Full Bloom
This spring, Kittredge Gallery exhibited senior thesis projects by 12 studio art majors at the annual Senior Art Show. Among them were two artists focused on making invisible human experiences visible. Megan Breiter ’18 asked her portrait subjects to name a character trait they embodied or aspired to develop, then used the symbolic meaning of flowers to bring “inner, unseen development” to the surface. Kyrianna Bolles ’18 connected with her subjects through a shared experience of chronic pain. In a self-portrait, living violas burst through her back, representing her own struggle with a lifelong illness. View more senior art at pugetsound.edu/kittredge.
Beyond canvas and paint, works displayed at this year’s Senior Art Show utilized various materials, including wood—a medium chosen by three artists. Sculptures made by Jarrett Prince ’18 juxtapose wood, a live material that requires skill to shape, with unnatural and unyielding steel. Similarly, Samuel Crookston Herschlag ’18 married natural and industrial materials by covering wooden forms with metallic leafing. He says the forms “become dense metallic structures that are no longer subject to impermanence” and represent the hardships he’s overcome. Stephanie Clement ’19 embroidered faces of women onto the cushions of wooden chairs—objects that people use freely and discard when they’re not useful—as a statement on the treatment of women in a patriarchal society.
