Senior art students prepare capstones

With graduation rapidly approaching, senior art majors are currently exhibiting their artwork, which they have been working on for the past year, as a part of their senior capstone. The first show kicked off April 11 and the last exhibit will be taken down April 29.

Starting off the string of senior shows were senior art major Julia Allen’s show titled “Youth Shows but Half” and senior art major Jessica Peet’s exhibit titled “Viste dall’ Interno.” Both shows were housed in the Museum of Fine Arts and showcased beautiful oil paintings by the two artists. Following the next week was Melissa Robbins, senior fine arts major, photography exhibit titled “Fleeting Movement” along with an exhibit by Mallory Lewis called “Georgia’s Honey.”

Since she was 16 years old, Allen has volunteered at Wesley Wood, located in her hometown of Newnan, Ga. Working with many of the elderly housed in the facility, she was able to gain close relationships with many of them. Allen expressed that during the time she has spent with the elderly, she has gained an immense knowledge of the aging process and knew right off that she wanted to make many of them the focus of her art exhibit.

“In general I feel like I have this connection with the elderly just because they are the elderly and I have this innate love for them,” Allen said, “I can’t explain it.”

Nine out of the 11 oil paintings depict individuals who Allen has a personal relationship with, while the other two are people that she has met and spoken with in the past. Among the people featured in her art is her grandmother, her father’s nanny, a man she met in Memphis playing the trumpet and her good friend’s grandmother.

She stated that her grandmother has written her a letter each week since her freshman year at Georgia College and since she holds these letters so dear to her she decided to collage pieces of the letters on all 11 pieces of artwork.

“Each piece has the letters collaged onto the surface just to kind of mimic the jumbled memory of the elderly but to also create a connection between the audience and my grandmother and the audience and me and show my personal connection with someone who still has that enthusiasm and drive for life,” Allen said.

After working for the entire year on her exhibit at the end of the day Allen is really happy with her exhibit.

“I’ve always thought of photography as being (a way to) capture that one moment that is never coming back again. Some people say a photograph is like a death of a person because that moment never comes back. I think you know we let so many moments in our life go by without a thought. This way you can see each part of the movement and give it time and extra thought than you would in real life, so I wanted to express it that way.”

Melissa Robbins, Senior art major and capstone student

“It was awesome. I feel like it really got across the message of being content because most of the pieces I have, the viewer does not look at the audience, there is one that there is eye contact ,the paintings is of a man he’s looking directly at the audience,” Allen said. “Most of them it’s like they don’t have to have this companionship with somebody to be okay and I feel like that’s conveyed in my paintings.”

In the summer of 2009, Peet studied abroad in Italy with Georgia College. While brainstorming the idea for her exhibit at the beginning of Fall semester, she decided she wanted to put on a show focused on her memories of her trip to Italy, and therefore titled the show “Viste dall’ Interno,” which is French for “views from inside.” Many of the oil painting are set in confined spaces and include windows with one specific self-portrait of her looking out of a window.

“It was exciting to see your work up in a museum,” Peet said. “You’re art students, you have your work up in critiques and stuff but you never have it in a real place where you have a real reception and you have all these people that you sometime you don’t know that come in and look at your artwork. So it was really supportive and inspiring to you.”

Body language was the first idea of focus for Melissa Robbins photography exhibit. Concentrating on this idea for much of the fall semester, it soon evolved into human movements, capturing those moments of movement with continuous photography.

“I’ve always thought of photography as being (a way to) capture that one moment that is never coming back again,” Robbins said. “Some people say a photograph is like a death of a person because that moment never comes back.”

Her show features 10 black and white pieces of an individual doing different movements. Seven of the pieces, with 15 prints in each print, are horizontal or vertical in a grid pattern while three pieces are in a straight line allowing the viewer to walk along them. She decided to show human movement in a series of 15 prints per piece because it allows the viewers to see each part of the movement and view it as a moment stopped in time.

“I think you know we let so many moments in our life go by without a thought. This way you can see each part of the movement and give it time and extra thought than you would in real life, so I wanted to express it that way,” Robbins said.