Column: Wesleyan College artists open their final exhibition, reveal thinking about world

There are only a couple of days left to see Wesleyan College’s graduating art student’s work at the school’s East Gallery in the Porter Fine Arts Building.

What are young artists thinking about the world, themselves and their art in 2023? What are their abilities and what means of expression do they lean toward?

Graduating senior shows allow an annual glimpse and reveal answers to these questions and more. Of course, the way to get the most out of such shows is by personally visiting and drawing your own conclusions. But still, here in words based on a variety of artist statements and personal conversations, is an indication of what a handful of graduates are thinking and how they’re working. It’s very personal and very much worth the time to explore what each is uniquely up to.

The Wesleyan show ends Tuesday so there’s just today, Monday and Tuesday to find the Porter Fine Arts Building’s East Gallery in the center of campus at Wesleyan’s 4760 Forsyth Rd. location. The exhibit is free and hours are 1-5 p.m. weekdays.

Erika Durham works in clay and ceramics and is from Dry Branch, Ga. For the show, she used clay to create a large, towering vessel to “explore the impact of organic pattern and movement.”

“I wanted the movement in the piece to feel calming, almost like you can look at it forever and have the wavy lines put you in a trance,” Durham said of her creation. “The influence behind the emotion was the music I listened to while I worked … which impacted the way my hands moved when I carved.”

Durhams’s green and brown ceramic sculpture is the singular sculpted piece in the show. She said her work and philosophy was influenced by a passage she was required to read by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in her first year at Wesleyan.

“He defined word flow as being ‘completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies.

Every action, movement and thought that follows inevitably follows the previous one.’ I incorporate that definition of flow in my artwork.”

Nicole Gaddis, from Peachtree City, Ga., is a mixed media artist whose work “In Between” explores in part the fears and challenges of OCD as she experienced them through different stages of her life. Gaddis uses drawings of insects as a way of expressing relevant emotions and accompanying themes of breaking free.

“My goal with this series was to make viewers feel uneasy looking at the illustrations in order for them to find the space in between horror and fantasy,” she said. “Even if they don’t particularly like giant bugs or creepy crawlies, I hope they’re able to find the space in between what is unsettling and what is fascinating.”

When it was noted her work in some ways resembles medical illustration, she beamed and said that was one potential direction she was looking at pursuing.

In “Illumination,” Erika Hendrix of Jonesboro, Ark., said she used photography to explore her personality through objects she over and under-exposed.

“My photography shows my personality with light and shadow and it made me think how much I’ve changed over the past couple of years,” she said. “I wanted to keep exploring who I am so I decided to photograph objects in the studio that represented myself. I used a studio space to create photos that I overexposed and underexposed with some being blurry and some in focus. I thought the meaning of the work was just going to be about light and shadow but while working I discovered the true meaning was me shining a light on who I am and what I perceive to show people.”

Minjia Luo comes from Guangzhou, China, and her display is mixed media/oil paints and called “Butterflies and Ribbons.” She said her work is taken from her very traditional mother and her relationship with her.

“The butterfly is used as a character and different objects are used to represent the bondage to traditional marriage and behavior patterns as well as the clash of ideas between my mother and myself at different stages,” she said. “I gradually found that my perceptions were vastly different from hers. She feels that ‘sacrificing herself to take care of her family’ is the correct thing to do and she’s a microcosm of many women who are bound by tradition. Through this process of creation, I hoped to completely enjoy the thinking and confrontation of different perceptions in my inner heart and mind.”

Luo expressed that after the project’s completion, she understood more the dynamics of her relationship with her mother and found the work a way to express her love for her mother and how she missed her.

Laura Oceguera is from Fort Valley, Ga., and used videography to make a series of short films collectively known as “Into the Known.” Together, they explore psychology and art by showing a man with different identities and end by requiring viewers to make a tough choice.

“The piece speaks about the feelings of anxiety, stress and the desire to be free,” she said. “These three feelings are explained through body and face and language. Additionally, narration is included to follow the interaction and specific qualities and speech of distinct characters. This short story was created through the journey from my last semester to this point in time. It is the sense of feeling overwhelmed but pushing forth to meet deadlines and working to make time for my friends. I used filming and editing techniques with audio experimentation to incorporate the atmosphere and mood of the film while working with angles, lighting and overlay videos.”

Anna Richards of Macon created a series of mixed media works collectively called “Excavation.” Her senior show is one of three recent Wesleyan shows, the previous called “The Woman at the Desk” exploring a 9-to-5 view of women working in offices and the other a photography exhibit called “A Space with Many Names.”

“In this new series, I used found objects from Central City Park to explore the themes of excavation, public spaces and the representation of communities,” she said. “I decided to collect objects from public spaces in Macon and use them to create abstract, mixed-media pieces. I believe a public space is a unique area that can be accessed by everyone so it serves as an ecosystem for those who utilize it. After visiting Central City Park, I decided I wanted it to be my primary focus. The size of the park and its history is a big enough subject I wanted to explore fully. I visited the park multiple times, surveying the land and collecting anything I found.”

With everyday objects from beer caps, balloons, candy wrappers, cigars and cigarette packaging to objects unrecognizable due to the length of time they’d been left, Richards began cataloging, considering who might have used them and then began transforming them into something new. Yet each still remained somewhat recognizable. She said the idea of finding unseen aspects of a community and connecting activities and people has been a common theme in work produced in the past year.

Abigail Underwood of Fort Valley created a series of acrylic on canvas paintings called “Deep Waters.”

“My work explores escapism through the usage of sequential storytelling and symbolism,” she said. “Everyone has something they want to run away from – or to run to. With my body of work, I wanted to focus on this escapism. I chose to address this concept of escapism because of my own personal crossroads in life. As I’ve matured throughout college, I’ve changed immensely. I don’t wear my hair the same; I don’t talk to the same people or even identify with who I used to be. These small things accumulate and grew until eventually, the feeling of escaping grew along with it. I hope to escape myself – my problems, anxieties, fears, the future. But escapism as a concept goes both ways. A person can run away but also be running toward something.”

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com. For a quick, abstract reel showing each of the Wesleyan grads, go to www.instagram.com/michael_w_pannell.