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BY BRENDAN WORK

In print | Published April 26, 2007

For four years, nine students have explored their visions of art — but only since April 13, at the List Gallery’s Senior Art Exhibitions, have they finally been able to exhibit them to the public. The shows, which last until May 14, span the spectrum of artistic media from sculpture to painting, and each exhibition represents the creative growth and maturation of the artist in a uniquely personal environment.

“It’s always nice to see the range of points of view and the incredible craft that emerges from this perspective,” List Gallery Director Andrea Packard said. “Many have been really quite strong, and they just get better and better.”

Art professor Celia Reisman, who tsupervised the seniors this year as they created the bodies of work they wished to exhibit, commented on the distinctive nature of the exhibits: “Unlike a lot of other liberal art schools that have an arts major, where the culminating experience is usually a group show, the fact that we have a solo show is quite unusual.”

The works of each art major sit in the List Gallery next to their written senior thesis, a culmination of their experiences, studies and opinions at Swarthmore and throughout their lives — a “leap of faith,” as Packard describes it, which sets these students apart from other seniors.

“This is a very public event,” she said. “When most people write their theses, the whole campus doesn’t have to read them. In the visual arts, you have to put up or shut up. You have to make a constructive step forward. It’s a gutsy thing to do.”

Reisman praised not only the diversity of media, but the wide variety of ways in which the students went about their work.

“I think everybody has their strengths,” Reisman said. “I think what’s fascinating about it is that each student has a different rhythm of working. Some like the pressure of having a deadline, and others like to work much more continuously. For me, that’s what it’s about: getting to know each person.”

Each of those people — seniors Blake Roberts, Maceray Sesay, Heather Reese, Alysia Chevalier, Summer Spicer, Laura Mecklenburger, Becket Flannery, Jessica Mandrick and Danielle Borgaily — met twice a week with Reisman for several months to discuss the progress of their work, and some found that its focus was much less on the subject than the style.

Blake Roberts’ abstract painting, for example, examines the numerous effects that paint can have on the eye and mind.

“I was much more interested in the qualities of the paint — the texture, color and brushstroke — than the subject matter,” Roberts said. Her oil paintings hung in the gallery in mid-April.

“Blake explored abstract painting in a really serious way,” Packard said. “You could see a love of paint and looking at the medium in all of its expressive possibilities, from the thickness of the paint to playing with the edge of the canvas and the nuances of color.”

Similarly, the works of Danielle Borgaily, which will go up for display on May 11 and last until May 14, concentrate on something more than the images she has drawn.

As a self-described prospective Pixar animator, Borgaily said she was fascinated by the process of creating a storyboard with her drawings.

“The work emphasizes process more than a product,” she said. “I’m not interested in making a finely detailed piece so much as making a storyboard, and doing rough sketches.”

Becket Flannery’s May 4 mixed-media exhibit aims for subtle impressions through detail, he said in an e-mail. Sculptor Laura Mecklenburger, whose works go up on Friday, explained that 18 hours of continuous glazing was all that needed to be said of her exhibit.

The students were aided in the design of their exhibits by Packard, who, as the List Gallery director, was willing to lend her eye for lighting and placement.

“The arrangement can enhance or defeat their purpose,” Packard said. “It’s not easy to do — not putting in too many, or not putting in sentimental favorites. All those decisions seem obvious when they don’t work, but when they do work, you see the effect of the art. It’s a beautiful synthesis of decision-making.”

Disclosure note: Becket Flannery is a living & arts artist for The Phoenix but had no role in the production of this article.

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