IGNITE: 1st ANNUAL ART, DESIGN & SCHOLARSHIP EXHIBITION
April 25th through May 14th
Reception and poster presentations: Wed, April 27 from 2:30 – 6:30 pm.
Ignite your curiosity. Ignite your imagination.
Ignite is a celebration of our undergraduate students, their research, and their creativity as demonstrated in a variety of disciplines across campus. The scope of these presentations showcases the outstanding caliber of our undergraduate students at St. Thomas Aquinas College. We hope that this exhibition will ignite a passion for discovery and ingenuity in all of our students for years to come.
The projects on display also demonstrate the ongoing commitment of our faculty to supporting undergraduate research. As is true of the professors who support them, these students, through their work, hold the potential to contribute positively to the world. Each of these students has benefitted from mentoring provided by our exceptional faculty, and we thank the faculty for their efforts on behalf of these students.
We encourage you to engage with the excellent work in this showcase – visit the poster presentations, view the exhibits on display in our gallery, and read the collection of abstracts included in this booklet.
2016 STUDENT SHOW
March 28th through April 17th
Reception and performances: Wed, April 6 from 4:30 – 6:30 pm.
St. Thomas Aquinas students submitted art, design and spoken word. Visual submissions were jurored by Barbara Galazzo, owner of Gallery 66 NY.
Contributing artists include John Bhatti, James Brinkley, Melissa Urena Castillo, Quinton Chambers, Eva Cochran, Abraham Gill, Lindsey Heiberger, Lauren Hernandez, Ashley Kimkowski, Ashley Lewis, Ashley Liporace, Daniel McConnell, Kristen McDermott, Kendall Mejia, Jessica Mizzi, Kelly Monzon, Heather Palmer, Jessica Parker, Michael Pascocello, Jacob Rothman, Gabrielle Serrano, Chris Silva and Daniel Viaud.
KATHRYN MECCA: SIGNAL TO NOISE
February 22nd through March 20th
Reception and artist talk: Wed, March 2 from 4:30 – 6:30 pm.
Signal to Noise features the work of painter Kathryn Mecca. Signal versus Noise, an concept popularized by Nate Silver, references the relationship between the information we need to make a decision and the information that clouds that decision. Using techniques of cropping, visual simplification and color saturation, Mecca seeks to remove “noise” and amplify “signal”.
Her subjects are witnessed and documented in public, but are not posing, highlighting the discrepancies between the public and private information we share on a daily basis. This body of work, which obscures the identity of her subjects by showing them from behind seeks to, in the artist’s words, “examine the essences of identity,” through the use of color and cultural identifiers such as clothing and hairstyle.
Kathryn Mecca studied both Visual Art and Sociology at Rutgers University and these areas of research are evident in her work. She is an active member of the Jersey City art community and has worked both as a gallery curator and a graphic designer. She currently lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.
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SUSAN GRAHAM: PECULIAR FLORA
January 25th through February 14th
Reception and artist talk: Wed, Feb 3 from 4:30 – 6:30 pm.
Peculiar Flora is an exhibition of the sculptures and prints of NYC-based artist Susan Graham.
Graham grew up in Ohio and taps into childhood memories of hunting and car-culture in this body of work. She feminizes and personalizes these experiences by creating artwork out of delicately built procelain and sugar sculptures or quietly layered screenprints. Her work is fragile and delicate, weaving together organic imagery, Toile patterns and the built structures of cell towers, poking through the layers of foliage. This tension between nature and technology is evident both in the printed imagery and in the porcelain or sugar sculptures climbing the walls. Earlier work, including firearms created from sugar and egg whites works in dialogue with these newer pieces, establishing a push and pull between subject matter and media.
Susan Graham is an artist based in NYC. She and has shown her sculpture, screen-prints and site-specific installations nationally and internationally and recently completed artists residencies at Blackburn Printing making Studio in Brooklyn and at the Space and Time Artists Residency at Guttenberg Arts in NJ.
