Becoming Staged
This is the Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis exhibition of artist Jennifer Salemi. Jen's interests and primary focus in the fine arts revolve around theatrical costume design. On display will be work from studio classes and independent research (on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream) done by the artist.
There will be a reception for this event on November 27th from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Also scheduled to be on display are is an exhibition by Aprille Bryant, so come on down and check it out!
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the UMass Arts Council and from the Thomas Parker Arts Fund.
The artist's statement:
At UMass, I have had the unique opportunity to advance my personal interests in creative design through the transdisciplinary track in the art department. I have studied the numerous media venues of art, film and theater, focusing on the fundamentals of fine art, the history of film, and the design of costume and clothing. In my four years here as an undergraduate, I have cultivated even further my love and dedication to the fine art of designing.
Through artistic endeavors, we are able to achieve advanced thematic, plot, and character development. It never ceases to amaze me what can be conveyed by the subtle nuances used in aesthetic, theatrical, and costume design. The same is true in our own realities: in our lives, we use clothes as a way to express our personalities and ourselves. At times, we are restricted by dress codes (such as in the workplace) or made to feel guilty about how we chose to dress (based on society’s codes for acceptable dress wear). Other times we dress for the mood we are in, apathetic to what anybody else thinks of us. The rules of our realities apply to these imaginary worlds of the theater also. Not only are clothes a basic human need, but one will notice they are part of the fundamental needs of fictional characters as well. Human obsession with clothing carries into the fiction we create.
It is with this BFA project that I hope to achieve my personal dreams of crafting the costume designs of a production from scratch (for this, I have chosen Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream). In the end, my goals are to develop characters through their physical appearance, to portray personalities through aesthetic choices in their costumes, and to turn a world of fiction into a reality for the UMass community.
Directions & Parking
The Student Union Building is in the central area of the UMass campus. The Art Gallery is on the first floor of the Student Union, located on the South Side the Building, across from Earth Foods and the Cape Cod Lounge. Parking is available in the adjacent Campus Center Parking Garage.