Works by 66 graduating seniors in painting, sculpture, graphic design, and BA in art cohort showcase range of themes and materials
Inside a brightly lit room in the College of Fine Arts last month, a group of senior painting majors stood together, surrounded by colorful canvases, paint-stained tables, and art supplies, an air of anticipation permeating the room. The students were waiting to find out when their works from the semester would receive their final critiques. Now, with critiques complete, the public can see many of those pieces on display in this year’s annual School of Visual Arts BFA thesis exhibition.
The show is on view at the 808 Gallery through May 10, and comprises work from this year’s painting, sculpture, and graphic design seniors. Across the street, students in the BA in Art program are presenting their thesis exhibitions at the College of Fine Arts Gallery 5. That show runs through May 16.
Graphic design student Kelly Guo (CFA’25) says working on her thesis exhibition throughout her senior year helped her realize broader patterns in her work. “The way I framed my thesis was that I am designing joy,” she says.
In the video above, Kelly Guo (CFA’25) talks about her work as a graphic design major and how she helped develop the branding identity for this year’s BFA Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition. Video by Nicolas Rocca
This year’s graduating seniors represent a dazzling range of voices and ideas. From environmental awareness to cultural memory, the themes reflected in the individual projects reveal the rich creative energy found among this year’s BFA and BA in Art graduates.
Painting
Seated inside her cozy sunlit studio leading up to this year’s undergraduate thesis exhibitions, Lauren Boysa (CAS’25, CFA’25) is surrounded by dried plants and her paintings inspired by the natural world. As she meticulously layers gesso on a panel, Boysa reflects on her artwork’s longtime connection to nature.
“I’m interested in creating space for conversation about the environment,” she says. “I don’t expect people to know exactly what I’m painting, but I want it to be reminiscent of the natural world, so that it can elicit memories in somebody about their connection to [it].”
Relying on subtlety and playing with negative space, Boysa captures the simplicity of nature in her work and hints at its various forms.
She depicts plants with painstaking detail, something that dovetails with her community engagement. Boysa helped start CFA’s color garden, a green space adjacent to the building where students can sustainably grow plants for pigments, dyes, and more.
A few studios over, Anthony Venturi (CFA’25 CAS’25) reveals a similar foray into the natural world in his studio. Decorated with wooden boards and brown-toned ink, it’s reminiscent of a woodworker’s shop.
“I’m interested in landscape, and I think landscape kind of comes in [to my work] as both material and subject matter,” says Venturi, who also helped start the color garden.
Venturi creates his own walnut ink and paints on wood surfaces. Using a palette of earthy colors and paint strokes that evoke dappled light, his pieces transport the viewer into the heart of a forest.
“I wanted to participate more in the process of creating materials as a way of understanding them better,” he says.
The BFA Painting Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave, through May 10. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm.
Sculpture
This year’s Sculpture BFA Thesis Exhibition includes work by four seniors. Corinne Nichols (CFA’25) says that having such an intimate cohort has allowed the group to work closely together and “get very invested in each other’s artwork. We play off of each other a lot.”
Nichols says her thesis project is influenced by records of decay. For example, some of her work uses old found wood with holes created by termites.
A combination of found and synthetic materials, her sculptures mimic natural phenomena—whether that be decay, invasive species, or simply a twisting branch—while introducing an innovative element to their depiction.
“I would hope that it would cause a closer looking at both the natural world and our domestic environments,” she says.
Kathryn Reno’s work—which includes both sculpture and painting—also seems to evoke domestic environments. Reno (CFA’25) has layered fabric scraps to create a colorful piece titled “Really safe in my cocoon.” Working off themes like collecting, childhood, and beauty, her sculptures recall the comfort of furnishing a space with found objects and memories.
The BFA Sculpture Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave, through May 10. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm.
Graphic Design
The playfulness and joy of childhood memories take center stage in Guo’s work. While her thesis project, titled Light as Air, Heavy as Time, nudges the viewer to consider vulnerable themes like forgotten dreams and unresolved emotions, there’s an undeniable gaiety in her pieces.
Much of that is due to the fact that her work is interactive, inviting viewers to describe their perfect Sunday or accomplish a short-term goal before the installation’s balloons deflate. It’s part of her focus on designing “experiences that people will remember forever” rather than fleetingly observed products, Guo says.
“What I want people to take away, mainly, is having a moment to relax and remember a part of themselves that they are close to forgetting,” she says.
Memory also plays an important role in the works of Kate Ragosta (CFA’25). But the graphic design artist uses a unique point of entry into her graphic design: printed matter.
“I used to work at a letterpress shop, which was a huge influence on my work,” she says. “Getting to interact with historical forms of making, handling the type, and manually printing everything gave me such a deep appreciation for where graphic design comes from.”
Accordingly, her work for the graphic design thesis exhibition includes text, folded pages, and other printed materials that influence the world we see outside. The pieces hint at the fleeting and changing nature of memories, and provoke a fascinating question—can we be trusted to narrate our own lives?
The thesis project by Sheryl Peng (CFA’25), titled Go Touch Grass, offers something quite different—a unique call to action. Through her work, she attempts to dismantle the divide between nature and culture, urging us to view nature as a collaborator rather than collateral damage.
She says the exhibition includes three parts: a visualization of the Animist manifesto, a toolkit on how to love a rock, and a speculative piece on how humans can photosynthesize. “My intention is that they’re kind of tacked together, and it’s a toolkit for reframing our relationship with nature,” Peng says.
The BFA Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave, through May 10. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm.
BA in Art
Launched four years ago, CFA’s BA in Art program combines traditional studio arts courses with liberal arts research. Anita Emokpae (CFA’25) says the major allows for flexibility and “the opportunity to really form your own path.”
Emokpae’s work on display in this year’s BA in Art Thesis Exhibition draws on her Nigerian heritage, using fabric to explore ancestral memory and generational knowledge.
“I don’t want to view fabric as a commodity,” she says. “I want to see how it can offer representational properties for learning, like creative pedagogy—how can it hold memories, experiences, and knowledge?”
Keep an eye out for the recurring blue in Emokpae’s work. It’s an homage to traditional Nigerian indigo-dyeing techniques, she says. Her project also includes a digital archive, with voice recordings of women in her family who hold important generational knowledge.
“I wanted to explore ways that I can learn outside of academia,” she says. “Just having conversations with people who are of older generations is also a valuable source for my project.”
The BA in Art Thesis Exhibition also includes work by seven other graduating seniors. Together, the shows ask viewers to consider the ways art intersects with fields as varied as science, technology, and literature.
The BA in Art Thesis Exhibition is on view at Gallery 5, 855 Comm Ave, from May 5 to May 16. Gallery 5 is on the CFA first floor and is open Monday to Friday, 7 am to 8:30 pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 9 am to 8:30 pm.