“Clay Fish”, created by senior Alex Caskey, will be displayed in Java Junction sometime in the next year. “In making this piece,” says Caskey, “I often reflected on the process of creation, both in the studio and in the natural world. The natural world is full of imperfect beauty, and I would like to think that this piece falls into that category.” When Caskey originally removed his work from the kiln, he was slightly disappointed by the rough results that the kiln had yielded. “But after some time,” he admits now, “I grew to like the rustic and organic finish.”...

By Sarah Rich • September 16, 2009 • Arts

When Andrea Kraybill, a junior Art major, began working on the banner that was to be hung in chapel, she couldn’t quite grasp its theme of “making peace with God.” “One of the first images that came to mind,” says Kraybill, “was that of colors emerging from two hands. That transformed into birds—often a symbol of peace—in flight. I see the larger hand at the top as the hand of God, working in tandem with the hand of humans at the bottom of the banner.” Throughout the creative process, however, putting pattern and color to the vague and expansive concept...

By Sarah Rich • September 9, 2009 • Arts

The featured artist this week is Daniela Hernandez, a senior. Her self-portrait drawing is representative of more than just herself. “It represents the oppressed women of Mexico, and more specifically the indigenous women,” said Hernandez. The quotation that surrounds the portrait is from Subcomandante Marcos, a Chiapas guerrilla leader whose rebel fighters stand up against government discrimination and injustice towards indigenous people. “I use a dove to represent hope and ideas of peace,” Hernandez said. The quotation translates as: “Why is it necessary to kill and to die so that Ramona can come and you all can pay attention to...

By Ben Noll • April 15, 2009 • Arts

This featured artist this week is Laura Harnish, a senior art major from Flanagan, Ill. Harnish’s oil paintings, as with “Agrey” pictured here, are on display along with the work of four other senior art majors in the Music Center’s Hershberger Art Gallery from now until April 15. Although drawing was her medium of choice until this year, Harnish became interested in the color possibilities of oil and canvas for her senior exhibit. “I love the depth that can be achieved through building layers of paint,” Harnish said. Harnish’s show draws on her time on the Tanzania Study-Service Term in...

By Ben Noll • April 8, 2009 • Arts

The featured artist this week is Whitney Philipps, a senior, and her oil painting “madonna not yet with child diptych.” The piece is part of the final senior art gallery of the year, which features the work of Philipps, Joanna Landis, Laura Harnish, Britta Albrecht, and Dirk Leichty, opening this weekend in the Music Center’s Hershberger Art Gallery. “There’s a lot of beautiful ‘madonna and child’ iconography,” said Philipps, an art major from Clinton, Ill. “I wanted to draw upon the conventions of that tradition to create something that complicated the story.” “For me, this piece is about Mary’s divinity...

By Ben Noll • April 1, 2009 • Arts

The featured artist this week is Carmen Myers, a senior, whose work, along with fellow senior art majors Daniel Merkt-Blatz, Janell Koch-Cripe, Emily Shantz and Alex Troyer, is currently on display in the Hershberger Art Gallery. Myers, an art major with a fine art oil painting concentration, spends her time away from school working as a pharmacy assistant, where she received the inspiration for her senior show pieces, including this painting of a bottle. “The purpose of my art is to help people slow down and realize the beauty of what is around them,” Myers said in her senior statement. “It should...

By Ben Noll • March 25, 2009 • Arts

The featured artist this week is Emily Shantz, a senior from Goshen. Her drawing, “Ollie Squibnose,” was created with a  pen on paper and will be featured alongside her other drawings in the second Senior Art Exhibition of the year, opening this weekend in the Hershberger Art Gallery in Rieth Recital Hall. Shantz drew the monsters from the fictional point of view of an observer named Charles H. Monroe. “There’s a whole story behind my show,” said Shantz, an art major with a writing minor. Shantz was assigned an abstract character piece for her figure drawing class. “I ended up...

By Ben Noll • March 18, 2009 • Arts

Abigail Groff, a senior art major from Lancaster, Pa., is this week’s featured artist. Her graphite and watercolor work is currently on display in the Hershberger Art Gallery in the Music Center. Groff’s piece is part of a series of four 8″ x 8″ figure drawings. Groff began each panel with a graphite line drawing before building the form by adding watercolor washes and additional lines. “Unlike some of my larger drawings,” Groff said, “the context of the space that the figure is in is less significant. The way the body fills the compressed space is more important.” The current...

By Ben Noll • March 11, 2009 • Arts

This week’s featured artist is Simon Birky-Hartmann, a senior art major with a graphics design focus from Strasbourg, France. “I ran across a set of broken bulbs a few weeks ago, and I ended up playing with them and creating compositions,” Birky-Hartmann said. “I ended up taking the camera out and started shooting, which gave interesting results.” After some early explorations, Birky-Hartmann took the bulbs to the Visual Arts building where he experimented with studio lighting to achieve the effect seen in this week’s photograph. Birky-Hartmann’s work will be featured along with four other seniors in the first Senior Art...

By Ben Noll • March 4, 2009 • Arts

This week’s featured artist is Dirk Leichty, a senior, with a sample of one of his five life-size zombie figures. As part of the requirements for his senior show in April, Leichty is creating an outdoor installation, applying a comic book format to a three-dimensional space. “The figures will be layered in deep space in a way that the visibility from any given angle only conveys a limited part of the whole,” Leichty said of the eventual completed project. Leichty added that it will be “an imperfect translation of a comic book into three dimensions that is analogous to the...

By Ben Noll • February 18, 2009 • Arts

Andrea Kraybill, a sophomore art major from Elkhart, is this week’s featured artist, with her painting of a train on Plexiglas. The assignment was part of John Blosser’s fall semester painting class where students were asked to paint a train theme with acrylics on a found object. With the help of the Physical Plant and a little dumpster diving, Kraybill decided to use a wooden window frame to support the Plexiglas frame. “Originally, I painted a train on the front in a more representational manner,” Kraybill said. However, when she saw the back of the object, “I happily discovered the...

By Ben Noll • February 11, 2009 • Arts

This week’s featured artwork – a painting of Dirk Liechty on canvas in oil – was created by Annali Smucker, a junior art major. She crafted the painting as part of the Advanced Painting class held in the Union gymnasium last fall. Smucker explored with skin tone and bone structure of the human body. “We had to create multiple skin tone colors on our palette before we even begun painting,” Smucker said. “There are many layers on this painting, but oil paint is slow drying and each layer has to dry in between session to work. It took a number...

By Ben Noll • February 4, 2009 • Arts

This week’s Artist’s Corner is a graphic design from Abi Tsigie, a first-year. He created “Vexation of Spirit” for a scholarship competition run by Shalom Mennonite Church that encouraged students to think creatively about their role as peacemakers. The winged figure that dominates the design is actually the outline of Tsigie’s own body but represents any individual. The piece is filled with symbolism, including the image of Africa on the wings which represents Tsigie’s African heritage and conveys group belonging. The barbed wire symbolizes how an individual can be held down from helping the world and the surrounding words –...

By Admin • January 28, 2009 • Arts

This week’s featured artwork is “Hope” by Edgar Diaz, a senior business major. Diaz produced this drawing in John Blosser’s Drawing 101 class this past fall semester. It was the first drawing course he had ever taken. Diaz’s inspiration for the piece came from an elderly homeless woman at the South Bend Center for the Homeless, an organization he has connected with through his work with “DanceSport … on the plaza,” a ballroom dancing studio in Mishawaka. According to Diaz, “When asked what she wanted for Christmas, [she] asked for love, happiness and peace. I decided to give her the...

By Admin • January 21, 2009 • Arts

This week’s featured artist is Chet Franklin, a senior art and American Sign Language double major. His piece, “Connection,” was created as part of John Blosser’s Drawing 101 class this past fall semester. Chet stuck to a black-and-white color palette for this work using inkwash on masonite with newspaper, gesso and string. Franklin said, “I chose to use strictly black and white imagery so that I could connect the drawn images to the newspaper print, as well as to simplify the image as a whole.” Franklin also said that the “simplicity of color correlates to the simplicity of human connection,...

By Admin • January 14, 2009 • Arts