Three Roski School of Art and Design students exhibited multimedia art shows at the Roski Studios Building (IFT) from Aug. 30 to Sept. 10 in its first student showcase this fall, as an opportunity to enhance students’ real-world art skills.
The artists – Sammi Wong, Isabel Jasper and Yoon Seo Lee – each submitted proposals last spring to showcase their exhibitions, which they began installing “literally on the first day of school,” said Hattie Schultz, gallery coordinator and postgraduate student in curatorial studies.
“If you’re unfamiliar with IFT, it can be a very rough place to suddenly get thrown into. We want these student exhibitors to practice not just showing art, but all the aspects of exhibiting that come with that that are not often talked about,” Schultz said, referencing space, lighting, sight lines, and other curatorial considerations.
Lee, a junior majoring in fine arts, presented her exhibition “Chrysalis,” a representation of familial protection in two distinct tones: warmth and coolness. Being away from her family for almost four years because Lee’s father was ill largely influenced the focus of her work.
“When a caterpillar turns into a cocoon, it’s forming its own shield and making its own protection,” Lee said. “I was apart from family, and I still feel like I needed protection in a certain way.”
Many of the artifacts used in her art hold personal meaning for Lee, from paintings of animals shielded in a blanket fabric from her childhood, to a bird’s nest composed of tree branches picked from the garden of a family friend.
“I feel like people all over the world can connect to this theme of protection because all people grew up under their parents, under their protection. I feel like any animals or anything around this warmth could be related to my theme,” Lee said.
Three large-scale photorealistic paintings of Lee were shown side-by-side, showcasing her fluency in traditional forms of art. In the paintings, Lee is featured in her family’s sushi restaurant in Mission Viejo, Orange County, hiding “underneath the cabinet, and behind the chair, [to] use it as kind of a shield of connection,” according to Lee.
“I like [a] place that I have to hide my emotions,” Lee said. “I also wanted to convey to the audience the other side of the protection. What if I’m surrounded by a cool, impersonal object?”
A cyanotype-colored canvas combines Prussian blue prints of family photos, tulle, lace and string to form a web. “I love painting, but sometimes I feel like painting is just not enough to convey what I want to tell the audience for sure,” Lee said.
Jasper’s exhibit, “Gentle Grounds for Seeing,” is a “demonstration of the process of observation itself,” the senior design major said. The exhibit is informed by her experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a universal treatment known as exposure and response prevention, which involves observation as a key component.
“My OCD usually revolves around these unwanted, really disturbing thoughts, and then the compulsion to do something to get rid of those thoughts, disprove them, or kind of alleviate the anxiety around them, and which then kind of throws you into the cycle,” Jasper said. “Observation has been really significant to me – just observing my thoughts and when I’m really anxious, taking [in] my surroundings.”
Jasper recalled sketching her observations during the summer in her hometown, Marin County, located in the northwestern part of the Bay Area and known for its redwood trees. Throughout the exhibit were patterns found in the natural world accompanied by text.
“The forest floor is my gentle ground; that is where I feel its gentle energy,” Jasper said. “My gentle grounds for seeing are where I feel safe enough to observe and where I am brave enough, where I have this ability to just observe and just exist.”
With a background in typography and publication design, Jasper translated her 2D design knowledge onto the 3D plane – most apparent in the large wall of sketches and text resembling a grid on Adobe InDesign.
“Design is like branding, like curating a brand, a visual identity,” Jasper said. “The entire thing just felt really satisfying. Because I feel like I spent a lot of time making work about this personal topic throughout last year, I feel like I’ve closed a chapter a little bit.”
“More is More,” the exhibit curated by junior fine arts major Sammi Wong, considered the illusory culture surrounding competition. A divider made from fabric and burned wood created a sense of “tunnel vision” from the seat of the observer as it obscured the periphery of the exhibit.
“The subject “more is more” is more specifically what we see and don’t see in terms of the division of sight, and kind of thinking about what comparatively to other people, what we see as the final product,” Wong said. “When I’m looking at other people’s work, there’s so much work that goes [on] in between that it’s kind of lost,” Wong said.
Her creative process itself is intended as a demonstration of this idea. Ceramic structures on display took on a fluid form as Wong emphasized the intuitive process of art rather than methodically planning the finished products.
“Grinding away at this material and then exposing it and letting it come forward when I would burn the wood – that texture and that pattern kind of comes to the surface and reveals itself,” Wong said. “A lot of it is just kind of like almost retracting, kind of turning off my mind and just working with the material again and creating these organic shapes. It’s going back to obscurity and having an inkling of what someone is working to or towards, but not really getting the full picture.”
Nonetheless, curating the pieces took much planning and thought.
“Even though I had very minimal pieces, it just took a lot of time, just because it’s like deciding with the other two artists how we’re going to partition divided space, that kind of determines how I’d go about laying out everything. It’s definitely a learning experience, for sure,” Wong said.
The cycle of installing and showing exhibits repeats every three to four weeks. With the first exhibit of the school year at a close, Schultz hopes to continue teaching students the practical aspects of art.
“It’s a tedious process in Roski and in the real world,” Schultz said. “Not only do those minor details help to relay the message or theme of a show, but it also makes it more enjoyable for the audience, and when it’s more enjoyable for the audience, then that encourages people to keep viewing your work, which is ultimately how you become a successful artist. Real world art skills aren’t necessarily in the description of displaying art.”