When the 10 senior art majors at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University were batting around names for the annual exhibition of their work, there was one that seemed to resonate more than any other.
“See You One Last Time.”
“What that means is that as a class we’re all going our different ways after graduation,” CSB senior Megan Novak said. “We don’t know the next time we’ll all be in the same place at the same time.
“Our college experience here has meant a lot to each of us. We’ve become a community, and this is the last time we’ll come together like this.”
The show is scheduled to be on display March 29 through May 10 in the Alice R Rogers and Target Galleries at SJU. A reception and artists talk are scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. on March 29.
The art galleries on both campuses are always free and open to the public.
The annual exhibition marks the capstone for the senior art majors – having taken the two-part Senior Studio Thesis course, which consists of a full-semester, four-credit class in the fall and a half-semester, two-credit class in the spring.
This year’s graduating class is notable in that it features Chenxu Yu, the first SJU art major to graduate in three years.
“This is a senior show and probably the last time all of us will make art on this campus,” said Yu, whose films were honored with three separate Broadcast Education Association Awards of Excellence special distinctions earlier this year.
“I think that’s why the title really seemed to fit for everybody.”
Yu’s contribution will feature a mix of film, photography, sculpture and computer art.
“There’s a lot of stuff there,” he said. “I was trying to summarize all the stuff I learned during my time on these campuses and present a full body of work to the audience.”
Novak’s portion of the show, meanwhile, features around 11 charcoal drawings depicting typical messes and moments of life.
“I wanted to try and find the untold stories in the ordinary,” she said. “Drawing messes I’ve seen lying around was a way to stop and notice things we take for granted while at the same time providing a very observational look at our lives.”
Yu, who attended high school in Chengdu, China, is this year’s co-director of Extending the Link, a non-profit, student-founded and student-run group that creates short documentary films dealing with under-reported global social justice issues.
He hopes to one day embark on a career in the television or film industry. But he said preparing his own artwork for display provided him with a different perspective on artistic creation.
“Filmmaking and art making are two very different processes,” he said. “When you’re making a film, you’re surrounded by actors and actresses, a cinematographer, a prop master, a production designer and a lot of other people. When you’re preparing for a gallery exhibition like this, you may still have some help. But most of the time it’s just you figuring out how to conceptualize your work.”
Novak, an Amery (Wisconsin) High School graduate, has a post-graduate internship lined up at Art in Motion on the Lake Wobegon Trail, an art gallery, event space and cafe in Holdingford.
Eventually, she hopes to pursue a career as an art gallery or museum curator. That makes the experience of preparing her work for a gallery presentation like this so valuable.
“I think it’s important for all of us as artists to get a look at what this process is like,” she said. “There’s a lot that goes into it. I had no idea how complicated it was.”