Senior Students on Display @ MIAD

May brings graduation day for multiple students, especially for the over 120 students at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) in the “MIAD 2011 Senior Thesis Exhibition,” which opened spring Gallery Night in April. The exhibition fills every gallery space in MIAD’s building on 273 East Erie Street and always requires more than one visit to properly view the seniors’ work. If there’s only a short time to attend the exhibition, the lobby and river level galleries give ample choices. MIAD students display work in various majors, or disciplines, ranging from pure fine art including drawing, painting, and sculpture to the Industrial and Interior Architecture Design projects. Often double areas of expertise interest a student , enhance another major and expand the career choices after graduation. In the first floor lobby, Kaycie Dunlap majors in Time Based Media and Animation. Her 2011 thesis presented a lively version to the very scientific Periodic Table of Elements, or what she titled “Elements in Character Design.” For her project Dunlap rendered each element in an appropriate color with a human figure depicting an element’s attribute. For element #1, Hydrogen, a tiny blue swirl encapsulated a child like person with the tag line, “Hydrogen is the smallest, lightest, and most abundant element in the universe.” Carbon’s illustration depicted a angular female figure that transitioned into three textures, with the face and one outstretched arm resembling a crystal because, as Dunlap wrote, “Carbon can take the form of charcoal, graphite and diamonds.” Another more obscure element, Tantalum (#73), claims to “be named after a Greek God taunted by food he could not reach.” A wizened man waits under a fruit branch in this picture, and through these emotive figures and table square format a visual learner could connect these fascinating personas to scientific facts. Dunlap demonstrates a very practical application to her major. Two other seniors exhibiting in the river level lobby offer an interesting take on photography. Mandie Lousier offers an exhibition “from me to you” with tiny images,two by three inches in a wallet size, of black and white photos lined along a shelf on the wall. Variations to the matte gradations in gray, from fog white to charred black, portray Lousier’s observations on the common, mundane occurrences in life from distorted perspectives or viewpoints. The miniature scale focuses the viewer’s attention to study the forgotten and overlooked through day or night, including a cup of cocoa from a bird’s eye view or a misty evening snow scene. How finite and small human life can be while remaining grand in artistic value. Lousier’s art journals and small books reflect poetic comments to these prints for perusing on shelves underneath the photos. Aimee Kiel's thesis may be out of sight, missed, with her image tucked in a darkened room on the river level, a curtain drawn in front of the door. The abstract photo appears to recall a field of long grass or grain wavering in the wind while light dances across the black and white image appearing to make it actually move, all surrounded by an ornate golden frame. Her imaginative installation leaves no clues to how the effect might be created (video over print, light shining on print) although the effect hypnotizes those person entering with a peaceful countenance. These three artists exemplify only a few selections from the expansive exhibition, which also occupies a large fourth floor MIAD gallery and three galleries on the river level. Takes some time before May 14 to discover MIAD's wonders, in its quality facilities and the seniors that worked so hard the past years to complete their thesis for their entry into the real work-a-day world.