Senior Thesis at Wesleyan

We spent last week up in Middletown CT for a few days to attend Jessica's senior thesis presentation.  There were four weeks of thesis installations.  Each week there were about 4-6 projects installed from different seniors.  Jessica had the last week.  She was one of six.  Each of these installations were truly amazing.  Each body of work was impressive. 

Jessica spent the past 9 months traveling all around the east coast shooting impersonators.  She found them, hired them, drove to their homes or places of business and created the environment she was looking for.  Then she had them pose for her in what she visioned each piece to be.  That is only step one.  Then the photos have to be printed and fixed on photoshop (taking out the dust, the shadows that are not needed, the wire that randomly showed up, or the need to stitch a few photographers into one to create the right shot).  She had to narrow down which ones would be presented in the installation.  Get each of those photos framed and then hang her show.  The artist, the curator and the gallerist all into one. 

Jessica took her first photography class in 3rd grade.  Her high school gave her the ability to continue with photography the entire time she was there as there is a real focus on the arts at LREI.  She found something she is passionate about and something she has an incredible talent for.  I was blown away when I saw the installation as there were just a few of the photos she did not share with me.  She wanted me to have some surprises. 

Certainly not surprising to any one in my family I got very emotional when I saw the show.  My photos do not do hers justice but I did capture a few just to share.  I am sure Jessica will put them up on her site when graduation is over and she can take a step back and truly take in what she has created and certainly achieved. 

From the top is Snoop Dog, Cher, Albert Einstein, Obama and Batman and Robin.  I believe all and all there were more than 20 photos in the show and that was about 40% of the body of the work she took.

Here are the other seniors who were in the show.  This particular woman, Alahna Watson, did self-portraits of herself.  She must have been from the south.  Each pencil drawing was a different person but with her face.  The large piece of fried chicken was amazing.

This guy, Adam Forbes, was a math major who did analytics on Google as to what each of our value was to the company.  He did an art thesis on his work which is awesome.  He also got a job to start at Google this fall.

These were beautiful paintings of the inside of Versaille from a young woman, Arin Dineen.

Large creative paintings of men breaking things.  The series is called Build by Kevin Brisco

All and all and impressive show.