I’ve been part of Visual Arts Concentration since my sophomore year, so it has been a pretty defining part of my Choate career. The first half of my time in the program, I spent my afternoons in the PMAC watching my older peers prepare for their senior shows; I was inspired by their talent and motivation. I had no idea where I envisioned my art going, as I was just exploring my resources and trying to understand if and why I wanted to produce art at all. The idea of having a body of work to present to the school at the end of my senior year representing who I was, seemed to me at the time almost as distant and daunting as the college process. Then came 2017, which marked the halfway point of my time in Visual Arts Concentration. I shifted away from exploring and actively began planning projects I could build into my senior show. My dedication and productivity spiked with the dream of putting together an impressive show. I constantly kept my senior show in the back of my mind in classes, outside of school, traveling over the summer, and in conversations with friends and family, searching for themes and inspiration that I wanted to bring into it.
With the show only a few months away, I still feel overwhelmed by what I want to include and what I have enough time to create. At the moment, all of my pieces are in the works. The closest finished project I have is a deck of cards I’ve designed over the course of 2017. Every week of the year, I painted images that represent significant events or people in my life directly onto Bicycle playing cards. After working on this project for so long, I feel excited to have the finished collection on display in May. Other examples of what I hope to include in my senior show are visual pieces that incorporate music. My love for visual arts is almost matched by my love for music, so my exhibit would be incomplete without a musical component.
A final hope of mine and the other seniors in the Visual Arts Con program is to work on a collaborative installation piece. The past senior exhibitions have typically been limited to hanging two dimensional paintings or prints of the individual artists. Student exhibitions at Choate rarely have large three dimensional works. Dilan Bozer ’17’s use of the Turkish flag in her senior show was the first student installation piece I’ve seen at Choate. It inspired me to try to take advantage of the tighter space on the gallery side beneath the 2nd floor balcony. Since last spring, I’ve been brainstorming ways to hang fabric, string, and other materials from the ceiling, or to build up tall sculptures from the ground to reshape the viewer’s space.
Hopefully, with the help of the other three seniors, we’ll put up a show too big to ignore.
