Visual Exhibition 2023
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
Diane Catsburrow Linnet (Diane Lee) - (film and animation)
Put It Back!
"Put It Back! began as an experiment on the idea of the "flicker"— a quality often labeled as imperfection against smooth perfect arcs. This stylistic approach attempts to bring back the hand-drawn feel to the digital animation process, and utilizes a new animation program, brushes that emulate pencil and watercolor, and purposeful use of fuzzy and variable lines." *password to view the film is sea
Jacqueline Qiu (industrial design)
Family Plan
"This work is a family utensil set, which initially was a project for me to show the relationships in a traditional Chinese family. Each piece in this design shares similar textures and characteristics. Though they are identical, each part of this work is still irreplaceable, just like every member of my family."
Isabella Walters (Glass)
Warm and Scabs
"This piece is an interactive work addressing romantic optimism after trauma, encouraging viewers to confront their own associations with space and people. The surrealist chimera of a 'nightstand' is constructed with a found picture frame containing an image distorted by thousands of tiny glass beads. Viewers are welcome to touch and play with these beads revealing a photo of two lovers peacefully asleep in bed."
Hannah Wilson (metals and jewelry design)
Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy
"It was my first rodeo — by that I mean this is the first large quilt I’ve made, so I chose a theme that brings me joy: 1980s cowboy! This allowed me the space to attend to my methods of quilting. I created a bold, geometric design for the quilt because it speaks to the tradition of quilting and the American Southwest. I was deliberate about my textile choice and use of pattern to realize an 80s cowboy quilt infused with a contemporary and vivid color scheme.
"As a metalsmith, I had not used color fluidly in my work; opting instead to consider the colors of various metals when deciding what material to use. But I have always been drawn to color. I surround myself with color in my home, I drive a bright yellow car, and my wardrobe is full of color and pattern. Learning to quilt provided me with an access point to inject color into my art across mediums, and as a result, has allowed me to create work that feels more genuine to who I am as a person."
Alances Vargas (visual communication design)
Motion Graphics Reel
"This piece is a motion graphics reel, a culmination of all my work these past two years. It's an ode to my growth and development as a designer and a student. It features the highlights of my coursework and is meant to excite and inspire any viewer of it. There is a lot that one can accomplish in two short years, and this is a demonstration of what one is capable of."
Schools of Art and American Crafts
Nava Barenji (fine arts studio)
Woman
"This work demonstrates a powerful, confident, beautiful, and free woman inspired by traditional Persian miniature painting. I tried to paint the things that are forbidden for an artist to show — nudity or a woman to show their body — in contemporary Iran and illustrate a combination of modern and traditional elements. In order to paint a strong woman, I looked for old, abstract Persian miniatures because they illustrate women as they are without any boundaries and they are full of unique textures and patterns. The choice of colors and patterns have an important role in my art to exemplify Persian culture."
Kate Jacobs (visual arts-all grades)
Buttermilk Falls
"The theme of this painting revolves around the word place. An image of a place can evoke several emotions revolving around personal experiences. Our memories are so intrinsically tied to place, so I wanted to depict a moment that had an impact on my life. This painting is done in pencil and watercolor on hotpress watercolor paper."
Zayneb Jaff (metals and jewelry design)
"The work is a transformation of a shape and material in an on-site-specific installation. The installation was meant to reflect on nature nurturing us as humans, and humans never leaving nature be as it meant to exist on its own. We are always adding and taking down in nature. This work is nature's story."
Seojung Kang (metals and jewelry design)
It Is There
"How many precious things that we take for granted are in our lives? Things that are so obvious that you don't recognize they are there every time. This work was inspired by the moment when the sunlight, which I took for granted every day, suddenly felt precious."
Yuanyuan Li (metals and jewelry design)
"Lost in VR is a body sculpture about the relationship between the human body and virtual reality. If humans are addicted to the VR world, will their minds and sense of the natural world fade away?"
Yaoxuan Liu (metals and jewelry design)
Untitled
"My work is based on my initial thoughts about the world surrounding me. I am using children's perspectives to view things, which allowed me to break the boundaries between cognition and imagination."
Zixuan Ni (metals and jewelry design)
Rain
"Rain was inspired by the spider web after the rain. I have been a person who is afraid of spiders since I was a child, so everything related to spiders is not good. But after accidentally watching a spider web after the rain, I suddenly changed my mind. After the rain, water drops of different sizes hang on the spider webs, and each water drop reflects our world, which is clear and shining. Everything has many different sides, and we need a pair of eyes that are good at discovering beauty from other angles."
Dandong Ouyang (fine arts studio)
A One of Mine 3.
"Through a photo donation program initiated on social media, I collected fragments of Chinese women's daily lives and pieced together the background stories behind them. These images were selected and reorganized into a set of narrative paintings to establish female ownership, in which I connect myself to the women of this community, and my work is a statement and microcosm of the female community."
Jordan Tavan (ceramics)
"Sand cast, solid glass egg carton, altered."
Yixuan Xia (metals and jewelry design)
Home
'The concept of this project is home. The home let me think of strong, soft, warm, belonging, relaxation, and love. My home town is in Shanghai, China. There is a really traditional flower called zhizi hua in Shanghai. The seller will use the wire to wrap it on the top which can let people wear on the clothes. Young girls will wear it on their clothes because the flower has a really good smell. My grandmother always brought me zhizi hua when she took me home when I was young. That is a very warm memory for me even though I am growing up now.
"Nowadays, with the development of technology, this kind of street shop has disappeared. People are not allowed to sell things along the streets. It is hard to find this kind of flower. So I decided to make this flower brooch to maintain and capture this memory. Besides, the flower can represent my purity and innocence, and now I am mature and strong. But It does not mean that I am not pure anymore. I still maintain the purity inside my heart."
Yayan Zhang (metals and jewelry design)
Cuirass
"The cuirass is inspired by Steam Punk and water fluidity. Combining with 3D prints which represent Chinese minority traditional water pattern elements and machine parts to show a duality of strength and softness, this fashion work expresses nostalgia for hometown and respect for national culture."
School of Design
Madeleine Baum (visual communication design)
Anxiety
"This is a typographic exploration piece that aims to visualize feelings of anxiety through sharp metallic edges and an uncomfortably quick transformation from smooth to distorted. The spatial treatment and camera angles aim to promote a sensation of claustrophobia and being surrounded by the feeling."
Zhen Bi (visual communication design)
Schedule Design
"A schedule design for the 2022 Honor of Kings World Champion Cup, the top event of the Honor of Kings professional e-sports tournament. It is an international e-sports event with oriental culture as the background. This project combines oriental and modern styles. It integrates two different thematic styles through color choices and expressions to show international e-sports events in a Chinese way."
Honey Ashvinkumar Gardharia (visual communication design)
Disconnect
"Disconnect is a lowercase typeface inspired by Helvetica. The design reflects the idea of "disconnect to reconnect." The typeface is composed of cutouts in the form of strips of printed letters. The strips are disconnected from one another, but they come together to reconnect and form a letter shape. The intention behind making this typeface was to use analog and digital processes. This was implemented by cutting out the prints, taking photos, adding texture, and changing the perspective of the letter using design tools."
Ariella Knight (industrial design)
Mothership
"Mothership was born as an offshoot of my thesis research: accessibility within family units. I wanted to explore a playful location and communication device that would be accessible to a variety of ages and people without the use of a traditional screen. I used traditional image research and sketching as well as AI imaging software."
Ipshita Pal (visual communication design)
Fantasy Face Sculpt
"This 3D model was made as a part of my coursework in visual communication design. The inspiration behind this design was Medusa from Greek mythology, who has snakes on her head instead of hair. In my fantasy character design, I attempted to make a woman who is transforming into a mythical creature. Thorny vines are coming out of her cracked skull and flowers are growing from them. Her eyebrows have turned into vines and her veins are protruding to show a drastic transformation in her body. The woman is becoming one with nature. The essence of this piece is open for interpretation."
Xueer Wang (visual communication design)
Ava: The Future of AI Assistants
"Ava is an engaging future user interface (FUI) animation that envisions the future of AI assistants. This short film introduces Ava, a revolutionary AI assistant designed to enhance our daily lives with seamless integration, exceptional intelligence, and unparalleled user experience. Ava's cutting-edge features offer a glimpse into a future where technology and humanity work together in perfect harmony."
Xi Yang (visual communication design)
Promotional Video for NFT Digital Products
"This short film serves as a promotional introduction to NFT digital products. The transformation from a physical circle to a digital one at the beginning signifies the shift from traditional art forms to virtual products. The goal of the video is to provide viewers with a comprehensive understanding of NFT products."
Tianyi Zhang (visual communication design)
M. Butterfly
"The inspiration for this poster comes from the movie M. Butterfly. I used a collage art style to create them. The blue background is an ocean made up of blue paper, representing the protagonist's confusion. The male and female images of the M. Butterfly appear together, and I used some keywords to describe the protagonist's confusion about his identity and his ultimate answer: both of these images are him. I believe that the movie M. Butterfly has profound significance. It is not just a tragic love story, but it also inspires people to realize that a person can have different identities, and that the soul can transcend the physical body and gender."
Jayden Zhou (industrial design)
Electric Violin Concept Design
"This is an AI-assisted design project. Midjourney is the AI tool I use; it functions more like a rapid search tool for me, swiftly performing random combinations depending on the keywords I specify. To dig deeper, I chose the desired route from the generated findings. Design requires extensive research. Before designing, I conduct a lot of research, such as learning about the history of what I'm working on and what previous designers have done. Designers learn as they search, and AI may help them learn faster. Furthermore, while the resulting AI-generated images may not be realistic, portions of them, such as the color palette, are quite informative.
"'Futuristic sci-fi stringed instruments' was my prompt. The first image generated is a light strip that spans the entire image, while the other three are guitars in various configurations. I initially utilized the guitar as a variety to keep creating photos, but because it looked so much like a guitar, the effects were not immediately noticeable. I eventually discovered a tiny unfinished instrument in the corner of the initial blurred photograph. This instrument had an unusual structure, but its shape had never been seen before. One advantage of the fuzzy image is that it allows the designer to conceive and rationalize the absurd structure. I drew the stringed instrument from my imagination, and its layout and colors are more reminiscent of an acoustic violin. I preserved the unique contour lines as the outline of the electric violin during the conception phase."
School of Photographic Arts and Sciences
Hebrews Campbell (media arts and technology)
Got Drip?
Video, photography
"This work is a piece of my capstone titled “Got Drip?” (Strategizing and Producing Multimedia Campaigns for Emerging Products and Businesses). Startup businesses have difficulty strategizing and creating media campaigns that convey their products and the company’s vision while retaining user interaction on social media and online platforms. They also have difficulty producing content that interests potential investors to help get their company to reach its full potential. Media campaigns are a series of advertisements or messages that share a single idea and theme that can be applied to several digital mediums and forms of media. These campaigns, if done correctly, are pivotal in a company’s branding, outreach, sales, funding, and overall success.
For this project, I collaborated with Shoe Coat NYC, a startup with an innovative product but very little professional content. It was founded by a current RIT student. Their company produces and sells a protective "Shoe Coat." It mainly distributes online via its website but can also be found in select retail stores across the country. It has had several media campaigns but they have not been diverse in medium or effective in generating new customer interaction, retention, and sales.
Fan Yang (media arts and technology)
Macro photography
"A cross-sectional photograph of a cotton rod. The sample was stained with CN103528871b and photographed using a compound microscope. The structure of the sieve tube can be seen clearly in the picture."
School of Film and Animation
Katie Christ (film and animation)
Thread
"I have wanted to engage with the topic of simulation video games for a long time but have been intimidated by the scope of its themes and effects. By stripping back documentary techniques to focus primarily on reflective interview and in-game footage, I was able to develop a thesis that serves as an important conversation starter about our reliance on the virtual world."
Roshni Jayakrishnan Nair (film and animation)
Moonbrain
"'Moonbrain' by Shikhar has been one of my favorite tunes since he released it in 2022. Knowing how personal this song is to Shikhar, I wanted to visually convey the journey of not fitting in with a crowd and finding a sense of comfort in one’s own skin as beautifully as he describes in his song. The video shows the journey of the protagonist from the deep seabeds to slowly swimming up to the surface."
Gabriel Ponte-Fleary (film and animation)
Mi Vida en 2 Maletas
Mi vida en 2 Maletas focuses on the stories and everyday life of an immigrant Venezuelan family. They share their struggles and ultimate triumphs, and the unbreakable bonds of families despite their separations.
Annaliese Taylor (film and animation)
Don't Think, Just Dance
A documentary about five members of RIT's Urban Dance Crew, Velocity — why they dance, what dance does for them, and what it means to be on a team.
Aybuke Yilmazer (film and animation)
Blue
"Blue is a frame-by-frame lip-sync animation for the 2D Animation Fundamentals class. It is a combination of animation principles, walk cycle, camera movement, and effect nodes. My intention was to make a comedic piece and the original song was playing in my mind. The color palette was inspired by the song and since the color blue has a sad mood I ended up with a tragicomic story."