Photo Essay: Senior Art Majors Add Their Final Touches
Althea wants this particular painting to represent a Twenty-first century. Her paintings will be up in the Cummings lobby and subgallery until graduation.
“I’ve been playing with symbols,” Althea Solis, a senior majoring in Art Practice, told me. This painting is part of what she calls “The Loneliness Series.”“For the most part, I’ve been using historical images, focusing on the relationship between the Philippines and America. I’m moving into new symbols, science fiction imagery, because I’ve been working in science fiction outside of painting, in comics.”Althea wants this particular painting to represent a Twenty-first century. Her paintings will be up in the Cummings lobby and subgallery until graduation.Neil Hamamoto’s final project was the only photograph in the group. He made a huge print of his image, and added a complex frame.“The frame gives the photograph more layers, literally and figuratively,” Neil says.He took the photo during the Occupy Wall Street Protests, using a medium format Hasselblad film camera.Nick Hoversten decided to add an art major to his history major after his first art class in his junior year. He focuses on 3D sculpture, and works with many different materials including wood, metal, and bone.“This piece is one I’ve had in mind for two years now,” Nick told me. “A close friend of mine died, and this is dedicated to him. It feels good to work on it for so long, I didn’t think I would pull it off but I think I finally might.”Nick is shaping the wood to represent an open palm with a prayer bead necklace. The necklace is either dropped into the hand or rising out. “It depends on how you look at it,” Nick says. Nick will be displaying this work, along with a drawing that he started in his first Stanford art class, at a senior show at the end of spring quarter.Victoria Duke is a senior, majoring in art practice. At Stanford, she has been focusing on sculpture. “A lot of my work is interactive” she told me. “I like getting people to interact with the art and actually be allowed to touch it. I like getting people closer.”Victoria also created another piece, where she created mythical monsters out of thrift store stuffed animals. She likes to use nontraditional materials in much of her work.“This is going to be a skeletal torso. I’m a humbio minor and I really like anatomy, so that theme tends to show up in my work.”
