Into the Studio: A preview

Staff Writer Hannah Park and Staff Photographer Grace Jeon took a trip to 185 Nassau St. for the annual Open Studios at the Lewis Center for the Arts. Juniors and seniors in the Program in Visual Arts exhibited their current works in progress and shared a few of their thoughts on art, inspiration and their work.

Gerardo Veltri ’15

Why art?

"Art, for me, is a way to express ideas that I can’t in any other way.When you are an anthropologist, history student or literary student,you are writing about things in a detached way, and you have to have a kernel of thought behind it. You argue something, you support that argument, and it has to sort of plug in a certain way.

Art is similar to that, except that it releases you from a lot of conventions and is centered around exhibitions. It is kind of a space or situation in which you present a form, and it interacts with ideas, concepts and your perception of beauty and the world. It slips under the radar as an even more powerful way of making you re-examine things.

Art has the potential to transform me in ways that other things can’t. It reconfigures relationships. A lot of things attempt to do that, but art for me is the most successful and interesting way. My artwork is typically having fun: I have fun on canvases. I always have fun with what I do."

Ben Denzer ’15:

What are you working on?

"[I’m currently working on] S-T-O-R-E-D, an art/businessproject. It is simultaneously a way to show art, a reason to make art, anaccessibleway to interact with art. Viewerscan search and create a meaning, or simply decide if they will buy it, an acknowledgment of art ascommodity, astatementofart ascontextdependent and a way to fund visual and material experiments."

Why art?

"I think art is an alibi for life, a way to validate beingcurious, learning and making things. Ioften find that thebusyness [of school and art]forces me to be more efficient, and I end up getting more done in both."

Kasturi Shah ’16:

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What are you working on?

"What I am currently focusing on is Title IX and the sexual misconduct policy. The idea is to raise awareness about the policy on campus and the policy itself, while simultaneously instigating a reaction. What I’m trying to do is schematically diagram the policy out on a geographical space on campus, which is currently the Firestone [Library] C floor. I’m trying to get permission to install pieces of work there, where different rooms represent a different stage in the policy, from the reporting of the violations to the panel of investigators.

Here, [train station within a studio wall divider], I am trying to get a gauge on where people think we are right now [at the University] in terms of treating sexual misconduct seriously. The idea is that we are a metaphor for a train, and our current stop is Title IX and the violation of Title IX. So people can get on the platform and graffiti the wall with whatever thoughts they may have, even if they don’t have any, about Title IX."

Why art?

"Because I am not happy without it. It makes me complete."

Wendy Li ’15:

Why art?

"I never thought of myself as being a very good painter, drawer or sculptor, and that is kind of what I thought art was supposed to be. But I have always had this interest in photography. I have always been obsessed with photos, starting with these [in my studio]. I grew up looking at them — they were how I got to know my family and what China looked like while being an immigrant here, in America. These photographs were seen as my identity. I have been fascinated with them, collecting them and making scrapbooks, and stuff."

What’s your inspiration?

"These photos have always been here and have informed me and been my preliminary education in photography. I never really thought of them as being part of my art until very recently. Last year and years before, I would take my own photos about completely different, separate things.

This year, I think being a senior and having to ask questions — who am I, what am I going to do and what is my place in the world — has forced me to return to these photographs, the original photos that I knew, and question my identity in a sense."

Neeta Patel ’16:

Why art?

"It’s a lot of up to chance. Typography was the first class I took here in visual arts, and I was hooked from the beginning. I feel like if it had been a different visual arts class, I could be studying painting, sculpture or something else. It was kind of up to chance that way."

Do you consider graphic design to be different from art?

"I think design is interesting because, in one sense, when people think of a design, they think of it almost as a service. You design a poster or a website, and in that sense, it can be considered asless of an art.But if you think about graphic design in a more theoretical sense or when you are designing a poster and what you are thinking about, you are thinking in the same terms as any other visual artist."

These interviews have been editedand condensed.