Minding the Gaps Between Space and Time

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Opening April 28, studio art exhibition probes subjective realities

by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

College is a time of seismic growth and shift, and that’s particularly true for those in the class of 2023. Challenged by a global pandemic during their first year at Dickinson, they adapted to online and hybrid learning—and, like many of us, felt their sense of time expand and contract with the flow of it. Now, the class of ’23’s studio art majors are distilling those experiences into a capstone body of work.  

The result: Mind the Gap, an exhibition that examines the complexities and lived experiences of swimming in liminal moments and spaces during an identity-forming moment in their lives.

“These students know what it means to live in conditions of time and space that can only pretend to be objective,” says Eleanor Conover, assistant professor of art & art history, who leads this year’s senior studio art seminar with assistance from the rest of the studio art faculty.  The spaces between disciplines are also in play, Conover adds, as the artists bring other interests and passions—music, athletics, media, computer programming, psychology—into the work.

The opening reception for Mind the Gap will be held April 28, 5:30-7 p.m. in The Trout Gallery. The exhibition will continue through May 21.

Works by Kate Altman and Nathaniel Chaves draw inspiration from childhood and its objective sense of passing time. Altman rediscovered a love of favorite picture books last winter, during a power outage. Chaves gathered up driftwood during low tide on the Long Island Sound, where he spent childhood summers. He fashioned a rough apparatus for displaying discarded linens, which he weathers to evoke the passage of time. Josephine Cook makes sewn soft sculptures that represent the body and how it can be reconstructed. 

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Photo by Dan Loh.

As the 2022 recipient of the Weiss Prize for the Arts, Fasade Fagoroye ’23 produced a graphic book about the Carlisle Indian School, informed by site visits and archival research. Her Afrofuturist paintings, drawings, collage and bookwork depict the complexity of the human condition and the narratives we construct to make sense of our realities and dive deep into timeless storytelling values and questions while also challenging Western, white-centric narratives and ideas.

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Photo by Dan Loh.

Stephanie Henderson combines readymade medical materials, such as bandages and syringes, with her own sewn and cast pieces to depict a relationship between identity and illness. Caitlyn Longest’s oil paintings illuminate preventable global and local disasters and catastrophes, such as extreme weather events, and society’s failure to properly address climate change. 

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Photo by Dan Loh.

Anika Naimpally uses original and archival photography to evoke her experiences of moving between states and countries as a child, and the piecemeal visual memories held within photographs—and within associated stories. She suggests that photos can be used to shape identity formation and that her work on this theme helps her “to synthesize memories, interacting with previous versions of myself.” 

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Photo by Dan Loh.

Belle O’Shaugnessy’s paper-pulp sculptures portray human relationships through the idea of proximity—how the spaces between us create physical, emotional and energetic reactions. Matthew Presite makes candid photographs of figures in motion that, he writes, ask the viewer “to slow down and to take their time trying to understand how something so common and ordinary can be manipulated in a way so that it is no longer something with which they associate so regularly.” Olivia Schapiro creates paintings that are mainly figurative and sometimes eerie—a process that was more challenging than she initially expected but one that has enabled her to take a more comprehensive approach to her work.

Photo by Dan Loh.

Photo by Dan Loh.

Iris Shaker-Check’s ceramic vessels represent bodies and the ways they interact. As she works, she presses the vessels together so that they shape each other, the vessels also creating a unique space. Han Trinh, an international student from Saigon, portrays changes she’s witnessed within her home city and the tensions inherent to finding a sense of belonging in unfamiliar spaces. Within this, she explores the concept of memories forgotten across time. As she contemplates what she’s forgotten, she looks “for a connection between myself in the past, myself in my hometown and myself in the current space.”

Senior-year studio-art majors present their 2023 thesis exhibition, Mind the Gap. Photo by Dan Loh.

Photo by Dan Loh.

Learn more about current art exhibitions at Dickinson and view the Calendar of Arts.

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Published April 20, 2023