Nineteen graduating art students showcased their final projects at the Fall 2024 Senior Showcase at the University of North Florida Gallery of Art and Lufrano Intercultural Gallery on Nov. 21.
Taking inspiration from their own personal lives, experiences and interests, many students spent the majority of their final semester creating their artwork for the senior showcase hosted by UNF Art, Art History, and Design. When the galleries opened, UNF students, families, friends and faculty wandered the two galleries to support the graduating artists while enjoying light refreshments.
Lufrano Intercultural Gallery
The Lufrano International Gallery featured eight students’ art including a variety of sculptures and paintings.
Sculpture major Shelby Stiehl has future aspirations to be a movie set scenic designer. She mainly produces escapism art, which is what her piece in the art gallery represents. Her sculpture is a tree with lights and a small pond.
Stiehl originally planned to go to UNF to get a second degree in education after earning her first degree in culinary arts, but she changed her mind because she found the “feeling of family” within her sculpture program.
“We’re all close and sculpting is like a team sport,” she said.
Fine arts major Deo Elyon Agnila said his paintings are a three-part narrative inspired by Filipino culture and stories. For Agnila, art has always been a way to express himself.
“I’m not very good at expressing myself in other ways. I want to put myself out there and not put up a facade,” said Agnila.
Attending UNF allowed Agnila to “find a community” where he felt like he could showcase his art.
Being at the exhibition allowed him to “look around and see all the other students’ works and their different techniques and styles,” Agnila said.
Jamie Getman, a double-major in psychology and painting, drawing, printmaking, created paintings portraying a girl with an eating disorder. Getman’s inspiration for these pieces were based on her personal experiences.
“The exhibit allows me to talk about my art and share my message with people that eating disorders are very real and affect my life,” said Getman, expressing her artwork is “more confrontational.”
She said she wanted her work to be something people can’t ignore.
“It happened to me,” she said.
“I wanted to share with other people and connect with others and for people to be able to reach out to me,” she said.
Getman shared that others have even cried to her because they can relate to these experiences.
Being introduced to art therapy when she was younger was a healing experience for Getman and inspired her to become an art major.
Emily Timmons, a sculpture major, was inspired to create a model of a town because of the road trips she took as a kid going through small towns.
“I’ve noticed so many similarities between them,” she said.
After taking a sculpting class in high school, she “fell in love with it,” inspiring her to attend UNF where her teacher went.
“I learned skills at UNF that I thought I would never be able to do like welding and casting iron. Now welding is my favorite thing to do,” Timmons said.
“I have made lifelong friends and I’m close with all the other sculpture students. They’re like my family now,” she said.
UNF Gallery of Art
UNF’s Gallery of Art featured 11 students’ works including sculptures, paintings and photography.
Painting, drawing, printmaking major Grace Pulak said her work was inspired by “a lot of movies,” including Studio Ghibli films.
Her work was also inspired by her “love for nature and animals” and “mental health,” she said.
In addition to working on her art project for three to four months to create the five paintings, tree and grass quilt, Pulak wrote a short story that was also displayed with her project.
Although Pulak has been doing art her whole life, UNF helped her with all aspects of art including becoming better at painting.
Patricia Villanueva, a sculpture major, created a sculpture representing an isolated version of herself. The sculpture depicts a spiked head while its neck and shoulders have a smooth appearance.
“After COVID and politics, [life] has left me very introspective about what I want to be. COVID made me isolated. The spikes represent isolation and hiding away from people.” Villanueva said.
During the pandemic, Villanueva started as a biology major, but “everything was hard online.”
After taking some art classes including sculpting, she found her passion for it.
“Learning art is almost like a new language that not everyone knows about. It teaches you things that other majors can’t teach you,” said Villanueva. “When you learn the philosophy of art and what it is, art is everywhere. Art taught me how to see the world in a different way.”
Villanueva found the faculty with UNF’s sculpture program “is very involved,” and was not sure if she would be able to get that somewhere else.
“It was exciting seeing my faculty come out and getting validation from them and my classmates, and being able to show my art in a gallery,” she said.
Photography major Emma Price focused her work on the transition into “womanhood and societal expectations,” using a pinhole camera to take the five images.
“All of my works are women-centered. They are very important and personal to me and encapsulate the work that I’ve done over the past four years,” said Price.
“It has been really cool to see all my friends with their works, especially in a gallery setting. It is my first time having my art in a gallery,” she said about her exhibition experience.
After studying film at Douglas Anderson High School, she decided to attend UNF where she was granted access to alternative cameras and lenses, expanding her knowledge about photography.
Retired from the Air Force after 20 years, Dustin Sims, a sculpture major with a minor in ceramics, was excited to reveal the sculpture of a raven he has been working on for the past year and a half.
His creation was inspired by his fascination with nature. “I hope to get other people curious and fascinated with nature as well. I used materials that I thought represented the functions of a raven biologically,” he said.
Sims decided to attend UNF because of his long-time interest in art.
“UNF has a lot of opportunities and we have a complete workshop and tools that aren’t available [elsewhere],” said Sims. “We have amazing professors.”
Sims shared that through UNF’s art program, he had the opportunity to gain different experiences by traveling to many places like Germany, Miami and Alabama where he learned about unique art methods.
Guests’ Experience
Long-time UNF photography professor Alex Diaz attended the event since he had four photography students who showcased their art. He thought that the exhibit was “dynamic.”
“The exhibit showed a variety of techniques and it was very engaging,” said Diaz.
UNF’s new Curator of Galleries and Instructor, Ian Carey, shared his role in setting up the two exhibits for the showcase.
Carey said he created “a visual logic that would make sense” in the showcase’s arrangement.
“I helped the seniors hang the show. My class also got to have hands-on experience with hanging shows. I was able to help them come up with ideas and teach them methodologies for laying out shows,” said Carey.
Megan Weber, a junior in graphic design, said she enjoyed all the students’ work. She came to the event because of her friend who was featured in the showcase.
“My favorite piece was the one with the shower curtain. I feel like it’s a very interesting medium to use. I love how the artist incorporated the texture of the trees into the art and the layering of it,” said Weber.
Senior fine arts major Keegan Freeman came to support all the seniors at the showcase and said the works in the UNF Gallery of Art were “very pretty.”
“There were a lot of really good works from all the students. It has been an honor to be in their classes and see how much they have progressed,” said Freeman. “I can’t wait to be a part of the showcase next semester.”
Freeman shared her thoughts on her favorite work featured in the UNF Gallery.
“There was one made by two twins. “I loved how, even in different mediums, they still explored the same topic and how they worked together to create it,” she said.
All 19 graduating seniors were able to thoroughly express themselves and their inspirations through their art in their final fall semester projects at the Fall 2024 Senior Exhibition.
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