By Nia Mwangi, Staff Writer

Before entering the professional art world, UMHB wants its artists ready. All graduating artists are required to create their senior exhibition, the capstone experience for students receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in either art education, studio art or graphic design. It is a yearlong process for artists in their final two semesters at UMHB.

This semester, Charley Hedgepeth, Karyea Oliver, Ash Calloway, Leanne McIver, Jordan Hernandez and Callie Stidfole are presenting their senior exhibitions. The six art students were challenged to build a body of work that meets the level of a professional artist or designer.

Charley Hedgepeth, Visible Vibes

Charley Hedgepeth, a senior graphic design major, created the branding for a music festival she conceptualized called “Visible Vibes.” Hedgepeth said she has had a hard time hearing lyrics while listening to music. She realized that people in the deaf and hard of hearing community might experience this issue at concerts. While many concerts have sign language interpreters, she thought it would be beneficial if there were a way to have the lyrics interact with the songs being sung.

She created what would normally be found at a music festival — from shirts and tote bags to wristbands and pamphlets. The logo she created was a decorative eye, using blue, yellow-orange and purple since blue represents deaf awareness, yellow-orange complements blue, and purple balances the overall color scheme.

“Everything that’s in the show is stuff I did my first time,” Hedgepeth said. “I’ve never done screen printing or made T-shirts before. I bothered a lot of professors, but people like them, so it all worked out.”

Karyea Oliver, Transition

Senior studio art major Karyea Oliver explored tradition in her exhibition. While her mother was deployed in Iraq, she grew up with her great-grandmother and grandmother, who taught her how to knit and sew. When she was older and her mother returned, she would play video games at arcades with her every weekend. For her exhibition, she wanted to combine these two traditions and explore the transition between them through watercolor pieces that incorporated alcohol ink and fabric.

She made two pieces in total: “Tradition” and “Memories.” “Tradition” was made up of 10 to 12 watercolor pieces sized 18 by 24 inches, cut up and glued together, with stuffed video game controllers and joysticks created out of fabric, as well as trails of alcohol ink throughout. “Memories” is a series of four abstract watercolor paintings that explore different aspects of video games. Oliver expressed her struggle with completing everything in time.

“Being a procrastinator before, I learned my lesson the hard way,” Oliver said. “I was stressing myself out when things were getting close to the deadline, so I started reprioritizing my work so I would have more time to focus on what I needed to focus on. It was a hard lesson to learn.”

Ash Calloway, Brand New Look

For the senior exhibition of graphic design major Ash Calloway, she explored three different brands and how they attracted different types of audiences. She created two of the brands “Bright Bite” and “Paws n’ Claws”  and developed new branding for the hot dog stand “Haute Dog” in Temple. She structured her exhibition this way to show that, as a brand designer, she could generate her own ideas while also improving upon an existing brand.

“My favorite aspect was definitely planning everything out,” Calloway said, “like finding the color palette and typeface I would use and sketching the ideas out for logos. I got to discover different ideas and aspects that I hadn’t thought of before.”

Calloway believes in the importance of adopting pets, having adopted three dogs herself. This gave her a personal connection to the animal shelter “Paws n’ Claws.” “Bright Bite” is a subscription brand based on a company she created in 2023, aiming for the future of dental care to be catered to a client’s specific needs. For this company, the client would take an online test to determine the products they needed, which would then be shipped to their door.

Leanne McIver, Disjointed

Leanne McIver, a senior graphic design major, included pieces in her exhibition that were created years prior. McIver’s project is a series of four paintings created from 2020 to 2025, exploring her feelings of disconnection throughout college.

“I was feeling super disconnected from reality,” McIver said. “With the world being livestreamed and stuff, it sometimes feels overwhelmingly present and super distracting. I’m not really good with words or working through things, so I just put it all into art.”

McIver relates to surrealist art because it reflects one’s attempt to connect with the subconscious mind. Her four paintings slowly explore her journey from feeling completely disconnected from the world to breaking free from the noise of it.

“I consider it kind of like a journey because each semester was different for me,” McIver said. “I had to find out how to still keep [the paintings] cohesive and represent where I am in life and as an artist at that moment.”

Jordan Hernandez, Tandem

Senior graphic design major Jordan Hernandez explored the use of AI in art, evaluating if and how artists can use AI ethically. His idea stemmed from one of his graphic design teachers, Mikaela Buck. While Hernandez was working on an assignment a couple of semesters ago, she recommended that he mix AI with his work, inspired by an artist on Instagram named Jad Kassis. He was able to create it in a way that both he and his teachers liked.

His exhibition was originally going to be a music festival, but it wasn’t working out and he didn’t feel passionate about it. Stephanie Chambers, the art department chair of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, recommended using AI to tie his pieces together so he could create work he enjoyed. Hernandez produced a variety of pieces, including book covers, magazine covers and a movie poster.

Knowing his topic was controversial, Hernandez hopes that “people will just have an open mind and consider other people’s perspectives before making a decision. I want people to be malleable and engage in critical thought.”

Callie Stidfole, Between Crits

Callie Stidfole, a senior graphic design major, created a zine series called “Between Crits.” During her time at UMHB, Stidfole would write about her college experiences in a journal, which she said helped her process her time in school. She had always been interested in web comics growing up, and she realized she could base a story on what she had journaled. She outlined the story from start to finish, created storyboards, planned dialogue beforehand and built the zine from there.

“It’s really crazy to see illustrations that have been on my iPad for almost a year to be in the material realm,” Stidfole said. “I don’t know how to express it with words. I’ve been staring at these things on my iPad and now they’re tangible. It’s really cool.”

These seniors spent many hours throughout the year perfecting their pieces. Their hard work and effort showcased their ability to succeed in the professional art world. Their work is currently being presented in the gallery of the Baugh Center for Visual Arts until Dec. 6.