Senior studio art and screen studies students showcase final works
The Traina Center for the Arts came alive the night of Tuesday, April 29, as the annual screen studies film screening and the studio art senior thesis show provided an interdisciplinary, multi-media celebration of art from Visual & Performing Arts students.
The senior thesis show, “Vanishing Point,” which opened April 23 and is on view through May 19, features eleven artists across various mediums and scales. Just inside the Traina doors is a piece by Renée Knowles ’25 titled “POWIEDZ COŚ,” which includes lace curtains, family photos, and a projector showing a short film. “POWIEDZ COŚ” translates to “say something” in Polish, and the project explores Knowles’ relationship with the language and with her Polish grandmother.
“‘POWIEDZ COŚ’ traverses my relationship with someone whose connection transcended language. Inspired by early experimental and avant-garde film, moving images unravel this connection,” Knowles says.
The exhibition also includes “they told me it was normal” by AJ Orringer ’25, which comprises a series of painted canvas panels, suspended from the ceiling, depicting different aspects of Orringer’s body and “the effect of sexual trauma on the body.”
“I combined painting and embroidery to show how visceral these memories are,” Orringer says. “The front piece, called ‘Who Am I?’, is meant to physically portray the barrier I place between memories and the external world, and the smaller paintings connected by red thread show how my being, both physically and spiritually, is affected by the weight of what happened.”
The slashed and stitched-together panels move as one and draw the viewer through the suspended layers of painting.
Andrew Ferrari ’25 has created a series of collaged square photo panels altered with paint, titled “Collages Rearranged by Chance.”
“My process of creation and the resulting collages are a contradiction of control. The instructions are intentionally planned yet contain arbitrary decision systems that force chance and randomness,” Ferrari says. “This produces an outcome that is unpredictable, though its general look and effect is guaranteed.”
The instructions, Ferrari says, began as a way to encourage himself to complete the works and not remain paralyzed by decision-making.
Like the mixed-media work of the studio art senior thesis show, the screen studies film screening showcased works of multiple mediums. The projects grew out of courses led by faculty from disciplines often considered to be distinct from filmmaking, including Creative Writing Professor Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, a poet and novelist, and Studio Art Professor Jan Johnson, an interdisciplinary artist, and Studio Art Professor James Maurelle, a sculptor and interdisciplinary artist. Screen Studies Professor Soren Sorensen and Gutmann-Gonzalez, Johnson, and Maurelle hosted the screening.
“The energy in the room Tuesday was so joyful and celebratory,” says Sorensen. “I have to thank my colleagues in studio art and creative writing for inspiring our students’ wildly creative and mischievous films and helping to make the end of this semester so special and memorable.”
Zeke Fairley ’25 premiered the film “From the Cabin,” a short suspenseful drama in which a young man tries to make an impression on his pizza delivery driver, to disastrous effect.
“This film has been my main priority for the past year. In that time, I wrote the script, built the set, filmed the movie, and edited it, all with an incredible amount of help,” Fairley says. “We filmed between Vermont and Worcester from mid-January to late February, and I expended more energy than I ever have in my entire life. This project could not have happened without the support of my whole crew.”
Angel Rojas ’25 premiered the film “Channel Surfing,” an experimental documentary that preserves a family’s diasporic history from Peru to the United States.
The two films are honors thesis projects. The showing emphasized both the connections between the screen studies, studio art, and creative writing communities — and between students and their loved ones.
“I became quite emotional as Angel Rojas’ thesis film concluded,” says Sorensen. “The crowd was absolutely roaring, and Angel was hugging their sibling, who is featured in the film. I lost it. I’m just glad I brought tissues.”
The night also included a film from the Text & Image course taught by Johnson and Gutmann-Gonzalez, titled “Three Horses Named Renée.” This experimental short uses the cameraless technique of direct film manipulation. Students, working directly on the surface of 16mm film, incorporated techniques such as printing, drawing, scratching, painting, image and text transfer, splicing, cutting, collage, and sewing.
The Experimental Production class, taught by Maurelle, presented a series of experimental shorts that explore the visual landscape via multichannel, title sequence, essay film, and appropriated footage.
