As a final goodbye to their art career at Choate, senior Visual Arts Concentration students Rebecca Bernstein ’16, Daphne Harrington ’16, Caitlin Chiocchio ’16, and Anika Zetterberg ’16 showcased their best work on May 15 in the Paul Mellon Arts Center.
Bernstein’s display consisted of an array of black and white film photographs that she edited and enlarged to fit on A3 photographic paper. She took the photographs over the course of last year and during her summer trips to Scotland, New York City, South Carolina, and Colorado. She explained, “I usually do what you would call street photography. I like to explore and capture a lot of different things — not just landscape or people, but rather all aspects of a place.”
Chiocchio, a four-year senior that joined the program two years ago, presented a series of remarkable oil paintings of the Long Island Sound. Her time growing up in the area allowed Chiocchio to immerse herself in this series: “I had a vision of doing a series of these paintings, and I knew exactly what I wanted. I made my first painting of the Long Island Sound before I came to Choate, but this winter I got the idea for the series. I’ve always been surrounded by art,” Chiocchio, whose mother is an artist, explained. “The show went really well. It was so rewarding to see everything that we have done be put up that way,” she said.
Zetterberg’s works included part of a graphic novel, a digitally drawn self-portrait, and works that she had been unofficially “commissioned” by The Choate News and at the request of her mother. “My process involves just diving into it. If I hesitate even just a little bit before I start something, I know that in that moment I won’t be able to finish it. The only way that I can work is if I get something on the paper that I can envision. I’ll do a basic outline or focus on one small part and enhance it until I make it look the way that I want it to,” she explained. Zetterberg’s graphic novel was not displayed in a traditional way, but as an array of colorful strings connecting each image. “I needed some way to show people that it connects — that it’s not just a bunch of random things — but that there are different parts in my mind that have connections and lines drawn to each other. To be honest, if for the string piece I had more of it, there would be string all over the place. Everything would be connected in different ways.”
Dilan Bozer ’17, a junior in the Arts Concentration Program, reflected on the reception, saying, “Usually, in visual arts you work independently and you never know how it’s going to turn out. The projects always have a plot twist to them, so it’s always awesome to see how things turn out.”
Ms. Kalya Yannatos, the Director of the Arts, also commented on the development of the artists, saying, “It’s exciting to see what our four graduating Arts Con artists chose to culminate their time as artists at Choate. Their exhibition shows work they made both here and elsewhere, in some cases representing an arc of their artistic journey.”
