2018 Scripps Senior Exhibition

April 27 – May 12, 2018
Opening: April 27, 7 to 9 pm
Williamson Gallery

This year’s annual senior art exhibit, featuring the final thesis projects of graduating studio art majors, will be on display from April 27 to May 12 at Scripps College’s Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery. An opening reception is scheduled at 7 p.m. on April 27. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. The reception includes live music and light refreshments. Rooms of Our Own features book arts, ceramics, digital art and video, painting, and photography. It displays the culmination of the artists’ work during their senior year. In addition to creating their works, the students conceptualize and install the exhibition, write artist statements, collect funding, and design publicity for the exhibition.

This year’s featured seniors are: Sarah Bruml, Aiyanna Cameron-Lewis (CMC), Julia Chambers, Justina Goldbeck, Caroline Golding (CMC), Madeline Helland, Judy Lin (HMC), Ishbel McCann, Holly Mitchell, and Marissa Schow.

About the Artists:

Sarah Bruml is majoring in Studio Art concentrated in Photography, along with a Media Studies minor. For her thesis project, she created a video that incorporates video in real time to illustrate four different techniques used to help children diagnosed with dyslexia in overcoming their challenges in reading and writing English. This project is meant to illustrate the “behind-the-scenes” aspects of what it takes for someone with dyslexia to understand some basic principles governing the English language.

For Aiyanna Cameron-Lewis, growing up near old-growth forests and the Willamette River nurtured within her an understanding of the underlying and consummate interconnection between the natural environment and human existence. As an Art and International Relations major she has chosen to further explore and represent the dynamics of human-environment relations in her thesis as she believes them to be immediate and universally relevant. Through her neo-expressionist landscape paintings, Aiyanna meditates on the question of water sustainability in Los Angeles and elevates for reflection the impending juxtaposition of human development and environmental transformation. She explores and challenges the idea of Manifest Destiny as a concept that extends beyond international relations, to impact the way in which humans engage with and view the environment.

Julia Chambers is a double major in Economics-Accounting and Studio Art, with a focus in Digital Art. After graduation, she will pursue a CPA license while working for Deloitte’s audit practice. Julia draws artistic inspiration from the multitude of dreams she has retained memory of since childhood, and she has combined dreams of the past and present in her animation. In her vibrant work that navigates between the fantastic and mundane, she encourages viewers to consider the substance of their own dreams, the feelings they evoke, and what that signifies.

Justina Goldbeck is a double Art and Linguistics major with a concentration in Photography. As a Pacific Northwest Native, nature is incredibly important to her and connection to the outdoors is explored across all branches of her work. This project portrays powerful female figures and mirrors in surreal and remote environments. All of the illusions and impossibilities in her work are created on site with only mirrors and battery-powered images, and are not manipulated in Photoshop. This decision is intended to challenge what is possible in an unmanipulated image and to interject more mystery into the work. Her project aims to impress on viewers the magnificence of nature, the strength of women, and the power of beauty in art.

A Bay Area native, Caroline Golding is majoring in Studio Art with an emphasis on Digital Art.  After graduation, she will be pursuing a creative marketing career in the wellness industry, as this encapsulates two of her biggest passions.  For her thesis project, she created three digital portraits of herself, a close friend and her mother, assembled out of the specific pills they take in an effort to examine and raise questions about society’s collective dependence on prescription drugs. She hopes these portraits will make viewers think twice about the vexed relationship we have with western medicine and the impact our pill culture has on our bodies and society as a whole.

Madeline Helland grew up in Claremont before attending Scripps College, where she pursued a double major in Studio Art and Art Conservation. Her art encompasses a variety of mediums, including book arts, printmaking, watercolor, and digital art. For this project, she was inspired by complex themes of cultural heritage and the dissemination of material history that she often encountered in her studies on conservation. The resulting piece, titled Field Guide, is a mixed-media journal detailing the exploration of a fictitious culture through cartography, narrative, and illustration. It is presented through the lens of an amateur archaeologist, navigating a chain of islands to search for ruins and artifacts.

Although Judy Lin is a computer science major at Harvey Mudd College, she wanted to step back from the screen to concentrate on painting as well. For her thesis project, Lin paints large-scale landscapes of California’s Silicon Valley by pixels to reference a digital storm. Her work seeks to connect the sublime philosophy to technology’s impact on capitalism and geography.

Scottish-born Ishbel McCann grew up in Newton, Massachusetts before attending Scripps College to major in Studio Art concentrating in Digital Art. She has studied graphic design at Rhode Island School of Design, University of Art London Central St. Martins, and at DIS, a study abroad program in Copenhagen. For her senior thesis project, she delves into the process of cosmetic application as a means of self-care and identity creation in a video art piece documenting various women’s makeup routines and their motives for the application. Inspired by the role makeup has played in supporting her mental health, Ishbel showcases the way in which makeup is often much more complex than the simple assumption that it is act of vanity done to please others.

Holly Mitchell is a double major in Computer Science and Digital Art. She uses art primarily to help her form ideas about the world through narrative explorations. Her primary focus is on working through emotion and learning if there’s a right way to feel. She hopes that these careful explorations can also help others see either edifying or relatable perspectives on life in an engaging and immersive manner.

Marissa Schow is a Studio Art major from Kentfield, Calif., who emphasizes in Ceramics. Next year she will take part in a Post-Baccalaureate program, after which she hopes to pursue a career in Art Therapy. For her installation, she has replicated a child’s playroom that consists of found objects, five of which are covered in unfired clay. Each clay-covered object sits beside an uncovered object. Hanging on the wall is a clipboard that reads: “We didn’t really know what to do, or what was going to happen, or how long it was going to take, or for that matter, anything else.” The installation explores the impact of pediatric cancer on children and

 

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