By Mckenna Brazie
Every Bachelor of Fine Arts student’s college career ends with the Senior BFA Show. The BFA program is a higher level education in the art program that allows for more growth and challenging opportunities compared to a BA degree. Each student in the BFA program has gone through many portfolio reviews, hours of studio time, numerous classes and lots of research on their projects. The program reaches across all mediums and concentrations of art, including painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, graphic design and photography.
This is the first in person BFA showing in nearly two years because of COVID cancellations, so this is an exciting opportunity for campus and community members to see the senior show.
Since being initially accepted into the program, these students have taken strides to perfect their final portfolio for the show. After initial introductory and secondary classes in their concentration of choice, higher level classes strictly for BFA students push the artists to broaden their artistic horizons and complete this portfolio for their final show.
“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing something creative,” BFA student Mollie Ward said. “Even in the last few years when I wasn’t attending college, I was still making art after my day job.”
As both a ceramics and drawing concentration, Ward’s works across both mediums display a similar theme.
“This series of sculptures and drawings is an examination of my relationship with my body and the parts of myself I feel insecure about,’ Ward said.
“Art was never a choice,” ceramic and sculpture concentration Kailey Maher said, reflecting on her love for her work. “It was written on the inside of my heart, in a language not spoken, only heard. It was written in the rhythmic ebbs and flows of my hands on clay and stone, of its shaping and reshaping.”
Maher’s work bridges the gap of her two mediums, as she stated, “My work currently explores the way in which I interpret the natural world around me and the language of exchange between nature. I find myself fascinated with non-linear concepts of time and the rhythmic patterns mimicked in nature, which is not about the allocation of time, but the experience of it.”
Senior Kelsey Rambach explained how her love for art came to be.
“The real start to my love of art is thanks to my high school art teacher,” Rambach said. “He originally made me absolutely hate art, but through a lot of pushing and perseverance he taught me that I can always grow as not only a person but as an artist.”
Rambach, who has a painting complement in her program, has some works that are portrait-based.
Ward, Rambach and Maher agreed that they are excited to see all the other seniors’ completed works. Maher also said that she is excited for “the experience of experiencing my own work.”
COVID has tested the true grit and talent of these senior students. Some of their past art classes have been totally online during the pandemic. As many of the seniors agree, art is not easy to learn or teach online, but nonetheless their final show will come together to show off everything they have overcome and produced artistically.
The show is a final statement of the seniors’ time here at SUNY Plattsburgh, a compilation of all their best work. Following the show and graduation, most students will begin their careers as artists immediately, or go on to achieve an MFA from another institution.
The show will open April 9, and will include a short presentation by each senior artist on their work and education here at Plattsburgh. The BFA show is a final celebration of the hard work and dedication all the senior art students have here at SUNY Plattsburgh.
