Guilford’s Senior Thesis Art exhibit opened last Friday. Guilford’s finest – and finest-dressed – showed up to mill around the Founders Gallery, munch on finger foods, and chat with the artists.
The annual exhibition displays the work of graduating art majors. This year, it celebrates the achievements of six students: Lauren Zeigler, Melissa Taylor, Marcelo Tabor, Despina Statelova, Noah Howard, and Marc Bernstein.

Viewers got more than grapes and brie, for there was both eye candy and food for thought. The show was filled with pieces startling and beautiful: Statelova’s body casts, Bernstein’s pyrography (literally, “fire-drawings”), and Howard’s intensely personal abstract paintings.
Though the exhibition focuses on content and theme, some of it jarred with the easy social atmosphere of the reception.

Take Marcelo Tabor’s subject-driven photography for example.
People fell silent as they stood before his wall, full of photography that contemplated “the reactionary experience of death.” It seemed the only appropriate response to his black and white images of prone bodies, dead animals, and burning cigarettes.
But the show’s content was as diverse as a Guilford promotional brochure.

In the next room, painter Melissa Taylor’s images of pomegranates and bedrooms explored fertility symbolism and reproduction, while Lauren Ziegler’s color studies in fabric and paint address the cycles of life.
Statelova’s drawings and sculptures feature images of herself and her family. “I am in a state of permanent transit; not a rite of passage, but rather an exertion to overcome self-imposed obstacles,” she explained. “My passion is my driving force.”
In the midst of such seriousness, though, humor still reared its naked head.

Marc Bernstein’s wood burning “Ours, Absurd” displayed a
crowd of T-shirt clad runners. Clad only in T-shirts, mind you, and all holding phallic symbols. Hmm …

All the art is for sale, though prices are as unique as the pieces. Some are priced to sell at $275; others, such as Bernstein’s “Keeping the Free in Freak,” marked at $1999.95, are priced to keep.
And while I wish I had money to buy them all, perhaps painter Noah Howard summarizes the show best.
“This is an exploration of the intricacies of my human experience,” he said. “Take from it what you can.”