Liminal Spaces: the Overlooked and Otherworldly

Liminal Spaces Liminal Spaces

Liminal Spaces the Overlooked and Otherworldly

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Department of Fine and Performing Arts

MCLA Arts & Culture / Gallery 51

ART 480: Senior Art Project 2023

Liminal Spaces

the Overlooked and Otherworldly

This exhibit showcases imagery and ideas of being between spaces or times, such as ending college and beginning life outside of school, or finding one's way through changes of the pandemic's impacts on our lives, to subtler states of being that are often overlooked or fantasized.

Each artist approached these larger themes in different ways through their artworks. Eloise Baker's installation relates to hidden computer code made apparent through weaving; Tiffany Ferreira's collage-paintings pull together common elements from nature, living, and dying; Rachel Zemsky's imagery activates considerations of burn-out and recovery; whereas Deianara Seamans' colorful rabbits implore us to consider folklore passing through our attention; Joseph Vigiard's drawings imply dreams of the past and the future; and Delano Mill's comics detail stories of moving through revenge to difficult truths.

Artists

Eloise Baker

Tiffany Ferreira

Delano Mills

Deianara Seamans

Joseph Vigiard

Rachel Zemsky

Eloise Baker (b 2000, Boston, MA) lives in North Adams, MA and attends Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, where she is a senior Art (Design) Major with Minors in Software Development and Arts Management. Eloise's work focuses on connecting technology with physical art techniques, as well as exploring the influence of women in design. She works as the graphic designer for MCLA Arts and Culture, and she had work shown in the Berkshire Art Association College Fellowship Show 2021 When Eloise is not making art, she enjoys spending time with friends, listening to music, and trying to find time to read more books

Artist’s Statement: Making visual art and programming computers can seem like two separate creativities My artwork combines them, using physical techniques such as fiber crafts and hand-binding books alongside digital art programs or actual code The time-consuming, processbased techniques contrast with the efficiency of a computer, while putting more focus on the computer’s own, usually hidden, processes. This group of artworks highlights HTML and CSS code, with every string or ribbon corresponding to a specific line of code from my portfolio website. Each of my projects also helps me explore and redefine my identity as both a computer programmer and an artist.

soft/wares yarn, ribbon, thread, computer wires

dimensions variable

Tiffany Ferreira: (b 2001-) Raised in Bridgeport, CT, Tiffany currently lives in the Berkshires studying Art and Arts Management at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She examines the natural world and society through acrylic painting, drawing, collage, and mixed media. Ferreira’s artwork has been exhibited at the Berkshire Art Association College Fellowship Show, COPLAC Conference, MCLA Bowman Gallery, and MCLA Sm[ART] Commons Blog When she’s not making new artworks, she enjoys making time to bake new sweets

Artist Statement: My art practice focuses on mixed-media and collage inspired by natural patterns In this series, Nature's Roots in Life and Death, I considered the interconnections between past and present life including skeletons, insects, flora and fauna Utilizing found imagery and my own painted features, the work highlights the beauty of the process of living and dying. I’m expected to receive my BA in Art and Arts Management from Massachusetts College of Liberal Art in 2023. The Berkshire Art Association, MCLA Bowman Gallery and others have exhibited my artworks, including winning a fellowship award at the 2022 Berkshire Art Association Fellowship Show. In addition to my main pieces, I look forward to more color studies and explorations of the natural world as the weather gets warmer

Untamed Wildflower collaged prints and acrylics, on canvas 12" x 16"

Delano Mills (b 2000, Springfield, MA) is a digital illustrator, character designer, and comics artist who focuses on bringing black representation and visual aesthetics like Afro-Punk, Afro-fantasy, and AfroSurrealism into the forefront of sequential art and storytelling. Delano is receiving his BA in Studio Art and minor in Arts Management from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Artist’s statement: I focused on bringing black representation to comics / manga through sequential art and visual storytelling, highlighting black people as the main characters throughout my stories. Making multiple short stories and placing 5th in the Manga Plus Creators December contest I am on track to release my first full-length graphic novel. Themes of these stories include the relationships to characters’ life histories, thoughts of revenge, processing anger, and discovering truths of our relationships with people and our conflicting cultures

Tears of the Red Blade digital media, inkjet prints 24" x 32"

Deianara Seamans (b 2001, Honolulu, HI, she/her) loves storytelling through both writing and visual art Her current body of work explores different mythologies from across the world, and learning about the creatures that exist within them and their symbolism She currently attends the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, but resides in Texas with her mother, two loving dogs, and a spoiled cat who thinks himself a water connoisseur.

Artist’s statement: I like to aim for a mixed media approach. I've focused on drawing, painting, sculpture, and some digital tools too, but while my primary methods are the first two, I believe it's important to be able to try several methods depending on the messages that I want to convey - a more abstract conversation may be amplified by pouring acrylics rather than traditional brush strokes, while a piece that intentionally calls back to more ancient styles may be intensified in ink and grayscale. I also want to explore cultures and their mythologies and find the stories and/or similarities that bring us together in fascination despite our differences. In this exhibit, my artworks reflect on the “Year of the Rabbit;” in the Chinese zodiac, the rabbit represents grace, beauty, mercy, and good fortune. I want to bring a series of rabbit drawings into this space to bring the idea of good luck and positivity to everyone who enters

Joseph Vigiard (b. 2001, Adams, MA) weaves imaginative fantasy scenes using traditional ink drawing methods. Provoking thoughts of escapist entertainment, his pen-and-ink drawings produce dramatic environments and worlds that contrast our own Vigiard studied 3D animation and mechanical drafting at McCann Technical School, and is currently studying Studio Art at MCLA When he is not making art, Vigiard can often be found daydreaming and listening to music played a bit too loudly.

Artist’s Statement: I create art to pursue beauty and to conjure potent emotions No matter how much I experiment, I often return to fantastical subjects, environments and dreamscapes. Fiction impacts my creative endeavors as an outlet to escape into an impossible reality of make-believe. By drawing grand stories and scenes, perhaps the artwork recreates this childlike magic. Harkening back to a long history of reality-bending fantasy artists, I use traditional pen and ink techniques. With this series of artworks, A Fanfare for Somewhere, there are no set stories, there are no wrong realities I invite you to build the unseen world around what you see, and forge your own story

Ishmael, the Pageturner Ink and Acrylics on Bristol Paper 17" x 14"

Rachel Zemsky (b. 2001 in Albany, New York, she/they) focuses on character designs and portraits. She is earning her B.A. in art from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Her artworks center around the idea of experiencing burnout through the comparison of astronomy and candles with portraits and character design. Outside of creating artwork, she enjoys special effects makeup, video games, visiting planetariums, and butterfly conservatories

Artist’s Statement: In this series, Melt of the Wax, Death of the Star, I worked with the theme of burnout, referencing imagery of a supernova, or death of a star, and burning candles to demonstrate the emotional and physical feel of exhaustion and cycles of recuperation. Using water based markers, paints, pens, and colored pencils to create vague self-portraits, the artworks display how it might look or feel to experience and overcome burnout and mental exhaustion

from the series Melt of the Wax, Death of the Star water-based markers, acrylics, pencil and ink on illustration board 9" x 12"

Acknowledgements

The artists thank the following individuals for their support:

Julie and David Baker

Kristina Seamans

Leo Skoble

Evangeline Cook

Lexi Fappiano Whalen

Giovanna Kinney

Mrs. Derosia

Christine and Jeffery Zemsky

Stacie Vigiard

Pete Moriandi

Matthew Norton

Ethan Giroux

Conrad Eygir

Emeka Jucintho

Patricia Mills

And thank you to everyone at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, MCLA Arts & Culture and Gallery 51, the MCLA Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Pi Upsilon Omega Sorority, and the Undergraduate Research Conference and the URC Student Mini-Grants program.

This exhibit was developed through the course ART 480: Senior Art Project, taught by Prof. Scheckler in Spring 2023.

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

https://www.mcla.edu