Senior Art Exhibition – 2026

Location: Olin - Cyrus M. Running Art Gallery

A01. “An Act of Care”

Artist: Abigail Thurmer

“You see, but you do not observe”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Artist’s Statement

I often find myself relating daily life not to lived experience, but to literature. I see the characters’ faces in the strangers I meet or the daily challenges I encounter. Stories have become my framework for understanding the world. Softening its sharp edges and giving shape to its unpredictability. I am a comfort seeker. This body of work is for those who retreat into the forest, into their imagination, or the world of fiction. Searching for stillness within a consistently changing world. While several go most of their day with a sense of discomfort, there is quiet reassurance in the narratives we construct to make sense of the absurdity of the everyday. Art, like literature, transforms the mundane into something meaningful. Many people see, but few notice. How many can recall the exact pattern of freckles across a loved one’s face, or the number of tiles beneath their feet? Noticing is an act of care. It requires patience, and mostly presence. Throughout my time at Concordia, I have challenged myself to move beyond passive comfort, to become a person who notices. To be present and linger in moments of stillness found on the page, the sound of a brush on canvas, and in the presence of a loved one. Though the plaster casts The Sins of Our Youth to the Oil on Canvas portrait series, I aimed to notice how literature has changed the way I see the world and hope to see those in the world around me a little more deeply. I see art as a bridge between the tangible world and the written one. Both are rituals of repetition. We wake, we turn to the next page, and repeat. Yet no moment is experienced the same way twice. Through this work, I aim to honor the quiet, often overlooked details that shape our lives. To offer a space where observation of the words that form us and the people who change us becomes an act of care.

A02. “Exploring Through Making”

Artist: Giulio Angotti

Artist’s Statement

The act of making is an ongoing search for understanding, an exploration of my self, the material, and the world around me. This dialogue is created as I work to explore forces and energy through figure and form. As I draw from these inspirations, I find myself questioning what it means to be me, then exploring this open-ended question through making. This work exists to ask the question who am I, who are you, and who are we.

A03. “Juntos”

Artist: Grace Dowden

Artist’s Statement

For my work I used the mediums of clay, crochet, and beadwork to create a homelike environment. My intention is to encourage interaction with these pieces, people are invited to interact in ways they feel comfortable, and I hope that by interacting with my work people will step outside the usual gallery etiquette in order to form a sense of community. Community is a theme that goes through all of these works, the making of the pieces is community to me because I am surrounding myself with other people and cultures as I create. My hope is that through making them interactable there will also be a shared sense of community between the people who are viewing my works. I focused a lot on my own Mexican heritage and cultural identity because I wanted to better connect with myself and my community especially in our current climate. Choosing mediums that are traditionally seen as craft such as clay, crochet, and beading gave me a channel to explore culture in different ways. Beading is specifically a way to connect with the community I have here, since I was able to take part in an opportunity that gave me the space to learn more about local indigenous beading.

A04. “Aphrodite of Artemision”

Artist: Stella Peterson

Artist’s Statement

In the depiction of strength, society tends to associate it with the masculine. We may picture our local gym crawling with buff, muscular men who train for hours on end to achieve the conditions that society has set for them. On the other hand, femininity tends to be seen as a passive, quiet energy that is contradictory to the foundations of strength. It is often represented with a meek and humble persona that paves the way for restrictive gender codes. While strength and femininity are conventionally seen as mutually exclusive, what if we were to flip the narrative? What if strength were not portrayed in the masculine, but rather as a feminine energy we all exude? In the work Aphrodite of Artemision, a play on the statue Zeus of Artemision, the boundaries of how we perceive strength are stretched, specifically portraying it in a more feminine light. Though it is typically a masculine-coded term that we assign to the male sex, this work aims to recoin strength as a feminine characteristic. While femininity does not equate solely to women and can include any individual regardless of gender, sexuality, race, or other characteristics, it can be seen as an energy that radiates from our bodies. Through the use of digital photos that feature organic, flowing poses, this collection nudges the viewer’s perception of strength to include a feminine atmosphere. This series reveals the threads intertwining femininity and strength, redefining the complex relations we have with our gendered way of existing. Overall, feminine energy can emanate through the tender, loving moments of life, while also enhancing the strength and discipline it takes to be human.