Audra O’Reilly (she/her) is a junior fine arts major who created the print “Little Big World” from compositions of her past oil paintings. “I just wanted to show myself that I’m in a new space in my life. It used to be a very much imagined landscape where I didn’t know what my dreams were going to be,” O’Reilly said. “Now I kind of have a place where I’m headed and that’s like in San Francisco, at the school. So, it’s kind of like little implementations of those symbols are all in the print.” O’Reilly also personifies herself as a bunny, not just in this piece, but as a motif across her work.
Gianna Palanca (they/them) is a fine arts and design double major who painted “Modern Chorus,” using oil paints for the first time. “I really wanted to explore movement and a good way to do that would be showing people dancing…I came upon this ancient Greek dance called a chorus that is all about unity and spirituality.” According to Palanca, it deals with a sense of overwhelmingness and chaos, and how to ground oneself through that. While they intend for the overall meaning to be left to interpretation, the characters depicted each represent a trait: the wolf is strength, the bird is freedom and the rabbit is a connection to nature. “The way I painted it, I wanted people to look at it and relate to it and see themselves in the painting, and maybe come up with a meaning of their own.”
Tara Redford (she/her) is a senior fine arts and design double major who uses her art to highlight her family’s history. “Great” showcases her great grandparents on their wedding day over 100 years ago. “We have like this pretty picture of them, but there was a lot of abuse that was actually quite cyclical in our family.” Hung next to it, a portrait of her daughter titled “All the Stars” contrasts her familial history, because Redford’s bond with her daughter broke the cycle. “This is definitely about the echoes through history and how they can be disrupted, you know, if you choose to disrupt it,” she said. “From what my family was at one point in time to like this beautiful relationship I had with my daughter now.”
Kathryn Clarke Garcia (she/her) is a senior museum studies and fine arts double major who painted “Mysteries 1.” with acrylic paint on polytab mural cloth. The painting is created after the “Villa of Mysteries” in Pompeii, and inspired by Clarke Garica’s original research for the Sunni Nupaltz Art History Symposium. “I was really interested in flat applications of color, and different meshing and composition techniques used by ancient Romans. Trying to explore what myth and gender and performativity in sexuality and all that looks like for them and how that stuff still resonates to us today.”
Theo Ardinger (he/him) is a senior design major who imagined the late night coffee brand Au Late, designed for people who enjoy drinking coffee after hours. “When you think of night coffee you typically think of something calm, and I wanted to instead make something high energy.” Ardinger’s style is fluid and challenges the typical, using lots of bold colors and typography. Design is his calling and he believes it to be an essential part of our world. “Art and design are not only crucial to our school and city, but society as a whole. Everything around us is designed.”
Sofia Rasi (she/her) is a senior architecture major whose studio project “Xpansion” showcases her vision for an addition to the current XARTS building. “My design process was really looking at the site and thinking about the different views. Thinking about what I experience and what my classmates experience as architecture students and what we need.” Rasi’s architecture style is informed by the surrounding area of a building, accessibility and openness. “I have a huge personal interest not only in building design but in urban design as well…I like using natural materials in modern ways.”
