W&L’s Staniar Gallery Presents 2021 Senior Art Theses The students’ work will be on display in Staniar Gallery starting March 29.

By Erica Turman
March 24, 2021

Washington and Lee University’s Staniar Gallery will display artwork from the senior theses of Class of 2021 studio art majors March 29 through April 9. Each year, undergraduate students completing a studio art major develop a body of work and prepare it for exhibition in a professional gallery setting. This year, six students will present their work and take part a virtual reception on Zoom on March 31 at 4:30 p.m. During the online event, the artists will give brief statements about their projects.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Staniar Gallery is open to W&L community members only via swipe card access to Wilson Hall from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week. The exhibit can be accessed remotely through a virtual gallery tour. Links to the tour and the March 31 talk, both of which are free and open to the public, will be posted to the gallery’s website: https://my.wlu.edu/staniar-gallery/current-season/senior-theses.

Featured in the exhibit:

• Mixed media pieces by Missy Barro ’21 explore the resilience of the natural world adapting to human presence.
• In her photographic collages, Emma Coleman ’21 examines her family’s long history in the Rockbridge region, reflecting on the connections between the past and the present.
• Water is the central theme of “Current,” a series of works on paper by Gabriela Gomez-Misserian ’21 in which she draws from her extensive sketchbook studies made in Goshen Pass, Virginia.
• The studio practice of Liza Moore ’21 revolves around systems of labor-intensive tasks, such as creating a sizeable latch-hook rug that draws visual inspiration from organic forms.
• Mary Stephen Straske ’21 uses the medium of printmaking to create wallpaper reflecting the beauty of the natural world while embracing the variations that are inevitable in the print process.
• Reggie Zhao ’21 will exhibit sculptural works that are a creative investigation of what she calls the “ontology of materials,” such as cardboard and bamboo tissue.

The Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.