March BFA Group Show displayed at Grunwald Gallery

Bachelor of Fine Arts students worked diligently in the studio, melting glass onto metal pieces, upholstering furniture and developing entirely new personas to act and perform.

The Grunwald Gallery of Art opens its March BFA Group Show today and organized a reception 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. The exhibit will remain open until March 13.

The gallery will display art in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, digital art, textiles, video, metalsmithing, photography, printmaking and ceramics.

Metalsmithing and jewelry design major Alexandra Lawless is displaying six different brooches in the exhibit. Three are enamel pieces and the others are mixed media, which incorporate food packaging, envelope backings, tights, screen prints and animal bones.

Lawless spent weeks creating each brooch, especially the enamel brooches, which she said can be quite finicky.

“I had a few problems with cracking,” she said. “There’s times when you’ve melted glass onto your piece and something goes wrong, so you just have to break it all off or try to fix the bad patches.”

Printmaking major Jessica Grannan also faced challenges with her materials for the show.

Grannan created an installation of furniture that all have the same pattern made from silk screens.

Printing on such a wide variety of surfaces — including cloth, glass, paper and wood — made it difficult to attach the exact same pattern to each object. , she said

Despite her challenges, Grannan said she successfully completed her installation, which shows an extensive use of color, pattern and imagery.

“It’s meant to describe your daily interactions with patterns,” she said. “It enhances the idea that everyday life is chaos, but there is comfort in that chaos.”

The idea and concept of chaos took about six months to develop, and Grannan then put in several hundred hours of labor drawing the designs, building the furniture and putting the designs on silkscreen.

All of her labor will be displayed in an 8- by 8-foot square installation in the gallery.

“I think it’s a good time for the artist to stand back and see how people receive their work and what changes you want to make to your work based on their reactions,” she said. “Are people understanding the message you are trying to get across?”

Digital art major Cassie Harner will answer this question through a performance art piece.

She will perform in the gallery as a young woman of her creation named Kay-T Critiques, critiquing the work in the show with other guests.

Harner developed the character this past summer when she was on vacation in South Korea.

“I had a week where I stayed inside the apartment, and didn’t leave,” Harner said. “That’s when she emerged, I suppose.”

Harner used Kay-T as a way to reach out and engage on the Internet by posting videos of herself on YouTube.

When she came back to the United States, she realized it wasn’t something she should keep to herself, which meant she needed to be confident talking about it, she said.

“I have been using her as a way to gain confidence,” Harner said. “There’s some things where I’m like, ‘I would never do that, but Kay-T would do that.’ This is going to allow me to do more things.”

Kay-T is a way for Harner to poke fun at the way people talk about their art, often in a narcissistic way. Kay-T embodies that confidence, Harner said.

The character’s personality is based on students in Harner’s classes and famous and established artists such as Lady Gaga and Andy Warhol.

Harner said she looks forward to being in character for nearly four hours a day for an entire week during the show.

“While YouTube is a big part of Kay-T’s concept, I think the true potential comes from interacting with people,” Harner said. “It will be a growing experience for me as a performer as well, being able to react in character in real time.”

Besides seeing Harner perform as Kay-T, there are many other media and pieces to see in the exhibit.

“I think it’s a really interesting opportunity to get to see students’ work that are going to school, that are in this advanced program and are dedicating copious amounts of time to this thing that they’re doing,” Lawless said. “It’s interesting to see what ideas they have.”

Broadening viewers’ horizons is a major goal of many of the artists in the show.

“Kay-T’s success is heavily based on being memorable,” Harner said. “Hopefully, through Kay-T, people will find something to think about that they’ve never thought of before. But at the very least, they will remember her.”