2022 Department of Art
Undergraduate Scholarships Exhibition
Each year, the Undergraduate Art Scholarships Exhibition features work by selected undergraduate scholarship recipients in the Department of Art.
The Undergraduate Art Scholarship Exhibition is sponsored by the following endowments, funds and scholarships:
Arthur E. Baggs Memorial Fund
Daniel J. L. Firestone Photography Fund
Department of Art Scholarship Fund
Department of Art Faculty and Staff Scholarship Fund
The Susie Gehring Gundenkauf Art Scholarship Fund in Painting & Drawing
Charles W. Massey and Ola Belle Massey Printmaking Endowment Fund
Mary Martin Picarillo Endowment Scholarship Fund
The Robert & Marion Gatrell Undergraduate Student Art Award
Jerald J. and Terry Katz Kasimov Scholarship Fund in Dentistry and Art
Aida Cannarsa Snow Endowment Scholarship Fund
Hoyt L. Sherman Memorial Fund
Anna Arbogast
You Never Told Me, Now I Know
Assemblage
12 x 36 x 12 in
September 2021
I’m attracted to the softness,
To the thought of warmth,
But I can’t ignore the pain,
the sacrifices of mothers,
of my own mom,
did my grandma have bigger dreams?
did she give herself up so her children could have more?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman.
It scares me. Somehow, it also empowers me.
This piece began as a journal entry. Words written in alternating waves of grief and rage.
Much later, the objects you see-that I salvaged over time for arcane reasons-became symbols for those words. In holding the doll, cutting its hair, and marking it with scars; I found a way to press bruises deep under my skin.
Gifts passed from mother to daughter come at a cost. A mother gives herself away in tiny doses.
We live in a tapestry woven by cycles of loss and victimhood. Yet here, there is still love and sacrifice and devoted care. The definition of womanhood can be suffocating, or it can become so expansive that one feels untethered in its depth.
To survive under a standardized façade of softness, women must be sharp. With bones of iron and biting thorns at their defense.
The arrangement of my piece is dictated by all of this. With needle and thread, I tried to set down outposts and explore the geography of my experience as an artist, daughter, and queer person.
Yana Artemov
Whispers of Now
Mixed media on canvas (Acrylic, molding paste, cut paper, raccoon pelvis)
5 x 4 ft
December 2021
With Whispers of Now, I tried to create something that preserves the magnificence of the natural world. Our planet seems invincible in its vastness and endless self-sustaining networks, yet is now jeopardized by the human race. I combined different approaches to making, such as energetic intuitive brushwork paired with collaged rectangles of sky, or glued tiny ready-made rubber animals, dwarfed by a textured tree stump with shades of blue, pink and purple, next to an abstracted collage of exotic insects. I hoped that this variety of material application would highlight the whimsy of looking closely at how every object we encounter in nature is so complex, so different from the next, yet all harmonious for billions of years. This piece is a celebration of these incredible phenomena.
If environmental conservation and restoration fails, after humans are gone, it’s my hope that nature will heal itself. All of these fantastical elements I tried to capture in this work makes me believe it can.
Mashayla Berry
Blooming in Bad Times
Photograph
January 17, 2021
My name is Mashayla Berry and I am from Marion, Ohio. I went to River Valley Local Schools where I first discovered my passion for art. Through lots of hard work, I have been able to attend my dream school, the Ohio State University, which has allowed me to pursue my passion for art and brings me where I am today. Creating art is something I have always loved to do. I'm happy to have been able to pursue art throughout my schooling and into the future. Nothing will stop me from pursuing my passion. One of the most important things to me in creating good art is looking at things differently and finding beauty in everyday items and situations. I always challenge myself and don’t take the easy way out. I always work with what I have been given, come up with an out-of-the-box idea, work hard, concentrate on the task at hand, and never give up. I frequently challenge myself to do new things even if I'm not comfortable with them so I can grow and learn. Creating art for me isn't always sitting at a table and coming up with an idea of something to draw; sometimes it’s going out and seeing things from a new perspective and being observant. I'm really proud of my art and how far I've come over the years and I can't wait to continue to pursue my passion in the future.
Hannah Buss
Western Workwear
Vinyl fabric, rivets, and aluminum
54 x 25 x 23 in
December 7, 2021
I experimented with materials and how they are presented. I explored making clothing with nontraditional materials. My Western Workwear project is a combination of silhouettes from early cowboy clothing and designs from denim workwear. It is made out of vinyl fabric because of the durability. The vinyl is fastened together with rivets because I wanted to acknowledge the importance of rivets for the strength and durability of denim pants. The jacket I made used the rivet mandrels left over from my Western Workwear project. Instead of recreating the durability of a jacket, I wanted to make it fragile and remove the purpose of a jacket.
Juan Camargo
Avery
Charcoal on tan paper
9 x 11 in
November 2, 2021
The pieces included in the following mini portfolio are all images that come from and for people in my personal life. Those close to me are very important to me and play a major part in my work. The portfolio consists of a portrait of my girlfriend, the family friend dog, Rosie and painting depicting a dance from Colombia, a piece of my heritage. I have chosen these pieces because they encompass what matters most to me, my family my friends and my heritage and represents those who have supported me in my journey as an artist.
Makalah Clark
Eat Your Feelings
Acrylic on canvas
2021
This trio of pieces represent the relationship between one and their emotions. The first one represents people spitting out their emotions, unable to keep them bottled up leaving the mouth uncomfortably open. The second is of a person yelling at their emotions. Often times because one cannot control their emotions, it upsets them and makes them angry. Lastly in the third piece the person's head is open for us to see their emotions docile and chilling on a nice cool island to themselves. This represents when people are at their calmest state.
Shya Crable
Lost Signal
2-second loopable GIF (Cinema 4D)
1200 x 1400 px
December 3, 2020
My work serves as a catalyst for things I don’t typically share to others, but feel as if they need to be out of my mind and body in one way or another. While I’ve always suffered from dwelling in my head far too long for my own good, I feel as if the past two years have made it even more difficult to cope with feeling isolated, whether it be in a literal sense or just from feeling like an alien among a sea of strangers. I’ve also never felt like I’ve been comfortable with the typical self-portrait, so as a result, I use this rabbit-headed character that I’ve created as a makeshift image of myself to project onto instead. This is why many of my pieces may seem “grotesque” or touch on a far more psychological idea, rather than something more feasible in nature. They are my own manifestations of my state of loneliness and anxiety towards something that I can only feel the watchful eyes of while never seeing and understanding its likeness.
Gracie Denbow
Grow a Friend
Animated short film
2 minutes, 33 seconds
October 18, 2021
These artworks I’ve elected to submit to be assessed are some of my more recent works over the last year that have proven the most challenging, successful, and fulfilling projects I’ve completed thus far. Two are works of narrative animation, while the other is a venture into new technology and installation work. The first work, titled "Different Worlds" was my final animation project completed for my 3D animation course in Spring of 2021. Telling the story of two unlikely foes from different visual environments, the work was created in Blender and Procreate in a mix of 3D model animation and hand-drawn 2D animation. The second is my final project for New Media Robotics in Autumn, 2021, "Customize Your Avatar!," wherein I created an interactive installation using Microsoft Kinect technology and modified plugins crafted in Unity. The video included serves as documentation of the installation in a gallery setting, where viewers’ bodies are sensed by the Kinect, and rigged 3D model props are mapped onto their likeness in real time to create an avatar reminiscent of the virtual world that’s projected into a real setting. The third work, titled "Grow A Friend," is a more recent animation project made during the Moving Image Art course in Autumn, 2021. Using Blender’s 2D animation capabilities known as Grease Pencil, the story of the budding friendship between a jack-o-lantern and a crow is brought to life, set to a backdrop of hand-drawn autumnal environments. These three works are some of my most recent accomplishments at Ohio State that I’m eager to share and expand on further in my continued learning at the university.
Ella Dipold
Shelter
Pencil on paper
18 x 24 in
December 5, 2021
Through my art, I perpetuate balance. This involves balance of composition, balance of materials, and striving to create balance in my life. The scale remains equal as I draw on internal emotions, both good and bad.
Kaily Drake
Wife
Acrylic on canvas
20 x 20 in
2021
For this piece, I examined the nuances between gender, sexuality, and power, as well as where each of those categories overlaps. Societally, there is a specific way that gender through sex is viewed- who should be on top or on bottom, who should be dominant or submissive- and very rarely does the position of power inherently land with the woman. So what, then, would it look like for a man to be feminized, cared for, cradled, or fed, by what is seemingly a woman’s hand? Does it make Him less powerful? Does it make Him more loved? This painting provides fewer answers than it does questions, and yet possesses no lack of surety. The subject’s realistic rendering forces the viewer to be in the same space as Him, as if the hand in the painting is their own. There is permission to see oneself within both the hand and the face being cradled, in the feminine and the masculine, in the dominant and the submissive.
Madison Gdovin
untitled (emotional abuse is still abuse)
Relief print
11 x 13 in
April 2021
When I was growing up, I never thought I would consider myself an artist, let alone go to school for it, but this is my passion, my everything. Without art I do not know where I would be or who I would be. I have always put 110% into any piece I have created. I am a very driven and determined person. I am an artist who finds it important to have meaning behind your art. By using this approach, I have made some powerful and deep art. Mental health is especially important to me and when viewing my artworks, one can tell. As a printmaker, I always get asked what kind of art I produce, as if there is a limit to what I can make or do, which is impossible. Art has done nothing but helped me become the truest version of myself. The first piece is a close up of a girl's face with something written in her glasses; it is the word broken. Highlighting mental health issues and how it is okay to not be okay. The second piece is a print playing with the idea of borrowed time. This is focusing on the idea of death and the weight one carries when dealing with mental illnesses. Lastly, the final piece is focused on several types of abuse and even though physical is the most recognizable, it does diminish emotional and mental abuse. In this piece you can read "emotional abuse is still abuse", there are three highlighted scenes in this piece that focus on different situations of emotional abuse. When viewing my pieces, I have included in my portfolio I hope that you too can see that this is my one true love, and I would not change it for the world.
Nicholas Gribben
Nicholas
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 24 in
December 2021
These three paintings are the culmination of everything I’ve worked for and practiced in my art. With this series, I reached a new level of portrait painting. Technically, I was able to push myself and grow in my ability to paint. Conceptually, I discovered new ways to add message and meaning to my work. All of this was accomplished while still making something very near and dear to my heart. The portraits are of my two brothers and myself, subtly representing our individuality while still connecting the three. What started out as a class project turned into the best gift I’ve ever bestowed to my mother. The strong reactions that people have to seeing images of themselves, loved ones, and anyone else they know and care about meticulously created by hand are what drive my work. I like to be a people pleaser. Usually, I’m asked something like: “How did you want the figure portrayed, emotionally?” or “What is the figure doing?” I prefer to leave those things up to mystery. I like to give the viewer enough to form their own conjectures, but leave enough in question so the viewer is forced to further explore the work.
Emilia Harned
Fox Fortress
Ceramic, glass
1.75 x 1 ft
Fall 2020
I believe in the power of cuteness to connect with the viewer and its legitimacy as an art practice. I make cute art. But, generally, whenever cuteness is brought up in a critique it is assumed to be incidental, a mistake, a side-effect. Cuteness, like comedy, is a complex thing. There are rules for crafting something adorable and without understanding the rules of cute it can go to ugly, or even worse, plain.
When I make my art I am always working with the viewer’s experience in mind. It’s not just me "speaking at" the viewer but me thinking about how the experience could unfold for the viewer. Cuteness is useful in that approach. It’s a method for capturing the attention of an audience surrounded by less adorable subjects. It’s often an involuntary flood of feelings; fondness, affection, obsession, and love. Cuteness in my art is like a tiny dog in a purse at the store- you can’t help but look at it.
Allison Hess
The Professor
3D Render
1920 x 1200 px
I was raised by stories. As a baby, my father would sing my brothers and I to sleep, telling stories of magic dragons and little boys, New Orleans, and don’t-tolerate-nothin’ women. And every night we would beg for more. When we grew older, we would regularly create elaborate games with plots all of their own, spending weeks at a time creating worlds in our heads and even trying to go to the center of the world we just knew held dinosaurs and treasures. We believed in these stories, not because of the truth and reality they presented but because of how much power they held over our hearts. I was raised as much by these stories as the people who told them.
Much of my inspiration and drive as an artist comes from my desire to connect emotionally with other people through stories despite my struggle with understanding the minds of others. I seek to make these narratives and craft a convincing world for another to get lost in. Through these works I create my own stories, ones just like my father shared with me. I convey my ideas and wants through these works, and I connect myself to others and the world through their creation.
Hong Huang
Apollo/Aphrodite/Arte
My project is a series of collages with a topic of Greek and Roman gods. I choose Apollo, Artemis (Diana), and Aphrodite (Venus) and try to introduce them to audiences by collaging their representative elements which are mentioned in myths. I hope to share their stories with images rather than words since the picture is more straightforward and vivid to attract the viewers' attention. I also choose to design their corresponding colors and patterns by their stories. For instance, Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. When we talk about love, we always come up with pink, which is a passionate and romantic color. Moreover, sometimes love will give birth to lives, and Aphrodite also has the position of the Mother Goddess. Thus, I design her representative pattern as a womb.
Gabriella Kellogg
Day in the Park
Collage, ink drawing
14 x 17 in
December 4, 2021
My work explores aspects of mental health, my personal experiences, and worldly issues. I use a variety of different mediums ranging from sculptural to collage to painting. Some of my influences include Banksy and Basquiat. I have become fascinated with the idea of human form in my works such as making works look as if they are from a first person perspective.
My two pieces "Day at the Park" and "Untitled" are a part of a series I did of collages mixed with ink-drawn human forms that are in a first-person point of view. The pieces were based off memories from my childhood. One being going to the park with my dad and going down this unique corkscrew shaped slide. The other was based off trips I would take with my grandma to the Franklin Park Conservatory to see the butterflies, glass art, and their gallery space.
Olivia Malloy
Fuel Dock
Pen and ink on drawing paper
19 x 24 in
This drawing is about my experience pumping gas for boys at a fuel dock in a harbor north of Boston. It is one of the experiences that has shaped me most over the past few years, and has left me with many memories and keepsakes. The lessons I have learned from this job impact my everyday life. I haven’t made any artwork about the fuel dock, so I decided to illustrate some of the physical mementos I have from working at Manchester Marine.
Isabella Mazur
Self Portrait
Oil paint on canvas
18 x 24 in
2021
My piece entitled Self Portrait is a painting from my Painting I class. I had never painted a self portrait before, so this piece was a great learning experience. I have always enjoyed drawing people, so I had a feeling I would enjoy painting people as well. This painting gave me challenges like mixing the correct colors of my skin and getting the proportions of my face correct, especially on a larger scale than the drawings I have done. I spent a great deal of time working on this piece because I thoroughly enjoyed painting it. It was our final project, so I am glad I finish the class knowing I did my best.
Kailey Merriam
Consternation
Graphite and charcoal pencils
24 x 18 in
December 5, 2021
My name is Kailey Merriam and I experiment with multiple different types of art media. This includes drawing, painting, photography, and more as I go through college art classes. Most of my inspiration for my art comes from everyday life. I especially find nature intriguing and usually involve it in my art. Usually, I think of a theme that my artwork will surround. Some common themes include mental health and my own experiences. Then after making mood boards and compiling references I start creating my art.
Chikamnele Nkwocha
Black Evolution
Digital oil painting (Procreate)
2700 x 3600 px
May 23, 2021
My journey as an artist is guided by my experiences as a Black woman who is passionate about professing her identity. As an artist, I am deconstructing the historical racism and exclusion of Black and Brown subjects in the arts. This means using my art to prolong the survival of African/African-American history lost through colonization while uplifting marginalized identities. I have used my art as leverage in other realms which has led me to create platforms centered on art activism. My art has also been vital in my journey as an engineer who interprets the complexity of the sciences through the arts. Through my work, I hope to bridge the gap between science and art by creating immersive, interactive, and educational experiences for all viewers.
My art is a culmination of traditional and digital mediums. I have developed a stylized form of realism that emphasizes the intricacies behind the texture of 4c hair in each brushstroke and pushes the saturation in melanated tones. I create settings that display the ingenuity of Afro-futuristic architecture while employing delicate textile patterns.
I hope to leave my viewers feeling empowered and enlightened. I believe that my art gives them access to the unwinding mind of an artist who finds inspiration in the most unique way.
Anya Parsons
12 Hours
Multimedia on gessoed bedsheet
102 x 96 in
2021
This piece was created by going into a room with a mirror and repeatedly drawing myself without stopping for the next 12 hours. Its intent was all in the process and not the outcome. I wanted to witness and welcome the changes that would happen as I drew the same subject matter over and over again for an uncomfortable amount of time. Each new drawing is marked with the time I started it, beginning at 11:00 and ending at 23:00. I expected the most challenging part of the drawing not to be the lack of breaks, but instead I worried that spending that much time watching myself in a mirror would unground me. I was surprised to find that the opposite happened, and watching myself in this mirror turned into an act of self love. I was able to truly acknowledge and spend time with myself to an extent that we almost always distract ourselves away from.
Max Reynolds
Hansel and Gretel
Charcoal on paper
14 x 17 in
September 17, 2021
My work, titled "Miserably Without End," illustrates a dark twist on classic fairytale stories and their common conclusion of "happily ever after." The work, done entirely with charcoal, uses grim details and clues to narrate a flipped ending to the classic stories including Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Hansel and Gretel. My main goal was to create three pieces of art that could stand alone, but were properly tied together into one piece. Another goal of mine was to effectively portray these stories in one scene without revealing the narrative right away. I want the viewer to search for clues until they piece together the intended story. In addition, I used charcoal to push the feeling of darkness and drama using contrast as my most used tool.
Gideon Smiley
Materializing Distraction
Video; clay, liquid, latex, string, and makeup
3 minutes, 14 seconds
Fall 2021
My work stems from the changing everyday inputs and interactions that I have with contemporary culture, and the observations that I make as a result. Though diverse in medium, I work from a conceptual start and expand outward to the best representation of an idea. Often focusing on technology and mental processes, I use my work to bring the unseen into reality.
Recently, with the development of the ever continuing pandemic, and the constant changes in everyday life, what art that I have been able to create has often stemmed from my attempts to grapple with the related issues caused by such change. After a time of radical intersocial dormancy, evolution, and reemerging demand I often find interest in exploring the consequent strains caused by such, if only through the intersection with my own perceived experience. Pulling references from folk music and psychological concepts in social theory help me to process and hopefully allow for the work to connect to a larger experience. In Festinger I attempt to understand my experience through social comparison theory, and in Pandemic Portrait I incorporate quotations that amplify emotions at play. With such aspects I can include conceptual notes as brushstrokes within a composition, as is consistent with my goal to bring the unseen into reality. This is not more clear than in Materializing Distraction, where I explore bringing physicality to the tensions of attention, especially in such a digitally oriented and over-stimulating world. Originally presented virtually over zoom, this performance incorporates sculptural and bodily elements in attempt to bring a visceral tactility to contemporary hyper-distraction.
Gabriella Stauffer
Autumn's Mirror
Oil on canvas
18 x 20 in
November 2021
In recent months, I have wanted to make works of art directly about my life and experiences. I do not always work from life, or directly from living references, but as I currently create, it seems that these are things I cannot help but focus on. I love to draw and redraw myself, representing my personhood in cartoons or clowns or landscapes. I see myself in all of my work, even when my face is not there, and it seems that everything I make just becomes a sort of self-portrait. Beyond the many clear representational portraits in my repertoire, I find many other kinds of works that express the where, how, and why I exist in the world.
Lola Steele-Neal
Gilda
Procreate on iPad
8 x 11 in
2021
These three images, "Harriet", "Gilda", and "Christabel", are all part of a short anthology I created for a vampire-centric English course I took last semester. Our final project was incredibly open-ended, which was a miracle for me as an art student. Each piece shows a moment from three of the vampire stories I read in that course: "The Blood of the Vampire" by Florence Marryat, "The Gilda Stories" by Jewelle Gomez, and "Christabel" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Throughout this process, I naturally gravitated towards the stories that mainly focused on female vampires. I wanted the imagery and tone of each piece to have the same overarching feel as the stories/characters themselves had in the original text. Harriet, for example, is an overzealous and kind yet sometimes cruel character that is vaguely unsettling. I wanted to show this by having her big, black eyes looking directly at the viewer as if to challenge them. A central theme within Gilda's text is loss or the act of letting go, which greatly informed my decision to depict this sad farewell between Gilda and her lover Aurelia. Finally, the curiosity and longing between Christabel and the mysterious Geraldine made me want to interpret their "meet-cute" as I saw it in my mind.
Exer Thurston
Paramecium Cups and Decanters
Glass
48 x 10 x 48 in
December 2021
I am a non-traditional student at Ohio State. I returned to the university in 2020 after a four year hiatus. During this time I was employed at Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont. This experience forever changed my art practice and approach to making.
I am a puppeteer before I am anything else. Puppetry is an intense focus on movement; all movement is animation. In my time at OSU I have explored a variety of mediums and techniques as a means to explore my ideas around time, motion, space, and self. The act of production is a performance, regardless of audience.
My practice has shifted since my introduction to glass in the fall of 2021. Glassblowing engages the body entire in the same way as puppetry. The motion, choreography, and intention involved in production is captured by the object. Glassblowing too requires an intense awareness of the body in space. I am most excited about combination of movement, process, and physicality and am committed to exploring it further.
Nataly Vergara
Construct with Cards 2 (Dragon)
12 x 11.5 x 1.5 in
Exploring constructing a painting, I found myself exploring the potentialities of playing cards. I applied a specific treatment to the cards, a piece of tape to shape it into an asymmetric cone. Simply from pushing corners together, unexpectedly the flat rectangle forms this extrinsic cone shape. Sculpting with paper became painting as I coated the outsides of these cones, exposing comparability to party hats. Blue, Reds, Greens, and Yellow hats were stockpiled. I began to construct them. Constructing the colored cones felt like painting. Instead of wet paint on a brush, it was dry paint on a cone. The cones' color translated into their placement and treatment. Greens felt sharp and pointed yet soft and rounded. The cones began to flatten, back into rectangles, and fold into squares to complement their color treatment. The function of the canvas is a receptacle of the installation of the cones, a limited placeholder allowing materials to connect. Despite uniform treatment of the foundation (playing card), the process of painting alters the playing cards composition.
Madeline Vogelmeier
A Combined Space
Acrylic on Bristol paper
11 x 14 in
April 2021
This piece considers both the combination of various color palettes, as well as that of interior and exterior spaces in one composition. The extreme closeups in both images confuse the eye, forcing the viewer to focus simply on the competition between organic and geometric shapes. The straight, hard lines of the first image contrasts harshly with the flowing, curved shapes of the layered leaves in the second, each interrupting the other and allowing the viewer to imagine what the complete image would look like on its own. The varying color palettes aid in this confusion, shifting the mood dramatically with each ring. With the changing of both elements – color palettes and physical spaces – a new, strangely combined space is created.
Lindsay Wolverton
Sunk
Digital animation video
2 minutes, 15 seconds
April 2021
My work is constantly asked to channel itself within the limits of a commercial lens: how will the things I make be seen within a gallery or video website? Is there a way to maximize viewer engagement of simple artwork? What can I do to make my conceptual breadth have the broadest reach possible? The worlds of cartooning and short-form animation are unfairly, from my perspective, labelled as commercial ventures which intellectually "fall short" from the texture of realism. Style is not a one-to-one representation of substance; my works are imbued with the same meaning they would be if they constructed from drawings of life (though whether their presentation would be the same is unknowable). I strive to weave narrative into my work with subtlety- enough to greatly influence its construction, but quiet enough as to not overtake its visuals. My breadth strives to allow for everyone to walk away from my work with something they enjoy, whether its a visually interesting animation or a deep reflection of the story. My short-form animations, which I hope to take beyond school into my professional practice- industrial or independent- embrace the universal form of cartooning as an important factor to narrative. I am merely a storyteller, manipulating my bold-lined, absurdly built puppets for the sake of my stories.
Lauren Wood
Symbiotic Magic
Digital media (Procreate)
5400 x 4800 px (300 dpi)
November 2021
My work is done digitally using Adobe Photoshop and Procreate. I specialize in digital paintings and gear my compositions for illustrative work. Content can range from the fantastical to the ordinary. I enjoy making paintings that have an atmospheric quality. This means, that regardless of the content, I emphasize the overall color, tonality, and energy of a painting to give it that atmospheric quality. In regards to Symbiotic Magic, I used the lines of magic to light the piece and complement with the yellow flowers. This use of wrapping, smoky light allowed the piece to have an atmospheric quality that emphasized the figure’s movement.
Cheng Zhang
untitled (street photograph)
My name is Cheng and I’m majoring in Art and Technology BFA. As an artist, my main focus is on 3D especially model making and environment building. I was fascinated with the possibility of creating a virtual world that we can experience without the limitation of time and space since I began playing video games at a young age. The unlimited way of compositing different elements into the 3D software and then rendering them or porting them into the game engine gives me a great sense of achievement and drives me to continue. At the same time, 3D modeling is the foundation for all my works and I truly enjoy the process of recreating objects from reality to a model that I can control as my wish or even creating something unreal like a lightsaber. Creating different worlds and model renders not only gave me satisfaction but also helped me to think and intergrade my knowledge into my works, for instance, how can I make a model more efficient and less hardware consuming yet obtain the same render quality and how can I use different studio lighting method to further enhance the material texture to achieve a more realistic looking.
Among all my works, one that I was especially proud of is a Canon RF 85mm 1.2L lens that I made for my 3D modeling class. During the production of this model, I adapted a non-destructive method of 3D modeling which is using modifiers in Blender like “Screw,” “Boolean," “Mirror," and “Array” to construct the model instead of directly modifying its typology. This method requires more thinking behind the modeling logic as to how can I achieve the look of the control ring using just one cuboid with curve and array modifier instead of just modeling a ring. This process provides a brand-new vision for me as I used to only understand 3D modeling as a way of digital sculpting, yet the non-destructive method expanded the possibility of using the power of software to complete a repetitive process yet still obtaining the ability to redo for adjustment. During the rendering process, I tried a more commercial way of lighting the lens by using multiple face-lights with the contrast of red and blue to form a techno look which I think goes well with the lens. Also, using multiple face-light could bring out the glass texture of the lens as it creates a nice reflection of the lights’ shape.
Another project I put a lot of effort into is the lightsaber model I did during the summer.
After I completed the Canon lens, I wanted to adapt the technique to other projects, yet I wanted to create something brand new without any clear references. During the construction of this lightsaber, I used mostly the same modifiers as the Canon lens but with some destructive modeling methods to enhance the details including the handle and the buttons. While the non-destructive methods were used for the grip, main body, decorations at the bottom side, and ventilations at the top. The lighting again played a huge role in the finalizing process as more light strip face lights were used to bring out the metal texture and it successfully imitated the look of a cold metal body with rubber grips and a gold button plate.
Away from 3D modeling, another art area that helped me a lot was photography since it allowed me to understand how light would work on an object and how to set up proper lighting conditions to let the render obtain a nice presentation. During my photography experience, I loved to do street photography as it allowed me to capture how people live and interact with each other without any manual interference. At the same time, sunlight and other manual lights like streetlights forced me to change my position and think during the shoot to create a nice composition and effective way to introduce lights in the frame. My absolute favorite photo I took during this process is a picture of a mother and her daughter arguing in the morning at the local old market during morning sunlight. I composited them to the left side of the frame as there was a shop opened with its rack blocking much unnecessary information including a random person. Since it was in the morning, the sunlight and the dust on the road formed a nice Tyndall effect that created the “weight” of light and lit the back of the mother and daughter which formed a circle of light that separated them from the background. This separation is very effective as when most people see the image, they will automatically ignore the rest of the frame including the passenger on the scooter and the products in the shop as they are all in the shadow while the kid and her mother are under this ring of light.
Chiara Ziska
Michigan View
Photography
3872 x 2592 px
2020
Nuvole
Graphite on paper
11 x 17 in
2021
Untitled
Photography
15 x 22.5 in
2021
My name is Chiara Ziska and I am a third year Studio Arts Major. My concentration is in photography but drawing is a large part of my art practice. The two different mediums allow me unique avenues to challenge my creativity. Themes of my work include the stress of unattainable beauty, impacts of the male gaze, and self image.
My work included here specifically explores feelings of isolation and seclusion during the pandemic. I bonded with the people around me by sharing thoughts and experiences together as full time college students grasping any thread of normalcy during a time where normalcy was nowhere to be seen. The pandemic created noise and I wanted my work to create quiet and stillness.