Since last spring, three EMU students- Mckenzie VanHandel, Philia Lienardy, and Jeremy Blain- have been planning, revising, and finalizing their photography projects for their senior gallery show. These efforts were rewarded last Friday, Dec. 3rd, when they presented their work at EMU’s Margaret Martin Gehman Gallery to a crowd filled with friends, family, peers, and professors. 

VanHandel, a double major in photography and marketing, titled her collection, “There Is No Linear.” When you visit the gallery, you might recognize a few of the pieces, as three of them were featured in the Weather Vane a few weeks ago. However, seeing these pieces printed on newsprint paper really can’t compare to how they look hanging in the gallery. 

Each image in “There Is No Linear” has a base image with many other images, taken “of a different sky, at different times of the day, at different seasons” woven together into the base image. “So, you are looking at this one photo that really consists of many seasons and many times, so many different colors, and it’s all in this one, singular image,” said VanHandle, during her explanation of the collection at the gallery opening. 

The images are printed on acetate sheets and hung away from the wall, giving the photographs a stained glass look and allowing them to cast a loose, second image on the wall behind them. 

Lienardy, a photography major, titled her collection “Mátia,” which, Lienardy said, “means ‘pair of eyes,’ or just eyes, in Greek.”

“Mátia” is intended to represent Lienardy’s journey with her vision in the early part of her life, dealing with a condition called Strabismus that affected her eyesight, which she required surgery for at age 11. “Basically, it didn’t allow me to ride a bike, it didn’t allow me to draw, it didn’t allow me to see colors either,” said Lienardy. She said the surgery “didn’t help to fix everything, but it felt like it had given me a second choice, like a second chance in life, […] to see the world from a different perspective.” In order to represent this experience, Lienardy’s pieces feature desaturated colors and prisms to distort the focus. 

This final collection is different from the project that Lienard had initially planned for her senior show. “My initial project was to capture macro shots of eyeballs,” said Lienardy. However, she switched her plan to what ended up becoming “Mátia” in order to make the theme more personal and better express her story and experience.

Blain, also a photography major, titled his collection “Phos Graphí”, which means “light painting.” Blain said that his concept is “about visualizing the energy that’s all around us if you could actually see it.” In order to create these images, he lit steel wool on fire and swung it around, casting the sparks that you see captured in the images as streaks of light. The type of energy meant to be represented by each image is described in his artist statement. 

Blain said that the most challenging part of the project was figuring out the lighting for each shot; figuring out the right settings “to capture all of the lighting without too much of the foreground while also making sure that [the] subjects are in focus.” Other challenges were finding legal locations for the shoots and managing equipment, such as a tripod that broke midway through one shoot. 

All three students received suggestions, critiques, and encouragement from their peers, friends, and teachers along the way that helped their work to become even more successful. 

The show will only remain on display until Dec. 16, so make sure to drop in during Common Grounds open hours to see “There Is No Linear,” “Mátia,” and  “Phos Graphí.”