Elon professor of art Ryan Rasmussen has spent the past year watching the six senior visual arts majors create their pieces for the senior art thesis exhibition that opened at Arts West on May 9.
“It’s a very rigorous, kind of experience for our seniors,” Rasmussen said. “They start to understand maybe what it is they’re trying to convey and communicate a little bit more. Each student is really on their own to figure out what it is about.”
Rasmussen said the exhibition is the culmination of ART 4970 and ART 4971: Senior Seminar I and II, a two-part course spanning the whole year. The fall semester is dedicated to cultivating a concept followed by in-depth research and an outpouring of creative ideas that is later refined during the spring, he said.
Junior Sarah Allan Straight, an art major who specializes in painting, came to the exhibition to support her friends and to gain inspiration for her thesis next year.
“It’s so cool to see, especially having seen them from the start,” Straight said. “And then now seeing the finished products, it’s really neat and it’s very intimidating because next year, it’s me, and that’s scary.”
Another viewer at the exhibition, sophomore Mary Todd, said she enjoyed how relaxed the environment was and connected with many of the pieces on display.
“Existing is art, in a way,” Todd said. “Everything that we do, the product of everything that we do, the remnants of what we are, we create, whether or not one considers themselves an artist.”
According to Rasmussen, the title of the exhibition, “Breaking the Frame,” came after each artist decided on their thesis. The title serves as a unifying factor between the distinct arts.
“Each student is working to kind of push the boundaries and the expectations of the disciplines that they’re navigating,” Rasmussen said. “It’s trying to break out of cultural narratives and historical normatives. We need to sort of live outside of the boundaries of expectation.”
Professor of art and environmental studies and chair of the art department, Samantha DiRosa, said she hopes viewers of the exhibition understand how much work the seniors put into their theses.
“A lot of our students share this with us, that their friends in other programs think, ‘Oh, you’re an art major, you’re just doing fun stuff all the time,’” DiRosa said. “But they’re sometimes pulling all-nighters, they’re getting projects done. It’s very high intensity, especially this senior year. I’m hoping people really can sense that level of rigor and that they’re impressed with the program and want to see more.”
The exhibition will be open until May 23 in Arts West Gallery 406.
James Eaton
Senior James Eaton did not like the thesis process at all.
“I draw for myself, not for a thesis,” Eaton said. “My work is just an obsession, I guess, with drawing.”
According to Eaton, he would get anxious when he had to explain his art. Eaton said it felt invasive and like he had to prove something.
“As much as I tell people there’s no depth, I’m sure there is. There’s something there. But I just don’t want to talk about it,” Eaton said. “It’s like drawing something, looking at it, being able to embrace it and emotionally let it out and walk away from it, and then people say, ‘Can you revisit it?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to.’”
According to Eaton, he wanted to show that he is creating something completely his own, taking bits and pieces of everything he has learned over the years. Eaton wanted to show that he “made this path,” he said.
“I’m not going to let the thesis confine me into a box because it feels so suffocating,” Eaton said. “As an artist, you have your right to draw and do what you want to do.”
Because of Eaton’s stubbornness throughout the thesis process, he said he wanted to make something unconventional. None of his work is finished in a traditional sense, except for one digitally created drawing of himself drowning, hanging at the top of a collage of raw and rough sketches.
Held together by staples and thumbtacks, Eaton said his sketches showcase the full range of what an artist can create. Eaton said he is fascinated by anatomy, and his sketches include many variations of arms, legs, bodies and random character designs.
Eaton also included sketches he intentionally ripped up and destroyed. He said he wanted to prove to himself that “they are not precious” and that he can create them again and again, hopefully making them better.
“Perfection is a huge problem nowadays with art. I don’t think a lot of people find the beauty of a sketch anymore,” Eaton said. “The sketch is like the fundamentals. The study of years of work is in one sketch.”
Eaton, heavily inspired by cartoons and music, said his thesis is a progression of how much he has grown as an illustrator and as something to look back on when he is more experienced.
“If I like the same things I liked two years ago, that means I didn’t grow at all,” Eaton said. “And there’s always room for growth, like all the time. There’s no limit to how good I can make my work.”
Zoe Gehtland
Senior artist Zoe Gehtland’s watercolor piece changed drastically from its conception. According to Gehtland, the initial concept was based on her interest in Japanese fashion, per a professor’s suggestion.
But struggling throughout the year led to an abrupt change in direction, which she decided about a month ago.
“Like the entire year, I just couldn’t do anything. Then I started to think like, ‘What would I like to draw? What would I like to make?’” Gehtland said. “And then I was like, ‘I like my friends and I like cosplay.’ And so that was the starting point.”
Cosplay – dressing up as a character from a book, movie or video game – is a community Gehtland and her friends have grown up with and watched develop. In her piece, Gehtland said she wanted to explore the hard work and meticulous detail that goes into cosplay.
“I want to show all the craftsmanship that makes it art, even though I don’t think a lot of people consider it art,” Gehtland said. “Cosplay is not just this nerdy little thing that people do, it’s just this creative explosion. And I want to show the joy that comes from not only creating that for yourself but sharing it with a community.”
Gehtland’s watercolor paintings are a triptych – a work of art divided into three panels – meant to be seen as a sequence. In this case, the three paintings represent three distinct stages of cosplay.
“Unofficially, step one is ‘The Making,’ step two is ‘The Putting On’ and step three is ‘The Wearing,’” Gehtland said. “My friends are who I’m depicting in costumes that they chose for me to draw them in.”
At the beginning of the year, Gehtland said she imagined herself painting self-portraits for her thesis rather than other people. However, she said it is more meaningful to have her friends in her art because the cosplay community is bigger than just one person.
“I’m trying to bring it into the art world in a way that hasn’t really happened before,” Gehtland said. “Watercolor is also not a very respected medium in the fine art world. So in that sense, I’m not doing any traditional art topics.”
Because of the sudden change in plans, Gehtland had to just feel the art. Instead of getting sucked into the tiny details, Gehtland said she had to learn how to loosen up and have more energy in her paint strokes.
“I’m not happy about the fact that I gave myself so little time, obviously,” Gehtland said. “But that time limit has helped me get a crash course on how to say, ‘It’s OK if it’s not perfect,’ and it’s made my pieces better.”
Alex Hambrick
With a background in video game design, Alex Hambrick said his early approach to his senior thesis series was primarily focused on visuals and aesthetics. But as the year went on, he decided to focus more on the concept behind his initial idea.
“It’s a lot less time-consuming to make aesthetically pleasing work that says nothing,” Hambrick said. “That just isn’t as interesting to me.”
Once he made that integral transition, Hambrick planned out his project in twofold, having a piece of wood half-painted white raised on a podium, and then digital scans of wood hanging behind the physical piece.
The podium is the main draw of the series, Hambrick said, as he is using it as a way to criticize the pristine and untouchable versions of art often displayed by museums.
“When you’re putting something on a pedestal, raising its level of importance, it completely ignores all of the other objects that are interconnected with that,” Hambrick said. “So it’s really a critique of how museums simplify things. There is no one sanitized version. There are so many deep dives and important things that are missed.”
According to Hambrick, the whole concept was inspired by his passion for mythology and what he believes to be the unfortunate reality of the constant reshaping of narratives through time. This is shown by the digital scans of the wood he carved.
“If we’re taking a scan of something, that scan is now added onto the meaning of the original object, because most people will only interact with the scan,” Hambrick said. “They’re not actually going to interact with the original piece.”
When creating the scans, Hambrick said an unintentional glitch distorted the scan of the wood. This glitch essentially caused information loss, which was shown in repeated horizontal lines halfway down some of the scans. Hambrick then decided to reflect that glitch on the podium, painting the wood white in the same place where the glitch started.
“I’m pushing that relationship between the digital and physical,” Hambrick said. “Like how we perceive the objects affects the objects themselves.”
Hambrick said he wants to continue this series once he graduates, as there is still so much more he wants to say with it. Hambrick also hopes that his art sparks debates and questions, encouraging a conversation and critical thinking about history and how it has evolved.
“It’s not interesting if everyone agrees with me,” Hambrick said. “I would much rather people poke holes in my logic than say, ‘Ah, yes, you did it. Good job. You did the thing. You fulfill the formula.’ In my mind, at least, it’s a catalyst for starting a thought.”
Jolie Patten
Colorful duct tape, cut-up cones, plexiglass, zip ties, a glittery mold of a human torso, paper chains and mini disco balls are just some of the many details of Jolie Patten’s senior thesis piece, which seeks to transport the viewers to a world where mundane items become extraordinary.
“It’s basically an immersive, interactive, psychedelic wonderland,” Patten said. “It’ll be walled off, so you can come inside of it and be in your own little world.”
Patten, who has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a genetic condition that makes the body’s connective tissue weaker than usual, said she wanted her piece to be big and elaborate while it still can.
“My disability is going to keep getting worse as I get older. So I don’t know how much time I have to be physically in the art world,” Patten said. “Creating something to this magnitude that’s just mine, this might be my only opportunity. So I’m going big.”
Patten’s piece is situated in the corner of the gallery, taking up two walls, with the other wall being made of paper chains, which are fashioned from abandoned student prints from photography classes.
Patten primarily works with reused and repurposed materials, which the exhibit highlights. Fifteen-year-old duct tape, pieces of old fabric, secondhand art store cones and abandoned art come together in Patten’s collage.
“I collect art materials and random things, and I’m like ‘I know I’m not gonna use this now, but I will use this eventually,’” Patten said. “Someone donated a sink. Why not use it?”
The sink is used in the collage as a sensory experience to immerse the viewer in Patten’s colorful and maximalist world. By using glow-in-the-dark cubes, disco balls and fabric scraps to add texture, Patten encourages everyone to have fun with her art.
“I’m disrupting the hierarchy of materials and the constructive fine art galleries where you can’t touch the art. Touch my art. Put your hands all over it,” Patten said. “I just want people to come in and not be afraid to play.”
Delanie Rourke
Delanie Rourke’s series combines functional and sculptural ceramics, highlighting the push and pull of human relationships. The functional pieces, such as pitchers and bowls, serve as a “mask” for the more abstract, sculptural pieces, Rourke said.
“The functional is what I would want an idealized world or relationships to look like and the sculptural kind of what they are in reality,” Rourke said.
According to Rourke, the pieces are based on her own personal relationships, with the sculptural pieces representing the messy, fractured realness of life. She said she wants people to look at her work and see their own relationships mirrored in the clay, positive or negative.
At the beginning of the year, Rourke said she embedded her pieces with the most minuscule details that only she could understand.
“I’d literally analyze every little piece. Like, this has this many things because it represents this or this has like four scratches,” Rourke said. “Every minor detail meant something.”
But Rourke said she quickly realized that no one else would be able to relate to her work and decided to take a step back and make her pieces more abstract.
“Art doesn’t always have to be so complicated,” Rourke said. “The wheel is where I am the most comfortable and it’s kind of like meditative for me and hopefully viewers can see that.”
Madison Williams
Madison Williams said her series is designed to take the viewer home and breaks the traditional way in which ceramics are displayed. Instead of putting her five ceramic bowls on a white pedestal, with stifling white light shining down on them, Williams incorporated furniture into her display, turning her exhibition into a living room.
“I want people to come into my space and feel like they’re going to their grandma’s living room or their mom’s house or their aunt’s house, and just kind of feel at home and feel represented,” Williams said. “They have a small space where they recognize their own identities outside of the space that they have to operate in every day.”
Each of Williams’ bowls represents a different Black hairstyle: Afros, locs, bantu knots, twists and shaved. These “hair bowls” are designed to celebrate each style’s individual beauty and uplift them in the form of dishware, Williams said.
“We don’t usually think about how our home is our safe space and how everything we curate in our home is a symbol of things that make us feel safe,” Williams said. “If you want to see yourself in every aspect of your home, why wouldn’t you want to see yourself in your dishes as well?”
Figuring out which hairstyles to include was difficult, Williams said, as there are so many to choose from and she didn’t want people to think she valued one style over another. The five styles included in the exhibition were inspired by Williams’ mom, who, according to Williams, is an unofficial hairstylist in their community.
“Art to me is what hair is to my mom. She’s very creative and we’ll come up with one-of-a-kind hairstyles that she still does for me today,” Williams said. “So I had to kind of narrow it down and think about, ‘What’s a hairstyle that my mom would give me,’ versus a hairstyle that I’ve seen a lot of people wear.”
According to Williams, there are not many Black artists at Elon. According to Williams, she is one of only two Black art majors in the class of 2025. Because of this, Williams said she wanted to have representation in the exhibition.
“Art is too vast to still only have the European perspective here,” Williams said. “This is the most technically complicated and meaningful artwork that I’ve ever created and I care that people enjoy it and see themselves in it. I don’t care about anything else, cause that’s why I want to make art.”