First place
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Normality, Mixed Media on Bristol Board 24”H x 18”W Layton McKewen-Dilling
To start off this piece is near and dear to my heart, I have a lot of emotional connection to the theme unlike some prompts in other classes and have enjoyed the process of creating it. Since the prompt is called, “Threshold”, I really wanted to do some sort of transition of my body from around 480-ish pounds to now at 230 and the emotional/physical after-effects it has on the mind/body. I used my own body as a recent reference for the skinner version and the outline of an old picture I had saved into my phone when I first started the journey. For this work, the medium is alcohol marker and mixed media on Bristol. I really wanted to work in some pastilles but I was terrified of ruining it and had no clue what I was doing during the process since this is my first time cell shading on something. I used a wide variety of skin tones for the skinner version to show health and happiness, and a greyscale for the other to invoke the feeling of depression and guilt. For the background the bright red, fading into black, signifies the feeling of emptiness and the void that some experience with weight-loss. |
second place
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If We Can’t See Air Can Fish See Water? Watercolor on Paper 26”H x 31”W Jocelyn Dong
I am an illustrator who primarily works in watercolor. I am inspired by Japanese animations, digital illustrations, my daily life, and the people I interact with. My work aims to show viewers the wonder and joy you can find in everyday life and the mundane. |
third place
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Spacing Out, Charcoal on Paper 14”H x 19”W Gabriella Dover
As a kid, I was always fascinated by colors and movement. As an artist, I strive to create works that enhance color and evoke emotion. The use of vibrant colors and contrasting hues reflects my lively personality, resulting in loud, yet beautiful, art pieces. I find my inspiration by doing self-portraits and using colors that complement each other. I believe neutral colors are vastly overrated, so replace them with bright pinks, greens, and colors alike I can truly express myself. Incorporating movement helps me explore my style as well as texture. I believe the tiniest detail makes a significant difference in pushing my creative freedom to evoke emotion in my work. |
honorable mention
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Last Resort, Air-Dry Clay, Acrylic Paint 4.5”H x 9.5”W x 2.5”D A’Marie Dukes |
Honorable mention
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Sarabeth’s, Digital Illustration 11”H x 8.5W Hannah Wilson
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I think that a pot isn’t complete until it’s used for an intended purpose. I love making pottery since it has existed for utilitarian purpose for daily life. Through my work, I want to tell that functional pottery also can be aesthetically appreciated and evaluated.
I believe that every image with staying power should tell a story, leave a viewer in awe aesthetically, and have a distinct mood/emotion under the surface.
Photographers shouldn’t apologize for capturing and publishing images that span the gamut of human emotion; rather, we should constantly seek out those experiences in an effort to seek meaning behind the human condition.
I’ve been fortunate to explore that range through my personal travels, commissioned assignments, and deep within the forests of Arkansas.
These British Soldier Lichens are peppered throughout the Ozark and Ouachita forests. Their distinctive red caps emerge in early March and quickly fade to brown.
I especially enjoy this image for the three layers of textures present and the human connection and curiosity to nature present.
Banana slugs are an imperative asset to maintaining a balanced ecosystem within the Redwood Forests of Northern California. This one felt comfortable enough to keep its upper tentacles alert despite my camera's shutter.
Hands down my favorite hike in the United States is this short jaunt among old growth evergreens that leads hikers to exclusive access to Crescent Beach in northern Oregon.
Sometimes the best color pops come from your hiking buddy's clothing.
As an artist, I enjoy working in a wide variety of media including digital painting, writing, print design, film and photography. I'm drawn to art that is ethereal and fantastical, possessing a dream-like aesthetic. My photographic work featured in this exhibition brings in my love of travel. The images are of the small chapel balcony at Belvedere Palace in Vienna and views from the Charles bridge in Prague. I edited the images in Photoshop applying light leaks filters to dramatically shift the colors and invoke the feeling of different times of day - morning, sunset, twilight. Through my work, I want the viewer to be transported to a new space visually and emotionally.
I have always been fascinated with colors, textures, and pattern, it is my happy place of exploration and just being.
Through the use acrylic paint, paper, and fabric it is my hope that the boldness engages and captures what radiates from within. The manipulation of shredded paper is used to capture the complex beauty and essence the natural crown of black women.
As a visual artist my goal is to continue to convey my faith, the black experience, and the stories told through the lens of black women.
"Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave." -Maya Angelou, Still I Rise
From the Lil’ Miss Series. Revised 2024
Neal Harrington LIT Public work Proposal 2021-2024
The artwork I propose will be three, 3’ x 6’ birch plywood woodcut panels (in a row) in a horizontal format, presented as a tripdych, which is an artwork consisting of three separate pieces with a theme yet, considered one piece of art. Woodcut is a low relief (like wood carving) process where the cut/removed areas will not show ink but the tone of the wood, the original surface of the wood will be inked black.
The imagery will reference the Americana/Arkansas landscape and Southern traditions of craft, storytelling, music, and the human condition that make up our state’s specific milieu. Each panel
will focus on a specific terrain: Panel #1 Homegrown: mountain regions, Panel #2 Down Home: water regions, and Panel #3 Home Sweet Home: delta regions.
(LIT airport public art commission) photographs of triptych
The artwork I propose will be three, 3’ x 6’ birch plywood woodcut panels (in a row) in a horizontal format, presented as a tripdych, which is an artwork consisting of three separate pieces with a theme yet, considered one piece of art. Woodcut is a low relief (like wood carving) process where the cut/removed areas will not show ink but the tone of the wood, the original surface of the wood will be inked black.
The imagery will reference the Americana/Arkansas landscape and Southern traditions of craft, storytelling, music, and the human condition that make up our state’s specific milieu. Each panel will focus on a specific terrain: Panel #1 Homegrown: mountain regions, Panel #2 Down Home: water regions, and Panel #3 Home Sweet Home: delta regions.
This work is my humorist take on the battles people face with alcohol, from the good and bad. We continually strive for moderation but it is a Herculean task at times.
My drawings and paintings combine linear perspective, architecture, and the occasional organic form. My subject matter and references come from personal photography of architecture and people and an engineering geometry formula book from the 1950s. My dad has always been my main inspiration for most of the artwork that I create. He is an artist, and growing up I always watched him paint and draw and I remember thinking that I wanted to be like him when I got older. He primarily created oil paintings or sketched figures or portraits with charcoal. I have always gravitated toward different architectural styles' linear elements and
angles. I also like the relationships between engineering, mathematics, and visual arts. My goal with these pieces is to evoke a reaction within the viewer that forces their thoughts to question the purpose of the drawing. I hope my pieces will open some kind of internal, creative door that enables the viewer to think about something they haven’t before they viewed my art. I want the viewer to wonder why I chose the angles, the enlargement of a certain body part, or why I distorted or dissected a certain area or section. In contrast, the straight lines and solidity of the geometric shapes and architectural elements are intended to create a safe and predictable element within the negative space. I aim to show the differences in the solidity of manmade structures compared to the uncertainty and fragility of human life. In most of my work, I combine a lot of linear, mathematical compositions with nude figures- visually showing that we find comfort in more solid, predictable facets, like buildings, math, and geometry, in contrast to the raw, uncomfortable, organic, and sometimes unstable human figure.
Ambient music and soundscapes play a ubiquitous role in setting a mood and sense of space in relation to other types of art media. The meaning of ambient music/sound is not meant to be consciously "liked" and instead, unconsciously felt. I prefer that listeners to my music and soundscapes find something meaningful even if it is revoked. What I hope you do not experience from these sonic objects is boredom. -Lowell Lybarger (musician name: ΦNYX).
My artwork is an invitation for viewers to encounter nature through the lens of my experiencesand imagination. I often include circular brushstrokes that evoke the striations found inmushrooms, geodes, bisected tree trunks, or shells. I am fascinated by the visual similaritiesfound in nature, including within the human body. For example, a branching fractal pattern canbe found in human veins, neurons, tree branches, river deltas, and lichen. By combining theseobservations, I demonstrate how humans and nature are interconnected.
This acrylic painting is a celebration of motherhood and breastfeeding, inspired by my nursing journey with my daughter. I combine human mammary gland/milk duct anatomical illustrations with hollyhocks, which stand out in my childhood memories. Hollyhocks were planted by my grandmother near the house on our family farm. My sister and I would use the blooms and buds to create dolls, crowns and necklaces. Hollyhocks symbolize growth and rebirth, and have associations with fertility, making them an ideal choice to commemorate the maternal body. I painted this after the watercolor painting, "Maternal Synthesis" was completed because I wanted to further explore the subject in a larger format with more detail added.
This watercolor painting is a celebration of motherhood and breastfeeding, inspired by my nursing journey with my daughter. I combine human mammary gland/milk duct anatomical illustrations with hollyhocks, which stand out in my childhood memories. Hollyhocks were planted by my grandmother near the house on our family farm. My sister and I would use the blooms and buds to create dolls, crowns and necklaces. Hollyhocks symbolize growth and rebirth, and have associations with fertility, making them an ideal choice to commemorate the maternal body.
I took this photo after my son Silas got a haircut after it had grown long. When he gets a haircut it's like we have a new kid, they look different and older. Silas is four years old and he painted the background, and I added his portrait on top.
This watercolor painting was named by my 2 year old daughter Sylvie, who painted the background. When I showed her the painting she immediately said, "I swinging." I wanted to capture her energetic, happy personality in this painting.
My work explores the beauty in our everyday surroundings. The common thread is a love for shooting common items, often overlooked and made beautiful, as well as unexpected perspectives.
At a minor league baseball game, I looked up as the lights came on and was struck by their positioning and beauty against the darkening sky.
I shot this photo while walking down Dickson Street in Fayetteville. It was not completely dark, so I had some help using available light without a tripod. I wanted the motion blur of his sticks. I determined my composition, braced myself and held my breath to prevent camera shake.
I am an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work investigates events and personal stories in the form of narrative art and reportage illustration. My practice is driven by curiosity and grows from a strong desire to document fragments of our human experience that often go unseen. I strive to highlight stories of resilience and transition from communities and individuals whose perspectives are underrepresented.
My process begins with in-depth investigations of my subjects. I collect a broad range of recordings, photographs, and drawings on-site. Once I have established a real connection and appreciated the nature of a story I begin the illustrating process. My methods are both traditional and digital, incorporating ink, watercolor, gouache, film photography, and digital editing into a truly mixed media narrative work. I am drawn to make this work because I believe that illustration and narrative art has the power to communicate stories in a way that is both beautiful and fundamentally different from the written word alone.
My sculptures often emerge from observations of social, political or cultural concerns. The old adage “don’t judge a book by its cover” stands true with my work. Objects in my work are seldom what they initially appear to be. Through the transformation of the familiar, I hope my work generates questions about reality, society, our self-perception, and how others perceive us. Being somewhat editorial in nature, my work is diverse in imagery, material and process. This diversity allows each sculpture the freedom to merge an aesthetic with concept.
Inspired by the composition of Johannes Brahms, Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz (Create in Me, Oh God, a Pure Heart), Mixed Media, 2024
This work gives pause to acknowledge and pay tribute to even the most mundane or overlooked aspects of our day-to-day existence. Life can, at times, obscure details rendering a cold clinical illusion. Contemplation and gratitude (or a simple bow or nod) may provide clarity. Found objects, wood, glass.
This work is intended to generate questions regarding the foods we eat, how they are developed, processed and for whom they benefit. Bronze
Skin Deep addresses issues of identity, insecurity and the concept of beauty. Steel, 2024
