After months of preparation, five SVSU students will culminate their creative endeavors in a BFA Seminar exhibition put on entirely through their own efforts.
The five students are Alison Bur, Logan Mooney, Miles Nitz, Myles Roznowski and Garrett Weslock.
The show came out of a course these students are taking: BFA Seminar.
Part of the requirements for the class was for them to put on a group show without any assistance from professors or the chosen venue.
“We had to do everything,” Bur said. “From vendors to PR to buying food. It’s really about helping us make local connections and establishing ourselves as professional artists.”
The show will take place at the Saginaw Art Museum.
A sixth member of the class, Eric Birkle, is employed there and when the museum expressed a need for another show in the local artisan wing, Birkle was able to make the connection.
According to Bur, they each are showing two pieces from their specific areas of focus.
Bur is an art major and focuses in photography.
Her pieces are part of the larger series she’s titled “Dissolve,” which focuses on how people blend in to the landscapes they create.
“They are large format, double-exposure photographs and both are of my brother,” Bur explained. “One is in a cityscape to focus on the Detroit area and the other in front of a trailer to represent different living situations.”
Bur explained that her pieces focus on changes in personal environments, especially the transition from rural to urban areas.
“They have a very serious tone, very dark,” Bur said. “I don’t like scary movies or shows but I like dark, creepy scenes. I wanted to show the positives and negatives of these landscapes.”
In a cohesive contrast to Bur’s work, Myles Roznowski’s silkscreen prints offer a balance of color to her dark photography.
Roznowski is a BFA major focusing in photography but chose to display two of his silkscreen mix media works.
“I like long process things, where the medium expresses my precision and control,” Roznowski explained. “But these pieces are also more expressive, so they show both sides.”
Roznowski hopes that coming out the show will let students, especially younger art students, see where their classmates are and be able to ask about the process they took to get there.
BFA major Logan Mooney emphasized the importance of coming out to the show as a great place to experience some off-campus culture.
“It’s a great place to meet with artists and learn something about the art community,” he said. “Maybe students will even learn something about themselves.”
Mooney works mainly in graphic design and is showing two vector illustrations.
He focuses on complex images with hidden elements that are pulled from sketches and traced photos.
“It changes constantly right up until it’s printed,” he said. “I want viewers to compose their own narrative.”
As the only artist with three-dimensional works out of the group, Garrett Weslock provided context for the show as a whole.
Weslock is a BFA student focusing on ceramics and has two pieces from a series on love. He contrasts society’s view on love with what love actually is.
“I want to show that love isn’t a series of things we have, but something we actually do.”
Although Weslock’s pieces focus on it most directly, he sees the entire show as an expression against blindly accepted social norms.
“Our generation is looking at what the generation before has created,” Weslock said. “We’re in a state where we are uncomfortable by it, but we don’t know exactly what to do about it.”
Weslock sees this underlying theme as the connection for the entire show as each individual artist explores certain areas of this uncertainty.
The exhibit opening will be Tuesday, March 17 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
It is open to the public with free admission and light refreshments, including a keg.
“It’s important to be aware of what current students are doing,” Bur added. “You don’t have to be an artist to enjoy this and you never know what you might be inspired by, no matter what your major.”
