The Bachelor of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, titled “Six Degrees,” opened Monday and is open for public viewing in November.
The event is the McComas Hall Art Gallery’s final show of the semester. It showcases the bodies of work from six undergraduate art majors including Sarah Kindelan, James Jones, Kathryn Little, Amanda DeStefanis, Felesha Butler and Liz Johnstone. The show features works the artists completed in order to achieve their art degrees. The art majors include five painters and a sculptor. The show is the end result of a busy semester, and the actual artwork is only one aspect of the students’ preparation process.
“Part of the requirements are the hanging, or the installation for sculpture. You have to make the show, and you have to do all the press releases,” Little said. “It’s a lot of work.”
Sculptor Kindelan also poured much of her time into the exhibit.
“You basically have your final semester to compose this body of work and only that time,” she said. “It’s supposed to be the caption of your entire college career. You’re showing off what you’ve learned composed into one fluid body of work.”
Despite the hard work, the artists said they have enjoyed the process.
“I enjoyed the whole thing,” Little said. “Even the days where [I thought I was awful], they helped. This is our first real art show. We’re about to be professionals. It’s kind of a taste into what goes into what you’ll do for the rest of your life.”
Kindelan said the experience furthered her acceptance of the public’s view of her work.
“It’s exciting,” she said. “When you’re working you have to think about how people are going to accept your work and how they’re going to read it. It’s the first time you’re really showing people what you’re doing and what you’re thinking about, and your different talents and ideas. It’s important because it’s your first time to really express yourself publicly.”
The artists hope Mississippi State students will take an interest.
“I would urge students to come because it’s something that other students are doing,” Little said. “So they can see what their peers are doing that are about to be professional artists. Art students should come see it because they have to do it sometime. It should have appeal to all students because it’s a good show. There’s some real quality work.”
Kindelan would like people to come to the show to get a view of professional art.
“There aren’t many opportunities to see professional art around here,” she said. “So it’s a really good opportunity to see what’s going on in the world of art, because we’re a reflection of what’s going on in the art world. Especially being students, we’re fresh and new and always looking for new ideas and doing something different. None of our work reflects one another’s. It’s all very different and diverse. I think that everybody can find something there that they can relate to.”
Each artist has his or her own unique style.
Little is a music fan, and it shows through her work.
“My work is based on musicality,” she said. “The two are one, really. Music is audio vibrations, and painting is visual vibrations.”
Kindelan created pieces of furniture, but with a deep, artistic meaning.
“My work is pretty conceptual,” she said. “It’s about people who share a communal space, and the way that they interact.”
Jones’ paintings express romantic love, Johnstone’s works are abstract pieces about her memories of the landscape of her native Scotland and Butler’s work is also inspired by landscapes. She uses watercolor as a medium and local images to inspire her.
“Once the painting process begins, the painting becomes a metaphor and takes on a life of its own,” she said in a press release.
DeStefanis’ work is explorational and abstract.
“My work is a vehicle for me to divulge my honest emotions and aesthetics that reveal themselves through varying levels of consciousness,” she said in a press release.
The show will be open through Dec. 1 in the art gallery on the ground floor of McComas Hall. The hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.