'Students Choose' and Express with VES

The “Students Choose” exhibit might have looked unwelcoming, tucked away in the Sert Gallery in the Carpenter Center. But this Visual and Environmental Studies exhibit was just the way to remind Harvard students of the power art can have and its sophisticated way of providing both artists and viewers an alternative way to explore and express.

The first segment of the two-part exhibit ran from January 20-30—the second part is currently on exhibition through February 13—and featured the work of 13 student artists from various fall semester VES studio classes. Each class voted on the piece of work they would like to exhibit. Some artists whose work was on display, however, did not even know they had been chosen to participate. The art gave a broad sampling of what goes on in the world of VES—often secluded from more traditional concentrations—with pieces in a range of media, including sculpture, photography, oil paintings, silk screening, music, and video. The exhibit as a whole provides visitors with a new sort of intellectual engagement distinct from lectures and paper writing, asking students to think beyond their concentration or what they’ve come to regard as the norm at Harvard.

Upon opening the heavy door to the Sert Gallery, viewers could stare into the face of Dorothy L. McLeod ’12, standing in her dorm room with a shadow on her face. The photograph entitled “The Skies are Different Here,” by Alissa C. Costello ’12, was part of a larger, semester-long project of creating portraits of about 40 different freshmen. The project became Costello’s way of exploring the freshmen transition and their struggle to combine Harvard’s expectations with their own. “I’m trying to reveal the limbo, the in-between period,” Costello said. “It’s such a profound time of transformation. The nuances of the shift for each individual each had their own way of falling onto the film.”

While Costello documented students’ discoveries of what it means to be a Harvard student, Isidore M. T. Bethel ’11 applied a standard Harvard skill, a knack for analyzing novels and film, to his video installation piece. The piece features three television screens, each with different repeating loops of film. The subjects, Mary C. Potter ’11 and her father Tom Potter, were first videotaped unscripted, in their normal environment. Their dialogue was then rearranged by Bethel to create a new story.

“By reflecting unrehearsed, nonfictional parts of these two people’s lives in fictionalized written and videotaped media,” Bethel said, “the fabric of their reality became something fictive, subject to the rules of analysis we apply to a novel or a film.”

Further into the gallery, faint whiffs of apple emanated from a crate filled with decaying red apples punctured with nails. Xinran Yuan ’10, also a Crimson photo editor, calls her sculpture from her VES 30 class the more literal interpretation of peer pressure and self-realization.

“I was dealing with evoking awareness of the space within people, this idea of inner space and searching for the traces of oneself,” Yuan said. “Eventually the whole piece is meant to decay.”

Kayla A. Escobedo ’12 continued the theme of personal development, using her oil painting as a way to acknowledge and commemorate her growth in her relationship with her father. The painting depicts her mother and father as collections of hands. Her mother’s hands reach outwards and her father’s hands inwards.

“I wanted to honor and respect my dad now that I’m finally getting to know him,” Escobedo said. “But I didn’t just want to paint him the way he looked. Our hands convey our personalities.”

A song created by Michael C. Soto ’09 as part of his piece provides background for the whole exhibit. His exhibits features his song, a mosaic of 16 silk-screens, and a rhythm machine with corresponding buttons featuring samples of music by the subjects in his silkscreens, such as Sufjan Stevens and Bill Collins.

Soto has always been enthralled by hip-hop music and the hip-hop community. Silkscreening, however, was Soto’s first venture into the VES department.

“There seems to be a disconnect between VES, other concentrations, and the way people think about art classes in general.” said Soto. “Harvard definitely has a culture of not taking it seriously and not really understanding what’s going on over in VES.”

Some students would have preferred a more comprehensive exhibit. Many of the pieces on display were only parts of larger bodies of work, and only a miniscule sampling of the wealth of creative talent at Harvard.

“There were 11 people in my class. We’re all students. None of us are ‘artists.’ We’re all still students,” Escobedo said. “While I am completely honored to be chosen, all students should get a chance to display their work. Everyone has beautiful and substantial works that no one knows about.”

—Staff Writer Erika P. Pierson can be reached at epierson@fas.harvard.edu.