On March 22, the Senior Capstone Show opened at the Juniata Museum of Art, giving the Juniata community an opportunity to see the creations of the senior art students. Monika Malewska, assistant professor of art, describes some specifics of the show:

Q: What kinds of art are included in the Senior Capstone Show?

A: Well, we have painting, drawing, ceramics work, and mixed media. All the 3D work is from Professor Benson’s class. We didn’t have photography this time. In terms of students, we have six. Four students were working with me, and two in Professor Benson’s class.

Q: How does the show help the art students in their field?

A: It’s an upper-division class that is part of the coursework, and some of them have taken it for the whole year. Not all of the work that was generated for the class is in this exhibit. The students write a proposal to the professor for a project, which gets approved or modified, so that they have a clear idea of what they will be working on. For the process, they develop their idea and sometimes it changes. In the past, we have had students who ended up getting into graduate programs because they had an opportunity to develop their body of work and think about art critically, thinking about a portfolio and job applications or graduate program prospects.

Q: About how much time to students spend on their pieces?

A: For the class, the upper-division painting students meet twice a week for two-and-a-half hours. There are also five to 10 work hours, probably more than ten, outside of class.

Q: How do the students decide what they want to include?

A: Well, this is the second time we’re doing it. The space doesn’t change, but the number of students does. This time the number of pieces that the students could include was three, because of the size of the building and the exhibition space. They have chosen the best pieces based on what they have generated over the year.

Q: How popular was the senior show?

A: A lot of people came in. Just from the opening night, it was close to a record. It seems like it’s getting a lot of buzz, and the funny thing is that the show was not even really planned. We had a week of time between two exhibitions, so we decided experimentally to do the show. It was not initially in the original plans for the museum. We might continue doing that. This was also the first show where the students had to hang the work themselves. Normally, for the student exhibits, we have help from museum studies. This time, we got some advice from some of the museum studies students, but the capstone students did it themselves.

Q: What will happen to the pieces after the show?

A: Well, they will be taken home by the students, although I might show a few of them at the Liberal Art Symposium. I think we will have space. A colleague of mine was interested in buying one of the pieces, so maybe something will end up being sold.

~Laura Bitely ’14, Juniata Online Journalist