4 | MARCH 4-10, 2021 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
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ArtsWorcester College Show looks diff erent this year
“Corona Nightmare” digital art by Assumption University junior Nicholas Sposato. ARTSWORCESTER
Nicole Nelson Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
ArtsWorcester’s Annual College Show looks a little diff erent than in its previous 16 years. The 17th edition of this juried exhibition — for which students of any major attending a Worcester-area college can submit works in a wide range of artistic media — is entirely virtual and viewable online anywhere, anytime. The show opened Jan. 28 and will not be closing any time soon. Aprile Gallant, associate director of curatorial aff airs and senior curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Smith College Museum of Art, served as this year’s juror. She selected 51 works by 44 artists from nearly 180 submissions. “I had actually never heard of ArtsWorcester before and was really happy to learn about the organization,” explains Gallant, who chose three winners and awarded two honorable mentions. “It was hard to pick winners,” Gallant admits. “And it’s hard choosing art when there are so many diff erent mediums. I tried to be conscious of that and make sure I was including a range of mediums in my selection.” Alice Dillon of ArtsWorcester, who helped prepare the exhibition, points to the continuing progress of the student artists. “Every year the art is getting better, and we’re seeing people try new skills. One thing that’s good about the exhibition being online is that artists can include photos showcasing their process,” Dillon says. Each of the artworks also appears alongside a written statement by the creator, another advantage of an event built on Web pages. Of course, this year’s winter tradition
“It’s Just a Skull” by Tayla Cormier of Clark University. ARTSWORCESTER
for ArtsWorcester and the surrounding college community was anything but traditional. Gone was the festive and crowded opening night, with student artists discussing their works with visitors and each other, and even making a sale or two. Gallant also missed the hands-on experience. “They asked about a year in advance; before COVID. I was looking forward to seeing the works in person and I was sad that I wasn’t able to,” she said. “I view pieces of art as individual objects, and it’s not the same viewing them through a (computer) screen.” One of three top winners, Tayla Cormier, a Clark University senior and biology major, included two in-progress photos with her artist statement. “My
goal as an artist is to communicate, through many diff erent types of mediums, the beauty of what it means to be human,” Cormier writes. Cormier’s winning mixed-media piece, “It’s Just a Skull,” depicts musician Frank Ocean with lyrics from his song “White Ferrari.” The piece is both simple and immersive, with Ocean shown in half color and half grayscale combined with a collaged landscape dripping onto the white background. Ocean has “it’s just a skull” written on the palm of his hand. “Collage is new to me recently. I took a nature art class and we made diff erent types of stained paper. One was acorn paper. I decided I’d use it someday, and I did with this piece. I wanted it to be experimental,” Cormier says. Winner Yekaterina Martin, a senior studio art major at the College of the Holy Cross, did not include an artist state-
ment with her piece and let the work speak for itself. The asymmetrical composition of woven papers with a dangling rainbow of yarn in “Woven” has a deeply personal meaning that can be uncovered by looking closely at the piece, she pointed out. Martin explains that the papers she used to create this work are her own religious documents. “I classify my art as ex-Mormon art. I like making art about being raised in the Mormon religion and bringing issues up to the surface. This is an LGBTQ+ piece,” Martin says. “I crossed out every he/his/him in my patriarchal blessing when I was 16 and changed it to more gender-neutral language and included photocopies of it.” Another winner, Dana Mendes, a Secondary Education in Visual Arts major at Assumption University who gradSee SHOW, Page 5M
