Launch

This weekend was a big deal for all of the seniors in the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design, marking the sporadic openings of a citywide exhibition titled Launch, which showcases the thesis work they’ve been creating all year. Displayed in a variety of locations (the galleries of A&D aka 2000 Bonisteel Blvd., Work Gallery on State St., 325 Braun Ct. between Out Bar and The Bar, and The Yellow Barn/416 W. Huron), the results were across the board: there are eight-foot prints of caves hung from the ceiling, plants potted in concrete geometry, books bound like the Kells, books describing how to teach kids business through screen printing, books with illustrations drawn by hand, life size figure sketches that may as well be sculptures, chairs that change the way you sit, woodcut body contours, prints of fish guts, Minecrafted paintings, paintings of revolutionary leaders, shapes in a sand box, performance, poetry, installation – the variation was nothing short of overwhelming, in the best way. There’s enough to spend days simply looking, touching, listening, smelling, thinking; the most impressive part is that it was all made by students. Sometimes confused, stressed, and scared students, but dedicated students, talented students. Students I should be graduating with.

I switched into A&D from LSA after my freshman year; putting me behind in studio credits and flushing any hopes I had of a four-year undergraduate degree down the drain. Still, I’m friends with large amount of the class of 2014, and consider myself more closely related to them in the art school family tree than the ‘15ers. I was asked a hundred times about my “missing” work that didn’t exist yet. It was strange having spent all year listening to them talk about their ideas, materials, processes, ups and downs, heroic failures and happy accidents, to see it all come together in real concrete space. No more words, hand gestures, quick sketches – real stuff, each project a mirror image of its creator in some way, pieces of my friends hanging on walls or mounted to board, splashed on canvas, lying on the floor – proof of how seriously each artist took their work, a measure of their individual obsessions, priorities, an estimation of how much sleep they’d given up over the past few months. At first, it was really tough to separate the work from the person who made it. I realized this is how I’ll remember, or forget, every one of them. All of the memories, little strings tying together the people I’ve spent the past three years with, now anchored to these objects, images, gestures, staked down to the lattices of my mind.

Does this take away from any aspect of the exhibition? Of course not. The work stands on its own, and is simply augmented by the experiences and memories that have shaped my perception of each individual artist. I was lucky enough to witness the challenges, setbacks, inspirations, epiphanies, and everything in between, from a perspective that is simultaneously personal and detached. I feel as though I’ve taken a free prep course that’s allowed me to make an informed approach to my own project in the fall. I learned what’s possible to make in a year, what falls flat, how viewer interaction is the key to a visible response, how bigger is not always better (but most of the time it is), how to stick to my guns, how to stick it out. It felt strange to tell my peers I was proud of them, like my approval somehow validates their work, but I couldn’t help it. It felt awkward to thank them for making something they would have made anyway, but it had to be said. I’m proud and grateful to have made stuff beside these folks, to have known them and seen them grow into the artists and designers they are today. The majority of them don’t know where they’ll be in a few months, let alone a year from now, but I’m not worried. Each one has ventured into themselves and come out the other side unscathed; what better preparation for real life is there? One thing is for certain: they will be missed.