Senior BFA Exhibition to showcase student artwork and designs

Seniors will showcase their year's work before they graduate at the Senior BFA Exhibition, as part of their requirement to receive their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Southeast Missouri State University.

Ryan Paluczak is a printmaking student who will exhibit his work Dec. 9 -13. He plans to show his work with Candace Corgan and Tiffany Kohler at the River Campus' Art Gallery.

Paluczak will feature some 75 small wall installations and six big prints.

"My work tends to be more minimal," Paluczak said. "I'm not interested in action, excitement, or boldness, but rather the seemingly mundane or solemn. I feel this is a more accurate reproduction of everyday human emotion and my personal life experience."

Paluczak's work is heavily influenced by music and sound.

"I have always been more audio than visual, but working with both ways allows me to see articulations in different media," Paluczak said. "The audio informs the visual and vice versa. My work is often lyrical, dark, ambient and atmospheric, mimicking the music I make and the music that inspires me."

Paluczak also plans to have the first live installation piece.

"I'm going to have my guitar set up with my amp and all my effects pedals and then periodically during the opening I'm going to play," Paluczak said.

The music will play constantly during the show.

"With the effects pedals, I can add a lot of reverb and delay so I can play and then walk away and it will keep going, so there's not going to be breaks in sound, but I'm not going to be playing constantly," Paluczak said.

Kohler is a ceramics student and plans to bring more of a 3-D aspect to the show.

"I've always been an arts person and I had my first ceramics class and I just really like being able to manipulate materials in my hands and feel it and how relaxing it was," Kohler said. "I'm more drawn toward the 3-D and I think ceramics a little more different because it can still be artistic and functional."

Kohler originally wanted to show functional pieces in the show, like pottery, but decided to do pieces that would have more impact on the viewer.

"[The pieces] are meant to very loosely represent people or situations," Kohler said. "My brother is a three-time cancer survivor, so the show is about him and how it affected our family and everything we've been through. Each piece is a different moment or situation and stuff inside of them will be various things."

Kohler said that she will place objects, like toys, inside her ceramics pieces.

"One piece is supposed to be about all of the kids we saw at the hospital, so it will have cool toys in them," Kohler said.

Printmaking student Candace Corgan, will also show some 10 pieces on Dec. 9 -13.

Corgan's show will contrast to Paluczak's show because she said her pieces are the opposite of minimal: Corgan plans to focus on the death penalty.

"Last semester I started working on the subject because I was trying to think of a way to show people how I deal with emotions," Corgan said. "Usually if I get upset, I'll just make a joke. The death penalty interests me and makes me feel uncomfortable, so I want to show it to other people, but to show it as how my emotions would come out, like as to make a joke on top of it."

Corgan said she tries to make pretty images of horrible things and then throw in some humor. For example, Corgan will show a piece that will feature a strangulation device, and the text will say, "I could just squeeze you to death."

The shows will feature a two-hour-long reception, which will include free food and drinks for visitors, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Dec. 6, 13 and 20.

The Senior BFA show will run from Dec. 2 - 6, Dec. 9 - 13, Dec. 16 - 20 at the River Campus Art Gallery, located in the Seminary Building, Room 106. The gallery is open from 1 - 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

"It's really just a great atmosphere," Kohler said. "Everyone's friendly and just step out and expand your horizons and see what other people are doing in the community."