In room 108, on the bottom floor of College of the Canyons’ Mentry Hall, attendees could appreciate students’ art cultivated throughout the semester during the 27th Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition.
Mediums exhibited included drawings, paintings, multimedia, photography, 2D and 3D designs, illustrations, graphic arts, printmaking, animation, mixed media, sculptures and even performance art.
Alma Juarez, art director of the art gallery, described the incentive of the annual exhibition.
“In spring, we always have students submit work from all of our visual arts disciplines. Work is juried, so we had over 150 submissions, and then from there we were not able to house all of them, so we have about 62 pieces here,” Juarez said. “This exhibition is for students to showcase what they have been working on and their hard work.”
Juarez, along with Jennifer Smolos Steele, dean of the School of Visual and Performing Arts, presented the students with the awards. According to Juarez, students who were selected and gave their work to the college were given $500, while those who wished to keep their work were still awarded $250.
“Some of the work will be purchased by the College of the Canyons Art Collection, and so those students who wish to part ways with their work will get $500,” Juarez said. “We have a great turnout.”
Among those who were recognized for their work was freshman Sally Rabadi, whose interactive sculptures “Grief” and “Handle Me With Care” turned heads.
Rabadi challenged herself in more than one way. The former was her first-ever life-sized sculpture, and the latter was her first time carving wood — a piece that resembles Rabadi’s face, where one can pull up her hair to showcase what’s inside her mind.
“Sculpting was my strong suit, and I always love to have an idea in my brain and create it and bring it to life. It makes me very satisfied and happy. For ‘Handle Me With Care,’ it was a lot of carving so I had to use new tools I’ve never used before,” Rabadi said.
Kneeling on the floor next to her life-sized sculpture, and tending to the grass in a black cloak, Rabadi described her thought process during her performance art for “Grief.”
“I came every day to perform an art piece for it. The performance is acknowledging my old self— I created this piece to acknowledge your old you who died in order to become who you are today,” Rabadi said. “Each day that I’d go in, I’d add new things into it, because when it got accepted, it was just the body, there was no greenery. Over time, I put in so much greenery like flowers, stuff like that.”
Rabadi hopes that anyone who sees her work will see a reflection of themselves, as well.
“I want people to relate to it and acknowledge how far you’ve come in your life because we’re all humans. I feel like it’s important to give ourselves a break and acknowledge who we were, and who we are now, in order to continue growing,” Rabadi said. “I hope they see some human connection to it.”
