Midterm Art Boards

Sophie Szwartz

My art is all over the place. I am constantly battling between ink, color, clarity, light, style, and themes. It’s hard for me to center all my artwork on one single mission or view. Rather I prefer experimenting with everything and creating exactly what I’m feeling at that moment. Because my art varies so much, I deal like everyone can connect with it in someway. Whether it’s through messy paint strokes or ink scribbles or neat pencil sketches, I continue to change, create, and mold my art into the person I am at that moment, and because my art follows me, it is constantly changing.

Colleen Wang

Honestly, I’m not necessarily trying to express anything with my art I just do it when I feel like it. I guess it can be an expression of when I’m feeling creative or when I’m just trying trying to relax or when I’m bored. When I feel like doing something I normally paint something or sketch something in my sketchbook. Creating art helps relieve stress, and I enjoy it.

Zora Gamberg

I am inspired by people. An interesting person I met, a random face from instagram, my friends, myself. A face is personal, it’s telling, and drawing a person is a delicate thing. In my pieces, I try to emulate that, mostly depicting faces in an expression of tranquility. Mostly because it is a difficult position to draw (one wrong mark and a face can look completely manic) a peaceful face is the one most vulnerable to change, and there is something unsettling but also beautiful about this. I try to capture the people I draw in that one fleeting moment, their faces unchanged, vulnerable. It is the face of the body at peace.

Marie Nikolov

Art is one thing that lets us distinguish our own unique perspective from everyone else’s, while at the same time bringing people together through the expression of emotions. The reason I do art is to help understand my own feelings and try to understand others. Through my black and white sketches I reflect on how I’m feeling in a given moment if it be: depression, anger, helplessness, or just being lost. Placing my thoughts on paper and making them tangible enough for me to understand them allows me to later move on from them. When it comes to my photoshop art, it is more about expressing an aesthetic through a combination of lots of photo. Finally, my still lifes are very important to me in the sense that I can utilize color to the fullest. As well as honing in my craft to be able to improve my acrylic paintings and sketches to really be able to express everything on my minds. Overall, art is the greatest unifying force in the universe and being able to create art is a great thing that everyone should try to do in one way or another.

Mason Tepper

This year I ended up sticking to this theme of blacks, whites and fluorescents. I didn’t really start these pieces with this intent, but I’m glad I eventually came to this conclusion. It new and satisfying to work so boldly. When you work so boldly you have to accept the mistakes. This made me care less about the actual outcome of the pieces and focus more on the process. One of my favorite pieces, the print manipulations had a process that I appreciate more than the works themselves. (They were made by pulling images out of a printer at different intervals then layering them.) I hope to continue with the trend of making art with the intent to learn.

Oliver Stern

Life is contradiction.

Disparities are what make art interesting, giving the eye something to process. In some pieces I experimented with contrast: monochrome and color, light and dark, color and complement. In other pictures I attempted to examine the opposite, namely the leaf, which differs only in texture, not color. To me, art is about trying new things and seeing what sticks. I tried a few new media and techniques, especially with the abstract collage and charcoal still life. In the painting, I attempted to create an interesting texture for the headpiece and a rich world for it to inhabit. Art interests me in how it reinvents itself to stay relevant in a changing world.

Emma McAlpine

The past influences the future. My art reflects my mind and body. I am simply creating and evolving and existing for the thrill of it all.

Claire Phillips

Promises I made myself, I broke them pretty soon after these and I’m better off for it. Life lesson #276: Don’t follow the rules.

Hasadri Freeman

It’s only in review of my work that I’ve found myself rather involuntarily trapped in worlds of color. In the way I take and edit photographs, lighting and color have come to play huge parts in the moods and people I seek to illustrate with my work. As my studies of color continue, I’ve discovered color schemes I didn’t know existed in photos i’ve taken already or edited with no conscious goal (although I’m of the opinion that no art is taken up without a goal in mind). I rather enjoy the idea that color is something biologically innate to the human eye. Or perhaps, and I call myself this tentatively, the artist’s eye?

Of late, I've been obsessed with defining "the girl" from an artistic standpoint, an often elusive subject in both others and the image that greets me in the mirror as I wake every morning.

My work this past semester as both a writer and an artist has sought to find its way inside micro narratives; the inner workings of our brains as humans. Often, this overlaps with the way we function as members of society, allowing these two categories to blend in ways that draw unexpected parallels between the individual and the whole.

I hope all the scrambling of my brain isn’t useless.

Sam Strong

With my art, I try to pour my emotions into every piece. It can be hard at times, depending on how I’m feeling but I make sure it reflects who I am. This year I struggled a lot with my art. I lost motivation a couple of times and ended up not doing many projects. But regardless, I did learn more about art and what i like to use to make my works. Most of my art and my style was influenced by how I felt. I used many funky lines and bright colors this year for a few reasons. One, the line work was mainly used to display my ongoing health issues that took up most of my time and energy. I was told a lot that I was overreacting and that I just was pretending but I knew it was so much more. After five years, I still am figuring out what is the cause for my pain and I think the cross-hatching and blind contour really helped me convey my emotions through the harsh and dark lines. The vivid colors I used was for hope and happiness. It shows the other side of who I am and what I am feeling to give off a nicer vibe.