Michael Bair: Metals and Jewelry 

Ben DeGram

Title: Nautical Ring & Reliquary Project

Artist Statement: This piece was inspired by the aesthetic of steampunk and aquatic steampunk. It is an aesthetic that is commonly seen in forms of media and the complexity and unique machinery that it contains has always been quit interesting to me. As this class was really my first exploration metalsmithing I thought it would fun to challenge myself with representing such a complex look. This project and the over 30 hours I spent working on it were certainly difficult at times but it is something I continue to reflect pridefully upon as it gives me the confidence going forward to embrace the challenge.

Bill Hosterman: Drawing Printmaking, and Foundations

Lara Hinze, Grace Bugajski, Ellie Bolster, Dawn Leach, Natalie Malbone, Jenny Perris, Kyah Taylor, Jayden White, KaQui Wright

Robin Kane-HaberKorn: Metals and Jewelry

Kelsey Meadows

Title: Actaeon canibus suis necat

Artist Statement: As a classics student, I am most interested in how ancient stories have continued to be interpreted through art by modern and historic peoples alike. The story my pendant tells is from the Roman poet Ovid’s  Metamorphoses, an epic poem on transformations which many medieval authors reinterpreted into allegory. With my piece I hope to, as Ovid may say, simulate a story from antiquity in medieval illustrative style as a way to honor the fluidity between storytelling and the arts, the past and the present.

Megan Kellner: Foundations

Mattee DeMott

Title: Bug Girl, Bug World

Artist Statement: When it came to creating this work, it was a process of exploration. Diving into the indirect painting process, I knew it would lend itself to the concept of glorification. To raise up a topic to be accentuated and highlighted and give it conscientious love and care that I believe it deserves. Indirect paintings slowly built layers allowed for the thin accumulation of paint, turning the insects, I have come to admire, into shimmering jewels. These bugs were forms I had admired throughout my entire life and ones I had often seen neglected and disregarded. I found the common disgust most individuals held for insects to be misrepresentative of their beauty and importance to our planet. This misrepresentation led me to develop a significant connection to them, as I have often felt misrepresented. Specifically, these bugs are ones I have found myself interested in both aesthetically and entomologically. In the case of the cetonia aurata, both for its shiny green color and its negative reputation as a pest among gardeners, it became a clear choice for subject matter. Historically jewel tones were often utilized to accentuate the value and luxury of an item, thus the natural colors of these three beetles could only assist further, in the process of their rightful glorification. My goal was to shine the light I believe they deserve upon them, elevating the insignificant lifeforms many find to be repulsive. This triptych works together to show off the hidden beauty of bugs.

Carly Richmond

Title: The Weight of America

Artist Statement: As I cultivate my artistic style and voice, I find that art can serve as a powerful medium for expressing my thoughts about the world. Art has the potential to change perspectives, inspire new ideas and encourage others to reflect on what they are experiencing. As I reflect on the flaws of the American government, I think about the misrepresentation of people, false accusations, and the egocentric bias present in the system; which lead me to consider Lady Justice and the idea of America calling itself the "Land of the Free" or "Justice for All." Lady Justice is intended to symbolize the impartial treatment of all individuals and to represent a fair and just legal system. However, how can we say this is true when there is a lack of inclusion and diversity that leads government officials to be biased? 
 

Hoon Lee: Ceramics

Rebecca Boerma

Claire Emmert

Sophia Nelson

Christy Prater

Alaina Smith

Paige Voss

Vinicius Lima: Graphic Design

Tyler Masters

Giang Nguyen

Trevor Page

Title: Black Pixel

Artist Statement: For this project, I created a typographic system constrained within a 9 X 9 grid while being limited to only a few shapes to fill each 1 x 1 space(Square, right triangle, quarter circle, and full circle). Using these constraints I created 6 letters(A, G, H, P, R, S) in order to create examples of almost all of the pieces or sections of letters that make up every letter in the alphabet. For inspiration for this project, I explored many black letter and gothic typefaces, focusing on the highly decorative serifs and other aspects that make up gothic typefaces. Due to the highly decorative nature of gothic typefaces and their many intricate details, almost all are constrained to only capital glyphs, which is something my design shares. After going through several iterations, especially with certain letters, I built out each of the glyphs with similar or the same serifs and decorations in order to make the design as a whole feel more unified. These serifs came out as quite pointy but also somewhat whimsical, similar to the serifs found in blackletter typefaces due to their handwritten origins or inspirations. After completing my letter designs, I color coded each with contrasting color schemes. From there I used Adobe's AI tool “firefly” to create AI images where the structure was influenced by my letter designs. For the rest of the images, I tried to make the AI match the color schemes of the color schemes I applied to my letters. This came with some mixed results but I was eventually able to create semi realistic images whose general color scheme was similar in hue and shade to the ones I had decided upon. I also included a cover page with some identifying information and titled with a blackletter typeface to tie together the inspirations and theme.

Rebekah Bleyenberg, Drew Caminata, Emma Wolverton

Hope Ridley

Title: "I love you"

Artist Statement: For this project, we were asked to create a graphic design piece based on the lyrics of a song or poem. I chose Billie Eilish’s song “I Love You” because the lyrics are really emotional and show the complicated feelings of loving someone you know you shouldn’t. My design focuses on showing the heavy emotions from the song, like how love can feel both suffocating and fragile at the same time. I used typography to show this by making the words and syllables literally crash into each other, as if they’re weighing each other down, which reflects the struggle between love and knowing it’s not right.

To start, I looked at the lyrics of “I Love You” to figure out the key feelings and messages I wanted to show in the design. I focused on the tension between wanting to love someone and realizing it’s a bad idea, which is a big theme in the song. I explored multiple compositions and layouts to see what best communicated that emotional weight. I experimented with different arrangements, adjusting the size, spacing, and placement of the words in Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. Following my finalization of the design, I added color and began to explore various iterations of color combinations that would be most effective, ultimately deciding on a cobalt blue and a light tea green for the type, with occasional black strands of type for the purpose of layering.

The main goal of this project was to use typography to show how love can feel overwhelming, even if you know it’s not right. By displaying the text in this manner, I wanted to give the feeling of being stuck in a relationship that feels like it is crashing. The design shows how love can be beautiful, but also destructive.

Billie Eilish’s lyrics were the biggest inspiration for my design. The way she sings with vulnerability made me think about how I could use typography to express those feelings. I also looked at graphic designers such as Neville Brody who are known for playing with type to express emotions, which gave me some ideas for how to manipulate the words in my design.

I used Adobe InDesign and Illustrator to create everything for this project. These tools helped me experiment with different fonts, letter arrangements, and other design details to get the look I wanted. The final piece was saved as a high-quality PDF for printing.

James Helm

Title: Shadow in Time

Artist Statement: In this work, I used the lyrics from the song “Unknown/Nth” by Hozier. I find the lyrics to have a lot of deeper meaning to them and hope it helps people to connect and understand to whatever degree they may relate. Using color and adjusting the text placement to create emphasis or depth to some of the words and help them stand out more. For this piece, I was inspired by the idea of being in the “unknown” and not having any attention to you, as this can create feelings of pressure or emphasize expectations. This project was done in Adobe Illustrator, and the creation process involved taking those lyrics from the song and finding a meaningful font and layout for the text to create the emphasis I was looking for, like making more spacing for the end of the lyrics to create more emphasis and draw attention to them. I also liked creating the form of things falling apart as you are reading it further, as I feel that theme also relates to the lyrics. To create a further feeling, I added effects to a lot of the text using placement, spacing, and color to help draw attention to some of the keywords and parts of the lyrics to bring more meaning to it. The piece was made to be a large poster and displayed at a larger size, so I used some darker colors and made some of the text begin to blend into the background to play into the idea of being in the shadows and becoming unknown while using brighter colors and more contrast to create a more light and brighter feeling to some parts and draw the viewers attention away from the unknown. I feel the dark background and typewriter text fit the general aesthetic of the work and the sense of time through a relationship and being unknown can also be described as in the shadows helping me create the name for the piece.

Maggie McKeiver

Natalie Lowe: Metal and Jewelry

Maryn Butki

Title: Queen Bee

Artist Statement: Queen Bee is a cast bronze sculpture composed of found objects tied to femininity fragments of hairbrushes, face razors, q-tips, and sunglasses. These everyday items, often overlooked, speak to the rituals, expectations, and labor of womanhood. Through metal casting, I transform these disposable, intimate objects into something permanent and powerful, questioning the ways in which beauty standards and consumer culture shape female identity. Queen Bee symbolizes resilience, autonomy, and the weight of societal expectations, reclaiming these tools of femininity as emblems of strength rather than obligation.

Maureen Nollette: Studio Art Foundation

Taelia Spencer

Jake Teresi, Victoria Sunderlin, Audrey Edwards, Giang Nguyen

Kristin Reeves: Visual Studio Fundamentals

Yadira Duran

Title: Second Home

Artist Statement: Through a series of photographs taken in my childhood home in El Morro, Mexico, I created a collage-style media piece that contrasts what once was, to what remains. I incorporated old still images that were taken during a time when the house was lived in, above still images of the house in the present day, where it remains empty. Working with the combination of special effects, glitches, and audio techniques, I hoped to frame the narrative of nostalgia and loss in a way that would resonate with a variety of audiences, pulling from the broader human experience of grief and nostalgia.

How can a home that once thrived on joy and youth become so empty and still? How does the absence of this aspect reshape its structure?

This video aims to represent the passage of time through specific fragmented memories, capturing the emotions that arise when feeling attached to a place that once cradled childhood innocence, a place that is now frozen in time. The guilt that exists with no longer being a child, the knowledge that even if you were to return to a childhood space, you would no longer be able to fill it the same way you once did so effortlessly. This is a concept that weighs on me. Our childhood memories often feel distant from us, as if there exists the expectation that we must leave the past behind in order to progress into our independent futures. Yet, In reality, memories are the luggage we carry with us through it all. The emotions we experienced, the people we spoke to, and especially the land we were raised in.

Phaige Lothschutz

Title: Open Windows

Artist Statement: Home is a place of private solace, where multiple lives unfold simultaneously yet are contained within their own rooms. Different lives can occur within a home, with nothing shared but walls. Windows are a glimpse into an intimacy that is otherwise protected by concrete and brick. Open Windows gives a glimpse of two rooms with opposing dialogue. Though they physically exist next to each other, a moment of something that could be perceived as both internal dialogue and external conversation is taking place. Rooms act as a representation for the way thoughts and emotions are compartmentalized, and how this struggle leads to a feeling of being trapped within walls. A window serves as a boundary between the private and the public, and offers an outside view into this struggle,

inviting the viewer to consider how internal narratives are processed. This explores the duality of life, where different experiences coexist side by side, yet remain disconnected.

Max Spitzer: Foundations

Emmett O’Malley

Aria Thomas

Paige Young: Photography

Alexandra Baiz 

Title: Test Strips

Artist Statement: Beauty is present in the process. This work embodies tireless hours spent in the dark, bathing strips of photo paper in chemicals to ensure the final prints they belong to turn out just right. I wanted to depict the repetition and loss of sanity when time fades to oblivion, an inevitable phenomenon in the process of darkroom photography.

Allison Taiariol

Title: From The Eyes That Lie

Artist Statement: In my photography, I explore the internal, often invisible battles of those struggling with eating disorders. My intention is to capture the raw, emotional weight of identity loss and mental struggle that comes with eating disorders. The absence of faces in my work is intentional as a reflection of the feeling of being unidentifiable to yourself often felt by those who struggle with this.

My photographs speak to the mental struggle that isn’t visible in a mirror but exists in the spaces between thought and action.

Through my work, I seek to shed light on this isolation, to give voice to a story that many feel they can’t share. My goal is to invite empathy and understanding and help others that may be going through this.

Renee Zettle-Sterling: Metals and Jewelry 

Natalie Andrikides

Title: i want to hold your hand

Artist Statement: These rings are meant to be a physical representation of the fear of intimacy. I wanted to explore how our best efforts to keep ourselves safe from others can make us the one who causes and feels harm in the end. Using inspiration from medieval torture devices, this set is designed to prevent the wearer from holding another persons hand. While there are still ways to hold hands while wearing these, it will only hurt both people the longer they hold on.

Enrique Arana

Title: Untitled

Artist Statement: My intent with jewelry is to create commentary for myself and on issues the world ought to pay more attention to. Being direct has its benefits, yet so does simplicity. Issues internal and external can be boiled down to relationships within and outside ourselves. Jewelry is the embodiment of this. While I was unable to play with the material medium of the set of rings in a way that further supported my commentary, it was important I still commented on more precise damages of human environmental ignorance and dismissal in a narrative manner.

Morgan Davis

Title: Immodest Modesty

Artist Statement: Head coverings have been a traditional part of Abrahamic and Non-Abrahamic religions for centuries. It was required to wear them to any sort of church service or ceremony until more recently. Though, there are still religions that require this practice. Head Coverings has a huge part in Purity/Modesty Cultures that are commonly seen in various types of churches. Theyre a tool for protecting ones modesty, and to shield the wearer from vanity and pride. To contrast this, I decided to create a piece that goes against Christian Purity Culture by covering my head in something that would draw as much attention as possibly.

Sofia Grilley

Title: Mermaid Charm Necklace

Artist Statement: This piece is a charm necklace made of cast bronze shells that I have collected from the ocean. The pendant consists of a cast mermaid and a vintage photograph of a woman sitting on top of a rock. Shells often symbolize femininity, beauty, and strength while mermaids are mythical creatures that represent femininity and beauty as well. The pendant flips depicting on one side a woman and the other side a mermaid, drawing parallels between the two.

Iman Hearing 

Title: Soft is Black

Artist Statement: Black is a color that stands for dark, strength, unknown, and evil. Black is a term that is almost always seen in a negative light. Time and time again, black women and non-binary people have been masculinized and sexualized profusely. Whether it be for the sexual pleasure of white men or the uplifting of white feminism; feminine black people never get an ounce of respect. Features such as larger round noses, kinky hair, and dark skin are treated as undesirable. The media shines a light on powerful black women but, in turn, rarely respects them. Even hair is a topic of debate. Just because one chooses to wear their hair in a styled curl, protective braids, or even wigs does not make one more or less black.

The reclaiming of black femininity starts with how one chooses to dress. Through my protest piece, I want to stand proud and promote the uplifting of all feminine black people. Black can be powerful, black can be bold, but black can be charming and sweet.

Soft is Black

Elizabeth Morgan

Title: Mourning Chatelaine

Artist Statement: This chatelaine showcases my love for my pets. The orchid symbolizing my everlasting love I will always have for them. My pet’s fur is in the glass jar with crystals for protection and my cats nose in the frame. The pigeon heads symbolizing love and family. It is meant to be kept safe wearing on your body and having them with you at all times. Sometimes we mourn for them even while they’re still here with us.

Alaina Smith

Title: Threads of Time

Artist Statement: At the heart of Threads of Time is my thimble collection, a deeply personal series of collector's thimbles that have been passed down through my family. The collection began with my maternal grandmother, and after her passing, I inherited it and expanded upon it. My paternal grandmother gifted me my great-grandmother’s thimbles, and I also used my maternal great-grandmother’s thimble as the mold for the bracelet’s charms. Each thimble charm in the bracelet is a direct reflection of my collection, capturing not only the form but also the wear and tear of these objects, signifying the lives and experiences that have left their mark on them. The bracelet symbolizes how our lives and experiences are intertwined with the objects we carry with us and how these objects, small as they are, serve as tangible reminders of who we are and where we’ve been.

Threads of Time, for me, is an emotional tribute to my ancestors, a way of linking the past and present through the things they once held and used. It is a way of carrying memories with me, preserving them in a tangible form. It reflects the importance of my family, travel, and personal history. Through this piece, I hope to communicate the value of heirlooms, the passage of time, and the enduring connection we have to the objects and stories that shape us.