Featured Spring 2020 Work

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)

Exhibition featuring The BFA project completed by each student in their final semester

Anna Culpepper

BFA Photography | Spring 2020

Biography

Anna Culpepper is an artist born and raised In Little Rock, Arkansas. Photography has been her
passion since childhood.

Artist Statement

Overgrown is a photographic love letter to womankind. It embodies an enchanted view of what femininity entails, depicting themes of body positivity, self-growth, love, sexuality, and other personal issues she has struggled with while growing up. Anna created this series in order to let the women in her life see the beauty and strengths of their inner and outer selves and, in doing so, she learned the same about herself and gained confidence throughout the process. In some ways, the model is a stand-in for her self-portrait, but in other ways it’s a portrait of women in general. She likes to use human-made objects such as fabric to create a more ethereal aspect to the outdoor spaces and fabricate interesting visual juxtapositions within the compositions. Often, Anna covers the faces of her models which is a subconscious concept of protection instead of exploitation of the individual. Her intention is to celebrate the female, not place her into objectification from the male gaze.

Spenser Jacob

BFA Illustration | Spring 2020

Biography

Spenser Jacob (B. 1995) is a comic book artist from Little Rock, Arkansas. He was raised on a farm and has maintained a lifelong interest in comics. He has been developing the idea that would become AKASHA since he was eleven years old.

Artist Statement

Spenser’s work explores the narrative and visual power of the comic book and subverts the classic tropes of the medium. His current project, AKASHA, is a science-fiction series that follows a mercenary militia of telekinetics as they struggle against persecution. AKASHA explores themes of perseverance through adversity, psychological and emotional turmoil, and reckoning with the expectations of others.

Gwen Kudabeck

BFA Photography | Spring 2020

Biography

Gwen Kudabeck spends most of her time in her hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. She loves being in nature, local history, and adopting old cameras.

Artist Statement

Gwen began this project as a study of time and memory, however as she explored those themes she discovered she was facing fear of impermanence and transition. Pinhole photography allowed Gwen to capture the mixed feelings of love, loss, and uncertainty that exist between the past, present, and future.

Emilio Medina

BFA Graphic Design | Spring 2020

Biography

Emilio is a simplistic designer that enjoys designing art around the subject of sports. The reasoning behind that is because he has always been involved in some kind of sport from the age of 5 to his current age of 22. Whether he was playing baseball, basketball, soccer or running cross country/track he has been involved in a sport. When he creates client-based work he is able to create anything the client wants. Emilio doesn’t have a certain subject that he wants to create. He understands as a graphic designer that he does not get to choose these things like other artists do. He has learned through my college career that he is able to use the basic skills that he has learned and use them in any category of designing.

When looking for influences Emilio doesn’t look at one specific designer when creating, instead he looks at the designs that have already been created around the subject that he doing. This helps him get a better idea of what he wants to create for that specific project rather than looking at the different kinds of designs about totally different projects.

Emilio starts his creative process by looking at inspiration and then he begins sketching. This helps him to fully visualize the designs that he has made in head. He takes these sketches and move to a digital process. Digitally, Emilio starts creating the composition that he found to be the most interesting and best option for the design. In this step of the process he creates different versions using different colors, line weights, and fonts to see what works best. After he gets a design that he feels works for the project, he then adds the specifics of the project such as, locations, time, etc. Throughout this whole process he is looking for improvements to make. Emilio has found that by the time he gets to his final step, he has gone through all the steps, he has made my way to the best outcome for the project/design.

Christina Osorio

BFA Graphic Design | Spring 2020

Biography

Christina Osorio’s work uses graphic design and traditional media to investigate the relationship between design and art. Her pieces utilize type, image, distortion, and analog methods to go between the lines of legible communication and abstracted visuals. A local to Little Rock, Christina is a Judith A. Wrappe scholar at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where she is pursuing her BFA in Graphic Design.

Artist Statement

This poster series, I Don’t Understand, focuses on the interaction between viewer and letterform; how abstraction of the commonly known and personal knowledge affects whether communication is successfully transmitted. By repeating the phrase in various languages and levels of distortion, Christina searches for the line between understanding and illegibility. Looking at the physical forms of our writing systems, at what point are we returned to a moment in which we lack the ability to read what is written?

Chassidy Siratt

BFA Photography | Spring 2020

Biography

Chassidy Siratt works in charcoal, digital media, and alternative methods photography. Her work deals primarily with family, memory, and loss. She graduates this spring and begins graduate study this fall.

Artist Statement

Identity is tied closely to our memories. Many memories do not come with conscious recall, but surface when we see a particular image, catch a certain smell, or hear a snatch of music. In this way, identity is pieced together from fragments of memory to make us whole.

Jie Zhu

BFA Photography | Spring 2020

Biography

Jie Zhu is a contemporary photographer who likes to explore the traditional side of photography and details in our mundane life.

Artist Statement

The Silence Devours is a series about my experiences with depression. He uses photography as a way to cope with depression, anxious thoughts and to portray his depression. Feelings are
portrayed through images of routinely used domestics spaces.

Featured Spring 2020 Work

BA in Studio Art (BA)

Jordan Armijo

BA Studio Art

Bio

Classically trained as an artist and graphic design major Jordan Rae Armijo has been featured in past student shows for the Wingate Center of Art and Design for two years and the student competition for traditional photography and sculptural design. Her work in printmaking and explorations of other media have been featured on the center’s Instagram page. She will graduate this spring with a Bachelor’s of Art’s emphasis in Digital Media.

Artist Statement:

An anatomical study of various human appendages, and maintenance of accurate proportions. This series prints were based off of early medical illustration. The color scheme is a monochromatic scheme; a reference to early medical teaching tools. The sculpture was started off by creating and studying a human skull to keep the facial structure of the subject in proper relation to the anatomy it is built upon. These concepts harken back to the basics of illustration and give emphasis to learning the foundation before creating the final body work.

Ryan Farmer

BA Studio Art

Bio

Ryan is an artist focused primarily on 2D drawing elements that are oriented towards giving his audience a window to narratives. Whether the narrative is something of his own design or someone elses he conveys the morals and meanings through the medium of pencil and pen.

Artist Statement

The purpose of most of these works is to show a visual theme within the context and environment of the roleplaying game world that it is based on. There is a strong emphasis on the narrative in these works since RPG’s strongest factors are its story element. It is pencil and pen crosshatch work that is loosely inspired by the cinema Noir style.

Megan Hall

BA Studio Art

Bio

Megan Hall was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is 20 years old and will be graduating from UA Little Rock this spring. She started painting when she was little and as she got older she added photography and Graphic Design. She plans on going into a career creating yearbooks and then hopefully on to being a freelance creative!

Artist Statement

Creative who focuses on many aspects of art such as photography, painting, and graphic design. She is influenced and inspired by young female artists who use bright and bold colors like Carly Wiggers, Juliana Lupacchino, Ashley Mary, and Holly Bamgartl Kristoff. She likes to take photographs that are full of color and life. Her paintings show a focus on hand lettered designs and are created to client specifications. Her graphic works allow her to shift toward bold and colorful designs with a clean and rigid aesthetic.