Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2021

classes had to be completely redesigned for at-home projects. Because remote students could not simply pack up and take home an entire throwing wheel, Assistant Professor of Art Ron Geibel’s beginner Wheel- Forming course was adapted into Vessel Concepts, focused on forming containers such as vases, bowls, and cups and saucers through various methods. Because of health and safety concerns around using clay outside the studio, remote students practiced crafting with alternative mate- rials, including papier-mâché, cardboard, watercolor paper, and wheat paste. Chair and Professor of Art Victoria Star Varner believes that this generation of students will be viewed by future artists as the fortunate ones who had front-row seats to the convergence of three global changes: a pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the 2020 presiden- tial election. “Such disruptions feed art,” she explains, “and our current students will be the artists who will shape the post-COVID world.” Varner shifted the conceptual focus of her advanced courses to give students a space to process the unique experience artistically. Studio art major Sarah Friday ’20, for example, who prefers they/them/their as their pronouns, embraced this approach in their capstone project, Doomscroll , a living documentation of their daily existence during the pandemic. Their titular piece was a “livestream” scroll of circuit-board shapes drawn daily on a 261-inch-long roll of paper, the circuits coded in colors that represent emotions they experienced while digesting digital content and significant personal or global events. Doomscroll , along with other senior exhibits and the annual student art exhibition, can be viewed on the Studio Art Department’s webpage. Beyond class, the art departments found ways to create community with their students fromafar. In lieu of dinner parties hosted at her home, Varner shared a recipe that promotes eye health with her class and hosted a virtual dinner in which they cooked and ate together. Chair and Professor of Art History Kimberly Smith organized Art History Thursday Nights, in which students and faculty would gather virtually to watch art films and documentaries or play games. “We offered some chance to feel like you’re connected to someone else who’s thinking about similar issues,” Smith says. “To me, it wasn’t so much a matter of who came but who needed it.” As the pandemic carries on into the new year, the Sarofim School of Fine Arts continues its creative approaches to making art while fostering growth and resilience in its students. Biltz sums up the past fewmonths best: “Although everyone’s e xpe r ience of this pandemic is different, we’ve really learned a lot from it—such as appreciating what we already have, discovering something new about ourselves, and valuing the humanity of the moment.” 3 4 | SOUTHWE S T E RN Professor of Art Victoria Star Varner leads her capstone course on Zoom.