While other pieces in her collection feature beach sunsets and rich oceans, senior Clara Charpentier’s “The Market” pierces the underwater mystique with a raw reminder of human dependency on our planet’s aquatic provisions. “Fish markets, common in many coastal cultures, offer tourists insight into the daily role the ocean plays in people’s lives,” Charpentier writes.
The acrylic painting packs nearly a dozen similar “market” fish onto an ice bed of muted greens and gray-blues. Yet, each component stands out—some more literally than others.
The dead fish are livened by streaks of rusty red, vibrant orange and periwinkle blue scales, colors warmly reminiscent of Charpentier’s other sunset portrayals and in contrast with the greenish ice bed. Three of those fish are pasted cutouts with parts extending beyond the painting’s rectangular frame, adding to the visual depth of “The Market.”
Charpentier’s intentional coloring also ensures the “monochromatic” background remains dimensional, the ice bed distinct from the fish and the ice cubes from one another.
Still, the work remains cohesive through its detail. Cubes reflect colors of nearby scales and a warm central focus radiates to cooler, more abstract tones and edges, capturing the depth of the painting and the humanity behind it.

Interposed with the lifecycle of a grasshopper, senior Selena Li juxtaposes an image of her as a child with a solemn depiction of herself currently. Visually, the work, completed on a digital medium, is complex, lush and appealing; a rug patterned to look like a cicada’s wings beginning from behind the girls ties the motif of grasshoppers and insects from the forefront of the work to the background. The nostalgic, warm coloring on the left of the painting, where Li’s younger self smiles joyfully at the viewer, bleeds into the right side, where a cooler, more restrained, older version of Li looks down somberly. By contrast, the grasshoppers developmental stages shown at the front go from a cooler green to a warm orange, opposing both the color of the rug in the background and the coloring used to depict Li. By incorporating warm and cool colorings into both sides of the painting, Li’s work has a cohesive, complete feel, despite using contrasting tones. Li masterfully tells the story of “polyphenism” or “the ability of an organism to develop different forms depending on its environment,” by comparing her own journey into adulthood with that of a grasshopper. 

Senior Sebastian Hincapie’s piece “Answers” comments on a grappling with deep religious connection. Hincapie writes in his artist statement that he wanted to capture “the entrapment people experience from their families to follow a religion.” The piece is a depiction of The Virgin of Guadalupe looking up to the sky with large eyes detailed with crosses on the pupils. Bright red roses adorn the right side of the Virgin and yellow and orange light beams spike out from behind the semi-realistic figure. The colors of the work are made especially vivid from the detailed shading and emphasized contour lines Hincapie uses in his forms. The figure’s pose represents them looking up in search of answers as to what has led to them feeling the entrapment Hincapie wanted to focus on. The Virgin is used to create a thematic connection to Latin America, the group Hincapie has highlighted in a number of his works on display. This work is also a bold example of Hincapie’s recurring mastery juxtaposition through his use of charcoal, in this piece also contrasting the ranging values of charcoal with eye-catching colored pencil.

Senior Mira Ray’s “Goliathan” is a visually striking and emotionally impactful mixed media collage that reframes the Biblical story of David and Goliath within a modern context. Through a combination of images and text, the collage suggests that the modern Goliath is an overwhelming, unending stream of information. Carefully chosen images amass around an image of a large, sculptural human torso on the left side of the piece, where the bulk of the collage’s visual weight falls. On the right, a child with a camera represents the modern David, surrounded by imagery that conveys innocence: three lambs, and the silhouette of a child roller skating. In a sophisticated blend of modern allusions with religious imagery and text, the piece conveys a certain sense of timelessness — while the details of our surroundings may change, humanity’s observation and participation in the world is constant. With this collage, Ray creates a work that simultaneously fits with and stands apart from the other works in an exhibition that explores reinterpretations of stories and mythology.