Senior art majors embrace bold diversity of concepts, genres in annual exhibition
“Growth Operation” (detail) from the 2011 series “Genius Water Drinker” by Jee Hye Kim ’12. Oil and colored pencil on canvas.
In media running the gamut from pencil drawing to digital painting, 14 studio art majors at Bates College, one of them from Maine, show work from their yearlong thesis projects in the annual Senior Exhibition, which opens with a public reception at 6 p.m. Friday, April 6, in the Bates College Museum of Art, 75 Russell St.
The exhibition runs through May 26. Admission is free. Regular museum hours run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, please call 207-786-6158 or visit the museum website.
For his Notebook, College Writer Doug Hubley talks with a few Senior Exhibition artists.
In addition to embracing a bold assortment of media, this year’s artists explore a spectrum of conceptual interests ranging from a pure concern with form and color to questions of multinational self-identity and humanity’s environmental impacts.
Since its dedication, in 1986, the Bates museum has maintained a special relationship with the college’s department of art and visual culture, expressed in part by its support of studio art majors through the Senior Exhibition.
Stoneware bowls, reduction fired, by Catherine Elliott ’12.
As required by the studio art major, exhibiting students create a cohesive body of work through sustained studio practice and critical inquiry.
The yearlong process is overseen during the fall semester by Associate Professor of Art Pamela Johnson, and during the winter semester by Senior Lecturer in Art Robert Feintuch, who also curates the exhibit and oversees its installation.
Here’s more about the artists and their work:
- Claire Banks of Belfast, Maine
- Liana Blum of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
- Kelsey Dion of Truckee, Calif.
- Catherine Elliott of Edina, Minn.
- Liane Fitzgerald of Chilmark, Mass.
- Jee Hye Kim of Fort Lee, N.J.
- Kimberly “Tobi” Liaw of Ontario, Calif.
- Deborah S. Mack of Tarrytown, N.Y.
- Katharine Maxwell of Newton, Mass.
- Ellie McDonald of Manchester, Mass.
- Sophy Min of Yangon, Burma
- Caroline Sheridan of Providence, R.I.
- Emma Stevens-Smith of San Francisco
- Kaitlin Weinman of Califon, N.J.
