Senior Artists Compete for Best in Show

While each student focused on a single medium, they also explored individual themes that tie their collections together. Below are excerpts from their artist statements that clarify these deeper meanings. 

“I wanted to capture the feeling of coming of age as a teenage girl: being stuck in limbo between girlhood and womanhood and trying to learn the balance between the two when your family expects one thing and your friends expect another. 在整个影片中, the girl is stuck working on a painting and struggles to finish it, which reflects her own feeling of being 'incomplete.' The finished script was 31 scenes with eight locations…Filming this project was exhausting and beautiful all at the same time… I was doing what I loved and getting paid to laugh and cry along with my actors behind the camera and create a piece of art that hopefully would make others do that as well. A piece of art that makes teenage girls struggling with expectations from the world around them feel seen. A piece of art that made me feel seen.”

“When visiting my father’s village in Mani, 希腊, I felt an instant connection to where my dad lived. I wanted to photograph his village and surrounding areas to explore my Greek identity. For example, one of the towers (Pirgos) in this collection displays my family’s ancestral tower. I also photographed my brother walking towards the village beach. The other tower picture with an ant’s perspective was a famous historical meeting place of the Greek rebellion. I also documented a Byzantine Church and another religious site in Rhodes with a cross embedded in the gate to display the value of religion in Greek culture. There is also a remote temple of Poseidon in Mani, 希腊, that I captured to reflect on the ancient religious monuments that are interwoven in the culture.”

“Activism is integral to my art. It inspires me and allows me to do what I can to make a difference in the world. My art seeks to draw attention to various issues in the world — from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the lack of female representation in art history to the prevalence of female genital mutilation in several African countries.”

“I aim to create pieces of ceramic artwork that represent nature, the good and the bad. I have created pieces of work highlighting the beauties of the world, like flowers and frogs. I have also created pieces of work to highlight the more gloomy things in nature as parts of the world are dying or adapting to more human interaction. 这个收藏品， 基本灭绝, aims to address the major environmental problems that the world is facing. Each of these pieces focuses on an element — earth, 空气, 水, and fire — along with a problem relating to the element.”