Throughout her time as a studio art major, senior April Marshall said she had a bad habit of leaving highly toxic paint thinners open overnight.
Now, as she reflected on the culmination of her four years, she decided her thematic “safety rule” for the senior gallery “Safety in the Hot Shop” would be to store chemicals properly, commemorating her past mistakes.
“That’s very dangerous and I was just being super stupid,” Marshall said.
Each of the eight seniors featured in the gallery chose their own rule to add to the list. The result? A thematic string connecting the diverse styles of student artwork shown at the gallery for senior projects, encapsulating the artists’ experiences and intentions.
The Cal Poly Art and Design Department is hosting an opening ceremony for its 2024 Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (BFA) Show at the University Art Gallery this Friday from 5 – 7 p.m.
This year’s show has two different themes: “After All, I Exist” for photo video concentrations and “Safety in the Hot Shop” for studio art concentrations, according to the department website. The artwork displayed in the exhibits function as the student’s senior projects. The “After All, I Exist” portion of the show will take place in the Dexter Foyer outside the gallery while “Safety in the Hot Shop” will be held inside the gallery.
“We all have different themes that we’ve been exploring over the past few years with our art and that we’re proud to show and talk about,” Marshall said.
The “After All, I Exist” theme will explore experiences lived by the artists, including the struggles they have endured and achieved success along the way, the department website said. The exhibit will focus on ideas of visibility as well as introspection and experimentation.
Meanwhile, “Safety in the Hot Shop” references a sign located inside the department’s “Hot Shop” where students work with equipment. Each student assigned themselves a “safety rule” — like the one Marshall had — calling back to small icons listed on the poster. The exhibit highlights ideas around breaking rules and boundaries as well as creating them.
“Don’t stay in the installation room for 24 hours”
Printed satellite views of agricultural fields are pinned to the wall of studio art senior Addie Moffatt’s studio cubical. She often references the fields near her hometown of Davis as she models her textile pieces from the topography.
Piles of old t-shirts and clothes are pushed to the corner of her desk. Several wooden hands are clobbered together, hot glued with ridges to accentuate the fingers’ bone structures.
The seniors all work together on setting up the gallery showcase, Moffatt said, organizing almost every aspect.
“We all work really well as a team,” she said. “I think we all really respect each other.”
As she speaks, Moffatt stares intently downward as she dabs one of the wooden hands with hot glue and wraps the white-to-green ombre yarn around the last finger.
She began developing her style with textiles her sophomore year, but the labor intensive practice came with costs. Before the luxury of a senior studio space, she spent her time gluing, pasting and working in the installation room — a tiny, low ceilinged and windowless room off a hallway in Dexter Building.
During one project, Moffatt stayed in the “gross” room for a full 24 hours.
“I didn’t see the sun for a whole day because I had to finish my project,” she said. “And I went a little crazy, so don’t do that. It’s like the asylum in the middle of Dexter; it’s a scary time.”
Moffatt said she is looking forward to having friends and family come see everyone’s work, creating a “melting pot of different views on art.” She said she hopes students will come out to see their work as well.
“People sometimes can forget about the arts,” Moffatt said, encouraging people to come with an open mind and an appreciation for the work the students have put in.
“Don’t get caught”
With three oil paintings, one graphite piece and one sculpture in the show, studio art senior Julia Neils has been busy building up a body of work to present.
One of the biggest challenges, she said, is cultivating the artist’s statements to accompany pieces and guide the viewer to know “how we’ve come to our practice and what our art essentially means.”
Neils’ pieces focus on the idea of puppets and stage, creating what she described as “weird, surreal, like dismembered [or] morphed environments.”
Overarchingly, her work depicts larger themes of environmental decay and the impact of human technology on organisms — emanating the influence of her minor in environmental studies. Her pieces all have an element of entrapment to them, leading to her safety rule of “Don’t get caught” as a warning to visitors.
Neils encourages all viewers to read about what the art means to get a greater sense of purpose from the pieces.
“You’re gonna see a bunch of different and diverse pieces of work,” she said. “Hopefully everybody will be able to find a connection to something in the gallery.”
“Beware of paint”
With graduation looming, studio art senior Kelsey Amann said she has come to a self-reckoning of sorts.
Flipping through past memories and present versions of herself led her down a months-long road to finish one of her oil paintings to be featured in the gallery.
“I kind of wanted to take all of these different perceptions I have with myself and try to figure out how to make that perception a living thing,” Amann said.
After initially assembling the canvas in fall quarter, Amann has twice painted over the massive surface, unsatisfied with her prior results. Now, the vibrant oil painting depicts her morning ride to school — or at least a version of it.
On the old BMX bike she used to ride up Prefumo Canyon, a girl that resembles Amann dons a too-small iridescent puffy jacket as her hair flows in the wind. It’s not a self-portrait, exactly, more of a character that took on its own life, she said.
But on those morning rides?
“It’s like freezing cold. And I’m trying to go as fast as I can. And I feel like a rock star, I feel really cool biking, but then I think like, ‘Oh, God, I probably look really stupid, too,’” she said.
As the self-proclaimed messiest painter in the studio, Amann said she has been the reason many chairs were set aside to dry before someone sat in wet paint. Hence her safety rule “beware of paint.”
Amann said she has shifted away from painting from photos to give herself the freedom to tailor the artistic spaces to who she really is. She’ll have two paintings and one graphite drawing featured in the show.
“I think art is awesome,” she said. “People should want to come and see art. Like it’s fucking art.”
But if art itself isn’t enough for people to come, free snacks will be provided at the event and there will also be T-shirts for the exhibit for sale.
The artwork in both exhibits will be displayed after the opening from May 31 to June 14. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.