Art Academy Traditions: Senior Thesis Exhibitions

Sarah Adkins , "Sustainability"

I

n the spring, every Art Academy of Cincinnati graduating senior creates a Senior Thesis Exhibit. Each exhibition group consists of five students. The students self-select their exhibition partners and come up with a theme for their show. They help compose the exhibition announcement and press release, create the show layout, and prepare all the graphics and design elements. Works are eclectic and contemporary and will present a wide range of ideas, influences and subject matters.

The students submit written statements along with their bodies of work, confirming their training, growth, and dedication as working professional artists. “My paintings don’t leave the viewer out or force them in,” wrote Alex Scherra. “Through dramatic figuration my paintings simply draw the eye and ask calmly to just take a look.” Another member of the show, Anthony Birchfield, stated that his series of drawings “derives from a desire to get at what is beneath my everyday normal existence as a physical being, as a spiritual being, as an individual, and as a member of society.”

Read on to learn more about some of the students who participated in these exhibitions:

• Sarah Adkins was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated as class valedictorian from DuPont Manual Magnet High School in 2005, where she majored in visual art. She will graduate with a BFA in Visual Communication Design. Her work centers on Design Responsibility and how her personal ethics will play out in her career. Topics such as sustainability, consumerism, social justice and how these are manifested in contemporary graphic design are explored through posters, T-shirt design, documented performance, package design and other media. These messages appear as a series of statements about what the designer wants of herself, others and the industry.

• Devin Stoddard graduated from Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton, Ohio in 2005 and left for Cincinnati that fall to attend the Art Academy of Cincinnati. With the artistic direction of his father, Devin’s passion for photography grew. He has worked with a multitude of different types of cameras, but currently prefers his Nikon D80 digital SLR. His subject matter includes night photography of industrial landscapes and architecture, abandoned urban structures and live concerts of his favorite heavy metal acts. He will graduate in May 2009 with a BFA in Commercial Photography.

• 
  Stephen Fulton, Untitled

• Stephen Fulton, from Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Elder High School and will graduate with a BFA in Painting. His current video installations document processes in transformation in an attempt to bring the viewer into an abstract, meditative space where these experiments and materials are seen as alive and growing.

• Thea Bergstedt, a former journalist who returned to school after finding that life without creativity is dull. Her art is full of underlying wit and subversive intentions, evoking human discomfort and empathy.

• Sarah Rocheleau was born in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in the small city of Monroe in southwestern Ohio. Her home-education allowed her the opportunity to pursue interests such as real or imagined creatures, Victorian fashion and internal organs. It also allowed her the latitude to study in her own learning style, which entailed drawing, getting very thick books from the library and dissecting small animals. It was this combination of the arts and inquiry that led Rocheleau to consider a career in illustration.