From April 4 to May 6, the Rutledge Gallery and Lewandowski Student Gallery will be featuring the 2022 BFA Senior Exhibition, “Menagerie.” This new exhibit will feature 18 senior BFA students’ artistic works showcasing a multitude of themes that are important to them.
One of the students, Grayce Kellam, a senior sculpture major, describes the title of the exhibit, “Menagerie,” as the perfect title to ensure that the exhibit exemplifies inclusivity and diversity.
“The title ‘Menagerie’ is basically just a strange and diverse collection of artworks. We didn’t know how else to come up with a title to cover everyone,” Kellam said. “Because we’re all so different, and we’re all making such incredible things. We didn’t want anyone to be left out.”
Though a sculpture major, Kellam describes herself as more of an interdisciplinary artist.
“I combine multiple mediums to create one big giant piece, thing experience,” Kellam said. “So, sculpture and projection, or sculpture and video or literature, I like to combine a bunch of different things into one.”
One of the art pieces Kellam is showcasing is a sculpture wall that displays her love of Egyptian art.
“I’ve always been inspired by Egyptian art. I’ve always wanted to include literature on my sculptures, not just next to them or stand with them. And one thing in Egyptian art is the words that they carve are actually formed as some kind of magic for the dead,” Kellam said. “It helps assist their soul in the afterlife. So just the idea of me being able to carve my words, carve my narrative, carve my strength into a wall, and have those words become 3D sculptures themselves.”
Another artist whose work is being featured in this exhibit is Lauren Baechel, a senior sculpture major. She describes her work as being heavily concept–based.
“I like to try to create spaces for people to have spots to heal in. My past work was based around allowing other people to have a space for that,” Baechel said. “But for this specific installation, there are three pieces in this show that are mine. I wanted to have a more selfish approach to what I was doing.”
Baechel’s past works have been about creating a safe haven for those who come to see her art. However, this time around, her pieces are centered more on how she is feeling in her life at this moment.
“The healing that I was doing was really based around other people having spots to heal and go in and having places to mourn where they usually wouldn’t mourn,” Baechel said. “But in my life recently, I’ve had some pretty dramatic things happen. So, I wanted to take a more selfish approach to it.”
In one of Baechel’s pieces, she will showcase her personal relationship with being raised Catholic while also being a queer woman.
“I was raised really Catholic, and I’m a queer woman. So, you know, it kind of clashes with each other. But my parents are really devout Catholics,” Baechel said. “So, this piece is about my relationship with the actual religion and trying to kind of process the fragility of it and how growing up in that state has impacted me.”
My’Asia McCollum is a BFA student majoring in fine arts with a concentration in paintings.
“My work for the senior show is called ‘into the dark.’ It is an exploration of my own traumatic experience and events that happen and just the way of processing and healing from it,” McCollum said. “I’m showing different stages of healing, like just not knowing what to do, being confused, and then moving to being set free from all of it, being just able to deal with it, cope with it and move past it.”
One of McCollum’s pieces is a painting display of multiple cut–offs of parts of faces.
“This painting is called ‘into the dark web.’ It’s different pieces of faces showing different emotions, and the web represents my mind always being so confused, not knowing what to do next, or how to deal with stuff, just my mind is always racing,” McCollum said. “So that’s what this picture kind of represents. Just trying to figure out stuff and things. Not quite being able to figure it out at that moment, being very broken, and being pulled in different places.”
The “Menagerie” exhibition gives the chance for these senior artists to showcase some of their more vulnerable sides while also having something every viewer can relate to in their own lives.
