The 2016 Senior Exhibition Series is continuing to impress in the Ildiko Butler Gallery. From fashion designs and sketches, to photography and watercolor paintings, the displays of each artist will be featured for a limited time. The exhibits will alternate every week and a half to allow each aspiring artist to present their creations to the students at Fordham College  Lincoln Center (FCLC). The rotating series will be running through May 22 on the first floor of Lowenstein.

The Senior Exhibition Series is a rotating collection of each student’s enthusiasm, talent, experience, research and criticism. Each display has its own story and the committed artists are very excited for their projects to go public.

From April 17 to 28, the gallery will showcase the works of James McCracken and Zhiyi Zhou. McCracken will display his intimate collection of black and white portraits ranging from conservative Virginians, to outgoing Brooklynites, to refugees. This exhibit is special to McCracken because this project has allowed him to capture personal moments with strangers who he now considers friends.

“You’ll be able to see in these photographs that there’s a connection between the subject and the photographer,” McCracken explained. “It’s more of a collaborative effort between two people, rather than the standard portrait photography that maybe isn’t as personal when it’s done in the studio or on the street.”

Liz Saco, whose “Corporeal Landscape” exhibit of human body drawings will be on display from May 11 to 22, notes how significant these exhibitions are for the artists. “We all put a lot of time and effort into creating our work and making it perfect for the gallery. Everything we do, we do on our time, like setting up a reception and installing the art itself.” Saco went on to explain that “it’s a lot of individual work, which makes it more personal and professional.”

The exhibits are not just a manifestation of the students’ creativity. Eavan Schmitt, whose fashion designs were on display from April 4 to 16, explained that the unruly craziness of youth and anxiety provides inspiration. Schmitt  compared the process to the madness of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: “All the characters complain that she has lost her muchness. I wanted to lean into the wildness of the implied ugliness of feelings in our culture and embrace that ugliness and wildness for what it is, which is something that can be quite beautiful.”

The process of creating each individual exhibit reflects an artist’s own field of study or personal interest. Danielle Serigano will be displaying her showcase of artwork that represents her passion for social and ecological values from April 29 to May 10. “For me the creative process is a little bit different, as it is heavier on the research end. As someone with an environmental studies and architecture background, my project is based on systems research about infrastructure policy and socioeconomic well-being of a community.”

Serigano hopes that her exhibit will shine a light on social and environmental aspects of localized food systems. She is excited to be able to symbolize the globalized consolidated food industry through photographs, watercolor illustrations and wood palette constructs.

To be featured in the gallery, each hopeful artist had to submit a portfolio and thesis to the Visual Arts department. After being accepted, the students critique each other’s projects and input creative revisions. The featured students come from an array of distinct concentrations, including photography, architecture and graphic design among many others. At the end of the semester, the Visual Arts faculty finally chooses a special group of students through a very selective process to display their hard work in the Lipani gallery. The chosen group of students are grateful to be able to share their research and creative process in the bustling Lowenstein lobby.

Ildiko Butler Gallery will be featuring the works of James McCracken and Zhiyi Zhou from April 17 to 28, Danielle Serigano from April 29 to May 10 and Liz Saco and Emily Stone from May 11 to 22.