Students’ exhibits on display at Grunwald

The Grunwald Gallery of Art will present its sixth Bachelor of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibit today with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday.

The exhibit is free and open to the public, featuring different mediums including printmaking, photography, painting and textiles.

The exhibit will be on display until May 3. It runs in conjunction with the MFA thesis exhibit that was displayed April 22. Here are three of the students who will have work displayed in the exhibit:

Matt Lawler, painting
Lawler is displaying seven oil paintings depicting Western, post-apocalyptic scenes, relating to metal music.

Lawler drew his inspiration from Stephen King novels and his own interest in metal music. Through these paintings, he is trying to give back to the metal genre, he said.

“I’m hoping people will become more open to the ideas portrayed through metal in general,” he said. “They always think, ‘Oh it’s just metal with screaming and incoherent instrumentals.’ But there’s a lot more behind it.”

Each painting took around a month to create, but to catch up at the end of the semester, Lawler worked for eight hours a day to finish three in one month.

His biggest challenge was trying to paint his figures in a realistic way.

He said his influence from video games would come through in his painting work.
“I don’t want to have that come across too much,” he said. “I’m afraid people will quickly disregard them because they might not understand video games.”

Lawler focused on artists like Francisco Goya and Hieronymus Bosch to make his figures seem more realistic and life-like.

Celina Wu, photography
Growing up in America, Wu not only encountered Western culture, but was exposed to Taiwanese culture by her parents, who were born and raised on the other side of the world.

Wu used her photographs as a way to show the duality and opposition she has within herself because of the two cultures she has grown up with, and the emotions that come with that experience. But Wu did not immediately come to that idea.

Originally, she thought she would show alternate realities, but didn’t think that was deep enough for her thesis exhibit.

Eventually she realized that the source of her interest in alternate realities was from the same duality in herself. This led her to the concept of her show.

Thirteen photos and a book of photographs make up Wu’s section of the exhibit.

She used family photos that she reconstructed by mixing two-dimensional and three-dimensional aspects and recreating them into a photograph.

“I hope people enjoy the personal aspect of it,” Wu said. “I’ve never been this personal with any work of mine. It gives a better understanding of who I am.”

Izzy Jarvis, printmaking
Jarvis only ever wanted to be good at drawing.
“That was my goal as a kid and I always loved drawing people,” she said. “Whenever you’re drawing the human form, it’s a self-portrait.”

Portraits make up three of the five relief prints making up Jarvis’ thesis exhibit.
Relief prints involve the artist carving into the wood in order to make the print, but in this process, the artist is doing the opposite of drawing.

The carving is creating the negative space, or the part of the depiction that will not be printed or seen.

The artist is taking away parts of the print instead of adding them like in drawing.

Jarvis said it was a physical process, but because the wood pieces were around four feet by four feet, there were more chances for expression.

“I want people to see the care I put into it,” she said. “If they just see the beauty and care, then that’s enough.”

The other two prints show natural objects that Jarvis added her own symbolism to, all of which show her own identity as an artist and person. Creating the prints was a way for Jarvis to explore her own identity.

“I think artists find ways to figure out who they are through the work they make,” she said. “I think this show is very much about an experience of who I am.”