Senior art shows open April 18

Cornell College’s 2021 senior art shows feature works by studio art majors, including painting, photography, sculpture, and much more.

The exhibits will be available for viewing from Sunday, April 18, to Sunday, May 9, in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery and Cole Library. There will not be a public opening reception this year. 

The Peter Paul Luce Gallery is open to the public and campus visitors with a maximum of five guests at a time allowed in the space, unless physically distancing with a class approved by the Art Department. Cole Library is closed to the public but open regular hours to students. All campus COVID-19 protocols must be followed including mask-wearing, physical distancing, and limiting the number of viewers in the exhibit spaces. 

Each artist’s show presents a culmination of the year’s work, with a large variety of media and subjects displayed throughout the pieces.  

Raphaela Cogan

Cogan’s show “Bystander” features her photography and can be found in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall. This Cornell artist drew her inspiration from the artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, who demands her audience face their racist views. The display also follows a linear story that the audience takes part in by watching it unfold before their eyes.

Paulina Diaz-Alton

Diaz-Alton will present her work in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall. The show, “Invisible String,” includes a series of minimalist, contemporary portraits exploring the relationship between trauma and the process of healing. 

Emma Kamerer

Kamerer’s show “Essential Workers” will be displayed in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall. It features a series of acrylic paintings honoring essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jasmine Makabi

Makabi will present “Stitched: An Exploration of Sustainability and Functionality in Art” in Cole Library. She says, “‘Stitched’ showcases a transformative, improvisational, and multimedia approach to sewing and crochet in response to my experience living in a throwaway society and the increase in waste brought on by the pandemic. This exploration through yarn, fabric, second-hand clothing, found objects, plastic, and other waste materials pushes the boundaries on what art can be and what can be used to create art.” 

Matt Renaud

Renaud’s senior show will feature sculpture, installation, and photography. He describes the exhibit as “a three-dimensional plane presented through a two-dimensional format translated across our third-dimensional reality and a pinch of comic sans.” The show, “Dumpster Diving, Starvation, and Student Teaching: The Result of Shackled Mania, Ruptured Eardrums, and a Nonexistent Key Lime Pie 2.0 Chocolate Milk Flavored Extra Pulp 38.5 FLOZ Game of the Year Edition (Where did it all go wrong?),” will be located in Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall.

Isaac Wolfe

Wolf’s show, “Acrylic Apparitions,” features acrylic canvas art and can be found in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall. Wolfe says, “I wanted to make pieces that show an unconventional kind of beauty that is not designed by the artist but interpreted by the viewer. I took inspiration for many of my paintings’ aesthetics from subjects I find are conventionally considered unattractive or unpleasant, but I find can be viewed, as I think nearly anything can, as something beautiful. The point isn’t strictly ‘beauty in unexpected places’ but that beauty is a concept created by the viewer that is different to everyone experiencing it but also has a universal value.”

Yichen Zhao

Zhao’s senior show will feature video, 2D animation, and collage in an exhibit titled “Orange Daydream 1999.” Zhao says, “The piece is about the nostalgia of childhood and personal memory. I use collage and blurry footage of the city where I lived since birth. I will combine 2D animation with video in order to create a childish, dream-like impression.” The exhibit will be displayed in Peter Paul Luce Gallery.

The exhibitions are free and open to the public. All Cornell senior studio art majors receive their own studio spaces to be used throughout the year in order to develop and create entirely new bodies of work in the mediums of their choice. They propose their exhibitions before the department faculty, mount and market the exhibitions,  and defend their shows in front of the art and art history professors.