Recent Student Work

Anna Fifhause: Wear it Out

The three dresses displayed here were created in the Spring 2020 semester as a Creative Project advised by Professor Tracy Taylor. I chose to work with recyclable materials because I was interested in how most materials cannot be recycled into a product of equal quality and instead become a “lesser” version of what they were before. I wanted to see what would happen if I reversed this process and instead elevated an object like a soda can into something we consider a luxury item like a ball gown.

Off the Hook

Party dress made from recycled plastic bags and tablecloths

Pop Art

Ball gown made from recycled soda cans

Library Bride

Wedding dress made from recycled book pages

Chloe Phillips: Traces

Traces is a series of photographs and time-lapse videos created between May 2020 and March 2021 for my senior thesis project in Studio Art. The body of work ––which is comprised of 30 12x12 black and white prints and a collection of 5 timelapse videos –– explores the themes of memory, time, place, and the everyday. I chose the black and white square format of the photographs and videos to evoke the personal intimacy and analog nostalgia associated with the Polaroid style. Additionally, the square format characteristic of the Polaroid and uniquely created for the medium of photography symbolizes my desire for an alternative way of making compositions beyond the traditional portrait and landscape as well as approaching the concept of the personal documentary. The photographs are part of 5 different memoryscapes, each one composed of six images, that invite the viewer to experience them as individual compositions that are also part of a shared visual context with the videos which together form a larger conceptual whole.
The unique ability of the camera to capture visual traces of feelings, moods, impressions, places, subjects, and experiences has been the central idea guiding this creative project of trying to preserve material vestiges of unique, inimitable, expressive moments in my everyday life. Throughout my nearly year-long process of creating the artworks in the Traces series during the pandemic, I became increasingly interested in the power of digital photography to transverse both the virtual world and the analog physical one and leave indelible marks on both. At a time when everyone is experiencing profound pain and isolation, I hope that regardless of how you view this exhibit, in-person or online, that it can create a site for experiences of empathy and personal connection.