Art and Art History Senior Integrated Projects
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This collection includes Senior Integrated Projects (SIPs, formerly known as Senior Individualized Projects) completed in the Art and Art History Department. Abstracts are generally available to the public, but PDF files are available only to current Kalamazoo College students, faculty, and staff. If you are not a current K College student, faculty, or staff member, email us at dspace@kzoo.edu to request access to a SIP.
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Item Meeting with Reality(2024-09-01) Amaya, Osman; Koenig, RichardThe reason I wanted to create this project, for starters, the community. I wanted to highlight the immigrant community in their effort to continue to put food on the plate, for continuing to make rent every month, for continuing to influence and give color to a country stained by power. We encapsule resistance. Everything that is to be acquired requires something in exchange. Sweat, tears, blood, sleepless nights, early mornings, days of exhaustion. Just a few interchangeable. The much that you plant will be what you reap. Although not exactly the case for those trying to harvest a future in a continuously changing system that provides floods containing fees, droughts of opportunities, and land displacements that make common labor standards not entirely applicable. Meeting with Reality comes from a place deep in the streets of Los Angeles. I started getting ideas to work around this topic within a certain artistic medium back in COVID times. That is when I became a practitioner of photography. As many, I started with the camera from my cellphone. The material I needed to develop a continuous conjunction of photos was all around me, it was the people that have always been around me. I had heroes, geniuses, businesswomen, entrepreneurs, survivors, and dreamers. Stories to tell, living proof that success doesn’t always equal to a sum of monetary belongings.Item Interim: A Photographic Exploration of The Concept of Liminality(2024-06-01) Garcia, Ana G.; Koenig, RichardThrough my work, I aim to explore American urban and suburban spaces under the concept of liminality while focusing on the interplay of formal photographic elements. The concept of liminality feels transdisciplinary. It challenges our perceptions of mundaneness and invites us to reconsider what we already know. These spaces I have chosen to document are places caught in transit, devoid of human interactions. They evoke feelings of familiarity, ambiguity, uncertainty, and nostalgia. Exploring these spaces guides my own understanding of the connection I have with the subconscious mind and soothes my curiosity about where I am situated within the world. Keywords: liminality, photographic, perceptions, spaces, ambiguityItem Fragility(2024-06-01) Manski, Brett; MacMillan, FirthThe objective of my Senior Integrated Project, entitled Fragility, was to develop several pieces of art using mixed-media sculptures to demonstrate the skills I have learned as an artist and to capture my struggles and personal growth during my college years. During this project I took advantage of several different materials including plaster, fabric, glass, gel beads, chicken wire, string/yarn, wood, purchased base items, materials found in the surrounding environment, and recycled materials. Techniques utilized included multi-use molds, glassblowing, wire-form, stringing, and sewing. I created seven pieces for my SIP exhibition, Blue, Rebuilt, Fractured, Connections, Untitled #4, Untitled #6, and Stuck in a Jar. At the beginning of this process, I was making art to learn a technique and to fulfill a class requirement. At the end of this project, I had found my creative process. Through these pieces I was able to express my emotions and document my personal growth. Although these are my steps in the journey, many of the stages of growth are likely applicable to the typical college experience.Item Dum Spiro Spero(2024-05-31) Mohr, Brooklyn C.; Rice, Thomas, 1960-I’d like to get this out of the way. I had what some may deem a turbulent adolescence. I don’t like to spend much time on it anymore, because I used to spend all my time on it. It was all I could talk or think about. However, I do think it’s worth this brief prelude. I had a turbulent adolescence. I tell you this because I am of the belief that all the very best works of human expression were made by people who understood, on some level or other, a fundamental truth about creation. In order for it to speak clearly, it must be about the Honest Feeling. The story (or image) holds its own merits, each with its purpose. But those are practical matters. Corporeal. So let’s focus on the feeling, shall we? I had a turbulent adolescence and the story, with all its pain and context, matters little.Item Mid-Thought : An Exploration of Feelings and Memories with the Help of Printmaking(2024-06-01) Ingram, Carolyn K.; Rice, Thomas, 1960-This article describes the methodology and ideology present during the creation and completion of Carolyn Ingram’s Senior Individualized Project (SIP). As she explored memories of growing up in Michigan with idyllic imagery to capture moments as well as deal with everyday stressors. Using printmaking, drawing and collage, Carolyn pieced together fragments to create an exhibit of shared nostalgia, peace and reverence for the natural world. The main object of her work was the use of linocut printmaking, where she moved away from using it traditionally with editions to utilize it as a free-flowing painterly tool of monoprint technique. With xerox transfers she merged her snap and shoot film with the softness of paper and printmaking. This sip explores multimedia, handmade paper, family imagery, and nature through traditional and modern printmaking techniques. With the use of multiple mediums, the consistency of mark making, colors, patterns and materials Carolyn created a cohesive sip that welcomed the viewer to slow down and be thankful.