“This is the highlight of the year for the art program,” said Professor of Art Roy Nydorf, of the senior art thesis exhibit.
The senior thesis show will be held from April 23 to May 9 in Founders’ Boren Lounge, Gallery, and second-floor commons. The opening reception is April 23 from 7 to 9 p.m.
The thesis program, which has been at Guilford for 26 years, caps the Bachelor of Arts (optional) and Bachelor of Fine Arts programs. Students apply to the art faculty, who jury the work.
“By this time in the art major, the research (contemporary artists, art history) is done,” Nydorf said. “[Students are] very thoroughly proficient in their chosen media.”
Each thesis student picks a theme and medium to work with throughout the program, and each spring, their work goes on exhibit.
“There’s no definitive stamp on the work reflecting any particular faculty,” Nydorf said. “It’s the individual’s interest, even in terms of approach and media.”
Throughout the semester, some students meet with art faculty individually, but all art faculty are present for formal midterm and final critiques.
Nydorf said this year’s group is one of the largest the program has had with 13 students, 10 of whom have taken both semesters to work towards a BFA.
This year’s thesis students are Natia Rostomashvili, Karen Luther, Meredith Stanfill, Aliene Howell, John Boyd, Ivy McLeod, James Mulligan, Blake Ramsey, Nathan Finley, Sara Brigham, Matthew Shelton, Emily Tarleton, and Michael Maze.
“There’s a good camaraderie, which is uncommon among many seniors,” Nydorf said.
Shelton said that because the students all know each other well from having spent three years together in art classes, they are more able to offer each other constructive criticism.
Students feel the program has been beneficial and helped them to create amazing projects with an impressive range of subject matter.
Howell’s project, for example, are a large mixed-media oil paintings about the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, when the Communist Working Party organized a march against the Ku Klux Klan, and leaders of the march were shot.
“I was really surprised with what I tapped into with the community,” Howell said. “It’s opened up social justice job opportunities.”
Howell plans to move to Northampton, MA in the fall and work for a social justice fund run by a massacre survivor.
McLeod has done a series of 10 paintings “about relationships and people I care about.”
“I’m interested in solving issues of realism and abstraction, so the paintings have both elements in them,” McLeod said, adding that the program helped her “very clearly understand what it takes to prepare for an exhibition on a particular theme.”
Five of McLeod’s painting were stolen last Tuesday from the painting studio in Hege- Cox, but were returned on Sunday. For now, McLeod plans to continue her current job at Starbucks but to transfer to an Atlanta location while she narrows her focus for graduate school.
Tarleton’s project is an installation piece about “digesting knowledge.” She worked with mixed media, using different materials like plastic, canvas, paint, seaweed, and bones.
“[The thesis is about] pushing oneself as an artist by taking one idea as far as it can go,” said Tarleton.
Tarleton will graduate in December and plans to take a year off to travel before going into graduate school or gallery work.
Shelton described his work, a series of drawings, as “a way to displace my imagination.”
“It’s about the journey from an unfamiliar place,” Shelton said. “Drawing gets me back to a familiar place.”
He said the thesis program allows students a lot of freedom.
“As long as you’re invested in what you’re doing, they (the art faculty) are supportive,” said Shelton.
Shelton said there’s a professional quality about the thesis program, and people aren’t as afraid to critique each other’s work, because, “you’re working with friends who are invested in having a good show together.”
Shelton plans to work on art as much as possible after graduation, because he wants to find his voice or calling in art.
“College trains you on how to look for your voice, but when you get out, it’s up to you to find it,” said Shelton.
Nydorf said that he’s proud of the students’ accomplishments and that he’s looking forward to the exhibit.
“The work will be a combination of challenging, mysterious, amusing, confronting, poetic, personal, and among other things, whimsical,” Nydorf said.