Quarantine Gallery

Fine Arts Studio (MFA)

'Thingness'

Students in professor Elizabeth Kronfield's Sculpture class completed a research project for their first assignment of online instruction. Based on the subject matter in provided podcasts, videos and photos, students were tasked with creating five sculptures, each in 20 minutes or less. They then crafted written statements reflecting on connections between the works and how they relate to the research. 

Substitutability 

For another assignment, students focused on creating sculpture around the theme of "substitutability."

Yibo Liu

MNPT Connector (photo 1)

"Male national pipe thread (MNPT) connectors can firmly hold and connect with other tubs because they're made of zinc. However, the material itself does contain a lot of weights. It may not be a good idea to place heavy zinc on the upper part of the whole structure when a slender bracket supports the bottom. Even if it can be successfully placed, it still will make the next top connection a big challenge. For those reasons, I made a rubber mold of the original connector, then I did the resin casting. After that, I got the resin connector successfully. Instead of a heavy zinc connector, I created a lightweight, transparency color and lower-cost connector."

Inverted Sewer

"The first impression of a sewer pipe is always dirty and airtight. I erected a combined pipe and attached it to a round mirror. At the top of the combined tube, I added the connector, which was previously made of resin. From this transparent connector, you can see the intertwined hair radiating from the pipe. The whole work is like a water column in the fountain. Instead of water, there is human hair, which often blocks the pipe in our daily lives. The work "Inverted Sewer" wants to express: when a relatively derogatory and opaque object is considered after empathy, can it become upright and transparent?"

'Touched Your Soul'

For this assignment, students reflected on famous artists who have influenced them — or "touched their soul" — and created pieces paying homage to those artists and/or the soul-touching feeling they get from their work.

Kathleen Johnson

"My love for combining two-dimensional printmaking and three-dimensional sculpture techniques was first introduced to me by the artist known as Swoon. I first saw her work in 2015 walking down the street in NYC. Swoon started off as a street artist, but what separated her from other street artists was her choice of location. Her two-dimensional prints are created and placed in a specific environment. The work in turn interacts with the physical world. She has shown in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. 

"I created a four-piece series, inspired by Swoon, of two-dimensional drawings and applied them to the environment I am isolated to. I created a wheat paste mixture used by many street artists and applied the work to interact with specific aspects of my environment.

"Hands lifting and supporting my foundation, the continuation of the concept of a tooth as a sacrifice are just two examples. I also was thinking about the accessibility of art during the COVID-19 epidemic. With academia and galleries closed, there is a lack of sharing images. So, I decided to paste the work in a variety of access points. Some are visible to my neighborhood, exposed to the elements and will have the shortest life span. Some are inside, only visible to myself and my partner. Then one is placed on plywood, which will be eventually covered with tile. This work will not be seen by anybody until the shower is renovated once again." 

An elective course taught by Suzanne Peck, lecturer in the Glass program, employed “glass-based thinking” in the absence of the hot shop facility. 

“We’re opening up curiosity and going to learn about this material in other ways,” Peck said.

The class started an Instagram account to share its output and remain connected. Weekly assignments task students with thinking about the use of glass while not having access to it, and posting their results on Instagram. The class consists of seven students from Industrial Design and one from New Media Design.

Illustration

Student output Visiting Lecturer Nic Sweet’s Digital Illustration I class. A few of the many illustration are below — view more here.

Below is work by students in Lecturer Allen Douglas' spring Illustration classes. Assignments included a twisted myth project for Fantastic Illustration and an event poster project for Illustration III.

Medical Illustration

The below work is by students in our Medical Illustration BFA program as well as the MFA in Medical Illustration, housed in the College of Health Sciences and Technology.

In Adjunct Faculty Alan Gesek's Zoological and Botanical Illustration class, students learned a variety of techniques and processes of scientific illustration. This was done through observational drawings and exercises emulating Birds of Prey from Wild Wings and emulating traditional scratchboard techniques using a digital approach. Students worked toward building not only illustrative and medical knowledge and expertise, but also working on their graphic design skills.

Scientific Visualization

In this class taught by Professor Jim Perkins, students created illustrations of anatomy using a 3D imaging reference, receptor interaction and molecular disease posters. The course explores the use of technologies to provide references for traditional artwork and export models for digital rendering and animation.

Horos Anatomy Image

Students were asked to create an illustration of anatomic structures using Horos imaging software for reference. Horos displays CT and MRI data from actual patients in 3D. Since the Horos models can be rotated in 3D, students created a unique view of anatomic structures — something other than the usual front, back and side views that would be found in a typical anatomy textbook. The final rendering was done in Adobe Photoshop.

Receptor Interaction

Students created illustrations of a receptor embedded in a cell membrane, showing the response of the receptor to its ligand (the small molecule that activates the receptor). The receptor model is based on molecular structure data downloaded from the RCSB Protein Databank or the Orientation of Proteins in Membranes (OPM) database. The ligand is obtained from a small molecule database such as PubChem or ChemID-Plus. The molecules are visualized and reference images are exported from the molecular visualization software UCSF Chimera. Final rendering is done in Adobe Illustrator.

Molecular Disease Posters

For this assignment, students created a small poster describing the molecular basis of a medical condition and its symptoms. The focal point of the poster is an individual suffering from the condition. This may be a pencil drawing modified in Photoshop or may be painted entirely in Photoshop. Surrounding the individual are models of proteins and small molecules with accompanying text explaining the molecular mechanism responsible for the condition. The models are obtained from several online molecular structure databases and are rendered in the molecular visualization software UCSF Chimera. The final layout is created in Adobe Illustrator.

Intragastric Balloon Procedure


Maya Habecker
 

Jeong Jin Lee


Multiple Sclerosis


Larissa Dale


Hepatitis B Virus


Carson Zgoda

Photojournalism

Students and faculty from the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences and School of Communication created CoviDiary — a chronicle of the experiences of RIT students, faculty, staff and alumni during COVID-19. From Photojournalism graduates covering the pandemic as professionals to personal projects and heroic responses, the website holds stories of struggle, strength and resilience from the RIT community.