The spring semester of 2021 brought with it the opportunity for me to participate in the junior art major show, displaying some of my artwork in the gallery of Bedford.
Part of being an art major includes yearly assessments. They are zero credits and act as a pass/fail. Each assessment is a bit different, but essentially, we display some of our best work from our studio art courses of that year and talk about them in front of a couple of art professors. We get graded on our artist statement and resume, technical artistic aspects, the concept of our work, and our knowledge of relevant historical and contemporary influences. If we fail the assessment, we can no longer take any art courses.
For the junior year assessment, we show our work and present a PowerPoint proposal for our senior project. Our senior project is a big project that we work on for our entire senior year, created in our area of concentration. As an art major with a concentration in education, I have to have a mini-concentration, where I take a couple of extra courses in one artistic area. My mini-concentration is craft, so my focus is on ceramics. In addition to the PowerPoint and work, we put some of our pieces into the Junior Show in the Bedford gallery.
The pieces I put in the show this year reflect the kind of art that I make and the kind of work that my senior project will be. I love making people smile and laugh by creating funny works of art. Throughout my time at Longwood, I have worked on figuring out how I can turn that idea into pieces of art. For my final project in my first ceramics class, I created the sculptural baby feet with spurs. From there, I created a series of functional pieces, including bowls and cups, that I abstracted with legs, faces, and arms. I had quite a bit of fun creating those pieces, and they did make people smile and laugh.
Those pieces lead me to my senior project idea. I am going to create a series of pieces based on children’s drawings. I started working on some already to practice different techniques before I begin my senior project. In order to give the pieces meaning, I will be using drawings from the children at Glory Reins Ranch, a local ministry barn in Farmville. (See my section on Glory Reins Ranch on the Service page.)
After coming up with my senior project idea, I had the opportunity to place some of my pieces in the Bedford gallery where anyone can see them. This is the first opportunity I have had to display my artwork somewhere other than in my classes and at home. It has been a great experience for me, learning about how to set up galleries and being able to participate in one.