{"id":9,"date":"2023-03-31T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/ahi\/?p=9"},"modified":"2023-11-02T08:48:30","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T12:48:30","slug":"senior-studio-art-exhibition-all-the-debts-i-owe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/ahi\/2023\/senior-studio-art-exhibition-all-the-debts-i-owe\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior Studio Art Exhibition: All the Debts I Owe"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Cat Mailloux<\/p>\n

All the Debts I Owe<\/em> made its debut at Cedarville\u2019s The 220 Gallery on March 2, 2023. The visual art exhibition featured the work of graduating Studio Art seniors Max Patrick and Emily Herbst. Before the show\u2019s opening, I had the opportunity to visit the artists in their studios in Carnegie Hall to discuss the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Senior Studio Art major Max Patrick works across painting, clay, sculpture, photography, and collage. Though the medium varies from work to work, his concepts are rooted in a range of personal experiences: memories of home, family, childhood nostalgia, relationships, the anxieties of college, and the ordinariness of everyday life.<\/p>\n

Patrick\u2019s paintings, both figurative and non-objective mark making, depict both happy and sad memories, as important as an old photograph of a loved one or as banal as the stray cats that roam Cedarville\u2019s streets. His sculptural works, in ceramic and found media, serve as artifacts of personal history. Whether a painting or a ceramic pot, Patrick applies intense color, gestural mark-making, and collage-like compositions. The quality of his works takes on a dream-like, cobbled together form that read like the fuzziness of memory or trying to remember a dream. For Patrick, All the Debts I Owe<\/em> is a tribute to the people, experiences, and memories, both good and bad, that have shaped him.<\/p>\n

\"Display<\/p>\n

Like Patrick, Emily Herbst\u2019s visual work stretches across a wide variety of media, spanning painting, printmaking, sculpture, and ceramic. Herbst views her works as a pilgrimage, a journey to process theological concepts. Her works pay clear and specific attention to material and symbolism and draw from notes gleaned from Bible classes, sermons, and theological writings. Amongst such notes is a phrase borrowed from the sermon of Puritan writer John Flavel, who imagines a conversation between the Father and the Son in which the Son graciously takes on the debts of humanity, declaring \u201cBring in all thy bills.\u201d. The lament and celebration of Christ\u2019s suffering forms the backbone of her works, in which she casts the depravity of humanity and God\u2019s holiness into intertwined orbit.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

For Herbst\u2019s work, the title All the Debts I Owe draws a direct parallel to the atoning work of Christ. This is strikingly apparent in her work That They May Know, a painting that serves as a theological treatise concerning the incarnational nature of Christ. Using the Ark of the Covenant as a layered visual symbol, the painting carefully traces the nature of the incarnation of Christ through the symbolism of the Ark of the Covenant. The composition features a birds-eye-view of the Ark of the Covenant set against a stark, clear landscape. It serves as a portal of bone, muscle, blood, and skin, symbolizing the Word becoming flesh.<\/p>\n

\"Student<\/p>\n

Though the work by the two artists in All the Debts I Owe are vastly different in content, style, and approach, the exhibition captures a declaration of deeply felt indebtedness. The works featured are personal and humble, and in that specificity, invite the audience to join in the heartfelt expression of thanks.<\/p>\n

Cat Mailloux, Assistant Professor of Studio Art<\/p>\n