Save the Date for 2025 Studio Art Senior Exhibitions!

The University of Rochester’s Department of Art and Art History is delighted to present the 2025 Senior Thesis Exhibitions. The upcoming events will feature the works of 16 Studio Art majors who will showcase their recent art production in exhibitions both on and off campus from April 4 to May 18, 2025. Each artist blends their interdisciplinary expertise and diverse media skillsets in their studio practices. 

Memory and inheritance take center stage in the works of Dara Rozen, who retraces invisible family lineage through materials and stories of her great-grandmother, and Janelle McNiff, whose soft sculptures, collages, and photographs dissect the complexities of relationships. Isabella Hou adds to this dialogue, reflecting on the transformative crossroads of womanhood as she navigates new motherhood and her authoritarian upbringing. Nature and embodiment emerge in Alicia Lawson’s immersive installations, where drawings, sculptures, and light evoke the enchanted woods of western New York, while Emily Salman bridges art and medicine, exploring growth through anatomical and botanical motifs. Ella Smith confronts bodily stereotypes head-on, provoking visceral reactions to dismantle perceived boundaries. 

Questions of identity and belief resonate in Fagaye Seck’s politically charged works, rooted in her Black Senegalese-American identity and Islamic teachings, and Reece Stallwitz’s interrogation of Lutheran upbringing through religious iconography. Midas Briggs channels wordless emotions into pressure-forged sculptures, using materiality as an outlet for inner turmoil. Play and narrative intertwine in Charlie McAdow’s fictional artifacts, which invite sensory wonder, and Catho Fan’s unsettling toy-like forms, which expose childhood trauma beneath playful surfaces. Liam Henry captures fleeting emotional moments through meticulous wire and fabric constructions. 

Urgency and resistance define Rachel Kamata’s quilts, collages and prints, which scale climate crisis into tactile calls for action, and Alex Garlock’s repetitive sculptural processes, which grapple with social injustice. Ziruo Liu animates whimsical yet profound meditations on life and death, shaped by her transnational journey, while Ellie Chung maps the terrain of emotion through painterly and digital abstractions. 

Together, these 16 artists invite us into their worlds - where personal stories collide with universal questions, where materials speak as eloquently as words, and where the act of creation becomes a form of truth-telling. This exhibition isn’t just about what they’ve made, but how they see - and how their visions might change the way we see. 

Alicia Lawson 

On view: April 4-30, 2025 

Reception: April 4, 6-8pm / Artist Talk: 6:30pm 

Gallery 4-8 (Anderson Arts Building) 

Midas Briggs, Ella Smith, Fagaye Seck 

On view: April 17-29, 2025 

Reception: April 24, 6-8pm / Artist Talk: 6:30pm 

Harnett Gallery 

Emily Salman 

On view: April 14 to May 3, 2025 

Reception: April 24, 4:30-6pm / Artist Talk: 6:10pm 

Frontispace 

Rachel Kamata, Charlie McAdow, Liam Henry 

On view: April 17 to May 17, 2025 

Reception: April 24, 4:30-6pm / Artist Talk: 5:00pm 

ASIS Gallery 

Isabella Jiahui Hou, Alex Garlock, Dara Rozen 

On View: April 30 to May 18, 2025 

Reception: May 2, 6-8pm / Artist Talk: 7:20pm 

The Yards Collective (Public Market) 

Catho Fan 

On View: April 30 to May 17, 2025 

Reception: May 2, 6-8pm / Artist Talk: 6:30pm 

Gallery 4-8 (Anderson Arts Building) 

Ellie Chung 

On View: May 4-20, 2025 

Reception: May 8, 4-6pm / Artist Talk: 5pm 

Frontispace 

Ziruo Liu, Janelle McNiff, Reece Stallwitz 

On View: May 3-18, 2025 

Reception: May 15, 5-7pm / Artist Talk: 5:30pm 

Harnett Gallery