Meraki Art Show Reception

On Friday 12/8, I attended the art show reception in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery. The pieces were quite beautiful; each collection shone in its own way, and it was really great to see artwork hung up by my fellow peers. I was not aware that it was a senior exhibition, created by students in an upper level art class at Loyola. I learned that all of the students whose artwork was displayed in the show were enrolled in a course, where the entirety of the class was creating a piece of art that would be shown in a show. I think it is amazing how Loyola offers such a class which helps students complete resumes, put together a portfolio, and enter in competitions. It is a whole different type of career development that I was not previously exposed to. One of the artists from the exhibition explained to the audience that "Meraki", the name of the show, means the essence of putting yourself into your work. After looking at all of the works if art and hearing from the artists themselves, I can definitely see how hard each of them aimed to do just that.



There were two artworks that I enjoyed the most in the exhibition. The first was called "Essence" by Rachel Kingsley. This piece caught my eye right away, and not just because it was the first one that I saw when I entered the gallery. I was initially intrigued by the colors and the dark contrast behind the peoples faces. It really grabbed my attention. As I looked further and got closer to the work, I could really see the expressions on each of the subject's faces, and see how the paint and chalk were splattered across them. The artist, Rachel, spoke about how she wanted to translate how she saw these people in her life to color. Each color represents how she sees them and their personalities and characteristics that she sees in her eyes. The white powder represents what we project out to the rest of the world. I really liked how she then added that she wanted to capture the collision of the two (the color and powder) in the photos. It is a very powerful piece.

The second piece that resonated with me was called "Lula" by Kate Hegarty. I spent at least 10 minutes just staring at this one, because of the bright, vibrant colors and strong emotions from the women subjects. It reminded me of Andy Warhol's style, how he used bright colors and arranged his art in a grid style. At first, I loved how the colors were so bright and complimented each other nicely. I assumed that there was no meaning to the assignment of color to person in the photo. I then learned that there was a much deeper meaning to the colors that each woman had around them. The artist, Kate, is fascinated by people's auras, and asks us, what color is our soul? These 6 women are people who inspire her, and she impressed auras around them. The colors and flowers are her interpretation of their souls and auras, and it makes me want to get to know Kate better so she can paint my aura!