Fuck Your Perception-

The art that stands before you is a collection of work from our Senior Integrated Projects while students at Kalamazoo College. Although this collection is by artists working independently, we share the ideology of creating freely. Here we represent our realities through color, characters, memories, and techniques. In doing so, we allow for a snapshot of comfort.

Present is an array of pastels, softness and whimsy. Absent is blood, gore, and apathy. Viewing our  gallery contrasts the work of “the masters,” where non-males are seen as an object for the sexualized gaze or a prop for violence. So why does the absence of such elements inherently discount the emotional breadth of our work? This is not frivolous; this is our experiences as 20 year old artists. So, for the brief moment you spend in our gallery, fuck your perception - and pay attention to ours. 

-Carolyn Ingram, Kieya Kubert-Davis, Lana Oeschger, and Maria Tripodis

Plastic, a controversial material, takes many forms. Being used in almost everything consumed, it’s taken on not only the power of necessity but a social meaning as well.

Clay, a versatile and ancient medium, embodies materiality in art. Its malleability allows exploration and manipulation for artists to shape and mold it into an infinite amount of ways. Through the process of creation clay carries traces of its maker, and the intimate connection between the artist and material. 

Glass is fluid when at extreme temperatures, but fragile when cooled. Glass working is extremely delicate and your work could shatter at any moment. However if you use enough heat and time you can always reshape your mistakes.

The artwork of the three different artists' showcase materials and their unique applications and meanings. 

Ana uncovers the concept of liminality, focusing on the space between physical, mental, and emotional realms. Her work evokes ambiguity, uncertainty, and nostalgia, challenging perceptions of mundaneness and prompting viewers to reconsider what they know.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn's pieces visualize emotions, aiming to communicate the incommunicable through color and abstract form. Her work celebrates the minutiae of human feelings and the cathartic effort to connect deeply with each and every being one meets. Despite differences in interpretation, both artists share a mutual understanding with their audience, acknowledging that emotions, though named differently, are universally felt.

Together, the artists grapple with making sense of their own experiences and understanding where they are situated within the world. Ana's photographic documentation of transient locales prompts viewers to confront their own thoughts and emotions, while Brooklyn's spontaneous paintings reflect a creative fervor, capturing feelings in a single, swift gesture. Both artists undertake a rapid, process-oriented approach, connecting their works through color palettes and inviting viewers to delve into the complexity of human existence.

Hannah Schurman’s work uses bright colors to visualize diseases. In her work, she constructs familiar garments, then modifies them as a means of transformation by adding or removing elements and works with transparent materials to obscure or make visible internal structures.  

Julia Holt’s work reclaims found objects that are neglected as clutter by using them as source material for abstract painting. She transforms the visual elements of each object—manipulating form and applying bright colors—to create a series of new objects that reconsider the material world. 

Lilly Mattern’s work aims to reclaim the domestic space, specifically its assumed spatial layout. In bending the meaning of interior space through her furniture and sculptural pieces alike, Lilly puts into question heteronormative and patriarchal power structures built into our built environments. 

Across the exhibition, each artist reclaims understandings of disease, forgotten objects, and domestic spaces. The artists' transformative formal technique, that is, utilization of color along with abstracted form and space, calls attention to their subject matter. Collectively, their work encourages the viewer to contemplate complexities.