DoVA online Student Exhibition

Last year the annual Department of Visual Arts (DoVA) Student and Faculty exhibition was canceled due to the pandemic. The show usually opens in late April/early May and runs through late May/early June. Students who took YVC art classes in the preceeding year (Spring through Winter) are invited to show their work in the exhibition each year.

Jacob Sandford, stoneware teapot and cup, on-campus, functional pottery Winter 2020

Last spring the show was cancelled due to the pandemic. We had such a short amount of time in which to make other arrangements, faculty access to campus (where much of the work was stored) was limited, and faculty and students were strongly discouraged from coming on campus to pickup work. When we left campus in March, no plans were made to pickup work, rearrange the show, or even get students their work out of the kilns I unloaded the next week (during Finals for winter 2020 classes).

Ashley Lawson, cranes (pre-installation), online hand-building Spring 2021, this installation is not featured in the DoVA show, but will be featured here on this blog in future.

This year we were hoping to have an on-campus show, since Larson Gallery was open at some point for other shows, but at the time we were to install the students' work, the gallery had to have its floors replaced. Larson is in a new building and the floors were somehow damaged or installed incorrectly. The gallery is now open in person for the membership show.

Patrick Byers, Breakfast in Bed, on-campus functional pottery, Winter 2020

Because we couldn't be in person, we decided to move the show online. Putting together an all-virtual show was still a bit of a scramble, and it was made more difficult by the fact that with the status unknown for so long, and the classes all virtual since last Spring, I hadn't collected student work or images of student work since Winter, at least not in an organized fashion. In fact, the make-up of the show consists mainly of work collected in Spring or Fall 2019 and a bit of work from Winter 2020, though much of the accompanying paperwork for the DoVA show wasn't completed due to the abrupt end to the quarter, and thus nothing was showing from my on-campus hand-building class.

Patrick Byers, Tritone, on campu functional pottery, Winter 2020

I ended up photographing work that was left in storage on campus for the DoVA show, but only ~2/3 of the students who had left work in storage responded giving me permission to show their work in a different format (and time) than they'd originally agreed to. Some students had moved away, others maybe weren't checking email or just didn't have the motivation to respond to yet another thing this year. Significantly less than half of the students who had initially agreed to show work on campus in Spring 2020 (which would be students from Spring and Fall 2019) responded to my requests to send in pictures or bring in work for the virtual show.Winter 2020 students mostly didn't get the chance to fill out the paperwork which is usually done during finals week (the finals week that was abruptly moved online).

Lacey Velazquez, Cosmic Twister, on-campus, Intro to Clay Fall 2019

Very few students from the online classes (Fall 2019 and Winter/Spring 2020) agreed to show their work this year. I'm sure the low turnout for online classes was a combination of timing, the extra work of taking quality photos of their work, and me not being there in person to pressure them to participate. They'd already made work during a particularly challenging time. On top of that, we were asking them to take photos, fill out a document with a bunch of info they might not 100% understand (like sale price/NFS, dimensions, etc), adjust their file name and size, and email all that back to the gallery and their instructor. That's a lot of hassle, especially if you aren't totally comfortable with manipulating files and maybe also lack confidence in your work. This was exhausting for me, I can't imagine how it felt to students.

Kimberly Owen-Long, Mountain View, on-campus, Spring 2019

It really is too bad, because I had some really neat work this year. I taught three online Design and three online Hand-building classes this year, but only one student example from each shows up in the DoVA show. I did ask permission to show their work on my blog, so for those who gave permission, I plan to do so in future posts. 

Harrah Hanson, stacking set, online Spring 2021, this work is not featured in the DoVA exhibition, but will be featured here on this blog in future.

I hope that when people look at the Larson Gallery show and even my blog here, they realize that what ends up in the show is only a fraction of what was made. I prefer to have explicit permission from students before sharing work on this blog and I didn't always get it, but I do have more permission to show work here than work submitted for the Student Exhibition online at Larson.

Kaitlyn McPheeters, Viking Woman, on-campus Intro to Clay Fall 2019

Making the work this year, was expecially challgening, especially for the clay students, but not only for the clay students. Besides navigating an entirely online world for demonstrations, support, techniques,  critiques, and grading, they also had to learn photography, uploading, and file management for a class that isn't designed to deal extensively with any of that. They didn't have in-person help for any of this and they had to make do with whatever tools or space they had at home. 

Clara Hamill, Untitled (pit fired), on campus Intermediate wheel, Spring 2019

As my collegue John Bissonette explains, 

"The show represents a small sampling of the commendable results of remote learning at YVC over the past year. It is a testament to the tireless efforst of educators and the drive of students during a time of stress and uncertainty. Students have had to not only navigate the unfamiliarity and challenges of online education, but also adjust their lives and living spaces to accomodate impromptu art studios. Faculty members, working with limited resourcces, have had to devise new mthods of instruction to remotely communicate the tactile concepts that are best desmonstrated and experienced in person. Despite the many unavoidable setbacks of this period, the Department of Visual Arts is proud to be able to showcase some of the excellent work that continues to be produced by the students at Yakima Valley College." 

You can see some of that student work at the Larson Gallery website for the duration of the Student Exhibibition (through July 2, 201). Be sure to click through to each image, as the Instagram style square boxes of the main page impose artificial size and shape restrictions on the work, an especially unfortunate situation for vertical ceramic forms and horizontal compositions or groupings. There is also a video at the bottom of the DoVA page from my online clay stop-motion-animation project. 

Ashley Lawson, pinch set, online Spring 2021(follow her on Istagram) This work is not on display in the DoVA show, but will be featured here on this blog in future.

I have featured some of the work from the DoVA show (with the appropriate propotions) above, as well as some work from the most recent quarter in my online clay class that didn't make it into the show (not because of merit, but because of the complications mentioned above). I plan to create some more posts in future on this blog that feature and discuss student work from both the online clay and online design classes this past year. Stay tuned.