The 4th Annual Senior Art Show is presenting the work of eleven Stern College For Women students (’12) at the Yeshiva University Museum until September 30, 2012. The aptly named show, Revelation, emphasizes how the creation of art reveals a new technique, skill, or perspective without simplifying the artwork into schoolwork. Displaying various media like digital photography, oil painting, stop-motion animation, and stone sculpture, the show captures the various talents of the graduating studio art majors of SCW. The creation of art parallels the progression of the artists themselves throughout their creative process. As the museum explains on its website, Revelation, focuses on “art as a dynamic, often fraught process of discovery – a revelation, both personal and artistic.” Each artist’s work is accompanied with their personal revelation, which is explained in quotations on the walls of the gallery. For example, while one artist confesses she never even thought she could paint, another artist admits that different painting techniques and different colors have broadened her perspective of the world. Reading the artists’ revelations while viewing their work provides the viewer with unique insight into each piece. Adjunct Art professor, Traci Tullius explains, “In discovering and revealing themselves through their art, they offer us a path for the same kind of journey.”
The show’s entrance heightens the viewer’s perspective by creating a title wall that forces the viewer to play with their distance and view of the word Revelation. The title itself slices each letter onto different plastic panels at different heights and angles, and therefore it can be read from various viewpoints. This forces the viewer to immediately be conscious of their perspective and relation to the art in the gallery. The bold purple walls provide the backdrop for the oil paintings that display self-portraiture, nature, and the city of New York. Additionally, the sculptures vary from Jordana Chernofsky’s abstract marble creations to Lauren Kahn’s macaroni constructions and life-sized beautified sewer covers. After roaming around the paintings and sculptures, the viewer may be initially confused to see Samantha Feldman’s art displayed on the floor, with permission to not just touch, but to actually step and walk over her work. Before leaving, the viewer is summoned to watch Leah Fried’s adorable stop-motion animation video. Each of these works, to name just a few, represent the plethora of art found in SCW. In this way, Revelation not only highlights its artists’ revelations, but also invites its viewers to experience their own self-revelation.
Personally, the creation of the exhibition enabled a self-revelation of my own. Last semester, I enrolled in SCW’s Exhibition Design course and curated this show with seven other SCW students. It became readily apparent that even though memorizing dates and data about the history of art is crucial to pursuing a career in the field, delving into the creation of an exhibition is just as, if not more, important. During this course, I explored the curatorial process of everything from collaborating with the artists on their work, brainstorming a conceptual theme, inventing a title, and choosing the layout and color scheme for the gallery space.
While SCW is sometimes trapped in a slender stereotype, each piece of art proved it was anything but ordinarily similar to its neighboring piece of art. Therefore, the show emphasizes the common thread of actually creating art, and this revelatory experience that is shared among the artists.
If you haven’t already seen it, go check it out before September 30, 2012:
Yeshiva University Museum, 15 W. 16th Street, New York, NY 10011.
