In April 2023 I visited the always fantastic UNT CoLab to see what they were featuring! This go around it was the UNT Senior Photo Studio Exhibition: Dynamic Luminescence. It ran from March 31st to April 11th 2023 earlier this year. Let’s dive into the amazing work featured here!
Dylan’s work in ‘1992’ echoed so much nostalgic treatment of the interests and lives of everyone involved in this piece. It was beautiful and poignant in how it was displayed. Soft insides of the plush material, friendly household name characters, comraderie and love on display in the photos held on to tightly so like we hold onto the memories we carry with us in small photos. An ode to time itself passing, this piece was fantastic to start us off.
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The ‘Stained Glass Window’ was incredibly unique in the way that it uses negative space to create the window we are looking out, accompanied by the drapery. The photos colour treatment and layering effects create an ethereal look. The orange and blue complementary colour scheme provides a warm and enticing approachable feeling to this piece. It truly feels painted. I have no idea how this artist achieved any of this look, but I appreciate it so much. Meg Heller did awesome work on this!
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Olivia King’s action and sports photography pieces brought so much life to the room. The energy in each photo is captured flawlessly in the moment, with intensity that shows through the vibrant colours captured in each shot. The compositions are very nice and feel iconic for each sport.
Here’s a video to show off each piece without the glare problem;
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“Ashley (she/her/hers)” is such a beautiful scene of feminine divinity here. I especially appreciated the piece as Marina is one of my favourite musicians, and the link between Marina’s Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land album and the youthful person versus the ancestral photos of her family is really noticeable and a nice choice. She is also in front of a vanity mirror in particular, so it’s also very fitting for everything here. I love this scene so much. It is so warm and inviting to see into her world and little piece of heaven. Amy Nava Ruiz did an amazing job capturing that.
Take a look and behold the whole piece in this video below:
This was another intimate piece in the inner world of a person, in a bedroom, maybe its a guest room? Either way it’s featuring a nice orange , brown and blue colour scheme. Everything matches really well and provides a sort of wonderful inner look into Teirani’s life in their room. Amy Nava Ruiz captures people so nicely in their own realms. The colour schemes are so appealing too in the arrangement of elements.
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This piece required interactivity and it was beautiful!! Here’s a video that shows how it worked, amazingly so:
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‘Level Of Life’ was a fantastically beautiful animated piece, please enjoy:
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Both ‘Stairway’ and ‘The way’ definitely had a “heavenly” theme going on here, and it was nicely done!
‘Liminal Mind’ was an eerie couple of pieces that work very well to create that strange space. I really like the colour schemes here. Using warm colour schemes to create unsettling scenes with the noxious and anxiety-inducing yellow tones is a unique choice that works well for Nicholas Larsen. Awesome!
‘Car Movements’ is one I wish the lighting was easier for me to get photos of back when I visited, but if you can see through the glare it was an impressive moody piece. Better seen in person, so I recorded a video to hopefully disperse some of the glare better if looked at in motion. Enjoy!
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‘Black Angels Will Fly’ featured multiple beautiful pieces accompanied by written word that rang so strongly with the vibrant power of Black angels and artistry, it blew me away. This series by Christian Harper is one of a kind, gorgeous, special and so important. Cherish the Black angels you know in your life, too.
Take a look at the beautiful installation of their work featuring wings of Black angels here in this video:
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Ethan Hardy’s photography work was truly breathtaking, and very dreamy and in the realm of the unconscious as his work titles suggest. It’s astounding the unique colourful work he gets through I’m assuming photo editing his original work, and it looks marvelous! I love the effect he is able to achieve.
Let’s take a look inside his book here in this video:
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These three pieces are all ‘Untitled’ by Sophia Nguyen. I absolutely adored the kind of vastly different energies taking place in each piece here. The electric cool vibe of the green neon lit bar, the happy pink pristine vibes of the pink tattoo parlor, and the moody but warm and welcoming vibe of the street view of the ‘Winchester’ place. All unique worlds to each their own!! Nice work! I want to draw all these places!
The trio of pieces entitled ‘Badass Women’ all together are just magnificent work to behold. I love their true raw power on display, and the unique personality each show off.
John Slater’s race car series of scenes captured are fantastically intimate into the heart of the racing culture and community. This is what racing is about. He does a superb job showing the intensity and joy of the sport through his photography.
Kendra Stone’s work featuring wildlife caught in the moment is nothing short of amazing. These are one of kind snapshots that are obviously very difficult to capture, especially so clearly. I especially love seeing the social aspects of each animals life in the pieces with two birds in them. But the wingspan captured on the ‘Ring-billed Gull and Trees’ is mindblowing. I love all of these. Stone did amazing work here.
Leian Alshaer’s ‘My Olive Roots’ collection of pieces evokes so much of her family history and the importance of honouring those roots. Alshaer’s culture shines through vibrantly so in each piece – a culture that survives time and time again, year after year, through traditions in garb, foods, actions, beliefs, and so on. This series is gorgeous and well done in every aspect of this celebration of the self and those roots.
‘Suck for a Moment’ is a very emotional series of three pieces by Baylee Neff. I gather so much high emotional energy from these, even though the faces – where we’d normally see emotion – are obscured. There is an ever powerful overall mood of every piece here. The people in each don’t want you to see their faces – thats part of their moods. They might be at their lowest lows. Facing rock bottom, we often become a faceless wreck – maybe they are afraid of facing themselves. Either way, I adore how Neff made the unseen feelings felt in each piece.
‘Stressed’ and ‘Getting Dizzy’ both are impressive pieces of work by Mianiche Rivera Calhoun. Their work captures multiple moments of movement in one photograph for ‘Getting Dizzy’ and it creates a very compelling effect of how it feels to see dizziness when you are dizzy yourself. The repetitive imagery of ‘Stressed’ makes me think of how it feels when your mind goes in circles, coming back to anxieties and stressors that limit your perception of the world around you. Thats the feeling I gather from this piece. Both are fantastic work. Great job!
I also recorded a video observance of them, please enjoy below to avoid glare issues:
These three pieces by Ricky Gonzalez were beyond astounding, I really like the makeup and lighting working together for the model and the uniqueness of the shapes being made in the final outcome of each shot. There is a certain primal energy here and I love it.
Last but not least by any means, the ‘FOCUS’ series by Litzy Rea Valdéz that were really aesthetically pleasing and I adored the dotting effect seen in comics and news print that overlap to create the colours and imagery. The way that its only the background effected by this too is great, it brings into focus (working in the title 😉 ) the main figures and creates a very appealing effect on the eyes. I love this piece probably the most out of everything seen here today. Just awesome work.
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A bonus added to this piece is my outfit of the day that I visited! He/they are my pronouns so please be respectful, thanks!
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And that completes our journey through the Senior Photo Exhibition at the UNT CoLab. Congratulations to the now graduated seniors of that last semester! It was an honor to get to document y’all’s work. Please do follow up with each artist individually and see where they are now through a quick google search with names as listed above.
Visit the UNT CoLab today also!! It’s right on the square and hosts a variety of awesome exhibits of art all throughout the year.
That’s it for this art adventure of April 2023 – stay tuned for the next installment!
-O
Ovaettr Art Life 