For three fine arts students Joe Griffin, Jamie Murphey and Brian Taylor, it all comes down to their senior thesis exhibition, which will hang from Nov. 7-Dec. 2 in the McComas Hall art gallery.
Ranging from 2-D drawings to 3-D sculpture, the show encapsulates two months of work in each of their emphasis.
“My work deals with dependent relationships between people and their environment,” Taylor, emphasizing in sculpture, said. “However, I chose an industrial setting. Everything I use, from steel to resin, is industrial in nature.”
“His work is very contemplative,” Brent Funderburk, fine arts senior coordinator, said. “He’s using large industrial materials in an assemblage that cause you to re-evaluate the relationship between humanity and the things that we make.”
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Griffin. Having an emphasis in drawing, his 2-D work is a series of ink wash portraits that discuss themes of war, military service and middle class family life in the African-American culture.
“Joe’s work is very subtle,” Funderburk said. “He’s not a bombastic person so neither is his work. It requires the viewer to have some low impact time, as well as high impact time with the pieces.”
In the middle of the spectrum sits Murphey. While she has an emphasis in painting, her work is an amalgamation of drawings, sculpture and found objects that investigate the process of making a home.
“In a way it’s a performance piece,” Funderburk said. “You come in and live in it and with it. It makes one question how much of what we call a home is the art of it and how much is the homogenization of it.”
However, as Funderburk explains, the show only scratches the surface of the entire senior thesis process.
“While the work is usually done over the last few months of their last semester, the whole process is actually a year long,” he said. “They develop ideas, develop a committee, develop a body of work and then develop an exhibition all within a year. At the same time we’re going on field trips to see various artists, as well as doing things like giving oral presentations to the honors forum.”
Funderburk said he wants people to understand the depth that these students go to to produce this senior thesis show.
“A lot of people come to the show thinking it’s going to be retrospective of their entire college career,” he said. “That’s not the case. They also just see the very end product and tend to take for granted the amount of work that goes into it.
“This is a capstone element in their degree,” he added. This is where they synthesize everything they’ve learned and then are tested for two straight months.”
He also explained that during the whole art creation process they also have other duties such as making a research book documenting their idea development and a personal journal.
The development of the show, which is usually left to the gallery director, is also up to the students. Duties such as lighting, reception organization and press are divided up among the graduating students.
“It’s a very difficult process for an undergraduate,” Funderburk said. “But they’re our product. We don’t have a graduate program so they’re our pride and joy.”
And with only three students graduating (it usually ranges anywhere from three to 10 people), each student was given more of a responsibility than usual. Yet things worked out fine when they could’ve gotten a bit hairy.
“Luckily we’re a very close-knit group,” Taylor said. “Being close allowed us to figure out everything early on so the process went smooth. We were never at each other’s throats.”
“We really have a great show,” Funderburk said. “We’ve got two people doing three dimensional work that comes out into the gallery that compliments the two dimensional work. It turned out to be a beautiful installation.”