This past Monday was the Arts & Letters Evening, an annual tradition meant to celebrate the arts at Wooster, as well as commemorate the students who engage in them. This includes performances from the year's theatre productions, musical groups, poets, and an art exhibit featuring the visual works of those graduating in two months. This year the art show featured Marley Caplan, Jacob Engelbrecht, Kelly Fu, Trista Ma, and Paige Storrier; five seniors who have spent varying amounts of time polishing their craft at Wooster, but all of whom had a lot to show for their past four years.

"Every year it's very nice to see, especially with the senior shows, all of their work come together," Ms. Carlson told me as we walked through the different displays in the library. "It tells this interesting story about who they are, and I think it's really rewarding for them and their families and for us to see it all come together like that."

Ms. Carlson has taught *almost* all of the seniors featured in the show this year, and while she's happy to watch her students grow and excited to see what they continue to do, it's hard to see them go. "It makes me really wistful that I won't have them in my classes forever...except for Jacob, he's never taken an art class." *Jacob, in the background: I've taken art electives!* Ms. Carlson laughed about this, assuring me she was only kidding before walking me towards Trista's display. While we waited for Trista to find her way to us, Ms. Carlson told me about her as an artist.

"One thing I love about Trista's work is that it's aesthetically excellent, but it's also really conceptual. Everything she does has a really thoughtful...intentional idea behind it. So, even when it's a class project, for example in Advanced Art we did a social justice project..."

While we were talking about her, Trista popped in! When asked about her work and what she does, she immediately jumped in. "I connect all my work around brains and hands. I think artists think through their hands...but others think through their brains. So if brains and hands combine, then they can make art. Their hands are their brains because sometimes they make first and then think about what they're making."

"Everything she works on? She comes up with other things while she's making," Ms. Carlson shared with me, "So those paper objects on the side are an unfinished idea that connects to the hand and connects to a central idea, which in this case was contained."

As I walked through the gallery on my own, I started pulling aside the rest of the artists individually. First up was Jacob, known at Wooster for the photography he does here but not always known for the photography he doesn't.

"I tried to show a lot that wasn't the sports photography, because then it becomes WiNK and the usual, and I wanted to show off the other stuff I did. So I tried to focus on nature which is a big passion of mine, and the more unique aspects of photography like lensbaby photography, and the macrophotography. This is all an assortment of collections I'm really proud of."

Jacob started taking photography seriously around eighth grade, when he took his first photography elective at Wooster. Now he's taken eight, and it's just grown.

"I liked experimenting with the other types of photography. I was drawn to nature because I loved being outside, but then (I started doing) macrophotography, lensbaby, panoramas... just seeing what you can do with a camera is really interesting. To me it's very enjoyable... I do it because I like capturing the moment. I like looking back on the memory. It's just fun; I view the camera as an extension of my body, so I can be in the moment and capture it."

Next I talked to Marley, who was probably the hardest person to lock down that night. Every time I looked to talk to her, she was deep in conversation with someone else about her work - you could tell just by looking at her talk how passionate she is about it. By the time I did get to talk to her about what she had on display, she did not disappoint.

"Ask any artist here, when you say, "Oh that's so good!" they'll say, "Well nope, I have to finish that right there, and there!"" She laughed as we looked at her drawings, "These are a lot of things that were cut out of sketchbooks. These (ones) are variations on the same theme: there's this artist H.R. Giger who I really like. And he had a sketch of this type of pattern that I started copying and translating into a landscape of something from somewhere that doesn't really exist. It also infuses a lot of Gaudi, a Spanish artist who has really interesting buildings. I don't like architecture, but I think his buildings are awesome because he uses a lot of organic textures. One of his buildings is designed to look like a skeleton - all the railings are very curved and it flows upward...there aren't a lot of hard lines. It looks like something fantastical or something from a dream."

When asked how she got into art in the first place, she told me she "was supposed to be doing math. And started doodling. Third grade. I always say math class is a great place to cultivate artistic talent," before jumping right back into talking about her work. It became clear to me that her interests become her influences, shining through all of her pieces. "I read a lot of comic books, which is mostly done with pencil and ink and then colored in the background, so these pieces are a lot of copying that. These are variations on that. This is more dystopian, this one I was going for Roman but my art teacher says it's more Native American. I had to redraw the nose six times. That one is more like a supermodel face. A lot of twisted versions of people. People, but not people..."

Finally I spoke to Kelly, who told me about a series she created called The Love That Cannot Be Touched, "inspired by a piece that talks about two people who love each other but they can't be together. It's the Love That Cannot Be Touched. And there are many loves where we cannot be touched in our daily lives such as...there are some schools I like but they denied me, which is the Love That Cannot Be Touched."

"With the Love That Cannot Be Touched you cannot see, it's so unclear. Because people have bad eyes, they see everything unclearly. That's how I started with my idea. My design began with eyes, which became eye testing, with the letters from the biggest size to the smallest size, turning into black dots. (This) inspired me to use textures and objects using the shape of circle (to) form my fashion. A faulty eye to an eye test to an object with circle shape to the dresses. That's how it comes, that's how you go through."

I find this concept so fascinating, but I was particularly touched by what she shared with me next. "I think I can represent myself (through art), and sometimes I can't speak out what I want and who I am, but I can do it with art. I can show people who I am and what I want to say to you through my art. So that's why I want to do art. I think I founded new life when I do art."

If you get a chance to check out these pieces in person, they're all up in the Library Commons, and I highly recommend taking a look. I was really impressed by what these people made, and I loved getting to know them better through their work. Sadly I didn't get a chance to talk to Paige, but photos of her work will be included below.