Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
The List Gallery will showcase work by senior art majors Sofia Lopez and Zebi Brown this Thursday through Sunday.
When Lopez began taking art at Swarthmore she fell in love with drawing and decided that she wanted to take as many art classes as possible. She experimented with various styles over the next few years. She feels that the work she is showing in this exhibit, which consists primarily of charcoal drawings, brings her art at Swarthmore full circle, because she is back to doing what she is most interested in. She decided she really wanted to draw especially from still life and things from her past, like the ranch that her father grew up on.
She is excited about having her art displayed in the List. She believes the gallery gives her work a cohesion that isn’t necessarily visible when it is in the studio. She is most excited about drawings based on old photos from when her parents were dating.
Zebi Brown has worked extensively with painting, but last summer and this year she has focused primarily on the charcoal and pencil drawings which will be featured in this exhibit. She describes the exhibit as a display of different styles within her style. It showcases the different skills she’s developed and the various ways she approaches art. She says, “It is a kind of exploration in drawing.” Different series of paintings fit together in her head in different ways, either because they are of the same subject or because they are drawn in similar ways.
Brown did not originally plan on being an art major. However, when she took The Potter’s Wheel her sophomore year it altered her approach to art and sparked her interest in pursuing it as a major. She says that when she first began working with pottery she would create a little clay mound and get really attached to it and not want to ruin it, but she had to destroy it in order to make anything worthwhile. This really helped her to realize that getting too attached to art keeps it from reaching its full potential. The realization that it is necessary to risk something that you are satisfied with in order to create your best work is a principle that Brown now works to incorporate into her drawing and painting.
