Tonight, students from all of this semester’s visual art classes will exhibit their best work from the semester at an open house at the Edwards Center for Art and Dance.
The exhibit will include works of art from drawing to sculpture to digital media. The open house provides a space for students to discuss and share their work with the Bowdoin community.
Chair of the Arts Department Michael Kolster hopes the open house will be an opportunity for students from all areas of campus as well as the community to come in and see what the classes have been working on all semester.
“Those students have been working on their final projects for the past couple weeks, so it’s really a chance for them to put up what they think represents the culmination of works they did all semester,” he said.
For Tess Hamilton ’16, a student in Painting II, the open house is an opportunity to exhibit the personalities of herself and her peers.
“There’s a lot of academic spaces on this campus, and it’s of particular note to me that when you walk into a space in Edwards, you very much are not asked to leave your personality at the door and that comes through in a lot of artistic representations,” said Hamilton.
In Sculpture I, Assistant Professor of Art Jackie Brown decided to let students show a mixture of different projects they’ve been working on throughout the semester that they wanted to highlight.
“The students worked really hard and made really compelling work,” said Brown. “It’s really exciting to be able to show it and share it and have people from the community get a glimpse and know what we’ve been doing and hopefully a sense of why we’ve been doing it.”
Emily Jaques ’17, a student in Brown’s class, chose her piece because it incorporated the entire semester’s studies.
“I chose one that I felt like was involved in all of what we had done in the class, not just conceptually but technically,” she said.
Students will be displaying everything from their entire portfolio to final projects—any piece they feel is representative of what they’ve learned from their course.
“It’s very open-ended. They’re all self-designed projects,” said Hamilton. “It’s cool to see how all of our work, our own personal work and also the work of our peers, have evolved.”
“It was a chance for them to take things they learned in class and apply it to something they were interested in,” said Visiting Professor of Art Mary Hart, who teaches both Drawing I and Painting I.
“This open house offers students the chance to display the work that they’ve been passionate about this semester,” said Nevan Swanson ’18. “It’s also a chance to see stuff that’s going on in classes outside my own.”