BA/BFA Juried Senior Exhibition offers seniors opportunity to display year’s work

Graduating BA/BFA art students’ final works were unveiled at the Juried Senior Exhibition’s opening receptions in the Baum Gallery on April 15 and April 18.

The show featured the creations of 20 BA students and five BFA students. Their works will be on display until Thursday, April 29; the exhibition is free and open to the public.

Before the opening, BA students were required to take multiple pieces before a panel that consisted of four art faculty professors who helped determine which works would be exhibited. Students could choose from works created any time during their career at UCA.

Barbara Satterfield, director of the Baum Gallery, said art students are not finished with their degree until they exhibit their work.

“This is more than just a display of the work the students like … it’s a cooperative decision with [the jury],” Satterfield said. “They enter a professional discussion … look at each piece and determine their merits and shortcomings.”

Satterfield said an artist’s ability to determine his strongest work is of utmost importance. The juried discussion is meant to teach students how to selectively identify their best work.

At the beginning of the semester, students graduating with a BFA were required to submit a proposal for new work based solely on this exhibition. Throughout the semester, students receive guidance from a few faculty advisers.

BA student Sidney Jones exhibited pieces with a strong anti-war message; her work consisted of plaster-sculpted grenades on display in different ways. “Fallen Arkansans” commemorated dead soldiers from Arkansas and featured hanging slots in which grenades were housed, one for every fallen soldier. One row of slots was empty.

Jones said: “The empty space is important because it shows there’s more to come.”

As soldiers continue to die, Jones will add a grenade each.

“When I started the project, the toll was 67 … now it’s up to 70,” Jones said.

Jones said her work was meant to show how American society’s conscience is largely removed from the reality of the war in the Middle East.

BFA student Melissa Kordsmeier exhibited a series of self portrait sculptures built from casts of her own body.

Kordsmeier’s piece “Eternal Rest,” an organic work, features a life-size cast of herself in a raised box filled with soil. The cast, organic grey in color, was made from hypertufa, a dirt/concrete mix that will decompose in about 10 years. Eventually, moss will grow out of the slumbering body and ultimately devour it.

“The beautiful element … is that plants will eventually consume the body,” Kordsmeier said. “It is very much alive. Even when it looks like you can’t go on anymore, there is still something alive within.”

Kordsmeier said the plaster-casting process lasted three hours.

BFA student Allison McElroy exhibited five life-size oil paintings of human figures on canvas. McElroy said the gargantuan figures are meant to evoke a personal experience with the viewer.

“Seeing a portrait so large is a psychological thing … you’re able to connect with it more. And life-size is the creepiest size a portrait could be,” she said.

BA student Jennifer Hoornstra exhibited “Into the Nothing,” a tribute to her love of painting while listening to music. The piece featured intricately detailed havens, painted with watercolors, and incomplete, fragmented staircases floating in a space of white.

BFA student Brandon Mathis made a tribute to the personal shrines that people create in their homes or that retail stores put on display.

Exhibiting BA students are Robyn Blaylock, Karla Cossey, Letitia Clark, Peggy Holder, Sarah Holland, Hoornstra, Mary Hull, Jones, Cameron King, Shawn Lee, Anthony Leopard, Grant Looney, Megan McQueen, Bonnie Mergl, Zachary Neel, Samantha Simpson, Lonnie Smith, Julie Sullivan, Kirby Tidwell and Rachel Walker. Sara Morgan, who is a BA Art Education emphasis student, is also displaying work.

The BFA students are Jennifer Eakin and Katie Parker, both with a graphic design emphasis; Kordsmeier and Mathis, both with a sculpture emphasis; and McElroy, who specializes in painting.