Denison Museum - Senior Art Exhibition Catalog (Spring 2025)
It’s been a true pleasure working with this year’s senior Visual Arts majors. Over the past year, I’ve watched this group take on ambitious ideas with a mix of rigor, vulnerability, and creative force. Whether in critiques, hallway run-ins, or late-night studio visits, they’ve shown up for each other and for their work with curiosity and commitment. In doing so, they’ve embodied the mission of the Denison Visual Arts Department: to think critically, make intentionally, and connect meaningfully across disciplines, contexts, and communities. Their projects speak not only to their individual voices but also to a shared sense of inquiry that has made the department feel vibrant and alive. This final exhibition and catalog are a crucial part of their capstone experience—an opportunity to reflect on their time in the program, to present work that speaks to their growth, and to share their voices with a wider audience. I’m proud of what they’ve created, and even more excited to see where they go from here. Cheers to the Class of 2025!
– Chair Keith Spencer
Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Sustainability & Environmental Science
Dear Seniors,
Here is a question for you all, as you tremble at the precipice of the world: what kind of world do you want to build?
How do you want to make community, show up, share resources, listen, solve problems, make creative solutions, grow gardens, fight injustice, nurture friendship, privilege love, find jobs, pay bills - keep going with enough energy to wake up and notice the weather, the wind, the way the trees are becoming darker green each day.
You have been given the greatest gift – through your education you have each honed a voice that is not afraid to make art that speaks truly to experience, idea and belief. This takes courage. It is not a destination; it is a constant arriving. In other words, you must keep practicing yourselves, and bring that same courage forward in others.
I see this group of Seniors as uniquely positioned to enact this possibility. You are all deeply thoughtful (the first group of students I had to pull out of the galleries in Chelsea as you were so engrossed.) You care for one another, and are attuned to the political, social and personal responsibilities you hold as artists and citizens in the world.
I have many memories of sitting in a group with you all -- around the old oak slab, at the Mounds in Newark, in Central Park and during critiques – being aware of how you gave each other the gift of attention and time. I wish for each of you the ability to carry forward this capacity to be in community, to honestly share thoughts and differences of opinion, and to have the courage to continue when it gets difficult or there is a setback. It does not matter whether you go on to be an artist or a carpenter or a parent or a doctor -- or all of those things. The act of living and responding with courage to the world takes creativity.
And, also, vice versa. As I wrote in the syllabus at the start of the semester, “Creativity takes courage, now, Onwards.”
– Professor Sheilah ReStack Professor of Visual Arts and Women’s & Gender Studies
Visual Arts Practicum Fall 2024
LETTER FROM THE PROFESSOR
“There’s a moment for everyone when you fall into your own shadow and the fact is that it’s your shadow and you’re forced to live in it. And this is nothing to celebrate or not celebrate. It simply is. “– Robert Rauschenberg
Standing here in the Denison Museum it’s a treat to see your works gathered together in “ You Made That Up to Scare Me, “ a capstone exhibition that not only represents your latest body of work, but the culmination of four years in Bryant Arts Center leading up to this moment. I’m so proud I was able to not only teach Visual Arts Practicum with you this Spring semester, but also have each of you in other classes over the years. Some of you I’ve known since your very first semester at Denison and early intro classes. You’ve each grown so much as artists and individuals. This semester I’ve seen you not only hunker down developing your own individual studio practice, but also pursue a themed project addressing Art & Fear and most profoundly, present a series of oral presentations connecting your own autobiographies to provocative topics and contemporary artists. Many of those presentations were raw and vulnerable, and I feel honored to have been present in the audience to share in those ephemeral moments with you. In addition, it was a semester filled with visiting guest artists (Writer Lea Ollman & Eileen Myles, Printmakers Corinne Teed & Arron Foster, and Installation Artist Carey Newman) who came into your studios offering a range of perspectives, constructive criticism and insight. Your collective uniqueness, your thoughtfulness to one another and your overall creativity not only impressed those visiting artists, but often left an indelible smile on my face every Friday afternoon.
Perhaps as the title suggests you made up all this artwork…paintings, prints, drawings, photography, videos, comics and books…not to scare us, but reflecting on Rauschenberg’s quote here, envision your art as a means to explore deeper your own shadows, your own reflections, authentic selves, individuality….and your own sense of humanity and empathy that connects you to one another, as well all of us who visit the gallery and see the gorgeous exhibition you’ve conjured up.
As a teaching museum, Denison Museum is proud to support YOU MADE THAT UP TO SCARE ME as both an exhibition and a culminating learning experience for Denison’s graduating senior visual arts majors. This annual show exemplifies the museum’s mission to serve as a dynamic space for teaching and learning, and to foster interdisciplinary engagement through the arts. For these emerging artists, this moment represents a significant step in their professional development— offering them the chance to present their work publicly, engage with a wider audience, and participate in the full arc of an exhibition process. We celebrate their creativity, risk-taking, and thoughtful response to the world around them, and we are honored to collaborate with the Visual Arts Department to support their growth. – Megan Hancock
Director and Curator
Denison Museum
– Ron Abram
Professor of Visual Arts and Queer Studies
Visual Arts Practicum Spring 2025
ARTIST STATEMENT
Mason Allen is a BFA Visual Arts Major with a Communication Minor from Arlington, Virginia. His performance, sculptural, and installation works are rooted in examinations of domestic personal experience and interpersonal relationships.
With a professional background in technical theater and carpentry, his works utilize wood, text, paint, spoken word, and found objects to create works that evoke the memories attached to the material objects of interest in our lives.
@mason.making on instagram Website: mmasonallen.squarespace.com
My art is about the bodies, physical and personal, that use, inhabit, interact with, and depend on each other. Drawing on my own foundation in theatrical storytelling and public performance, I utilize the transformative nature of performance and installation to sculpt the space around me into a new stage; one in which the work becomes about the sharing of my body and its gestures and actions with an audience. In performance, I pull on the humorous and the absurd, contrasting sharply with the more serious observations that can exist at the core of laughter.
In my previous works, I have examined furniture as sculptural objects and as bodies in their own right, utilizing wood, fabric, metal, scrap, and prefabricated, mass-produced, and found objects. In doing so, I pull on influences of craft, as well as the conceptual works of Duchamp. My work in sculpture brings to the surface those interactions between and amongst bodies of wood and flesh, and examines the relationships that exist, and are changed because of these interactions. In the past year, my relationships with others have been incredibly defined by my dependence on family, friends, and loved ones. This body of work has arisen as a part of my reflection on my faith and trust as manifest in the liminal space time of recovery from injury.
The work in this exhibition includes sculpture, audio recording and performance. The objects I carve are loci of examinations of my relationships with my family and myself. As I cut, I find the connections they represent, and utilize these reflections to script monologues for performance.
In the making of these pieces, I hope to invoke how “shared memories attach themselves to the material souvenirs of our lives, and producing them is a kind of communion, with others and with the future.” (Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft)
In my practice as a whole, I hope to challenge and engage the faith and relationship of artist and audience, drawing on Michael Craig-Martin’s work An Oak Tree, where he claims he has transformed a glass of water into an oak tree, a work that Craig-Martin believes demonstrates “the confident faith of the artist in his capacity to speak and the willing faith of the viewer in accepting what he has to say.”
ARTIST STATEMENT
Phoenix Davis-Bailey is a Studio Art major and Education Minor. He grew up in Hiram, Maine, and spent most of his childhood outdoors, exploring nature, taking horse riding lessons, playing make-believe, and creating stick-figure comics. Phoenix creates artworks that explore themes of storytelling and worldbuilding through drawing, and exploring creating realities as a way to understand what’s happening in the world around him. He is currently writing a book, plays dungeons and dragons with his high school friends on the weekends, and cooks whenever he has the time. He has unending love for his late cat, Silver, who always kept him company when he did art back home. @phoenixdavisbailey on Instagram Website: phoenixillustration.com
The future is uncertain, and uncertainty is both terrifying and exciting. The actions of today ripple through time and create multitudes of realities and futures that could be, are, and yet will never be. Through my drawings I am creating an alternate reality that runs parallel to our own. I have the freedom to envision a world in which topics of order and structure, equity, overpopulation, and authoritarianism reach just one of their infinite extremes in a potential dystopia. Using forced perspective and intricate detailing, I invite the viewer to step into this world and explore it for themselves, needing to immerse themselves in the drawing to fully understand it. This alternate reality is integrated with the real world through multiple facets. Themes of advertisement and commodification of the human body are accompanied by both real world and fictitious companies and profiteers. My cityscapes are inspired by real architecture around the world while fusing them with my own imagination and creativity to imagine how they will look in the future. Through my drawings and the accompanying comic, I want you to step into the world, see how people live and survive in it, and consider if this is the world you want to live in.
Writers such as Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick have explored these imagined futures in Brave New World, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Huxley analyzes large-scale societal issues such as overconsumption, the total and unchecked control of government, as well as the loss of humanity’s uniqueness through systems in which children are grown from Embryos. Dick analyses the human condition in adverse conditions, and how we grow and adapt alongside our social structures. Artists like Peter Lee, Geof Darrow, and Samwise Didier, create intricate paintings and drawings of dystopian and sci-fi cities that explore life in the future through detail, color, and line density. All of these have inspired me to explore my imagined world through multiple facets, creating my cityscapes to look at the larger structures and environments where humanity lives, and my comic as a personal, in depth look into one person’s life in these cities.
There is uncertainty in the future, but in uncertainty there is infinite possibility. This entices us to imagine what could be, and to consider our role in that possibility. Utopia is striving for an unattainable perfect society, whereas dystopia is the struggle to survive in a society that has completely failed. I create a dystopian world to show how I believe society can collapse if things continue in their current direction, and call attention to the factors that I believe will facilitate that failure. Through this, I hope to inspire and push people to resist these possibilities, and take active steps towards a better future.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Chloe Chai is graduating from Denison University with a B.A. in Studio Art and a minor in Computer Science. From West Valley, NY, Chai’s works are inspired heavily by family photos and relationships with family. Focusing on themes of memory and her half-Korean identity, she specializes primarily in acrylic portrait paintings, which prompt viewers to connect with their own experiences. Her compositions blur the lines between realism and abstraction, using layered brushstrokes and symbolic color palettes to evoke emotion, nostalgia, and interpersonal relationship dynamics. By reimagining archival images through a present lens, Chai creates intimate visual narratives that invite reflection on cultural identity and personal history.
@chaiparkerchloe on Instagram Website: chloeparkerchai.com
CHLOE
In life, the strongest influences on our identities and values are often our families and childhoods. My work is motivated by honoring and preserving my family relationships by creating an archive of paintings of shared memories, some of which I have only experienced through photographs. In the work, I blur the line between the photo, painting, and memory to capture the moments as I remember or imagine them. To create my work, I use acrylic paint on primed canvas, which allows for flexibility and enables me to achieve soft figures and textures to capture the fuzziness, ambiguity, and warmth of memory.
For this body of work, the creation process is as important as the final product. Each reference photograph holds its own significance, and the paintings created from them serve as sites and evidence of contemplation. The time consuming process of translating photographs into paintings allows me to spend time with the subjects, revealing new insights into my relationships with them. Leaning into the painterly aspects of my work such as visible brush strokes, underpaintings, and areas left unrendered enable me to explore these revelations visually.
Gaining inspiration from the works of Jun Aihara, Christine Tien Wang, and Hayley Chiu, I reconstruct narratives from photographic imagery to create open-ended works that an audience can connect with beyond their own personal experiences. Having direct control of my own personal history through the paintings helps me to make sense of my disjointed childhood split between parents and locations, while highlighting connection to my sister as a constant.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Abby Conturo is a printmaker and painter from Westerville, Ohio and is graduating from Denison University with a BFA in Studio Art. Her work pays homage to the Ohio landscape’s often overlooked details and environments. She primarily creates works outdoors, drawing from observation and the multi sensory experience of working while in nature. She also experiments with making pigments from gathered natural materials.
@abbyconturo on Instagram Website: aconturo2.wixsite.com/abbyconturoart
ABBY CONTURO
When was the last time you squished a berry in your hands, threw a rock into a pond, climbed a tree, watched a bee pollinate a flower? The landscape begs to be connected with, if you listen close enough. This body of work is my method of connecting. I paint with crushed up rocks, dried flower petals, and berry juice that I gathered. I often internally debate whether this makes me feel more like a cavewoman or a kid making mud pies in the backyard. Either way, I am engaging in an instinctual human act of making and playing. My pigments are made of materials I walk past almost every day, and this process has led me to notice my surroundings in much closer detail than I ever have before. Now everything has potential, everything is an active being in my art making, and the world begs to be painted. I am landscape painting, both in the sense that I am depicting the landscape, but I am also painting with the landscape.
My work is informed by new materialism and queer ecology, allowing me to view nature as an autonomous being and an extension of my queer identity. My influences include authors such as Mary Oliver and Robin Kimmerer and visual artists such as David Hockney, Julia Godoy, Laura Peturson, and Alice Cazenave.
I have chosen to install my work hanging from horizontal wires as a way to bring my paintings off of the wall and add a sense of dimension. This disrupts usual gallery installation methods, allowing them to exist as objects rather than two dimensional images. The paintings become a gallery setting’s interpretation of leaves hanging from a branch, in which they possess liveliness and movement.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Isabella Hamm is a visual artist raised in Pittsburgh, PA. She finishes her B.A. in Visual Arts with a concentration in Queer Studies at Denison University in May, 2025. Her multidisciplinary practice is focused in digital photography, painting, collage, and ceramics. She is interested in cross-species kinships, landscapes, and queer theory.
@hammisabella.art on Instagram Website: isabellarhamm.com
ISABELLA HAMM
I am enamored by the patterns, colors, and textures of the natural world. Water ripples, fluffy grass, leaf shadows, dog fur, rocks, and cloud formations possess infinite landscapes within themselves. Wood begs to be painted, drenched with all kinds of colors to bring forward hidden pockets, where abstraction meets with the built-in maze of stripes and blobs. .
I take screenshots of dogs I find while scrolling on my phone; of a distant friend’s tribute to their dog they miss while at school, a flash tattoo page from a studio in Germany, or a carved wooden hound a sculptor is exhibiting. I thank this digital page of curated resources on my pocket box’s blue light screen. I also sneak poorly composed pictures of dogs on the street, hoping to avoid awkward moments with their owners. Some dogs come from another artist’s hand, like Paul Gaugin or Pierre Bonnard, whose work I see in fine arts museums. I accumulate this well of references that my hand is eager to paint. And so I paint dogs on wood and think about bark because bark comes from trees and it also comes from dogs. The bark I think of is the green and brown wavy blobs of Plane trees known well in Aix-en-Provence, France. I lived in this city for three months last year, and think about the mutts and the Dachshunds and the German Shepherds I passed every day on those little French streets covered in splotchy shadows. I have dog photos from every week I was abroad—living in the heart of a city for the first time greatly expanded the size of my phone’s camera roll. I find myself frequently referencing these hundreds of pictures with a craving to translate the dog in some other media. I can’t go back to that place, but I can reenter the fleeting moment of passing these dogs, even if it was just with my camera lens all the way across the street. Painting them in these colorful landscapes satisfies what grief I have for my sister, the dog who ignited my love for the species in the first place. Since her passing, I want to engage with every dog I pass. To remember her is to remember these dogs, too. And so, I build a shrine-like installation filled with different media— gouache and paint sticks and colored pencils on wood panels; newsprint that feels nostalgic for eating breakfast in the morning with my dog while reading the comics in the paper; ceramic tiles like the ones in Italy or China used to ward off evil spirits with dog imagery; a found piece of wood like a mantel; wallpaper made by digitally collaging a plein air painting of a tree’s shadows dancing on my canvas.
Each method of translating material and dog into a new existence together is a queer act. To manipulate a space and to usurp what is expected of a material is the same practice that queer studies engages with. I want to deconstruct and reject cis heteronormativity, so I cultivate these landscapes where I can effortlessly connect back to the pure love and joy of finding these dogs, who see all but judge not. There is nothing to be wary of. With patterns like these on wood grain and nature’s floor and the ocean’s surface, surely I must belong here, too.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Born in 2002 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, Renai Heath is a versatile artist who specializes in painting, drawing, and illustration. Still identifying as a Midwestern artist, Heath currently operates from her campus, Denison University graduating with a BFA degree. The primary objective of her art is to communicate and nurture personal, relational, and empowering expressions of the Black experience. Heath is particularly interested in depicting Black women in positive, peaceful, resilient, political, and traumatic roles. She seeks to create arts advocacy and enrichment that stimulates cultural enrichment with creativity and personal expression.
@art.renai on Instagram
Website: Renai-Heath-Art.com
In my work, I am using the mediums of paint, film, and photography to remake history. Specifically, my history as a personal journey shedding light on my experience of growing up as a black woman engaged with art around me and cinematography that stands before me, as it has been part of my formative education of the reality you and I stand in.
Each painting captures a moment of personal significance, a frame through which I interpret my experiences and emotions. By inserting myself into these scenes, I’m not simply paying homage to these films; I’m reimagining film stills as a two-dimensional visual interpretation of personal reflection and connection that I share within the context of emotion portrayed in the films. The imagery may be rooted in films, yet transformed visually to center my voice and my story.
Referencing popular culture in my work connects me to a broader cultural dialogue while offering a platform to reframe and personalize familiar imagery. Choosing acrylic paint, with its adaptability and vividness, enables me to transform the fluidity and artistic expression of film into textured strokes of my painting style. In doing so, I reinforce interpretations of cinematic narratives, turning fleeting moments and artistic practices into permanent visual reflections. This process allows me to reclaim these stories as a platform for exploring my deep interpersonal past, intertwining with themes of identity, visibility, and self-discovery. Such stories such as my experience and relationship with death, domestic abuse, freedom, and depression.
Through this series, I aim to communicate the depth of my experience as a Black woman, letting each painting reflect back a different layer of Renai Heath. In merging my self-portraiture with these scenes, I am asserting the importance of my own story, creating a space where I am visible and present to my desire. This series is a personal exploration focused on re-inhibiting storytelling across different forms of art through portraiture to conflate my past while identifying with the familiarity and connection of movie-stills.
This is my invitation to viewers to witness me, I Have The Remote.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Alex Noel is a comic artist, writer and illustrator. Alex’s work consists primarily of pencil and ink illustrations both traditional and digital. Alex’s work revolves around their own series, Red Star, which contains themes of resistance and queerness. A recurring theme in Alex’s work is the use of blood, which ties to themes of queerness and internal struggle. Much of Alex’s work is inspired by growing up with a Southern, Christian upbringing that conflicted with their own queer identity.
@nexnstar on Instagram
I cling to fiction and fantasy. I lack the ability to communicate outside of comics and animation. With no desire to survive in this world I am only left with the fictional world. But these stories… these worlds… have a profound impact on me. The image of the defeated warrior, with their back against the wall and no options left, only to bring forth internal strength to overcome and push forward, bathed in golden light, reborn anew. Even though it is not expressly queer, it has the potential to be. The internal struggle, the internal will to survive. It manifests itself not just in external transformation, but in these moments of anger and triumph. The rage and frustration, with everything that stands in the way of survival, may be the vessel to ensure that survival. Maybe that’s why I can’t help but pump my fist in excitement when I witness these stories. I can’t help but imagine my own freedom from the many prisons I find myself in. That my anger towards everything that exists to hold me down will grant me the strength to free myself. I used to think the works of those who came before me would carry me to the finish line. But I do not want to be carried. I want to walk on my own two feet. These works ensure I keep moving. Moving on my own. Moving forward however I can. Even if I have to crawl on my hands and knees. Doing whatever I can. Making whatever I can. I do not want to just survive. I want to live.
“Red Star: From the Top” as its title suggests, presented here for the senior exhibition has been in development since High School. The comic introduces a range of characters in the storyline, who will all develop in later stories. The themes of determination, struggle and resistance are the primary focus of Red Star. Red Star’s focus on struggle and resistance, along with the recurring use of blood and red, evokes themes of Queer identity. Blood, as seen in the recurrent use of the color red in the story, was chosen for how it represents internal and external conflict. Blood is the source of life within our internal bodies and when it exits our bodies demonstrates injury, loss and death. This in itself led me to create a main protagonist with a blood red arm, an external symbol that brands him.
Crimson and his more violent and uncontrollable transformation is the culmination of Queer Identity within this story. This transformation, called “Bloodshot”, bears red markings all over the body and its mouth moves from the face to the chest. While this design choice was not directly inspired by Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, the short story did inspire how I developed the transformation moving forward. Crimson cannot speak in this form, he is reduced to primal rage and instinct. The internal anger and grief towards an oppressive world and those who keep it so is brought forth. His hair and markings make him resemble a wild beast, cornered but deadly. I believe this transformation and the savage violence it brings is Queer. This eruption of anger and violence against the forces that would keep us down is cathartic. Crimson is a queer rebel against a government that would have him hunted but he will not be hunted. He will be the hunter. He will not die, no matter what. He will not die before he has reached his goal. He will not die until he is free.
Courtney Simmons is a Visual Arts Major with a minor in Educational Studies from Chicago, IL. Her art practice is photography-based and inspired by her work in educational environments. From displaying narratives of joy and nostalgia to the human experiences in and within our natural world. She practices portraiture in both outdoor and studio settings, putting herself in conversation with topics of identity, societal commentary, and natural preservation. Simmons’s practice aims to display photographs that illustrate her unique connections of self and to society, and the natural world. With her work, she aims to make people aware of the subconscious and its impact on the actions and experiences of our lives. @courtney.creations8 on Instagram Website: courtneycreations.net
COURTNEY SIMMONS ARTIST
Photos to Self is an ongoing reflective project that explores my personal journey of selfdiscovery and examines how societal contexts and external narratives have shaped my internal monologue and relationships—with the world, with others, and with myself.
A Girl on Ice is the first part of this ongoing body of work that investigates the intimate, fragile, and slippery relationship between self-worth and external perception. In effect of my studies in Fashion Photography, I learned about the value a person’s body can have in visual media. The wealth that is tied to it, and the social praise or degradation that is gained from it. Having to think and see my own body from beyond the lens, how others see me. I dissected my own history with fashion and dressing myself. This process helped me uncover the personas that desire to see myself embodying the a esthetics of the “it girl,” the pin-up, and the femme fatale.
Yet, this exploration also revealed how societal pressures and fears have limited my expression. As a Black woman, I have often stayed within the boundaries of comfortable fashion—choices that adhered to respectability politics and avoided the risk of being othered, oversexualized, or dismissed. Fears of being seen in a negative light shaped by societal expectations of beauty and Black womanhood became ingrained in how I viewed my own worth and self-presentation. This body of work reflects the tension between embracing beauty on my own terms and confronting the invisible but ever-present societal scripts that influence how I see myself.
A Girl on Ice is a visual exploration of what it means to be seen, to grapple with conflicting perceptions of identity. The blue cyanotypes are composed of ice and intimate clothing, and beauty products. With the ice melting over the products, the photographic value of the item is constantly changing and melting into a new form. Similarly, notions of attractiveness and desirability continually evolve and shift. Through these images, I challenge the viewer—and myself—by toggling between moments of vulnerability and boldness, between embracing myself fully in front of the lens and retreating to the safety of obscurity.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Sodahny Sip is a Cambodian-American artist from Grove City, OH, pursuing a double major in Studio Art and Art History at Denison University. Her work explores the evolving relationship between humanity and technology, focusing on the intangible digital spaces we inhabit daily and the ways they blur the boundaries in our lifes. She primarily works in light washes with acrylic paint and gouache. Beyond the studio, Sodahny loves to collect physical digital media, specifically phones, whether that be old iPhone models, flip phones, or landlines!
@jellynova_ on Instagram Website: sodahnysip.com
SODAHNY SIP
We live in windows—browser tabs, app screens, digital overlays—each one a portal into a world that is both intimately familiar yet untouchable.
Technology and the digital world are so naturally ingrained into daily lifestyles, inseparable from the human experience. Many of the newer generations have developed alongside technology, growing and changing in tandem. The idea of the singularity, a theoretical future where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and surpasses human intelligence, is both fascinating and unsettling to me, a tension I seek to express through my painting. I also explore the recurring theme of nature within technology, blurring the lines between the artificial and the natural. I challenge the ways women are often sexualized and dehumanized in Sci-Fi, portraying them instead in a natural and neutral form. In a world where the boundaries between the digital and reality continue to blur, my work reflects on the evolving relationship between humanity and technology, questioning the digital space we occupy.
My series “open New Tab! refresh.me” consists of 24 gouache paintings on paper. I employ light washes of color to emulate the soft glow and tonal qualities of the digital screen. This palette mirrors the visual language of the digital world—its icons, symbols, and pixelated textures— evoking both the nostalgia and familiarity of the digital world, while transforming them through the imperfect nature of paint. Each piece, identical in scale, imitates the overlapping windows and tabs that define our daily digital landscapes. This window motif is further emphasized by the blocks of color behind the paintings. By working with lucid, hand-painted forms that contrast the sharp edges and sterile precision of the screen, I create a visual tension between the digital and the handmade.
I am inspired by many artists, such as Anisha Baid or Testuya Ishida, who blend the human body and technological appliances into one. Mathew Zefeldt and Emma Stern also pull from video games which show the emergence of our lives into the digital. Though the nude woman is common throughout art history, I find that as a woman, it is important that I depict it myself, reclaiming the genre, similar to Lisa Yuskavage. Overall, I am most interested in Impressionism because of the genre’s brushstrokes and palette, as well as their intrigue of modernization—the highest forms of technology at the time.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Tra Vo (b.2003) is a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) candidate in Visual Arts at Denison University. Originally from Binh Dinh, Vietnam, she grew up amidst the bustling sounds of morning coffee shops and the hum of motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh City. Tra has a strong passion for digital art, photography, and printmaking. As a teaching assistant for photography and risograph printing in the Denison Visual Arts department, she combines her academic pursuits with practical experience. At Denison, Tra also serves as a Graphic Designer for several student organizations. She is a recipient of the Jeanne Vail Memorial Scholarship in the Arts and an Osborne Scholarship finalist. Tra’s passion for art and design drives her to explore the connection between human experiences, nature, and technology.
Fun fact: Tra is Art but reverse!
@qmche on Instagram
Website: trahuongvo243.myportfolio.com
TRA VO
“The sacred womb holds and nurtures It holds memories and nurtures the souls It sheds tears and pain And does it all over again.”
My body of work, titled “The Sacred Womb - Opening & Body,” includes an accordion risograph book and a series of sculptural forms that together provide an intimate exploration of the experience of menstruation. It serves as a tribute to the resilience and strength of those who menstruate. The “opening” accordion risograph book, bound by threads and created through digital collage and image manipulation, reflects the cyclical nature of menstruation and the profound, often unseen connections it fosters. The “body” sculpture, paired with projection and displayed on-site, showcases my experimentation with sculpture, body scanning, and new media installation. This relationship between the experience and materials of risograph and plaster enables a profound exploration of themes related to creation, nurturing, and the manifestations of life and death.
In selecting the risograph and sculpture, I aimed to infiltrate public space and make the narrative more accessible. The risograph captures the unique textures and vibrant colors of soybased ink printing, while the plaster strips - cast directly on my body - confront my vulnerability and frame my body as a sacred entity. I intentionally used crimson red ink to resemble blood, reclaiming a color often associated with menstruation to showcase my intrigue with the connection between the reproductive processes of the womb and the reproducible nature of printing. In the case of the plaster body casts, the public display and projection, which mimics the cycle of menstruation and the movement of blood, experiment with how technology and digital materials can fuse with physical materials to infiltrate public space, opening a discussion about menstruation as a normal bodily function. This placement and installation transform the work into a symbol of empowerment and shared experience.
“The Sacred Womb - Opening & Body” seeks to ignite deep reflection and foster meaningful dialogue surrounding menstruation, a subject frequently wrapped in silence and stigma. My intention is to honor these profound experiences by employing the evocative art forms of risograph printing, projection, and sculpture. Through this immersive approach, I invite viewers to intimately engage with the cycles that intricately shape their lives, encouraging a reclaimation of these natural rhythms and the stories they carry.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND THANKS
In order to create boldly in spite of our fears, doubts, and the noise of the world around us, we needed not only courage—but also the guidance, support, and encouragement of those who believed in our potential from the very beginning.
We extend our warmest thanks to the professors and staff of the Visual Arts Department.
Ron— Thank you for always pushing us to make the best work we could this semester. Your support and advice have helped us greatly in shaping this show into what it is today, and we can’t thank you enough for the excitement you bring to discussing our work. It was not an easy semester, but we made it through with your guidance! Thank you for helping all of us become not only more well-rounded artists, but also more aware of the inextricable and precious connections that we have to the world around us.
Sheilah— Thank you so much for a wonderful first semester of senior practicum. We were still adjusting to the expectations and pressure of senior year, and you cultivated such a warm and loving environment that has lasted even after the fall semester. Thank you for dragging us out of the galleries in New York or we may have gotten stuck there forever!
JSTN— Thank you for spending Junior Practicum with us! We had such a great time exploring Pittsburgh together—it was a trip full of laughs and unforgettable moments. Visiting your old home (and yes, picking up your laundry!) made it all the more special.
Keith— Keef Speccer’s, Thax fr bng the coolst chair evr! U’v bn so hlpful to all of us, and nvr stp bing so fnny + COOL. We LUV ur energee durin’ crits. Sry we stll haven’ foond Clippy yet :/ W’re nvr gnna give u up, let u dwn, r run arnd n’ dessert u!
Micaela— We miss you dearly! Thank you for the time you spent with us and for making your classes such a meaningful part of our experience. You brought so much creativity and care into the room, and it really stuck with us.
Shahid—Shahid, thank you so much for all your help with installing and setting up our exhibitions this year! It’s always a pleasure to have you present for our critiques; we appreciate the enthusiasm you bring to them. You are the best studio technician we could ask for, and this building wouldn’t function without you!
Chris— Chris, thank you for helping us even in the final moments before our assignments were due. You would always be there when we needed tech advice, and your willingness to walk us through new techniques was a lifesaver. Thank you for keeping the Risograph alive even against fate willing it to die.
Melissa— Our CCIR professor! Even though our class took place during such a strange time, you made it all worth it. You brought so much interest, fun, and heart into every session, and we’re really grateful for how you made that time feel meaningful and memorable. Thank you!
Sage— It was so wonderful to get to know you this semester! We love the humor and energy you bring to Bryant. Thank you for sharing your amazing chart on defining art, your artist talk is one that all of us reference on the daily—It really got us thinking!
Rebekah— Thank you for spending your first year of Denison with us! You have quickly become an integral part of the community we have here, and we are so thankful for your joyous attitude and unwavering support. We are grateful for everything you do for us and the department. Don’t have too much fun in NYC without us!
We would like to extend special thanks to Megan Hancock and Sam Smith for their outstanding support in organizing this show. We also appreciate the expertise and hands-on assistance of Museum Preparator David Horton and Museum Collections Manager Abbey Nickerson in installing the exhibition. Thank you for making our first museum exhibition possible!
