It's one experience to view an art exhibit and formulate your own ideas about the pieces and a completely different experience to hear the artist discuss their ideas and processes behind their work. Josh Torbick, Katharine Austin, and Shayna Bicknell's presentations discussing their work.
I had the experience of watching some of Josh's work progress and transform over the year through glimpses in the wood shop and conversations in the foundry. One noticeable change in his work was his integration of metal into his wood furniture sculptures. His first project, a bench, had subtle embodiments of visible screws throughout the piece. The next, a large hammock reclining bench form for laying in, was mostly wood, but the steel structure became more pronounced and was a more significant part of the piece. In Josh's last piece, the metal was almost as equally important in the piece as the wood was. The steel parts were finished to a shine and clear coated, giving the metal an almost superior character over the wood. Another theme that repeatedly came up in Josh's dialogue were references to how the piece expressed memories from his childhood. From camping to vegetable farming, in Josh's work the idea of the tool and machine being a functional device to a person expand into becoming works of furniture.
I enjoyed Katie's approach to painting and the results she accomplished. She used a palette knife in all of her paintings giving the lines a fuzzy blended appearance, which I love to see(and I personally love to use the palette knife). Katie talked about focusing mostly on interior spaces and the relationship they had not only to herself but the other BFA students, probably because these are the spaces where they spent most of their time! She also studied color, light, and perspective comparisons. She bent lines to obscure the perspective and played with contrasting artificial and natural light sources.
My first observation of Shayna's work was during the exhibition's opening night. I definitely felt more drawn to her smaller works which were so intricate and full of bold colorful shapes crammed on a small canvas, the paintings jumped out at me and shouted HELLO I AM HERE, LOOK AT ME. She discussed her choice of painting mostly landscapes and how she intended for the authority of her color swatches to demand the same presence through out her paintings, which is a bold move I liked in her work because it forced the painting to be seen and distinguished, not just an image to be casually walked by.
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