Each year, Gallery 360 hosts the Art + Design Senior Show, giving a professional platform to graduating students in what’s the first time for many.

This year’s show had a variety of media on view, reflecting the impressive range and creative skill that CAMD students are taking with them after graduation. 

Gallery 360 staff members, Anna Nasi and Claire Ogden, interviewed graduating students about their work.  

From Concept to Commission

Taylor Farnell ‘25, a Graphic Design major, knew she wanted to create a multisensory experience for her capstone project, but she didn’t know what form it would take. 

For a long time, she’s been passionate about lighting design and light shows. So after starting to work with electronics, she soon got the idea to make a musical light show. 

Her finished project, “A Lightened Moment,” includes a 3D-printed simulation of a splash of water, with installed lights that are programmed in coordination with gentle harp music. 

The piece is intended to be a “peaceful thing to watch that lets you put every bit of stress and daily life out of your mind,” she said.

Given its 3D-printed materials and programmed lights, the piece required extensive fabrication. The project gave Farnell an opportunity to explore skills she hadn’t learned in her design classes. She spent a lot of time in the university’s makerspace to learn how to solder and troubleshooting her code to get the lights timed right. 

The experience was difficult but rewarding. Farnell said she “surprised myself with the things that I’m capable of.” 

Now the rest of the world is seeing what she’s capable of, too. Shortly before graduation day, Farnell received an email about the piece from the Office of Student Life expressing their interest in keeping the piece permanently or commissioning her to do something similar. 

That was exciting for Farnell. “It made me realize,” she said, “that this type of work is essential, and something that I’d want to pursue as art for art’s sake rather than an industry-related need.” 

The project proved to Farnell that her future lies in producing 3D materials. She enjoys “having a physical product to hold in my hands or see in the real world,” she said. 

“This project is definitely something that will bridge into a career one way or another, whether it’s creating commissions similar to this in the future or using these skills towards something more industry-specific.”

Without the creative freedom of a capstone class and the time and resources to fail and try again, it would have been hard to make a piece like that happen. 

Finding an Audience

Hayley Chung ‘25 may have majored in Business and Graphic Design, but she’s always loved painting. 

In a recent mixed media class, she was assigned a project about “mapping,” broadly construed. The assignment was vague and open-ended, which allowed her a lot of creative freedom. 

Hayley ended up painting a piece commemorating her senior spring break trip to Aruba. She had gone to the island with friends and found herself inspired by the bright blue water there. 

The resulting painting, “Oinkation,” had what professors shared was confident control of the medium and a strong understanding of color. The piece shows pigs swimming in tropical waters, with translucent fabric scraps serving as a mixed media reference to the water’s reflections. 

“It’s kind of symbolic,” Chung said. The pigs are whimsical and dreamy, commemorating what she called “the end of a chapter” and a “playful end of girlhood.” 

For Hayley, one of the best parts of having her work on view has been getting feedback from an audience. She also has a self-portrait on view at Ryder Hall, and she’s been delighted by having friends send her surprised texts, asking “is this yours?” and complimenting her on the artwork. 

“They were caught off guard seeing a picture of me,” she said. 

In the future, Hayley hopes to continue to exhibit her work at cafes and galleries. The exhibition has ignited something new for her. It’s been thrilling to have the public engaged with her work. 

Family Archives as Art

For Charlotte Hysen ‘25, her capstone project became a place to investigate family history and archive childhood memories. 

She’s a Media Arts and Communications Studies major. Her multimedia installation “Remembering Monday” uses media ranging from Super 8 footage, old family photos and voicemails, and even cyanotype. 

The title refers to the old voicemail recordings themselves, many of which happened to fall on a Monday.

This project is deeply personal for Charlotte. It began five years ago when her grandmother Carole was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. As Carole began losing her memory, Charlotte felt compelled to document and preserve moments from her grandmother’s family life “before they slipped away for good,” she said. Charlotte even interviewed her grandmother and was able to include that audio in the project. 

Sadly, Carole passed away in the fall. Afterward, Charlotte helped to clear out her old home, and she “was struck by the urgency of preserving our shared memories,” she said.

“Each object collected became a symbol of our intertwined histories, inspiring me to create a space where these memories could live on.” 

The resulting project made her complicate the way she thinks about memory, seeing it now “as location, objects, and people,” she said. 

The use of old technologies like voicemail and Super 8 footage was intentional. Charlotte used each medium in the installation to embody “a different time in the lives of its subjects,” she said. She captured the Super 8 footage with her father’s camera in her childhood home. The cyanotypes were made on old family table cloths with “flora and fauna from the family’s yards, scans on the table from my mothers eighth birthday, and potpourri found in both grandparents’ homes,” she said.

There were mulberry trees in her grandparents’ backyard. In a touching coincidence, Charlotte found mulberries in nearby Mission Hill and ended up using the leaves in her cyanotypes. It was another fitting way to tie her family’s past to her present-day creative project.

Beyond the Gallery Walls: CAMD’s Lasting Impact

Whether learning new technical skills like Taylor, finding joy in public exhibition like Hayley, or preserving precious memories like Charlotte, these graduates have discovered unique artistic voices that will continue to evolve beyond campus walls. 

Their diverse approaches—from light installations and mixed media paintings to creative, multimedia archives—reflect both the breadth of CAMD’s offerings and the depth of students’ journeys. 

As these emerging creatives bridge the gap between classroom and career, Gallery 360 provides not just wall space, but a pivotal moment of transition, inviting the public to witness the first professional steps of tomorrow’s creative leaders. 

Whether or not CAMD graduates pursue their art professionally after graduation, creativity is a lifelong pursuit. There’s art after graduation, even after the structure of classes and clubs goes away.