Junior and senior artists at Princeton University share and discuss their work-in-progress on November 15
Students in fall drawing courses exhibit recent work
Visitors to a Lewis Center for the Arts Open Studios event learn about the work of one of the students in the Program in Visual Arts. Photo by Justin Goldberg
Juniors and seniors in the Program in Visual Arts at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts will open their studios to share and discuss their work-in-progress on Wednesday, November 15, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. at the Lewis Center, 185 Nassau Street. On November 9 through 22 students in the Program’s fall drawing courses will exhibit recent work. Both events are free and open to the public.
The evening of open studios will feature work by students in a wide range of media including photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, graphic design, scenic design, and film. The student artists, from the classes of 2018 and 2019, will be present to discuss their work.
With the opening of the new Lewis Arts complex and the move of the Programs in Dance, Theater, Music Theater and the Princeton Atelier from 185 Nassau Street to new spaces there, the Program in Visual Arts has begun to expand into recently vacated spaces at 185 Nassau, including adding more studios for classes and student artists and exhibition spaces.
“Our students often tell us that there is a lack of connection between their peers and the public, and what goes on inside 185 Nassau Street,” notes Fia Backström, Lecturer in the Visual Arts, who is working with the students on the project. “This open studios event offers the entire Princeton community a chance to see the creativity that goes on in the students’ studios and to chat with the creators behind the work, especially now as the program stretches out into additional spaces. This process of sharing what they are working on is highly beneficial to the students, while they are still in the midst of the creative process.”
The open studios event will begin at 4:30 p.m. with junior studios on the fourth floor and will continue at 5:15 p.m. with the senior studios on the second floor.
A junior in the Program in Visual Arts discusses her work with a guest at last year’s Open Studios event. Photo by Tiffany Richardson
Participating students include seniors Sandra Carpenter, Gabrielle Chen, Gabriella Chu, Logan Dziak, Imani N. Ford, Gabrielle Gibbons, Gwyndolyn Goldfeder, Heather E. Grace, Mihika Kapoor, Anhar Karim, Paulina King, Eric Li, Helen Lin, Kathleen Ma, Patrick Rooney, Rachel Schwartz, Angelica Vielma, Mariah J. Wilson, and Jonathan Zong; and juniors Anna Berghuis, Kara Bressler, Hudson Cooke, Rachel Cooper, Rami Farran, Caroline Gottlieb, Kyra Gregory, Cody Kohn, Susan Liu, David Lopera, Amanda Morrison, Isaiah Nieves, Kathryn Northrop, Elaine Romano, Sarah Sanneh, Mary Sauve, Nora Schultz, Pearl Thompson, Maya von Ziegesar, Alice Wang, Michelle Yeh, Yuan Yuan Zhao, and Jessica Zhou.
Refreshments will be served throughout the evening.
The Program in Visual Arts at the University offers courses in painting, drawing, graphic design, photography, sculpture, film and video production, and film history and theory. The studio courses in particular emphasize direct, hands-on art making under the guidance of practicing visual arts professionals. In order to develop their work, students are also given access to state-of-the-art technical, analog, and digital labs, including a fully functional letterpress studio.
Junior and senior students pursuing a major or certificate in visual arts have 24/7 access to shared studio loft spaces and semi-private studios, an unusual resource in an undergraduate visual arts program. Throughout the year, their work is exhibited in the Lucas Gallery, the new Hurley Gallery at the Lewis Arts complex, and screened in the James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, as well in other traditional and non-traditional venues on campus.
The Drawing Show will feature recent work by students in fall drawing courses including Drawing I, taught by Eve Aschheim and Nathan Carter, which approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing, and Advanced Drawing: The Figure, taught by Kurt Kauper, which is designed to teach students the skills necessary for drawing human figures as volumetric structures in clearly defined, illusionistic space using a range of techniques and materials.
To learn more about this event, the Program in Visual Arts, and the more than 100 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures offered each year at the Lewis Center, most of them free, visit arts.princeton.edu.
