Department of Fine Arts

Mid-Year Senior Show for the Class of 2021

Every December, the Fine Arts Department installs a show in the Dreitzer Gallery of the work students in senior studio have produced. This show allows students to take stock of the work they made during the fall and prepare for their final semester at Brandeis. Almost everything about the 2020-2021 academic year has been different and the 2021 Mid-Year Senior Exhibition was no different. In an effort to not lose this valuable experience, we hung a show in the halls of Goldman Schwartz featuring one piece from each of the seniors. This show welcomed all of our students back to Goldman Schwartz in February and it was a delight to see this work brighten up our hallways.

A nine-foot tall by four-foot wide landscape painting of a blue human wearing a dragon mask. The human is sitting under a tree holding a snake and there is a boar in the foreground.

Work by Anna Ginsburg.

An installation photograph of an Anna Ginsburg painting, Noah McNerney sculpture, and Zoe Gale text on wood grouping.

Work by Anna Ginsburg, Noah McNerney, and Zoe Gale.

An installation photograph of an Anna Kate Rattray painting, Zoe Gale text on wood, and Sarah Lavin painting.

Work by Anna Kate Rattray, Zoe Gale, and Sarah Lavin.

A two-foot tall by three-foot wide abstract painting that references a landscape. The color pallet stays within blues, uses whites and blacks, and utilizes a metallic sheen in the foreground to help give the painting space.

Work by Gabby Loeff.

A three-foot tall by four-foot wide colorful anime pop style painting that uses mostly primary colors with high hues. The imagery plays with space by showing a painting hanging on the wall with hands from a viewer penetrating its surface and mixing with the painted painting’s imagery.

Work by Isabel Cepeda.

A twelve-inch tall by four-inch wide ceramic hanging sculpture of an organic form. The top half is green, spikey, and looks like some kind of vegetation. The bottom half is brown, looks like deer antlers, though in this context reads as roots.

Work by John Lombardi.

Two twenty four-inch tall by thirty-inch wide painting by Joseph Nissembaum. The painting on the left is of a sunroom interior. This artwork is primarily painted in yellows and concentrates on light and perspective. The painting on the right is a night landscape. It has a limited pallet of blues and brown and again focuses on light and perspective.

Work by Joseph Nissembaum.

A hanging interactive installation made of paper and painted boards with a total size of five-feet tall by three-feet wide. This is an activist piece of artwork meant to educate the viewer on various disabilities. A stationary painted board at the bottom of the artwork declares, “DISABILITY RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS!” Above this text are multiple large paper cards the viewer can shift through to read informative facts about various disabilities.

Work by Lizzy Topper.

A five-foot tall by three-foot wide freestanding figurative wood sculpture. The figure is a split-faced and bodied person. One side is painted in warm colors with a smiling female looking upward at a 3D printed flower she is holding. The other side is painted in cool colors with a distraught male looking downward at his empty hand.

Work by Noah McNerney.

A four-inch tall by sixteen-inch wide plywood panel with the text, “i don’t care it’s obvious” painted on it. The text looks to be stenciled and each letter is painted either in red, blue, or yellow. It is in all lower case and there is a large gap between the words, “it’s” and “obvious.”

Work by Zoe Gale.

This is a series of nine paintings all ten-inches tall by six-inches wide hung in a horizontal line. Each is a different image of a freezer-refrigerator in a room with one or both of its doors open showing the contents. In some cases, the freezer-refrigerators are full and in others they are empty. The paintings play with color, pattern, and composition in a whimsical manner.

Work by Yuchan Li.

This is a figurative sculpture that stands four-feet tall and a foot and a half wide. It is wearing a sweater cape that drags another three-feet behind its body. The figure has the form of a tree trunk with a cased human face and hands. It is wearing a tall pointed crown and its body has a furry texture made of pieces of yarn. All of these elements give the sculpture a fairytale-type appearance.

Work by Xiuqi Han.

A two-foot tall by three-foot wide painting of a cropped green body lump. The body form has feet that are front and center in the composition. The fleshy layers of the lumped body are accentuated by being in relief. The relief sections read both as flesh wrinkles and vine-like organic matter that spreads throughout the surface of the painting and takes root in the ground.

Work by Sarah Lavin.