The BFA Senior Exhibition features a number of spatial works that depict personal experiences of artists using animals, a video game concept with colorful qualities and a collection of photos reflecting the life of someone loved and lost. 

From April 11-26, six seniors, ranging in majors from drawing, photography and integrated media, have work featured in the galleries that they feel best capture what their goal is for their show. 

Through this maze of artwork, viewers are able to capture what an artist learns at NKU and get an idea of the kind of work they produce. For the seniors featured in this year’s exhibition, they each took the opportunity to put together a show based on their individual interests and experiences, from fantasy to everyday challenges. 

At the end of each semester, graduating seniors in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program create their own show to be presented to gallery visitors for a number of weeks before commencement. This show acts as an opportunity for networking, and can give seniors an opportunity to showcase their work to potential employers or interested buyers. 

This exhibition serves as a last salute to the hours spent on obtaining a degree in the arts. With the help of the Director of Galleries and Outreach Paige Wideman, senior exhibition students are able to bring their show to life. 

Drawing BFA major Allison Insko describes Wideman to be a “secret sixth committee member” of her large support group in creating her final exhibition. 

Putting together a final show for their college career, these students are able to reflect on their time at NKU and talk about why their show is an extension of the work they have done in their years here. In addition to being able to reflect on their NKU experience, these students have the ability to extend their talents to the community.

Drawing BFA major and Director’s Purchase Award Winner Grady Gartland expressed that the gallery opens up the opportunity for possible job opportunities given by employers seeking assistance in their studios. 

“This leads to a lot of open doors that you might not expect because these exhibitions attract more than just your family and friends. They attract other galleries and professors from around the tri-state area,” Gartland said. 

Gartland expressed that outreach and “knowing a guy” is incredibly important in the art and design field, as connections are the driving force for graduating artists especially.

Allison Insko: Snapshots of Proswell 

Creating an alternate world where things aren’t what they seem, BFA drawing major Allison Insko took to expanding a previous work of hers through seven digital illustrations called “Snapshots of Proswell.” 

After completing a tabletop game in 2020 with a single character, she expanded upon this idea to focus on three characters: Catalina, Mathieu and Nat. The characters live in the city of Proswell in the state of East Caroline. 

Insko wants her audience to get to know her characters as well as how they interact with their environment. “My works are focused on establishing both the City of Proswell itself as well as introducing characters, groups and themes that will be important to my further explorations post-graduation,” she said. 

Though she has struggled with time management, Insko has taken great care and interest in the small details in her exhibition work, noting that this has been an integral part in taking them that much further. 

“Some things that have come to me easily are just the small little details that make a piece really come to life. So, like in one of my pieces, there’s a spice rack that’s visible and you can tell that the people that live there prefer the green hot sauce to the red hot sauce,” Insko explained. 

She hopes that others will find the topic of magical realism interesting as she will further expand on her ideas beyond graduation. 

“I’m just hoping that [the show] intrigues them. There isn’t a super big point I’m making but it’s supposed to serve as an introduction, sort of like an appetizer, to get your interest.” 

Looking back at her time at NKU, Insko felt that she was able to properly test out what mediums felt most like her. Going from graphic design to drawing, it has changed the way she previously thought about the craft. 

“I think it is really helpful that in the arts program they make you take a variety of classes before they let you specify,” she said. “I’ve really just sort of changed the way that I think about drawing. Even when I’m making paintings and stuff, I was considering cinematography techniques.”

Ty Holt: Tempomania

In a colorful world brought to life through gameplay, BFA drawing major Ty Holt created “Tempomania,” set in the land of Tempoto where one character must bring back color to the land. 

As explained on the game’s website, the game revolves around the main character, Sunni, and her adventures through Tempoto featuring nine different regions of the land. Each region “features enemies, items and characters exclusive to each region.” Most regions also have final boss battles which must be cleared to complete the game. 

“It’s almost, sort of, existentialist. I like to deal with existential, thematic topics within my work. She wakes up in a monochromatic, desolate version of her world that she seems to be unfamiliar with. She hasn’t lost her memories, but her appearance has been corrupted and her goal is to find out why the world has changed and how to undo the corruption,” Holt explained.

“I’m taking inspiration from primarily early 2000s video games, both in physical media and digital media. Making a project that is convincing enough that you believe it could be a real product,” Holt said.

He has created a website that includes the game information, character analyses, a map of the game and an online store to simulate the promotion material for a typical released video game. He has spent a great amount of time creating the characters, including their appearance and personalities, drawing inspiration from others.

“I draw a lot of inspiration from artists that I see online, but mostly from the video games that I play. When I play video games, I’m not only playing it just as entertainment, I am studying how the 3D models were made or how the textures look,” Holt said. 

In sharing his ability to create and design characters in his exhibition, he hopes that others will see his knack and consistency in concept art as this is his career goal after graduation. He also has realized that many have taken an interest in his video games concept. 

“I’ve had people tell me that they want to play the game now. I don’t have any experience with making video games but down the line it would be nice to realize this project,” Holt said.

Holt started conceptualizing and planning this project last summer, but some of the characters have been around for a long time in his work. He explained that their “purposes have changed over time, but decided that it’d be really interesting to develop a video game using their designs.” 

Priding himself on his abilities to bring a fictional world to life through character development, Holt had no problem sharing a class and professor at NKU that helped propel his abilities in this facet. 

“I think the classes that maybe revolutionized my experience as an artist were definitely figure drawing classes. Before figure drawing, I felt like I was good, but not good enough. Specifically Marc Leone taught the fundamentals of anatomy and poses and gesture and I think that helped propel the quality of my work I’m making for the show more,” Holt said.

Evey Cooper: Survived By

Creating a personal piece on childhood and the memories they have in their great grandmother’s farm house, BFA photography major Evey Cooper has put together a show that reflects the memories that come with growing up with a show called “Survived By.” 

After experiencing onset dementia for nearly two decades following a car accident, Cooper’s grandmother was placed into assisted living and passed away earlier this year. Realizing the deterioration of their great-grandmother’s former home that had sat vacant for about six years, Cooper began capturing the state of the home as it is, chronicling the decay and charm that still remains. 

“Seeing what I want out of the show and finding motivation for the show has been easy for me. I’ve had several people to make it for and I have a specific look in mind,” Cooper said. 

As someone who began their exhibition in December 2021, they have had their fair share of struggles in finding out where to finish their show off. While starting early gave them a chance to begin creating work for their show, it began with a broader approach, starting with capturing the house and evolving into what it is today. 

“I think whenever we hit this breakthrough of what it’s about, about it being my memory, then it started to really come together. It felt really more of a narrowed focus,” Cooper said. This was the driving point behind what they chose to photograph, as they incorporate old and new photos to complete a show based on past and present mementos of the home and their family. 

Cooper explained that their 10-year-old younger brother doesn’t have the same memories that they have with their grandmother, or “granny,” as they refer to her, and her former home. This has given them even more of a purpose to create images that truly capture their memories to relay them to their brother.

“I remember what it was like to be that age on the property and then now knowing that he has such a different experience even though it’s the same place, it’s the same house. Whenever I started making it, it felt like it would be a good thing to have and talk about whenever he’s older and wants to reflect,” they said. 

Cooper hopes that their audience, specifically those of the same age, will reflect on their own life experiences, memories, and loved ones, especially those they have lost and the places they hold dear. Over the past couple years, they have had a strong feeling of wanting to preserve the memories by documenting them for themself and others.

“I think now is when I’ve started to feel melancholic about family members and memories. I thought that it was maybe when I was a teenager and I am like, ‘Man I wish I was a kid again.’ But as a young adult in my 20s, it’s been kind of crazy to look back and start to feel really intensely about keeping my memories together of her,” Cooper explained. 

Through yearning to feel close to their granny’s memory, they hope that others, in being in the space with their pieces, will understand the intimacy behind their purpose. 

“I want it to feel close; warm like a memory. I want it to feel like somebody else’s memory that they don’t have. I want someone to walk in there and feel like they have been to that house before and seen those things before. They have lived my childhood,” Cooper said.

Grady Gartland: Emersion

Taking on a different approach to mental health struggles, BFA drawing major Grady Gartland created tactile and ornate animals with different themes relating to his personal experiences with anxiety and depression with his show, “Emersion.” 

Gartland explained that all of the animals he chose to sculpt, including rabbit, fox and mink, were ones he was exposed to in his childhood backyard growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. He is able to live vicariously through these animals in his exhibition, as they have given him a platform to explain who he is as an individual, specifically with his “behavioral and psychological” traits. 

“My childhood experiences are a big part of my work as well as my present experiences with understanding human interaction. Creating work about experiences that I often thought were very isolating and I end up understanding that things are very shared experiences which makes me feel a bit more comfortable,” Gartland explained. 

Ranging from about 15 inches to two feet, there are eight total pieces in his show. Though his focus is specifically in drawing, he decided to challenge himself in creating physical pieces that express the fullest extent of his feelings and emotions. “Drawings are just the bones, but my sculptures become the fullness of the artwork,” Gartland said.  

He explained that drawing these figures wasn’t “enough to make them come alive” and that their three-dimensional forms were how they were intended to be. 

A significant element used in this body of work is the expression of water and clouds to convey the heaviness and immersive qualities of mental health struggles. He specifically uses these two elements in tandem with the animals, as their fascinating qualities drew Gartland to them, as well as the symbolism they inhabit.

The use of clouds and water in his work has been a nod to the overwhelming feeling of his mental health which he describes as carrying a lot of weight in social situations.

“I think of emerging and submerging myself and hiding. With water it becomes a thing about this light fluid substance, but in mass quantities, it becomes this dangerous, heavy, almost dangerous aspect,” said Gartland.

He discussed the challenges that have arose while creating tangible pieces of work, as one of his sculptures fell off a wall. Focusing on sculpting pieces of work rather than drawing has come as a challenge for Gartland, as he even discussed the implications of using a hammer and screwdriver to create hanging methods for his works. 

Through symbolic expression of mental health issues through animorphism, Gartland hopes that his audience will see the topic of mental health as a destigmatized matter. 

“I want others to understand not only me as a person, but understand that we have shared experiences that sometimes we’re not familiar or comfortable with talking about yet. We all have these similar experiences that sometimes come off as taboo or they come off as opposites but yet here we are still confronting them to this day,” Gartland said. 

With his time at NKU, Gartland said he has learned to be confident in his work and stand up for what he believes in.

“Be an advocate for yourself and your work, because if you’re not confident in your work, it will show,” he said.

Sydney Decker: Rhapsody & Reverie

Taking a detailed and meticulous approach to character design, BFA drawing major Sydney Decker has created five individual characters with colorful personalities and appearances in her show “Rhapsody & Reverie.”

Starting on the rough designs of these characters in middle school, Decker chose to further their personalities and stories by telling them on a wider scale. Their appearances were first inspired by the hit TV anime show “Dragon Ball Z” and its original characters, but have changed significantly over the years. 

“I’ve never really had an opportunity to tell anybody about [the characters] though, so when the show came around, I was told the concept of it and figured now would be a good time to actually tell a story,” she said. 

The characters, Vidalea, Latil, Cresster, Cardan and Marlick, each have individual personalities. Videalea and Latil are opposites of one another, as Videalea is kind and selfless, while Latil is impulsive and selfish. When Decker speaks about Latil, she says “imagine if all your impulsive thoughts were rolled into one, and then turned into a new person and set loose on the world.”

Cresster is obsessed with technology while also trying to make friends. Unlike Cresster, Cardan only speaks to his closest friends and family and is quiet and reserved. With this familial attribute comes the last of the group, Marlick, who is loyal and protective of his family while also being quite stubborn. 

Coming up with each of their personalities has been a working progress, as she has plenty of time to spend on perfecting her vision on who they should be and what they should look like since starting on her show two semesters ago. 

“At first it was ‘this character is nice, this character is hot headed, this character is antisocial’ and then it kind of spread out from there. Some of them are based on people I know, but only lightly,” Decker said. 

Unforeseen technical issues set her back a couple weeks, causing her to not finish the show last semester, she said. This resulted in her not finishing before the BFA Senior Exhibition in the Fall of 2023. 

This didn’t stop Decker from achieving her vision of the characters. 

 “I guess just the idea of what I want them to be because there’s always an idea in my head of what I want them to be like, but specifically when talking to my committee, they want me to work on that more,” Decker said

The people around her have helped bring her vision to life in the physical design of the characters specifically, as she noted that she can think of an idea, but doesn’t always know how to execute it. This is something that she hopes her audience will take away: the ability to understand the characters and their stories.

“I want people, first of all, to know what I’m trying to convey. I want people to understand the story. I want people to grow some sort of attachment to these characters. Not necessarily the same kind of attachment that I have, but I want people to like these characters,” Decker said