During the Autumn 2025 first-year seminar, Arts Scholars engaged in various workshops, discussions, and gallery visits that served to explore new perspectives and consider how their own stories relate to those of their peers and the Ohio State community. Their learning culminated in their Engage the Arts projects. This multimedia academic exercise encouraged Arts Scholars to do the following: tap into their creative identities, incorporate new ideas, and work collaboratively in small groups to bring original stories to life through art. Final project format options were the following: 1) zine series 2) short film and screenplay or 3) music leitmotif and poster art. We hope you enjoy the five stories that scholars voted into this year’s UAS online exhibition.
All seminar projects can be viewed in person at the Fine Arts Library from Thursday, January 22 – Thursday, February 26.
Thank You! These stories could only be developed with the expertise and support from the following people: Walker Ballard, Shaheen Beardsley, Catalina Bode, Nicholas Booker, Lisa Congdon, Jessie Horning, Sarah Robison, Caitlin McGurk, and Megg Mullarkey. Thank you to the OSU Urban Arts Space and Fine Arts Library Staff for sharing these projects with the community.
Learn more about Ohio State's Arts Scholars program here.
A Hero’s Journey
By Victoria Chindavong, Jessica Ellis, Alexander Garza, Gavin Hodge, and Anjali Paul
Our pieces detail the tragedy of J. Blackwell, a misjudged and misunderstood antagonist set within a dystopian setting. The works explore themes of betrayal, sorrow, and corruption through a music composition, an 8 ½" x 11" character design, and a 12"x16" poster art through the medium of ink. Both the character design and poster art pulled inspiration from several concept arts found within the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum through the usages of value, early character designs, and tones and hues. The music composition uses inspiration found within Nicholas Booker’s presentation of "Music as Storytelling & Narrative Song" through the techniques of dynamics, tone color, timbre, texture, harmony, and pitch. We want our viewers to explore unique themes of interpretations when listening and hearing the pieces, whilst exploring what may occur within the story, as well as how the pieces affect their emotions towards the work.
Roles:
Victoria Chindavong – Artist of Poster Art and Character Design
Jessica Ellis – Vocalist, Story Creation, Lyricist, Alto Vocalist
Alexander Garza – Composer of Music Composition, Lyric Translation, Scoring of Vocals, Assisted with Story Creation
Gavin Hodge – Assisted with Story Creation, Bass Vocalist
Anjali Paul – Soprano Vocalist
Art Is Everywhere
By Willow Birdette, Arman Kaur, Peyton Perry, and Faith Tengker
A college girl in the midst of an academic burnout finds inspiration in the most unlikely places. The girl, portrayed by Peyton Perry, discovers the simplicity and consistency of art in life. The inspiration for this project stems from a unique photography activity we took part in during our Arts and Scholars Seminar that emphasized detail in the most mundane places. That, combined with our favorite places on campus, helped cultivate our short film.
The team behind this short film was created by Arman Kaur as director, Willow Birdette as cinematographer, Faith Tengker as editor, and Peyton Perry as lead actress. This short film was created solely from the minds of these four individuals and their experience in college life thus far.
Nine Lives
By Luca Brusco and Sam Haskell
Our movie concept Nine Lives is a cartoon mystery/thriller belonging to the 1950s–60s genre of film noir. It follows a feline detective (a "jazz cat" if you will) who frequents jazz clubs and solves mysteries. The art style is inspired by the early animation and characters such as Felix the Cat from the early 20th century. The music is inspired by the blues and cool jazz that contextualized film noir in films such as Anatomy of a Murder scored by Duke Ellington.
To make this project, we drew inspiration from pieces of art and media we gravitated to in our life and used skills laid out by the Arts Scholars seminar to bring it to life. To create the movie poster, we organized the design into thirds as described in the photography presentation and used lighting and shadows to emphasize key parts of the scene. The music is a jazz quintet performed by Sam on trumpet, Luca on bass, and three other musicians playing saxophone, piano, and drums.
SCOPOPHOBIA
By DJ Austin, Sarah Lewis, Alexander Matusiak, and Angela Mensah
Elena Ward lives peacefully. Her town, full of life and friendly neighbors, gives her life a new perspective. Daily routines are enjoyable, time with friends is always a laugh, and her boyfriend is the best man she could ever ask for... but what is that? A stranger stares, a toothy grin, a whisper of the wind? When Elena enters a room now, conversations are silenced. Her friends look at her with oddly hollow eyes and wide smiles. Her world is slowly slipping into madness. As she pleads to leave this hell, she will only find the embrace of what lies beyond the gate.
Our inspiration for this project was from the film and music discussion with Roman during an Arts Scholars weekly meeting. Horror music is a very different field of movie music, often relying on more noises and techniques than actual music, and the visuals of horror movies can be so varied. Using our knowledge of horror music and common design for horror movies, we created a simple design for our characters and musical motives. On the poster, we used a combination of cool and warm color palettes to demonstrate the juxtaposition of Elena’s wonderful life and madness. In the music, we used atonal writing techniques to show a never-quite-settled feeling of the music. With the different techniques used over this project, we hope you enjoy the madness of Scopophobia.
Super Normal Totally Average Very Regular Day in the Life of an Ohio State Student
By Kyla Dunphy, Harper Fleming, Kyla Dunphy, and Ava Napoli
Read the full zine [link coming soon!]
Join the W Art Group for a day in their lives at Ohio State. Their day may seem normal at first, but don't let that fool you. Throughout four chapters, travel with the group through morning, noon, afternoon, and night, and see how weird The Ohio State University can get. Each member of the group will face challenges, adventures, and chaos until they run into the next person. Finally, at the end of everyone’s crazy day, they are all reunited for a final debrief.
The inspiration for our zine was discovering what life is like as an Ohio State student. The chapters are based on each member's interpretation of their day, with added fantasy elements. As the day continues, in each part—morning, afternoon, evening, and night—the story gets progressively stranger, meant to represent how we, as freshmen, are trying to adjust to the craziness of college life. Our zine also has a strong emphasis on collaboration and individuality. Each chapter is drawn from one member's point of view and art style, until they run into the next person. This is when art styles and world building collide, giving the zine a fun mixed-media look.
Grace Miller: Chapter 1: Morning story and illustration
Kyla Dunphy: Chapter 2: Noon story and illustration
Harper Flemming: Chapter 3: Afternoon story and illustration
Ava Napoli: Chapter 4: Night story and illustration
Together: Cardboard bind, book binding, and collaborative back pages and covers (when we meet up)
