50th Annual Student Art Show and Merit Scholar Exhibition

CSU ART ANNUAL

50TH

STUDENT ART SHOW AND MERIT SCHOLAR EXHIBITION

April 19 – May 28, 2022

50 TH ANNIVERSARY Department of Art and Design History at a Glance

The Department of Art and Design at Cleveland State University (CSU) began its full-time art program in 1971 with concentrations in studio art, art education and art history. By 1974 the core curriculum was enriched by the development of cross-disciplinary courses serving other departments, such as Asian Studies and the Black Studies programs. The department also extended to the art community at large, connecting students with apprenticeships and field experience. To this day, the Department of Art and Design emphasizes the core principles of developing artistic skills, professional expertise and critical appreciation of art in order to prepare students for careers in fine arts, design and art history.

Our facilities in the Middough and Magnet buildings include multiple computer labs, design classrooms, a photography suite, printmaking and sculpture studios, and light-filled spaces for drawing and painting. Students benefit from small class sizes, outstanding faculty and careful advising and guidance throughout their college careers.

Each year the Department of Art and Design awards approximately $40,000 in scholarship funds to full-time art majors based on the artistic merit of their work. Scholarship recipients display their work at The Galleries at CSU in a special exhibition that accompanies the annual Student Art Show. Recipients in the design major choose to participate in the show or create a design-specific project. Also, through a special arrangement with the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), the CSU/CIA post-baccalaureate program allows select recent graduates of CSU’s Department of Art and Design to continue their studies at CIA for one year, tuition-free. This allows them to further develop their creative and expressive abilities and polish their portfolio to prepare themselves for professional work or graduate study at the M.F.A. level.

In 2012, The Galleries at CSU moved from its former home at 2307 Chester Ave. into a magnificent new space where it has continued to exhibit student, local, national and international artwork. As a result of the pandemic, the juried 50 th Annual Student Art Show represents the first full-scale gallery opening in three years. We are thrilled to turn the page with this student exhibition.

Irina Koukhanova Chair and Professor Department of Art and Design

INTRODUCTION

T he Galleries at Cleveland State University

The spring brings the annual Cleveland State University (CSU) juried student art show, an exhibition that presents an opportunity to recognize student excellence and celebrate our creative community. Juried exhibitions are standard offerings at university galleries and museums and provide an experiential learning opportunity for CSU students. The annual show is a major event in the academic life of the CSU Department of Art and Design.

This year’s 50 th Annual Student Art Show features 128 works of art by 55 students. We invited three art professionals to jury submissions for the exhibit—George Kozmon, Nancy Prudic and Chris Nagle. Their choices reflect their own professional experience, judgment and taste. In addition to selecting entries, the jurors also award cash prizes for our "Best In" series for the following categories: video animation, sculpture, photography, printmaking, painting, drawing, merit scholar and Project 60 (for those enrolled in art classes as part of the CSU program for students aged 60 years or older).

The Merit Scholar Exhibition in the North Gallery features work by recipients of the Department of Art and Design Merit Scholarship. This year’s scholars are Camryn Danielle, Evan Elchert, Stephanie Hering, Tyler Jefferies, Aurora Laux, Anthony Sciarappa and Jurnee Weeams. These talented students are fulfilling a scholarship requirement by presenting these seven exhibitions. Four other scholars majoring in design—Gabriella Kollar, Tim (Danh) Pham, Isabella Fierro and Treat Hanks— chose to complete their independent projects outside of a gallery setting.

To commemorate our 50th year of student shows, The Galleries at CSU honor retired Director Robert Thürmer who sat at the helm for 30 years. His influence on The Galleries and the quality of his exhibitions will be remembered in perpetuity. This catalog was produced to celebrate gallery milestones, pay tribute to a half-century of student shows and document the exhibit and participants.

Kendall C. Christian Director, The Galleries at CSU

CAMRYN DANIELLE

Arist Statement

Spheres and circles embody the cyclical nature of life; its impermanence and the certitude of death. I utilize these concepts in conjunction to scientific references regarding spheres and circles in mathematics and nature. In my recent sculptural work, I have been exploring assembling spheres to demonstrate the conceptualization of the sphere as the structure of all that exists—atoms, the beginning of human life, the sun, the multiverse. Spheres and circles represent the balance between inward and outward forces, uniformly growing from a single central point. In pursuing these ideas, they have expanded into my printmaking and painting work. Forms are placed impulsively and arbitrarily to express my perception of the immeasurable unknown.

“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

This exhibition is dedicated to my grandmother Rita Anne Estock-Walters (1937–2021). She remains a vital component in my journey as an artist, guiding my thoughts and movements.

EVAN ELCHERT

Arist Statement

Since before I can remember, I loved drawing. I love the freedom of doing it and how I can escape from the world by focusing on what I want to put on paper. The most planning I do when I draw my pictures is to make basic shapes to form a composition that I feel is visually pleasing. I then let my hand and my brain do the rest of the work. I do not have a theme or meaning in my mind before I create a piece. Sometimes I do not know the meaning of my work until I finish it and take a step back to look at it. It could take me days to find some meaning in my drawings and on some occasions, I never see anything. My pieces are more of a visualization of my feelings at the time of doing them and many people interpret them differently—and I am personally fine with that.

Most of the pieces I do are black and white ink drawings. I use ink because I enjoy adding texture and depth through black and white visuals. Ink is the most familiar to me—it is simple, but you can do so much with it. I use color very sparingly. If I add color to something it is because the piece needs it. I enjoy using other mediums and trying new things out, but I always go back to the pen and paper, the things I am most used to.

STEPHANIE HERING

Arist Statement

In each piece of art that I create, I show emotion and conceptual meaning through human hands. My hands are not only used to complete daily tasks and create art, but when used within the composition they guide the expression of emotion and feeling. Oftentimes I work with countless positions to place the hands until I find the one that will convey the emotion I want to achieve. These emotions could be grief, despair, excitement, anger, passion or pain.

I am attracted to the art of printmaking because it takes an image through a transformative process to produce the final work of art. The changes to the materials are precise and permanent, making the finished product that much more fulfilling. Working primarily in the etching and aquatint process has allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of what it truly means to labor through the artistic process. Because of this I have been able to apply my skills to the drawing medium and move my compositions into visceral self-portraits.

Although each of my works have become intertwined in meaning, the emotions and experiences that led to their creation are totally and completely separate. For example, the Ineffectual Guidance series focuses on the ideation of a dismissed childhood, while the Inescapable Guidance series explores the repercussions such an experience has on a person as they grow and mature. For each piece I create I hope to give the viewer a thought-provoking work of art, as well as a small insight into my own mind.

TYLER JEFFRIES

Arist Statement

I am a graphic design student in my third year at Cleveland State. I spent my first three semesters as a nursing major but made the switch to graphic design because I’d been creating digital art in my free time and realized how much happier it made me.

My art is heavily inspired by the music I listen to. I like to take my favorite albums or songs and design my own “alternate” album cover for them. My goal is to create a visualization of the way an album sounds or what mood it puts me in. With some album covers, I use a visual style that is dense and complex. I try to fit as much as I can in every corner of the composition.

It’s harder to explain what inspires my more illustrative designs, as I simply make whatever sounds cool to me at the moment. Being a huge "Star Wars" fan, I was inspired to make a Darth Vader illustration during my yearly marathon of the movies. For designs like this, I like to use color and other details to help frame and draw attention to the subject. Unlike my album covers, I like to keep the composition for these less populated.

AURORA LAUX

Arist Statement

My work involves using a variety of traditional media to design characters and to illustrate the stories, metaphors and concepts that they embody. For example, I have been exploring how a fictional ecosystem of sentient ink beasts could exist within the world. These creatures, collectively called “Inkfolk,” have become a central muse in my work. Some “Inkfolk” could be malevolent monsters destined to forever remain at odds with humans for their strange looks or sometimes odious behaviors. Others may be gentle creatures simply trying to enjoy their enigmatic lives. While their appearances tend to be whimsical and wild, I include some familiar physical traits, emotions and habits that animals and people display when I design them.

I use ink as my primary drawing medium when I want to render specific textures, dark values or attain a graphic style of drawing. I paint in a surreal style to explore color interaction and consider how my creatures would blend into their surrounding environments. By sculpting them, I capture more details, movements and expressions that I would not otherwise be able to depict in a twodimensional illustration.

ANTHONY SCIARAPPA

Arist Statement

I am Anthony Sciarappa, and I am a senior graphic design student at Cleveland State. I want to use art to make our society better for everyone, whether greatly or just a small thing that brightens their day. I hope to go into design work after I graduate and use the skills I learned at Cleveland State to change the world.

JURNEE WEEAMS

Arist Statement

Mind and Matters

Art can be subjective, literal or have no meaning whatsoever. That’s the beauty of creation—that any piece can have different meanings depending on the viewer and the perspective it’s viewed from. For me, my art was created with the purpose of release and growth—a type of release I would not be able to let out anyway or anywhere else, and a growth that I yearn for as I continue to create.

The pieces in this exhibit deal with a lot of my inner turmoil and experiences, in the way that I see and feel them. Some topics include love, loss, mortality, existentialism, the desire for freedom and my heritage, both lost and found. These pieces analyze the world with a critical, yet appreciative, lens. Some of these concepts aren’t always understood at first, with canvases and sculptures drenched in heavy symbolism and deeper meaning. These meanings, however, become more solidified and understandable as each piece ties into one another.

I draw inspiration from the beautiful people fate has introduced me to, the city I was born and raised in, the world and it’s good, bad and ugly, and the inner workings of my own mind. I use art for healing, and I hope that my works inspire others to do the same, whether that means viewing art or creating it.

JUDGES

George Kozmon , an internationally collected artist, is best known for his monumental paintings which have been widely exhibited and critically acclaimed throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, and four Ohio Arts Council grants. His resume reflects more than 30 solo exhibitions in commercial, academic and institutional venues and more than 100 two-person, invitational or group shows. Kozmon’s work is represented in prestigious public and private collections.

A curator for commercial and institutional venues who has served as judge for more than 100 exhibitions, Kozmon possesses extensive experience in assessing works in a variety of mediums.

Chris Nagle is a professional animator, editor and director and is currently the senior motion director at The Adcom Group, a Cleveland-based advertising agency. During his 15-year career, he has produced work for top local brands such as KeyBank, Cleveland Clinic, Sherwin Williams, RIDGID, Giant Eagle and Great Lakes Brewing Company among many others. His work has been seen on broadcast television, in Times Square and inside all major Cleveland sports venues.

Nancy Prudic lives in Cleveland and is a professor of visual art at Lake Erie College. She serves on the exhibition committee at the Sculpture Center and is a founding member of Waterloo Arts, where she continues to be a gallery committee member.

Prudic received her B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work is concept driven and includes performance, installation and sculpture and has been exhibited locally, through solo exhibitions at Brandt Gallery, Lake Erie College and Ursuline College; nationally, in New York City, Boston and Sacramento; and internationally, in Spic Nove Ves, Slovakia and the Staromestky Letny Festival in Bratislava. She has worked cross-collaboratively in visual art, dance and theater and has traveled to China and Thailand as a visiting artist at the Thai Chinese International Institute in Bangkok.

Prudic has traveled globally with visits to museums and galleries in each destination, served as juror and committee member for numerous exhibitions and was the director of the B. K. Smith Gallery at Lake Erie College. Exposure and activities like this, she believes, is what makes a good juror.

ROBERT SPADEMAN BEST IN SHOW AWARD

STUDENT ART WINNERS

Judges elected to split the Best in Merit Scholar Award to recognize the exceptional talents of two scholars.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Galleries at CSU wish to acknowledge the contributions of the many individuals who made this exhibition possible.

Most importantly, we thank the seven CSU merit scholars and 55 student artists featured in this exhibition. Items on display include painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, graphic design, video animation and sculpture.

We recognize the dedication and contributions of CSU studio faculty who encouraged their students to submit works, developed jury guidelines and took active roles in deciding award categories and cash prize amounts. All faculty worked with merit scholars to ensure exceptional exhibits.

We thank our student gallery employees who prepared the exhibit space, installed the art and served as gallery ambassadors: Aurora Laux, Shay Casey, Maggie Brandewiede, Emma Adams and Tenzin Lucas. Kit Hannum is our registrar intern. Aurora also participated in our exhibition as a merit scholar, Shay and Kit as student artists.

University Marketing and Duplicating Services are responsible for the design and production of this catalog and promotional materials. College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) communications coordinator is Lesley Lang who helped promote the exhibit. Photography of student art in this catalog was done by Heather Patterson. Thanks to all for your hard work.

Judges George Kozmon, Nancy Prudic and Chris Nagle had the challenging task of jurying the show and deciding the award winners. We relied on their expertise to make tough decisions and present the best exhibit possible.

Award donors are Robert Spademan and an anonymous alumnus. Thanks to their generous multi-year donations, awards were historically large this year.

We honor and thank retired gallery Director Robert Thürmer for his 30 years of leadership. He set standards and policies that govern The Gallery activities day-to-day. To honor his legacy, we have renamed our signature exhibition The Robert Thürmer People’s Art Show in perpetuity.

The Galleries at CSU receive continued support from CSU President Harlan Sands, Provost Laura Bloomberg, Ph.D., and CLASS Interim Dean Allyson Robichaud. Their support assures the continued presence of The Galleries at CSU on our campus.

Finally, we gratefully acknowledge funding from CLASS, the Ohio Arts Council and anonymous donors.

Kendall C. Christian Director, The Galleries at CSU

IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION

Robert Thürmer’s ever-present smile and low-key demeanor greeted countless visitors to the Cleveland State University galleries during his 30-year tenure. As director of the galleries, he played an instrumental role in establishing the presence of CSU’s art programs in Cleveland and beyond. Robert attracted significant artists to the CSU gallery program, including On the Wall in 2006, an exhibition by famed South African artist William Kentridge. Robert was also a strong advocate for showcasing the works of CSU students in the annual Student Art Show and was passionate about continuing the democratic, non-juried People’s Art Show. In a transformational moment in 2012, Robert and his late assistant Tim Knapp, led the transition of the galleries to its current location in the heart of Playhouse Square, cementing the cultural bona fides of CSU’s art program in the community. A conceptual artist himself, Robert prioritized the idea and experience of his work over the overall aesthetic appeal, craft and monetary value while often adding a touch of humor. Perhaps most importantly, the scores of museum management students and gallery assistants Robert worked with during his tenure are forever grateful for the knowledge, wisdom and experience he imparted to them. Cleveland State University thanks Robert Thürmer for his dedicated service to the galleries and the university and wishes him a long and happy retirement.

Robert Spademan

CSU Retiree, Part-Time Instructor, Gallery Committee Member and Donor

“My trial by fire came in the form of the notorious People’sArtShow. I found myself defending some unimportant but controversial entry in this non-juried, free and open celebration of creativity, diversity, and imagination! The entire ordeal was a tremendous learning experience and a unique occasion for personal growth. I learned that some ideas, including academic freedom and the right of self-expression, were worth fighting for.”

— Robert Thürmer, 2012