Keystone senior exhibitions part of First Friday Scranton
Friday’s opening exhibits at ArtWorks and the AFA Gallery represent a tremendous investment of time and talent into the fine arts for the student artists involved this month. “This is more important than graduation,” said 24-year-old Howie Baird, of Dallas, one of 24 senior visual arts majors from Keystone College involved in the single largest senior exhibition the college has ever conducted. Keystone’s senior exhibits are the culmination of four years of instruction in the form of, materials used, and history behind the visual arts. The college has previously hosted staggered openings in Tunkhannock and Scranton. The first single-evening opening held last year featured about18 artists, according to Division of Fine Arts Chairman Ward Roe. “It’s the largest we’ve had at one particular time,” Roe said of the First Friday event on April 6. Some artists involved in the senior exhibit like photographer Alex Seeley, 23, of Lake Ariel, and book artist Shane Schilling, 22, of Clarks Summit have participated in First Friday before. For them, however, Friday’s show rises above the monthly openings involved in the art walk through downtown Scranton.
“It’s a representation of the four years we spent there (at Keystone) and is supposed to represent the growth we’ve gone through,” Seeley said. Each student is required to show a small body of work for the senior show. While each carries a different focus in terms of the medium used, many say the work they’re not exhibiting was just as crucial to their development as artists. “When I started, I never realized how important drawing classes or sculpture would apply to the other classed that I was more interested in,” Seeley said. “Now, I see how things like light, which we learn about in figure drawing, directly applies to photography.” “I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I wasn’t interested in learning anything else,” added Scranton resident and ceramist Roseann Rutledge, 22. “Now that I’m a senior, I’m so happy that I did.” Students quickly admit that there’s much more to being an artist than making pieces they find are worthy of exhibition. “That’s just a foot in the door,” said Baird, a sculptor. Seniors must complete the cross-disciplinary “Professional Practices” course, which encourages a dialogue with fellow students, allows them to prepare resumes and artist statements, and aids in the transition from student to professional artist. The senior exhibition is one focus of the program that highlights the business behind the art world. “They are responsible for every facet of this exhibit,” Roe said.
“They deal with the gallery director as any other artist would. The whole thing is designed to give them the responsibility and a taste of what it’s like to try to pull this off when you’re flying solo. “They all rise to this occasion and pull off creating a body of work that is, indeed, professional and is something that they’re very proud of.” Collaboration with all individuals in the fine arts division is sometimes the key to a young artist’s triumph. “The connections and interactions you have with peers and the faculty, that’s what I took from this… There’s a huge, vast world of interaction that you need to become a part of to be successful,” Schilling said. In the end, the students’ aspirations after their formal graduation in May are as diverse as the work they’ll exhibit this month. Baird has his sights on developing a studio, Schilling will attend Marywood University for a master’s degree in fine arts, Rutledge wants to move into event planning and interior design, and Seeley hopes to open a portrait business and expand his photojournalism portfolio. He is currently a correspondent for The Abington Journal and Go Lackawanna. Behind the canvas, clay, ink, and photo paper, the works exhibit pieces of the artists themselves. Baird, for example, said he fell into sculpture after leaving his engineering studies at Penn State University. “I couldn’t see myself doing anything else,” he said. “It’s a passion that I didn’t know I had, and it was cool to find it.
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