In Their Final Days, Barnard Visual Arts Majors Leave Mark

Enter Barnard Hall and climb to the third floor, and you will be amazed at the transformation that has taken place. The entire hallway and one giant room have been converted into an art gallery, displaying the artwork of 18 Barnard senior visual arts majors.

The artwork, which represents the seniors’ final thesis projects—a culmination of their visual arts experiences at Barnard—is truly diverse, incorporating media that range from performance art to sculpture to site-specific installation. In choosing artwork to present, many of the artists relied on critiques from their professors, peers, and other artists.

In addition to displaying her neon, geometric paintings on her part of the wall, Emma Mendelson, BC ’08 chose to cover her body in her work. She attached neon-painted syringes to strings to create a shawl-effect. “This is what comes out when the pen hits the paper,” Mendelson said about her painting and sculpture style. The tangled lines create a jarring contrast with the neon color choice.

A little more subdued, Kristin Galetta’s On Those Networks, a series of mangled and tangled paintings, responds to the “increasing networks in society,” Galetta, BC ’08, said. On Those Networks is the largest canvas on display. It is more blurry than tangled, utilizing Rauschenberg-esque drips to create an almost white-wash effect. The work covers up Galetta’s “interrelated modern world.” However, Galetta’s artwork is not all located in the same place, which makes the overall effect of her concept less poignant.

In the hallway, photographs by Virginia Sprance, BC ’08, depict middle-aged women in their middle-American homes. The masterful photographs seem eerie and uncanny, and the women look out of place, uncomfortable, and oddly ordinary. On large wooden panels, Anuva Kalawar’s Floating Faces depicts “self portraits within larger portraits of the Self,” said Kalawar, BC ’08. “I dragged a giant piece of construction wood ten blocks.” Her work is a spiritual journey with touch—she utilizes charcoal and pastels to transfer herself onto the wood.

Unfortunately, the layout of the artwork is extremely scattered. Obviously, the show focuses more on the artists than on curating, but it would have been nicer to have seen pieces such as the installation by Ashley Melendez, BC ’08, on the actual floor of the exhibit instead of at the entrance to Barnard Hall. Nuances like this make the overall show seem somewhat disjointed as the eighteen artists try to attach meaning to their own individual worlds.