Week two, round two, of the three week long senior theses exhibition featured six theses; two architecture, one drawing, one photography, one sculpture, and one German thesis of print making.
The most colorful project was “Making Room,” a sculpture thesis by Myra Rasmussen. Rasmussen covered a Styrofoam altar with a mosaic of coca-cola boxes, plastic fruits, clippings from tourist and study abroad brochures, Tropicana boxes, plastic beads, Christmas lights and other colorful objects. The sculpture deals with the First World’s fascination and fetish with the Third World.
“I wanted the piece to be about the individual’s search to find a moral position, the need to make room in the mind for complexities and paradoxes, as well as the need to continue reevaluating one’s own motivations, perspectives, and assumptions, learning to navigate these issues with honesty,” Rasmussen said.
While the sculpture is very pleasing to look at from a distance, upon closer inspection the viewer finds small plastic toy soldiers shooting out at them.
“A closer look reveals problems, contradictions, complexities,” Rasmussen said. “I was hoping to show the hypocrisy of trying to sort out items into positive and negative categories, as well as get at the interconnectedness of desire and disgust, particularly self-disgust.”
The sculpture’s installation requires you to physically enter the altar from the back. It cannot be seen until you are on top of it. The entrance is at the center of the piece. You must walk down a short flight of stairs in order to gain perspective. Once down the stairs, the incredible spectrum of colors and lights can be appreciated in its entirety.
Jesse Delia’s “547 Main Street,” consisting of thirteen black and white photographs, depicts the life of the Middletown Roller Skating Rink on Main Street. A short caption follows each photo, describing the history of the rink, and the lives of the owners, workers, and patrons to the athletic facility. Maria Paquette, the current owner of the rink, was impressed by Delia’s artistic depiction of the rink that has served the Middletown community for many years.
“My favorite is the Santa photo,” she said, referring to a photo of a girl sitting on the lap of a man dressed as Santa. In front of the camera is a young girl in roller skates and a Santa hat waiting. The photograph is taken at such a perspective that the viewer can imagine him or herself waiting to talk to the big man in red too.
Both Delia and Paquette enjoyed the opportunity to become friends over the course of the year. A group of people who had met Delia during the project and from the rink attended the gallery opening on Wednesday.
“I felt like the project came full circle when all these folks came and were so excited to see pictures of themselves as well as just to take part in the excitement of an opening,” Delia said.
Min Ter Lim’s architectural project designed the “Malaysian Cultural Center,” a hypothetical cultural center in midtown Manhattan.
“Its inspiration is drawn from traditional vernacular homes of Malaysia that are built on stilts,” Ter Lim explained. For Lim, the design process posed the greatest challenge. “It drove me nuts.” However, receiving feedback on the project made it all worthwhile. “It was nice to see an average Joe with little understanding about Malaysian culture [could] actually see where I was heading with the project.”
Not all the art exhibitions were studio art theses. “Checkpoint,” Charles Lewis’ German Studies thesis, exhibited prints containing false cognates in German and English. For example, a print saying ‘was war gross’ features an American flag in the foreground superimposed by a skeleton donning an army helmet and a gun standing amidst a grave yard. “Was war gross?” in German means, “Which was large?”
The exhibit included several types of printmaking, including woodblock and etching prints.
“The one that says ‘Grave,’ which means gravestone, is one print where I showed that I could do both mediums well: the bottom plate is an etching, its all aquatint, it’s really hard to do, and the top plate is a wood block,” said Lewis.
Unfortunately, this exhibition was taken down last Sunday, and can no longer be viewed by the public. If you are interested in seeing this week’s installations of senior art theses, six new exhibitions will be on display in Zilkha Gallery through Sunday.
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