Visual Exhibition 2022
Visual Exhibition
2022
The College of Art and Design's Visual Exhibition is a juried showcase of creativity for RIT's Graduate Education Week! It represents exemplar work by students from our renowned graduate programs.
Best in Show
Hamideh Azimi (film and animation)
Panamir
"The panda who is living with his mother in a jungle far from his ancestral home, got trained by a tribe of eagles to get ready to go back home and take revenge for the death of his father."
Eric Bohrer (fine arts studio)
Develop - Part III
Concrete, steel
"When means are blamed instead and/or in defense of their end, when intention and outcome are radically separated from one another, the result is a system whose guiding principle is 'more of the same.' A series of sculptural works entitled 'Visions of Social Control.' Responding to the eponymous work of 20th century sociologist Stanley Cohen, this series considers various stages of social mediation and control within lived experience. Each piece presents a formal expression of constriction, suppression and destruction of true freedoms, both individual and communal. The natural material qualities of stone and concrete, as well as the work required to manipulate them, are inherently present in each form. The manufactured and weaponized steel elements appear to be apparatus that, while relatively smaller in scale, are designed to interfere with and alter the natural state of these forms. They do so awkwardly, imposing themselves with a general lack of foresight. What is left are individual moments of constraint, compression or flat-out destruction."
Alex Jarus (furniture design)
The Intangible Relic
Wood (beech, ash (dyed black), brass)
"A monolithic reliquary for memories past, present, and future. Standing at 80 inches tall, with visual stylization pulled from fictional monoliths of long forgotten civilizations and mechanical design based off Grecian armillary spheres, I have created a reliquary for memories. With each ring representing past, present and future, respectively, from largest to smallest, with the center core existing as the conscious with a window to the interior of the subconscious, I aim to represent how my mind tracks memories and correlates experiences across time. Mounted on a monolith that seems to stand firm against the persistence of time, the rings represent the intangible memories while the elongated drawers becomes a receptacle for physical fragments of experiences."
Yannan Pan (industrial design)
Electric Kettle Redesign
"I visualized the process of heating water in the design. By rotating the knob, different heating temperatures can be preset to meet the requirements of making different types of tea. The base of the kettle adopts electromagnetic adsorption technology to effectively hold the kettle in place and prevent it from being accidentally knocked over during heating."
Xiaohe Zhang (visual communication design)
Information Design of Milk Tea
Paper
"This is an information design about milk tea, used to help people around the world have a deeper understanding of the milk tea culture. It includes historical background, reasons for its popularity, the procedures of making a cup of milk tea and how diverse it is presented in different countries. Since tea is the main ingredient, I try to use tea leaves as the main element to visualize the sense of flavor diffusing out from the cup. It seems that all the contents are accompanied by the growth of the tea leaves and explained the story itself."
School for American Crafts
Shuling Chen (metals and jewelry design)
Hearing Your Voice
Silver, SLA
"This is one of a series of works that explores the combination of 3D-printed materials and jewelry wearable forms. The opposite of showing and expressing yourself is wanting to know the other person. Using the outward appearance of the cylindrical shape, it expresses the desire to listen to the thoughts and voices of others and expresses the yearning for external information."
Talia Drury (furniture design)
Oil painting
"This piece is a field study of a specific spot that I was drawn to for its textural qualities and color variation. There are so many colors that can be seen in one small area of land which is so spectacular and special to me. I love looking for the small details and encourage others to watch where they step for there is life found everywhere. Treading lightly in the forest is something that is important to me. The wilderness and being able to be completely encompassed in the forest and fullness of the trees and within the ground cover is something I will always want to share with others. The feeling of life in even the smallest area is a wonder to me, and always keeps me looking at the positives in life."
Stella Huang (metals and jewelry design)
Stainless steel wires 22ga, white spray paint, white satin fabrics, black threads, white gauze
"My inspiration comes from Massimo Vignelli's draft layout of the book pages and modern furniture design. The black and white plain drafts and three-dimensional colorful crafts left a deep impression on me throughout the trip. And this comparison allows me to capture Vignelli Design Studios' control over design diversity."
Yuanyuan Li (metals and jewelry design)
Connection
925 silver, acrylic
"Inspired by Vignelli's subway route map and t-minimalist design concept, I created a series of jewelry by combining the simple lines in interlaced ways and using gradient colors to make the minimalist lines to have a unique visual effect. 'Connection' refers not only to the connection between the lines in the form of the jewelry, but also the connection between the jewelry and the wearer. The wearer can rotate and define the shape of the jewelry by themselves. Parts of accessories in the jewelry can also be removed and replaced."
Yaoxuan Liu (metals and jewelry design)
Untitled
Fine silver, resin, gold foil
"Legends Massimo Vignelli and Lella Vignelli inspired my designs due to my admiration toward their achievements. As an international student, the combination of different cultural backgrounds allows me to embrace the Vignellis' works and express my interpretation, which sparks cultural collision. Geometry, comfort, system and simplicity are ways that I approach design concepts. I use acrylic materials, enamels, pigments and handmade chains to explore the possibilities of the beauty of jewelry.
Zixuan Ni (metals and jewelry design)
Element
Silver, USB flash drive
"After visiting the Vignelli Center for Design Studies, my perspective of Vignelli is that the products are a simple appearance, but are practical and the design is to serve humans. I am inspired by this and wanted to design a set of jewelry that can serve my daily work. Element's inspiration is many occupations need to use a USB flash drive at work, and forgetting to bring a USB flash drive often happens. When you need a USB flash drive at work, you can take it out of your personal jewelry calmly and elegantly. The shape of "Element" will satisfy most people's daily wear, extending the function on the basis of jewelry."
School of Art
Nava Barenji (fine arts studio)
Freedom
Painting (oil color)
"My ideas come from social issues, specially about women and gender discrimination. Many women get killed by their husband or family because they assume they are women's owners and when these women try to get their freedom, which is a simple human right, their death becomes their freedom."
Katirina Herbs (visual arts-all grades)
Photography
"This piece is one of many self-portraits taken from an areal view. I’ve spent countless sunsets trying to capture what water meant to me while the answer was right in front. To be one with the water. I've began exploring the connection I have with water and my passion for creating artworks surrounding bodies of water within New York. This image within the image serves to show that water has overtaken me; I've become lost in exploring what brings me much joy."
Becky Miller (visual arts-all grades)
Harriet's Adventure
Pen and ink, marker
"This piece is a series of four panels that tell the story of Harriet, a little frog girl, on a quest to catch a new fish friend. I didn't want to use any words in the story because I wanted all of the storytelling to be left to the visuals. This way, everyone can interpret her journey in a unique way. I created Harriet at the start of my graduate school career as a way for me to explore art mediums and techniques I was unfamiliar with, and working with her as a character always got me excited to start a new project or try something new. Thank you for your help, Harriet!"
Dandong Ouyang (fine arts studio)
Oil on canvas
"We celebrate our failures. In recent years I have lived a non-stop life, opportunities came and went, circumstances changed and changed, and my experiences of failure in all areas were crushed into the ever-moving wheel of time, never to be reviewed. But they are not non-existent, just being ignored. Once they are recalled, the negative emotions return stronger and stronger. In this series, the figures and the mirrored figures are element, but I don't want to present two identical figures, because they represent reconciliation with my own failures. They need to be roughly similar but slightly different. I want to use this series to remind myself of something that is easier said than done — to embrace the failures."
Morgan Sychtysz (fine arts studio)
Strands
Oil on canvas
"This piece addresses humankind's relationship to the natural world. Often overlooked and considered a nuisance, cattails here are brought to the forefront to represent the environment as a whole while contrasting the coarse rope, portraying man's use of natural materials to create utilitarian objects. For centuries humans have taken advantage of Earth's elements without much consideration for their impact on the future of the planet, creating a controversial relationship between natural and man-made materials as portrayed in this piece."
Yaoqin Xiao (fine arts studio)
How World
Printmaking (photopolymer)
"For the prints, I start to think about what is the relationship between the world and myself, which is a huge topic including the world outlook, identity of myself and the boundary between my existence and the world. Am I part of the world, or is the world everything beside my existence, physically and spiritually? It is an inspiring sentence that people can have the whole world. But sometimes, I know the existence of an individual or even group is just like a boat submerged in the mighty torrent of history and driven by the powerful current of the times."
School of Design
Sally Boniecki (visual communication design)
Nickelodeon Animation Bumper
Digital illustration, Photoshop, After Effects
"A commercial bumper animation that pays tribute to animated pencil tests and three decades of cartoons by Nickelodeon Animation. Though they are less common now, Nickelodeon has produced countless bumpers in varying styles since the mid-1980s. Made with guidance from Associate Professor Daniel DeLuna."
Xiangyu Deng (visual communication design)
The 3 Body Problem Title Sequence
Boheng Huang (industrial design)
Fusion 360 Modeling Study: Little Tiger Toy
Fusion 360
"This was an in-class exercise to familiarize the modeling function of Fusion 360 — a little plastic tiger toy with wings, which was designed for the year of the tiger. I hope this little tiger can bring good luck to people in the year of the tiger."
Mengxuan Huang (visual communication design)
Installation and photography
"Inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender is the Night, it comes from romantic literature. In the series, I try to express the romanticism and perspective with more diverse literary forms and structures. The color modeling, the sculpture form and the clearer paintings and crystal styles from my own perspective set off the structure of the brand. And it is portrayed in the sharp-edged technique as well as the divided branches and bases of the depiction."
Maria Kane (visual communication design)
Two Hunters
"This short film was made entirely using paper stop-motion puppets, hinged with wire, and shot on a down-shooter. It tells the story of a hunter becoming the hunted, only to become the hunter again."
Cristian Maynez (visual communication design)
Print design
"An accordion-style book reflecting design critic Natalia Ilyin's 'Love Bucket' passage while using a secondary text of our choice. The design was based on my interpretation of discovering our motives as designers as well as life. They both come hand-to-hand as our journey in life reflects how we behave or view the world as designers."
