Help UMich Stamps students host senior exhibition!

As seniors at the University of Michigan Stamps School for Art and Design, we are offered a year long, Integrated Project course that presents us with an opportunity to create our own work individually and work in our own studio space. This is our first opportunity to truly experience the process of creating a personal project, as well as curating our own exhibit and presenting our work in a professional setting. Every year, the IP students are promised a grand, final exhibition to display our work and teach us what it takes to market ourselves to a real audience. Due to Covid-19, our final exhibition was cancelled in person, and we are devastated that we will no longer have this opportunity to have a live audience come see what we have been able to accomplish. Our exhibition will feature each of our group member’s artwork which includes paintings, installations, and a book. Our exhibition name is called The Ending of the Beginning: Perspectives. We titled our exhibition this because all of our works are investigating the idea of perception. One of our artist’s is hanging five close up paintings of rocks and fossils. While creating these works they were thinking about how rocks are often overlooked and how their surfaces tell unexpectedly complex stories. Our second featured artist also created paintings but they verge between the 2D surface that paint lays on and combines it with a 3D form. This artist was interested in creating 3D canvases that all interact with each other through the visuals of the paints or the shapes that are created by the sculptural canvases. Another one of our artists is exploring their body dysmorphia through sculpture. This artist wants their audience to understand the disgust they have for their breasts and help them understand someone’s experience with body dysmorphia. Our last featured artist wrote a book about understanding their Mexican American identity, through their poetry, essays, and artwork. Within their book, they touch on topics such as farming, nationality, colorism, and appropriation. As young artists entering the professional world of the arts, this would be a huge step for us and our careers. By holding our own exhibition, we are not only learning how to be successful on our own time, but also are opening doors for people outside of our classroom environment to see our work, make impactful connections and expand our potential client base. It is a loss of revenue in terms of practice, exposure, and open-door opportunities. Specifically, this campaign is going to pay for the cost of our gallery space as well as advertising through posters, announcements, and informational booklets.