This week, alongside the work of professional artists, Dartmouth’s public galleries will display the works of 24 senior studio art majors. The annual end-of-the-year exhibition will be displayed in the Jaffe-Friede and Strauss Galleries in the Hopkins Center and the Nearburg Gallery in the Black Family Visual Arts Center through June 16.

The studio art major culminates with senior seminars offered during winter and spring terms. Because they are enrolled in classes that are less structured, seniors are given the freedom to follow their own artistic trajectory, with feedback from professors. For many, it is the first time they are treated as artists, rather than art students.

Students develop close relationships with professors in seminars and the pressure of the course’s environment often shapes the artistic identity of majors. They are able to take in constructive criticism, forcing them to question their choices as artists.

The entire senior seminar process “is in support of realizing a thesis body of creative work,” studio art department chair Colleen Randall said. “Each student is encouraged to pursue his or her individual artistic vision in the context of the senior seminar.”

The faculty selects pieces from each student’s work to be formally exhibited in the three galleries. The exhibition gives students the experience of presenting their work as well as communicating the meaning behind their pieces to audiences.

“I hope students will experience the complete process of creating work for exhibition as similar as possible to professional artists,” Randall said. “The completion of the creative process is to exhibit or perform work for a public audience.”

Because each piece represents an aspect of its artist, the exhibition sheds light on the overall community of seniors and their work, Julie Fiveash ’13 said. The exhibition contains a variety of pieces of different mediums from sculpture to painting to video. There are portraits, political works and other topical pieces related to the College.

Davey Barnwell ’13, for example, will be presenting three 5×5 paintings multilayered on wood. Her work has always been inspired by landscape in a more emotional, experiential way, she said.

“I paint what can’t be expressed in words,” Barnwell said.

Four pieces by Zak Kowalski ‘13 were chosen, including three unique prints that he created by working with plaster and powdered graphite to form an interesting texture that allowed for delicate marks. His invention provides a balance of intentionality and accident, he said.

Twenty pieces displayed in the exhibition represent a culmination of Fiveash’s personal work. Fiveash’s series functions to create an environment with graphics and comic inspired art, displaying “this weird psyche that I’m in with my art,” she said.

The exhibition united this year’s studio art class, bringing an opportunity for interaction among students of different concentrations. As they bonded over their work and the seminar experience, the studio was described as a family that “all lives together in a crowded, crazy art space,” Kowalski said.

Randall described the pieces in the exhibition as contemporary, expressive and knowledgable, citing the energy and imagination behind the works in particular.

The exhibition is not viewed as an end goal, but a chance to illustrate to Dartmouth’s greater community the wide breadth of experience and skill the seniors have accumulated in their time with the department.

“Art and showing your work by nature is very vulnerable,” Barnwell said. “Making art in general changes the way you think and gets you to know yourself in a way that other subjects don’t require. Once you get to this point in the program, all of us crave that active learning and vulnerability.”

Fiveash hopes visitors approach the exhibition with an open mind.

“I hope people come, enjoy it and take away something from the exhibition that they didn’t expect to see,” she said.

Fiveash is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.