This semester, The Etownian is working to highlight and recognize the work being done by Elizabethtown College’s seniors in their capstone courses.

One such capstone course has been taught by professor of art Milt Friedly to senior Fine Arts majors. This course is designed to prepare the students for gallery work and the logistics necessary to maintain a career in the arts.

The course concludes with a gallery showing May 5, 2019, in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center’s Lyet Gallery.

The students are integral in setting up the gallery itself, in addition to the work they have done all through their senior year to curate their portfolios.

“We [the Fine Arts department] want each student to be successful,” Friedly said.

He proudly emphasized the fact that graduates of the department “are doing all kinds of interesting things.”

The fine arts capstone course and senior seminar focus on allowing students to cultivate and refine their personal artistic goals and visions, and also prepare them for the reality of working in a creative field.

When working in the arts “you have to communicate, to defend your work, to talk about it,” Friedly said.

Through this course, he feels that seniors in the department are learning how to do just that. “If you’re better informed when you get out there,” Friedly stated. “You’re going to be more likely to succeed.”

The spring semester of the course focuses heavily on preparation for the Senior Art Exhibit in the Lyet Gallery.

The students have regular critiques of each others work, and are encouraged to explore one theme across various mediums. The end result is usually around eight to 10 finished pieces per student come the time of the exhibit.

“The themes can be broad or narrow” said Friedly, and the senior fine arts majors this year have been working diligently with themes that are creative, unique, and daring.

Senior fine arts major Rebecca “Bex” Williams has chosen to work with the theme of “character.”

“It is what I do best. I design characters and create stories for them,” Williams said.

Williams said that what she has enjoyed most during this course is having “the opportunity to share [her] work with people of different backgrounds.”

Williams also hopes to be able to build a character costume for the exhibit, reminiscent of other works she has created in the past. The character she is currently working with is a “Blue Jay Raptor.”

Overall, Williams feels that this course has helped her “diversify” her work while also allowing her to “improve” the skills she already has.

Another student working on the exhibit, Senior fine arts major Meg McMurdy, expressed that this capstone course was extremely useful in helping her “make [her] portfolio which aided [her] in being accepted to several graduate school art therapy programs.”

For McMurdy, the work she is doing right now is extremely personal and important to her.

She confided that her “theme [for the exhibit] has been a work in progress” as it “stem[s] from [her] mental health.”

“Due to my interest in art therapy, my work tackles issues dealing with self-reflection and by proxy, a commentary on the pressures of beauty and perfection that society places on women and the implications of these demands,” she said.

McMurdy additionally emphasized that her growth as an artist is due in great part to her positive experiences with Etown staff.

“Professor Friedly and [assistant professor of art] Dr. Arnold have helped me grow as a human and as an artist,” McMurdy said. “These capstones have been such a time of growth for me in both my artistic skills and the way I view the world.”

“I couldn’t have done it without their knowledge, skill sets, and support,” McMurdy said. “The skills I have learned will be ones that I take with me for life.”