2012 Emerging Artists from Xavier University

Annually, junior and senior art majors from local universities, representing the next generation of artists to emerge on the local art scene, are nominated by their professors, juried by SFC and are afforded the opportunity to exhibit their work among their peers. 

A continuing partnership with the Malton Gallery offers the students an opportunity to visit a professional gallery and get a hands on Q & A with the gallery owner on professional practices.  And NEW in 2011, the Malton Gallery awarded two (2) Gallery Choice awards, presented at the Opening Reception. 

In addition to the two Gallery Choice Awards, Summerfair Cincinnati (in 2011) implemented a new scholarship of one (1) $1,000 Purchase Award.  Selected by a jury of professional working artists, the selected artwork will hang on permanent display in the SFC Gallery. 

The following three (3) students were juried in from a list of nominees presented by our fifth (and final) participating school; Xavier University:

Natalie Clark

Natalie Clark is an artist living and working in Cincinnati, OH who is receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts Photography and Graphic Design, with a minor in Art History. She will obtain her diploma in May 2011, and will forever cherish the most expensive piece of paper she will ever receive. 

Natalie is from a family of five raised in rural Owensboro, KY where she found herself unfulfilled and bored. To spice up her life, she fell in love with traveling. This love is everlasting, inspiring, and first occurred when she was fourteen during her trip to Holland. She has returned to Europe several times, traveled to New Zealand and Canada, and will embark on a journey to India in September 2012. Funded by a research grant received through the Brueggeman Fellowship, A Center for Dialogue, she will be studying Hinduism, meditation, and yoga while documenting photographically and journaling alongside in preparation for her first book, which will be protectively published in May 2013. All of Natalie’s past and future travels change her general perspectives, outlooks, and her artwork accordingly.

In addition to traveling, Natalie enjoys getting involved with community-oriented projects, planning, organizing, and volunteering her time at Art Beyond Boundaries, a non-profit gallery in historic Over the Rhine, Cincinnati. She has worked at the gallery for the past two years as a gallery assistant and graphic designer.

Natalie has produced an extensive amount of pro-bono design work and photography. She has also worked with several clients, done wedding photography, events, and portraits.

Artist Statement:

Nature’s conflicting attributes of order and chaos are the driving force behind my work both visually and thematically. These themes have been important to human beings throughout history, and continue to mystify us in the modern world. While nature’s chaos is often believed to be mere randomization, its undeniable order reveals that there is somehow logic to her beauty.  

The pure connection between chaos and order is what I aim to explore through images of the human figure in this series. The presentation of these images will investigate the chaotic nature of human beings by displaying both their natural complexity as well as their inherent order. The frames will be a means of restriction, to hold and constrict the chaotic depiction of the abstracted nude figure within.

To achieve my own visual interpretation of chaos, I will be photographing into concave/convex mirrors to distort desired components of the figure. All of my photographs will be presented in black and white in order to examine each figure individually, formally, and as a part of a timeless, unified series. As each photograph will be individually chaotic, it will also become a component of an evolving series of chaos and order.  Making sense of the images or placing them in order will give form to chaos without diminishing their chaotic nature, creating a thought-provoking analogy for nature –which is ever changing, ever altering, and beautiful.

Elizabeth Guilford

Elizabeth Guilford is currently a senior art major, with a drawing and painting concentration working in a variety of mediums, not limited to one style.  She is the president of the Xavier Art Club, SVA.  Elizabeth currently lives in Guilford, Indiana with her parents and younger siblings.  A competitive gymnast for ten years, she now coaches preschool and kindergarten gymnastic classes.  In her spare time, she has numerous hobbies such as dancing and playing the harp.

Artist Statement:

“To read is to fly:  it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.”  A.C. Grayling

I have loved to read for as long as I can remember.  When I was young, my Dad would read poems and stories to me before bed every night.  We read a variety of different works; everything from Dr. Suess books, Charlotte’s Web and Shel Silverstein poems.  This is one of my favorite childhood memories that I believe sparked my love of literature.  These childhood memories of reading with my father were the starting point for my illustration-based work.

In this series, I am focusing on those stories and poems that I enjoyed reading as I grew up.  I am taking my favorite poems, stories or classic books and trying to capture the mood of the stories in one single illustration.  Each piece focuses on a separate story.  The pieces, although done in the same mixed media illustration technique, are very different from each other because they are representing the tone and mood of the individual story they depict.  I wish to share with the viewer the mood or feeling that I took away from reading each book, so that the viewer may share in a moment of my excitement as a child, reading these books for the first time.  Some of the stories are well known, like Treasure Island; some stories are more obscure, like the Greek myth “Apollo and Daphne.”

Either way, I hope that the viewer will experience and enjoy a moment experiencing my favorite stories through my illustrations.

Carly Renner

A graduate of William Mason High School, Carly is a junior Fine Arts major and Art Education minor. Outside of the studio, her free time revolves around helping others in the community, whether painting with stroke victims at the Drake Center, or going on outings with the brain damaged residents at St. Joseph Home. She is an active member of the Society of Visual Artists (SVA), the student run fine arts organization at Xavier. Her artwork, particularly in ceramics and printmaking, can be seen in the Xavier annual student exhibitions. All of her curricular and extracurricular activities are nurturing her love for the teaching of art at all levels.

Artist Statement:

Working in the clay medium allows me to escape from the stressful world I am surrounded by, and allows me to relax and think freely. It wasn’t until recently that I have learned to appreciate clay and how I can express my inner feelings within the multitude of forms, surfaces, and colors. My emotions, directly or indirectly, result in a creation from my deepest sentiments. In Ceramics I during the fall of 2010, we researched various cultures and their work. I chose a Native American Pueblo pot and an ancient Japanese Jomon vessel to replicate, in addition to my mask inspired by Ganesha, a God of the Hindu religion. My love for carving along with a passion for vessels drew me into my current body of work. My most recent creations are Burst and Wave, two handbuilt vessels where I discovered a carving technique that carried me throughout the semester.