Student Spotlight: Graphic design major constructs National Park-themed showcase
Parker Jones, Arts Reporter
October 20, 2020
This week, stepping into University of Iowa senior Amber Dale’s exhibition in the Visual Arts Building will be like walking into a National Park gift shop. A central display filled with trinkets accompanied by a fake campfire and prop tent will add to the naturalistic setting, aided by graphic desig...
Student Spotlight: UI student performs songs with meaningful messages
Jenna Post, Arts Reporter
October 6, 2020
University of Iowa sophomore Grace Springer doesn’t let the workload her engineering major brings stop her from sharing her passion for music with her followers. With nothing more than a white guitar, a simple, bare background, and a little bit of free time, the singer and her delicate, yet confi...
Student Spotlight: UI student uses dining hall to-go containers to create watercolor-like works of art
Jenna Post, Arts Reporter
September 22, 2020
After finishing their takeout from University of Iowa dining halls, most students see the paper to-go boxes provided to them as trash and throw them in their waste bins without a second thought. Fourth-year student Ericka Barloon, however, sees an opportunity to create art. For as long a...
Student Spotlight: Artist raises money for charity through political graphic design
Tatiana Plowman, Arts Reporter
September 8, 2020
Inspired by peers and the variety of art mediums around him, University of Iowa art and creative writing major Noah Neal found himself enrolling in multiple art classes in high school, determined to get an “easy A” and have a few more credits under his belt. Neal had no idea that these class...
Student Spotlight: UI artist creates ceramic pieces through experiential techniques
Madison Lotenschtein, Arts Editor
August 26, 2020
When Benjamin Gilbertson enrolled in a ceramics course in high school, all he was expecting was an “easy A.” By the end, not only had he earned the grade he’d hoped for — the young artist found a fledgling passion for ceramics. Gilbertson is now pursuing a bachelor’s in fine arts in Ce...
Student Spotlight: Grad student recreates scenes from Romeo and Juliet handmade dolls
Addie Bushnell, Arts Reporter
May 11, 2020
Just weeks before spring break — when the University of Iowa made the decision to move the remainder of the spring semester online — graduate acting student Luli Gomez was performing as Natasha in the UI Theatre Arts Department’s production of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. Her experience would so...
Student Spotlight: UI hockey player balances passion for sport and music
Megan Conroy, Arts Reporter
April 30, 2020
From the basement of his family home in Illinois, hockey player, musician, and UI accounting major Mikey Fontana described what his “new normal” looks like in a COVID-19 pandemic-era world. The basement recently flooded, making the now-carpetless space a haven for acoustics and rich sound. It is...
Student Spotlight: UI grad student explores space, time, and sound
Jenna Post, Arts Reporter
April 27, 2020
Guitars suspended in midair and a band playing in an inflatable bubble is an unusual sight at the University of Iowa, but graduate student Jacob Jones brought that vision to life despite COVID-19 changing their plans last minute. Jones’ intermedia performance, Space-Time (Space Lime), was orig...
Student Spotlight: UI artist creates music and paintings from themes of liberation of the self
Madison Lotenschtein, Arts Editor
April 19, 2020
On March 6, University of Iowa BFA painter and musician, Mary Bozaan, decided to do the unthinkable: host a live stream performance of her unreleased EP, Young Grub, on a pornographic website. Wearing a wig to protect her identity — and performing as her alter-ego, Ariella Nice — she projected ...
Student Spotlight: UI playwright turns to livestreaming their writing process online amid COVID-19 outbreak
Josie Fischels, Arts Editor
April 5, 2020
Should one find Cameron Speta streaming on Twitch, they might be surprised to find that the UI senior and playwright isn’t always playing Overwatch as the category title suggests — they’re typing on a Word document. According to Speta, the technique helps them to hold themselves accountable to wr...
Art student tells visual stories through comics
Madison Lotenschtein, Arts Editor
March 29, 2020
A pencil-drawn image of a girl looking down a hillside toward a cow laying on its side sets the scene of a comic strip drawn by Sabrina Claman, a B.F.A. drawing student at the University of Iowa. The comic depicts the story of a girl trying to help her father’s cow because one of its horns has go...
Student Spotlight: UI painter embeds queerness into Catholic spaces through artwork
Madison Lotenschtein, Arts Editor
March 11, 2020
Paint supplies, cardboard, and scraps of paper lay strewn across B.F.A painter David Michael Petersen’s workspace, as though an artistic twister had come through his corner of the Visual Arts Building. Wearing black jeans, a black sweater, and holding a ceramic coffee mug, Petersen joked that ...