2021 Contest

First Place:
Chris Casserly

"My drawings are based on my personal experience, and how I'm feeling mentally. These three drawing are part of a larger set that talks about feeling alone, and fear of growing up. These drawings are how I interpret my feeling manifesting themselves. I typically try to represent how I'm feeling through these strange creature that's can be molded and formed into anything they need to be at the time. For example in the piece title Ti-84 you have these creatures seeping out of the screen of a Gameboy which is an object that is very close to my heart and nostalgic because of my childhood, but every time I see a Gameboy I realize how I'll never have the childhood like imagination again, the title Ti-84 is a reference to the calculator we're required to have for calculus, a class you usually take around the end of high school, and how it represents the death of your childhood and entering in adulthood. These creature are meant to look cute, and playful but they also look melancholy. They're not quite sad, but they are not happy."
- Christopher Casserly, B. Architecture '22

Second Place:
Joseph Sauers

"This work resembles my voice and personality though the layers of details that many may overlook. Gentle care was taken when painting the softness of the snow and fluidity of the street flags combined with the ridged texture of the architecture lining South Broad Street. My voice is also represented through the oblique field of view. This simple rotation provides grounds for questioning of the artistic intent that otherwise would not occur through a typical linear photorealistic painting. Instead of focusing all efforts into depicting one aspect of the painting in detail (City Hall), the true beauty comes from the consistency of graphic value shared across the art piece.

Painting as a whole creates an impact to my architectural design. Especially in this piece the intricacy of detail provides me time to understand and deconstruct the elements that effect the deign process."
- Joesph Sauers, B. Architecture '23

Third Place:
Stephanie Catrambone

"Painting for me is about "moments" where colors work together or the movement of one brush stroke becomes the focal point. Similarly, my relationship with design is centered on trusting the process until one of these moments arrive, when things begin to make sense. By entering both the painting and design realms I get to use my gut and my subconscious, and bring what they want to say forward.

Abstract painting is about creating forms from nothing. This has helped me tremendously in creating compositions in design and creating forms in 2D drawings. I am comfortable with abstractions so collaging has been a major process step for me in the design process. Both paintings and architectural representations are framed pieces of a bigger story. The "crop marks" or edge of the canvas marks the end of what you want the viewer to see. In this way as painters or architects we're able to create illusions and fill the frame any way we want to."
- Stephanie Catrambone, M. Architecture

Social Media Winner:
Shayani Gujarathi

"Here I have tried to show how, in some parts of the world, women have to hide their true self and follow the rules that the society has laid out for them and they still face the humiliation of being harassed and looked down upon by the same men of the society.

Through this pencil drawing I have tried to bring everyone’s attention towards a very sensitive topic of gender oppression. Even today in this modern era, there are places, there are some society that are not yet modernize. They still have certain boundaries for their women and girls. Here, as you can see in this artwork, I have the profile of a women where the heavy ornamental jewelry is a symbolic representation of certain things, like the eyes covered shows that the women are not supposed to look straight up and present their point on any topic, her head is covered by the head gear which is also a sign of respect towards elders. It depicts the kind of restrictions and boundaries that women follow in the name of culture. Despite all this the women and girls are not treated with respect by the same society, they are objectified. Their worth is far beyond their body. But all they see is ‘The Red Lips’. This has to change. This is not a story, this is a fact which some of you might have faced. Let's talk about it because we have to take responsibility to make our society a better place to live in."
- Shayani Gujarathi, M. Sustainable Design