For up-and-coming artists, getting the opportunity to have their art seen by an audience is essential.
Four undergraduate students in the School of Visual Arts have been granted the opportunity to gain exposure on campus as a part of the “Faces and Figures” exhibit in Eisenhower Auditorium Conference Room .
The exhibit is a part of an ongoing partnership between the School of Visual Arts and the Center for the Performing Arts , said Laura Sullivan, marketing and communications director for the CPA.
“We have a conference space [in Eisenhower] that is used for meetings prior to most of our performances, but it has a very long, plain white wall that we needed to fill,” Sullivan said. “We were able to fill the space while giving some really valuable exposure to the student’s work.”
Caitlin Golesh, one of the featured artists, realizes the importance of getting her work out in the open to be viewed.
“It’s all about marketing yourself,” Golesh (senior-drawing and painting bachelors of fine arts) said.
Golesh’s piece titled “Contortion ” is an acrylic painting done on a bed sheet stretched over a canvas. It depicts a figure in a yoga pose, she said.
“I created it by pouring paint onto the canvas into the figure of the model,” Golesh said.
Golesh called the painting “a sharp turn” from her previous work.
“This opened me up to a whole new world of looseness and being able to just let paint flow,” she said.
The painting was inspired by a difficult time in Golesh’s life that led her to an artistic reinvention, she said.
“It’s a very personal story, but I feel like it’s something that a lot of people go through and can relate to,” Golesh said. “It’s about heartache and feeling abused — just being in a really vulnerable area and working through that.”
Another featured artist, Eleanor Skrzat, hopes that people will feel a connection to her painting as well, but in a slightly different way.
The painting entitled “Going to War ” is a depiction of Skrzat (junior-drawing and painting B.F.A.) and her cousin as children, she said.
Although the title suggests something more sinister, the painting captures a moment when the two children were preparing to play a game called “War.”
“My cousins and I would load up on knee pads and supplies and play war in their backyard,” Skrzat said. “We clearly had no idea what we were talking about if there was any terminology or anything used.”
The painting is a recreation of an actual photograph that Skrzat described as “clearly playful, but also kind of creepy.”
“It’s two kids little kids pretending to fight in battle, but also completely disregarding the reality of the situation,” Skrzat said.
Skrzat said she chose the title so that people would realize what the painting was depicting.
“When people would see the painting, they would assume that we were just playing and not make the connection,” she said. “I wanted to emphasize that we were being violent — or at least pretending to be.”
For Skrzat, the painting is not necessarily a way to get across a sociopolitical message or even to say something about herself. Whether viewers are reminded of their own childhood or of little kids that they know, she hopes they will feel some sort of connection to the painting.
“Or even if they just like the colors and the aesthetics of it, that’s good too,” she added.
Golesh’s and Skrzat’s paintings will be on display for the remainder of the semester, along with a painting called “Limbo ” by Josephine Seungah Lee and an untitled piece by Danny Ferrell . The exhibit will be open during Artistic Viewpoints and Kids Connections sessions, which take place an hour before most CPA performances and are free to ticket holders.
