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Staniar Gallery Exhibits Senior Art Projects

Washington and Lee University studio art majors will present their senior projects in an exhibition that opens in Staniar Gallery on March 28 and runs until April 11. An opening reception for the artists will be March 31 at 4 p.m. in Lykes Atrium, Wilson Hall.

Every year, Staniar Gallery showcases work by the Art Department’s graduating studio art majors in an exhibition that is the culmination of a year-long thesis project. During that year, the students develop a body of work and prepare it for exhibition in a professional gallery setting.

This year’s show features a variety of media by five artists. Abigail Pannell imagines elaborate fictions that she then documents with paintings, drawings and sculptural objects. Nathaniel Purdy will exhibit paintings on canvas, wood, paper and a microwave. In Bailey Russell’s short film “Tension Response,” she uses brightly colored lights, jarring sounds and frenetic pacing to convey to the viewer a sense of heightened anxiety.

In a series of prints entitled “Fortune or Folly,” Leigh Stauffer invites viewers to glean their own personal parables from her images of skeletons, animals and flowers. Laura Wiseman explores different notions of beauty with an installation of large black-and-white portraits juxtaposed against colorful wallpaper of her own design.

Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call (540) 458-8861.