Remote learning has become the norm for most all of us amid the pandemic, but for artists enrolled in the Studio Art SYE  online learning has presented them with a unique set of adjustments and challenges. “This has been unlike any art class that I’ve taken during my time at St. Lawrence,” stated Abi Todd ’21. Greta Nystrom ’21, another artist in the class, pointed out that most of the work is now done outside of the 2 ½ hour Zoom class. “I really rely a lot on feedback from people while I’m doing it,” Nystrom said, “so it’s very different because we’re not working together.” 

Todd explained that while she is a painter and has unlimited access to the painting studio, students working in different mediums, such as print or ceramics, do not have that level of access to the print shop or ceramics studio.  “Senior seminar is ultimately a course that prepares you for a gallery exhibition in the Brush gallery,”  stated Todd, “and with that goal no longer possible due to COVID-19 it has been challenging to create work without the hopes of showing it to the student body.” 

As a Covid-19 safe alternative, the projects completed during this senior seminar are presented as two separate web-based exhibitions. “TIME” is the official title of the online exhibition and can be accessed through the following link: https://sites.stlawu.edu/artsyetime/artworks/ . According to the description found on the website, “artists worked in a variety of media and formats to explore how perceptions of time have shifted due to changing routines, often seemingly endless waiting,and other social upheavals.” 

Todd found inspiration in the mundane for her project, which is a series of original mixed media and digital colleges  “This year life has felt mundane in many ways and this project is a way for me to see the everyday images we see in the media,” she detailed. Todd considers herself a painter and often works with the photo realist style, but grew tired of this particular focus. “So far the project has challenged me to think outside of the box and create images that pop and reignite my love for the creative process,” she said. 

Nystrom’s project for the first web-based exhibition was a 9 ½ watercolor creation inspired by Freudian theories — titled “Cut.”  “Physically it’s the cut of the umbilical cord when the infant comes out of the womb and before the infant comes out they’re like one with the mother,” Nystrom stated, “and when the umbilical cord is cut then the infant’s reality kind of shifts and their reality becomes shaped by language, but before [the cut] it’s all feeling and intuition and being one [and] having a sense of wholeness with the mother.” “I was trying to do the feeling of the cut because not that I remember it as an infant, but I feel like it is traumatic and we can’t remember ourselves in the womb..I think that’s kind of cool.”

In this first project Nystrom placed babies in enclosed architectural spaces. “I did architecture stuff because I think cities and words are all kind of like formations of our reality [that] are so far from the cut.”

For her second project, Nystrom was thinking about her dreams and the dreams other people have. She wondered where we go when sleeping. “Are you in your body, outside your body, are you just in your mind, are you somewhere else,” Nystrom asked. To her, the sensation of sleeping is similar to suspension.

 And, wanting to work with an unconventional canvas, she incorporated barbies. “I have screws in the eyes and face… because I feel like that feels like sleeping. Something screwed on to your face and you can’t wake up,” Nystrom further explained. Then to capture the mood of the dreams, she is painting intricate patterns on top of the barbies. 

Make sure to check out the exhibition website for these projects and the works of other artists in the Studio Art SYE!