Black Students’ Alliance art show stuns all

The Black Students’ Alliance Art Show at Rensselaer on February 11 featured a variety of art styles, topics, and mediums. Artwork based around geometric design, like Bryce Pennington’s ’23 “Hue Dimensional Blend,” was featured alongside pieces like Zoe Puno’s ’26 “Star-Spangled Stride,” a portrait of a girl named Hope riding to a "Star-Spangled Stride" banner at a Texas rodeo, or Jade Warrick’s (TrashKID’s) piece “Dissociation,” a work representing the detachment the artist experienced as a black, queer woman. Pennington’s “Hue Dimensional Blend” is a mixture of 2D shapes and 3D figures overlapping different hues of blues and purples, bringing the geometric forms within the piece into focus. Along with the variety of topics, art was also shown in a variety of mediums. Pieces showcased included digital prints, acrylic paintings, and 3D forms such as the arched cave-like structure of Garcelle Allen’s ’26 piece “Gateways,” which explores the connection between the architectural and digital world as well as tracker objects in the digital world. “Gateways” features a 3D dark gray arched form with light blue lines in patterns around the piece, getting denser towards the bottom. Amel Ouji’s ’24 piece “Swimming” is a painted piece which features two koi fish swimming in a darkly bordered pool. It also has a golden frame around the heads of the two fish, which are swimming in opposite, circular directions.

The art show was very educational about the lives of artists and allowed for wonderful insight into the minds of the creators and their experiences.