Studio art major toys with media

Studio art majors might just be the luckiest students at Vassar. Homework assignments include using power tools, making giant molds, experimenting in the workshop, painting and drawing, and pretty much anything else imaginable. Studio art major Jensen Smith '11 can testify: "I have become incredibly involved in my art classes. I'm not a passive student just sitting, listening and taking notes. I'm actually doing things with my ideas," she said.
Smith is indeed a very active art student. Even when most of her peers were taking it easy, she was hard at work. Over Winter Break, Smith helped Art Department Chair Harry Roseman with his installation "Hole in the Wall." "Jensen was one of six assistants on the project. The process involved understanding the way the paint was to be applied as well as directing lines as they were put onto the wall," Roseman said.

Before beginning work in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, the group did some test runs at New Hackensack Building over October Break. "We tried out different colors and patterns. There was a whole system for the way the lines could interact with each other and the walls. We helped decide what each line could do," said Smith.

Although working with Roseman is no doubt an impressive accomplishment, the work that Smith has been creating for her major is just as exciting. This year, she discovered the limitless world of sculpture and instantly fell in love. "I feel like there's a lot of opportunity with sculpture. You're not limited to a canvas or paint colors," she said. "It's fun to be able to say ‘I can do whatever I want.'"

For one project done outside the classroom, Smith experimented with unconventional media. "I use these small squares of plywood; I put nails around the outside, and then stretched rubber bands across to make a grid." The hovering rubber band grid then acts as the perfect net to contain a collage made up of paper and images.

A class project required Smith to learn a new skill, not to mention a hard one. "Our second assignment was to learn a new material. I decided I wanted to learn to weld," she said. Smith was inspired by the material because, for this particular assignment, the material came before the idea. "I made this giant pair of aviator sunglasses," she explained. The shades are still a work in progress: Both hinges work, and the glasses themselves are at least three feet wide.

Smith takes an interesting approach to playing off of what she describes as her "baby." "When I made the lenses, I had to use these huge molds. The molds aren't actually part of the sunglasses, but they're really beautiful and heavy. I thought it would be kind of cool to use the byproducts of my work to make a new work," she said.

Smith is currently working on a project inspired by the Oscar-nominated film Up In the Air. In the movie, George Clooney's character gives a lecture about the weight of life, asking his audience, "What if you put your entire life in a backpack? How much would that weigh you down?"

For her project, Smith interpreted this question literally: "I decided I was going to figure out how much everything in my life weighed—my house, my car, ‘my bed, my desk, my friends," she explained. "The idea is that it's the weight of my life."

To finish the project, she'll put a punningly clever twist on death. "I'm going to make a gravestone with my name on it and the weight of my life in pounds. Then it'll have some silly quote like ‘Was it worth the weight?'" she said.

Being a studio art major at Vassar has caused Smith's style to evolve and grow. "In high school, I would just copy photos in charcoal on a big scale," she explained. "I got here and we couldn't use a grid and we couldn't look at photographs." What is considered good must be backed up with ideas and originality. "The art classes I'm taking here have definitely changed my perspective and put me in a new direction," she said.