Michael Solano

On Thursday, the Edwards Center for Art and Dance hosted the opening reception for its newest exhibition featuring the work of four students.

These artists, Isa Cruz ’27, Izaiah Diaz ’27, Isabelle Rivera-Gandrung ’26 and Daniel Hennelly ’26, used funds from the visual arts department to support their projects during the past summer. The projects utilized various mediums including glass blowing, photography and screen printing.

Isabelle Rivera-Gandrung ’26 spent the past summer at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Michigan with the support of the Visual Arts Endowment Fund. Her installation includes five works, incorporating a variety of organic materials from both Ox-Bow and Brunswick in tandem with blown glass.

Rivera-Gandrung explained the significance of the dual origin of the materials and the nuances of bringing it to campus.

“It’s this idea that now that I have to install [my project] in a place that’s divorced from Ox-Bow with materials from Bowdoin rather than Ox-Bow itself. There’s a sense of invasiveness,” Rivera-Gandrung said. “There’s a sense that it’s fall; it’s not summer. So, this looks completely different from my installation from the summer. What does that change? Is it destructive? Because I’ve taken this out of nature and I’ve put it in a spotlight on a pedestal. Can it be sustainable? Is it good? Is it bad? It’s that wrestling of ideas of humans are in nature, and a part of nature that’s a part of humanity. If we think of it that way, what kind of art is produced, and what does it make us think of?”

Isa Cruz ’27 spent the summer studying screen printing at the Women’s Studio Workshop in the Hudson Valley region of New York, developing an exhibition that ties together visual art and poetry.

“I’ve been interested in the idea of marrying my poetic practice to that of the visual language I’ve been developing,” Cruz said. “The relationship for me between poetry and the urban, especially public space, has been very salient in my life. I was raised as a spoken word poet, so injecting the poetic into the everyday feels very natural for me.”

Cruz also highlighted the spontaneity and political inspirations of their work, including one of their pieces, entitled “class of 2014.” This work features a sketch of Zohran Mamdani ’14, accompanied by the words “Public Transit is not a luxury.”

“This was made yesterday to celebrate Mamdani’s win, and this moment of him becoming the New York City mayor,” Cruz said. “I wanted to honor that and bring that into the space, because I don’t know if our institution has done a great job about honoring that win, and so I wanted to show his face.”

Daniel Hennelly ’26 spent his summer traveling and photographing the United States on the Amtrak with the help of the Robert and Blythe Edwards Fund for the Arts. The photographs in the exhibit were taken in Oregon, North Dakota, Washington, Texas, Louisiana and Montana over the course of the five-week trip. Hennelly described to the guests at the reception the unexpected difficulty that came in capturing these images.

“This was a much bigger project than I realized when I signed up for it,” Hennelly said. “From the jump, I was lost. Immediately on day one, trying to take film pictures on a moving train while your lighting is changing, your whole body is moving, your camera is moving, even if it’s on a tripod…. It’s a really difficult thing to do, trying to troubleshoot all the issues that you think you might be having without being able to see them happening is really stressful.”

Despite these difficulties, Hennelly emphasized how rewarding this experience was and his gratitude to the College for supporting the project.

“It was such a beautiful and miserable, terrible and incredible experience.” Hennelly said. “I got to see all of my family, my friends. I got to go to new states, meet interesting people. And that was all possible through the school, through their office of fellowships. They funded my entire summer.”

Izaiah Diaz ’27 used the Visual Arts Endowment Fund to spend his summer capturing the two places he calls home: Waukegan and Chicago, Ill.

Diaz explained how his upbringing deeply influenced his conception of home and place.

“Growing up, my mom was very young when she had me, and my parents split, so I basically had two homes [in Chicago and in the suburbs]. This summer, I documented day-to-day life, and I really just wanted to depict how different it is from a community like Brunswick,” Diaz said.

“Home means something different to everyone, but it’s always personal. For me, this project is about cherishing those places—imperfect, change and deeply mine,” Diaz wrote in a statement about the installation.

The exhibit will be on display in the Edwards gallery until December 2.

Isa Cruz ’27 is a member of the Bowdoin Orient.