featured exhibition
SGCI Student Fellowship Exhibitions:
Kaitlyn Gesel and Izzy Jarvis
Reception: Friday, March 20, Room 105, Art and Architecture Building, UTK Campus, 6pm-8:30pm
This exhibition will feature prints by the two student recipients of the 2014 SGC International Student Fellowship Awards. Kaitlin Gesel is a graduate student at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Izzy Jarvis recently completed her undergraduate degree from Indiana University.
Kaitlin Gesel
Territory
Why are certain landscapes, through history, labeled as important? What is distinctive about these areas? The definition of territory is an area of land that belongs to, or is controlled by a government. With this definition, each of our National Parks is a territory. Our country has chosen areas that are of natural significance and it is our responsibility to preserve the reasons these places are acknowledged. These landscapes change drastically every day. What you lay eyes on today will never be exactly the same again. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, wrote “you could not step twice into the same river.” My art acts as a place of constancy for these territories. Through this fellowship, a suite of works will be created that is a ‘memoir’ of our experiences with the land around us and specifically our National Parks. This body of art works will consist of printmaking, book arts, and wood structural elements. My work has developed around how printmaking, in its laborious processes, repetition, and achievable textures, can mimic the qualities of these areas. This will result in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces that capture the essence of why these landscapes continue to be preserved.
Izzy Jarvis
Emergence
The SGCI Undergraduate Fellowship allowed me to produce five large-scale wood and linoleum relief prints with professional installation. My materials ranged from 2 x 3 feet to 4 x 4 feet which called for special printmaking paper and custom, lightweight frames. Working in large scale allowed me to have a more visceral and direct connection with my matrix, permitting instinctive mark making to flow across the surface of my carefully planned drawings. The carving process of working into substantial sheets of wood and linoleum created an honest dialogue between my hands and head, capturing emotion and movement into my lines. Using a variety of oversize western and eastern papers that I could afford using this fellowship, I introduced brown and blue tones as well as water colored gradients into the surface of my graphic marks, adding softness to the hard nature of my artwork.
