By: Clare Daly | Staff Writer
The Best of Salve Students (or B.O.S.S.) art show consists of over 70 works in paintings, graphic design, fashion, and other mediums on display in Antone’s Dorrance H. Hamilton gallery. The pieces were chosen by professors of the various arts courses taught at Salve.
The works were judged by May Babcock, a local artist and upcoming Salve Art and Art History Residency Program student. Babcock is a papermaker and artist of many disciplines and is based out of Providence. The adjudicator awarded artists by medium, with honorable mentions awarded across the mediums. Her residency at the Hamilton Gallery begins Tuesday, December 3.
Karenna Waring, a sophomore Studio Art major from Seymour, Connecticut, said that in her piece “Water” her inspiration was green and blue glass. “I saw this photo and knew I needed to use it. I love the highly saturated colors of blue and green throughout the photo,” said Waring. “The blue and green tones made me automatically think of turtles.”
The piece is a digital work which opposes the use of single-use plastics and littering in order protect marine wildlife. Waring’s process involved “[using] Photoshop editing to make a surreal image” and “a lot of playing around with the tools to make the separate photos blend into one another and seem believable.”
Alix Hughes, a junior from Trumbull, Connecticut, painted a self-portrait for her painting class. She is an English Communications major with a Studio Art minor. In her piece, appropriately titled “Self-Portrait”, her blonde visage creates a stark contrast from the plum background of the small canvas.
Her process, which began by having her photo taken for reference, continued with work in class and ended with sleepless nights in Antone working to perfect her painting. “We took the pictures in class, and they weren’t supposed to be that flattering because it was supposed to push us out of our comfort zone to look at ourselves in a different way and light,” said Hughes. “It was also a little rushed because it was my final project in my painting class, but I would go to class time and spend my nights in the studio painting and jamming to music.”
Her inspiration was to prove to herself that her final project would represent all the techniques she’d learned throughout the class. “I wanted to make myself proud,” she said. “It’s hard to paint a self-portrait, you have to get rid of the judgement and idea of what you think it should look like and paint exactly what you see on the picture itself. But in the end, I was pleasantly surprised!” Outside of the studio, Hughes is a brand ambassador for The Two Oh Three, a family company which creates Connecticut-inspired apparel and lifestyle products.
To see the rest of Salve’s best student artwork, head to the Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery on the corner of Lawrence and Leroy Avenues. The Best of Salve Students show is only open until Wednesday, Oct. 2, so don’t wait!
PURPLE: Fashion and Fancy, an exhibition celebrating the color purple, features clothing from designers such as Oscar de la Renta, Fendi, and Vera Wang, and will open at the gallery on Thursday, October 10th.
Waring can be found on Instagram @karennawaring.
Hughes can be found on Instagram @alixryanhughes.
Photo Credit: @Gcorrphotos
