Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

Sedimentary, Claire E. Sullivan

Senior Projects Spring 2024

S E D I M E N T A R Y is a mixed-media exploration of the layers and connections between the synthetic and natural world -- Where do the natural and built environments begin and end? In what ways might natural elements and man-made materials mimic or defy one another? What aesthetic, economic, or sustainable possibilities can be unearthed when nature's laws and patterns are applied to our calculated, built environment? Most importantly, how responsible must we hold ourselves and one other for our particular interactions with and impact on our environment? S E D I M E N …

Every Angel Is Terrifying, Jonah James Romm

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels’

Orders? and even if one of them pressed me

suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed

in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing

but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure,

and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains

to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying.

The title of my exhibition borrows from the poem “The First Elegy” by Rainer Maria Rilke. I was drawn to this poem because of how it uses the angel as a catalyst to intertwine beauty and terror. …

Here And Now, Samaira 2023, Samaira G. Wilson

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Consider my work as a thread weaving through time. Illustrations of grappling with the present and its illusive constant nature. Questioning permanence. The temporary. This show, these walls, not forever, not for lease. Just a point in time. Can we hold time? Keep it? Is it ours? No. Time is something that is eaten, driven through, falling, perpetual, casual, necessary, fought against, spent, and healing.

Here and Now plays with what time feels like and is contrasted by an active voyage to another world.

My Beulah, Georgia Edlyn Lenz

Senior Projects Spring 2023

My mom and dad owned two sister cats when I was born, Beulah and Yoyo. Yoyo was shy and moody, while Beulah was patient, kind and wide faced. Beulah was my chariot and my stuffed animal. She was almost like an older sister to me. So patient with me even when I would try to ride her like a pack animal.

It wasn’t until this year that I decided to look into the etymology of the name Beulah. I don’t think I’d ever heard of anyone named Beulah other than my cat, but I knew it had to come from …

Contained Messes, Cora M. Quinlan

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Contained Messes is an installation consisting of a range of sculptures or bundles that communicate my urgency for self-preservation. I put up massive boundaries when other people try to tell me about myself. When I think of setting boundaries, I think of building walls and I’ve built a lot of walls at Bard. The threat level determines the height and durability of the walls I build. When I started this project, I took a step back to look around and realized that I built myself a big house, an oyster shell if you will, suitable only for myself. Here, I …

Tryna Be A Mountain, Aru Apaza

Senior Projects Fall 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

She Is Clothed With Strength And Dignity; She Can Laugh At The Days To Come!, Immanuel J. Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Motherhood in the words of Aunt Brenda.

See, we look at our parents first as these godlike figures like they're going to figure it out, not realizing that they were children. They were people. They had dreams and aspirations and all that. And when you strip that away, the title of mother– parent– this woman…. Who is that person?

Well, they're a person. They bleed just like you. They had dreams and thoughts and all that, just like you.

You know, I challenge everybody, you know, take your mother or father off of that godlike pedestal because you'll find that …

As Many Names As Objects, Luke Herrigel

Senior Projects Spring 2021

“And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

turned toward the world of objects, never outward.

It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down.

We rearrange it, then break down ourselves”

• Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Honesty is Unbelievable”

• A Bumper Sticker I Saw

For my senior show I used collected materials, found objects, personal ephemera (both genuine and fabricated), paintings and sculpture to make installations that I would change every night of the show’s duration. Each morning the installation would be photographed, left for only a few hours, and then would be uninstalled to make way for creating a new iteration. …

Good Grief, Madeleine Pearl Buzbee

Senior Projects Spring 2020

“Good Grief” is a memorial project that began with the loss of my childhood best friend, Camille Sdao (1998-2019). She was a light.

Grief is a thing that is carried, compartmentalized, expanded, forgotten, and remembered. Grief is nothing and everything at the same time. Grief explodes, lingers, leaves and returns again. Grief is blue. I know this because Louise Bourgeois, Maggie Nelson, Taryn Simon, the Pacific Ocean, my tears, the sky, my mother, and my grandmother have taught me this. Loss means wading in deep waters for a long time and you must build a boat to stay afloat.

Consumed …

In The Shadows And Folds, Julia Mueller

Senior Projects Spring 2020

In the shadows and folds is the result of a mental scavenger hunt that I began this past year, to uncover myself and find what is hidden in my crevices. It was spurred by my fear of memory loss which had grown to such a size that it sat visible in the back of my mind unaddressed for some time. The reason for this fear is not large but it feels monumental. I have been existing in various states of sadness and disconnect, which have acted like a thick blanket over my mind. This blanket is simultaneously protective and damaging, …

The Illustrated Masterpiece: Teaching The Artist Biography To Elementary School Children Using The Illustrations In Picture Books, Sophie M. Mueller

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Arts programs, particularly ones that focus on education, are constantly losing their funding. Even as Michelle Obama, the former First Lady of the United States, stated that “Arts education is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. It’s really the air many of these kids breathe^[1]”, programs that benefit these kids are seeing their budgets slashed, and classroom educators are unable to get the training that they need to provide fulfilling educational experiences.

In an ideal world, museums would be free to everyone who wants to learn about …

I Promise I'M Not Racist, Yashar Hashemi

Senior Projects Spring 2018

An attempt to complexify race relations in the United States by an Iranian American boy.

Xx Openings, Jackson Siegal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

XX Openings represents my dual sculpture and photography practice. The title comes from a 70’s domestic frame, with 20 openings of varying sizes for family pictures. Half of the slots were filled with stock pictures of smiling family scenes, while the others just had measurements for the openings themselves. The object struck me as alienating, and oppressive. I didn’t see any scene within those openings I felt connected to.

The frame came to symbolize varying perspectives, ways of seeing, and ways of being. As my sculpture practice has weighed more heavily on my work as a photographer, I feel tensions …

The Long Goodbye, Sidney Meret Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Lifecasting & Ubiquitous Relationships, Alexis Charlotte Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2017

My subjects do not know I exist. They do not know who I am, and they do not know their lives are the center of my painting series. But I know them - at least, I think I do. My acrylic paintings depict people in domestic spaces in specific moments in time. The relationships of person-to-person, person to space, paint to canvas and voyeur to subject drives my obsession to watch and to paint what I see. What I am seeing are a collection of pixels that make up human forms, living rooms, and kitchens. These digital bodies move through …