
Exhibitions & Connections
Exhibitions
Sinclair Auditorium is home to the Marvin Cone and Eaton-Buchan galleries, two contemporary spaces professionally designed to display art in any media. With their high ceilings and polished concrete floors, these galleries are educational venues that engage the Coe community with the breadth of visual culture on campus, nationally and internationally.
The Student Art Gallery, located in Gage Memorial Union, provides a place for students and classes to exhibit their works or experiment with installation techniques.
The Sinclair Galleries at Coe College present the 2020 Senior Thesis Exhibitions. These exhibitions are the capstone project for art majors and showcase the diversity of work made in the Coe College art program. Please visit the individual student websites to view their artwork.
Vita, Morte, Interitus (Life, Death, Decay) is the online rendering of my senior thesis show. With its themes evident in the title, Vita, Morte, Interitus is made up of four works using digital and sculptural mediums. The imagery featured focuses on four different subjects (humans, deer, fish and birds). Vita, Morte, Interitus is a space created for the audience to contemplate themes of mortality in a neutral setting. I ask that the audience consider the following questions while viewing: Do we as humans take life for granted? Why do we fear death? Why is the notion of decay taboo? And lastly, we as humans consider beauty in all things; is there not beauty in all stages of life? In its duration, end and disintegration?
When I take photographs I use personal connections to people and their environments to tell a story. Discovering new places and people allows me to have control of the space I am photographing. Whether it is traveling or interviewing a person in a studio, I enjoy making sure the subject is in a candid state.
With the use of acrylic paint and a little love, Sienna Church creates a dialogue between human and plant growth and the emotions derived from change. Her paintings aim to capture the emotions and struggles that come with moving on, growing wiser and blooming into something more.
My work is narrative in nature. All of the content is derived from the world I have been constructing for the last several years, which is centered around the rebirth of human civilization 250 million years into Earth’s future. It focuses on the timelessness of the human condition: on love, life and suffering.
Josephine Fox
At the beginning of putting this show together I struggled immensely to find a theme. Should I go with first love, or a story or an anthology? Eventually I just went into the studio and began to create. This is the result: a love story, a climax, a space opera, a quiet moment and a moment of desperation. Each piece giving the viewer a glimpse into the obstacle course of too many ideas, time constraints and the artist's process.
The expressiveness seen in my art is driven from an emotional place. It is a middle point where my creativity and emotions coincide to make something genuine and hopefully powerful.
The works shown here represent only the most recent iteration of a long and convoluted process. Originally — many months ago — I began by making portraits of people. But as time went on, I discovered some of the astonishing cave paintings found in France. I became fascinated with these paintings and attempted to replicate some of their trappings: The brown, creased paper is analogous to cave walls or hide, and I made extensive use of chalk. I wanted a somewhat rough and unrefined process; the materials can assert themselves, and I could imply the weight of some 30 millennia pressing down on the drawings.
My artwork explores the intersensory integration of visual, tactile and gustatory stimuli that inform my own philosophy of life. Rooted in my Chinese upbringing, my perception of life’s joy and sorrow is intricately linked to the four “tastes of life” — sour, sweet, bitter and spicy. They are embodied by orange, alcohol, pepper and candy, a mixture of enjoyable treats that can at times be dangerous and addictive. Using dazzling color patterns and the unique texture of printmaking, I aim to offer a critical look at the experience of living in the current hypersensitive world filled with sensory stimuli that are at times enjoyable as well as addictive.