Lizzie Martinez

Four students, four styles and four unique experiences at Linfield. One exhibit.
“Echo,” the 2009 Thesis Exhibition, opened May 13 with an artist’s introduction and will remain on dispay through May 30. The exhibit features works by seniors Ryan Gerdes, Laura Johnson, Zach Mitlas and Joe Robinson.
For some majors, the culminating project is an essay or a research project that may or may not be useful to a future career. But for studio art majors, the thesis is a direct representation of everything they have learned, experienced and seen.
“This exhibit represents the last four years: friends, relationships,” Gerdes said. “Even now I’m still figuring out what it all means.”
Like most of the graduates, the art majors who created the exhibit are headed in different directions. But on May 13, they came together to talk about their pieces and how they are all the same yet different.
The title of the exhibit comes from the idea that all of the four artist’s styles have underlying themes that are similar, though they may be hidden.
“What one person was doing was playing off the ideas of others,” Mitlas said. “We were aware of the ideas floating around in our [senior seminar].”
For example, Mitlas and Johnson shared styles in their portions of the exhibit. Johnson focused on
semirepresentational sculptures, or sculptures with elements of painting, while Mitlas used painting with sculptural elements, such as gluing objects onto a canvas and painting over them.
Though each student’s focus is different, he or she can appreciate and help each other plan these final projects with critiques offered in their senior seminar class. And, although each artist has his or her own style, each of the students pushed the boundaries of his or her experience to create new and exciting pieces of the exhibit.
For Gerdes, the thesis exhibit is radically different from anything he has done previously.
“After each semester, I am ready to try something new,” Gerdes said. “I’m already done with [vector illustrations]. Now I’m using Photoshop and Illustrator to create short films using stop-action.”
His work for “Echo” pushed him to try a new form of art that was structurally opposite of his usual work. A class taught by Professor of Art and Visual Culture Nils Lou provided further inspiration.
“My thesis exhibit is very different than me,” Gerdes said. “Normally when I create artwork, it’s very structured. I spend hours and hours brainstorming and planning, and I know what everything means.”
Mitlas, whose major is studio art with a focus in painting, also took a new direction for his thesis. He pushed his experimentation with paint to a new level by incorporating foreign objects and expanding on his previous
exploration of the textures created by layering paint.
“Some of the textures will be uncertain as to what they are, and that’s good,” Mitlas said. “I felt like I took a lot of risks; it’s the kind of painting I never thought I’d be able to create.”
Mitlas also began to play with all-over compositions, in which there is no focal object or space in the painting.
“It’s been good to experiment and step outside my comfort zone,” he said.
The exhibit also offered the artists another lesson in professioal experience. The students chose the exhibit’s name and how to hang the works, gave artist talks about the pieces and, of course,
created the artwork itself.
As they head off into the real world, they said they feel prepared to continue in the art world, as well as other fields.
Mitlas is directly continuing his artwork with artist residencies, which are short-term opportunities for artists to travel to a location and create art.
After graduation, he is heading first to Kentucky for two weeks, then to Marnay-Sur-Seine, France, for a month as part of an international artist residency.
“I’m actually surprised I got in,” Mitlas said.
Gerdes will continue building his clientele as a freelance graphic design artist in the Portland area.
The exhibit is open noon to 5 p.m.