Max Bickley – General Assignment Reporter
In recent weeks, Southern has put an effort in displaying the art of not only its faculty, but also its students. There is now an art display showing art samples from two of Southern’s students, Tracy Henri and Emily Landino.
The display itself is the first on the left when entering Earl Hall, and is divided into a foreground of different styled prints and a backgrounds where there are a series of photographs. The foreground belongs to student Tracy Henri and exhibits a series of her prints.
The prints vary in color and style, but all of them have an antiquated look and frame. Henri explains this as the result of her love for the style.
“I really have a love for reclaimed wood. It really is a beautiful material for frames, and it makes a good use of mixing the new with the old,” said Henri. “I love bringing back old things, like the old, wooden Pepsi crate beneath my prints, or even the reclaimed birdcage.”
Henri makes use of colors, but also the standard black-and-white for her prints.
“I like color, but I like the use of black-and-white a lot more,” said Henri, “the use of black-and-white is a lot more stark; it makes the image pop more and there is an emphasis on positive and negative space which color can’t quite match.”
Upon looking through the prints, many of them have a naturalistic, almost abstract nature about them, and Henri attributes this to her interest in nature.
“There is a very natural sense about my work. There are animals in some prints, and in others things are abstract, but I do like my birds,” Henri said. “In the birdcage, what I call my ‘Peep show’ are a few of the marshmallow peeps scattered about, I just have always enjoyed nature and incorporate it in my work.”
The background of the exhibition, belonging to senior Emily Landino, are a series of five photographs detailing a young girl and a masked man in dark clothing.
“This is something of a narrative I wanted to create with my photography,” Landino said. “There are five pictures detailing a narrative of insecurity, when how nowadays we feel insecure about ourselves and our lives.”
The series, fitting in with the Halloween time of year, is dark and leaves a sense of tension. According to Landino, this is what she was aiming for.
“Really it is the story of a stalker,” said Landino. “It is the story of a stalker so obsessed with his victim, he breaks into her home to simply take a picture of her.”
The pictures slowly go through the masked figure’s progression through the house, but ends with the woman, a friend of Landino’s, holding a knife in a dark room. There is no conclusion to the story, which is the ending Landino wanted.
“I want the people who see this to look at the pictures and figure out what they want the ending to be,” said Landino. “Whether or not she dies, if she makes it out, all that is up to the person and I don’t know how it ends myself.”
For any student interested in seeing these pieces of work, they are right in the front of Earl Hall in the left display case, and will be shown for another week before the next student installation.
Photo Credit: Max Bickley – General Assignment Reporter