Kathryn Looney
On Friday, April 25, the senior art show opened in the Flaten Art Museum. Featuring capstone pieces from the 24 studio art majors, these students present work that captures family, emotions, interactions, and social critiques, all in a dazzling array.
The museum features works exploring a variety of mediums, from woodcarving and oil painting, to animation and crochet. Some provoked thought, while others sparked joy.
Among the pieces I found most thought-provoking were “Grief — deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement” by Soren Chirhart ’25 and “The World Around Me #1 – #9” by Manaw Kyar Phyu ’25. Chirhart’s piece combined three main forms of art — poetry, videography, and physical art — to portray grief. Using papier mache masks, people within the video put on these different faces one can choose when experiencing grief. By the end of the video, a person without a mask takes the hand of someone who had worn a mask with a hollow mouth and eyes: grief impersonated. While the piece made me feel creeped out, the feeling helped me to better understand and relate to the courage and strength those in the video had to have to take the hand of that freaky personage.
Kyar Phyu’s piece entailed nine black and white ink and crayon posters, every poster representing a different month and year. Each poster represented a white ball with eyes — “a ball of hope in a dark, dark world” — facing different circumstances: on a couch with a weeping woman, reading a psalm from the Bible. Each poster was meant to capture a moment in Kyar Phyu’s life that transformed her “perception of death,” and was shaped by her experiences in Myanmar and Thailand. For me, this piece was both thought-provoking and steeped in emotion.
Other pieces I loved for their color and uniqueness. My favorites included “Star” by Xinyuan Zhao ’25 and “Giardino, Greenvale Ave,” and “Kawa, Herbata?” by Giulia Flores Brykowicz ’25. Zhao’s work was a digital print and watercolor pop-up picture book about a star who comes to Earth and helps the people he meets in various ways. The amount of detail and interaction in the book was incredible, and the story, like a cherry on top, was sweet. I loved flipping through the pages and pulling to reveal a drawing or watching the whole page unfold.
Another piece that left me saying “wow!” was Brykowicz’s. Using clay, fragrance oils, and mica, Brykowizc created her own fragrances whose scent reminds her of three specific places: her grandmother’s kitchen, the garden she frequented as a child, and her home now. By lifting glass domes over the clay flowers holding each scent, I thought this was an incredible art form I had never even considered but nonetheless understood — the power of scent.
The exhibition is open until May 24, but will be closed May 15 to 20 for finals, with an opening reception to be held Friday, May 2. I cannot stress enough how much you should visit this exhibit; the amount of creativity these seniors present will leave you at times with tears in your eyes or a huge grin on your face.