The Artists and Their Muses: Open Studios Showcase Visual and Sound Art Students

A shining fountain, inspired by boat construction and made of resin and fiberglass. An earth-toned painted landscape, evoking migratory histories. A ring of edible grains and soil, representing different modes of perception. 

These were some of the works on display on ​​November 12, 2023 during the Visual Arts and Sound Art Class of 2024 Open Studios in Prentis Hall. The 30 student artists welcomed members of the public to engage with their work and learn more about their materials, techniques, and influences. Experimenting with an array of artistic mediums and exploring elements of innovation and identity, students filled their spaces with color, texture, and sound—making for an afternoon of discovery and imagination. 

For Visual Arts student Zhiqian Wang, Open Studios was an opportunity to exhibit an interactive piece. In 50% Chance of Hard Boiled Quail Eggs, Wang laid down oats in the middle of her studio and surrounded the material with sand, dirt, quail eggs, and rice. Viewers were invited to sample the oats from small paper cups. On the walls Wang displayed traditional, soft-framed Chinese paintings as well as a television set showing black-and-white tableaus, such as a group of hogs eating fruit. By considering the constraints and potential of ordinary language, Wang probes the conceptual underpinnings of knowledge and draws attention to what lies beyond Western-oriented convention which emphasizes reason. Her work examines and expands current understandings of material reality through the lenses of science, literature, and philosophy.

Visual Arts student Aristotle Forrester’s practice centers on large-scale landscape and figure-based oil paintings, accented with bright colors and marked with expressionism. Considering the internality and externality of the human body, Forrester’s pieces incorporate abstract imagery and connect to his real life experiences and his subconscious. Interestingly, Forrester makes most of his oil paint from scratch, even creating a pot of black paint out of his hair. 

“A lot of my work has always been about creating language that speaks to my multicultural identity,” Forrester said. “I’m a city kid from southside Chicago. I’ve grown up in a family full of artists but I’ve also grown up working.”

Forrester described the inspiration he draws from the “fusion” of his Trinidadian and Tobagonian and Nordic roots. “You can see both sides of my family talking in my art, whether that’s tension or harmony,” he said.

Like Forrester, Visual Arts student Sasha Fishman demonstrates a close attention to craftsmanship in her work. Through pieces including a fountain and a salmon ladder, Fishman investigates marine biomaterial extraction, toxicology, and genetic engineering as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting. 

“I’ve been really attracted to fiberglass and resin because of their transparency—they’re almost like solid water,” Fishman said. 

Fishman is building on her exploration and exhibitions of flowforms—vessels that allow water to flow through rhythmically—in India this month. “Being in a space at Columbia where I can reach out to different spaces and work with them and bring my work to them and vice versa has been really exciting,” she said. 

Extracting energy from a variety of creative sources, each artist’s body of work illuminated the weight of both social and natural environments. Each artist’s vision and curation spanned strikingly different depictions and distortions of the mundane and the surreal.