Metamorphosis: Echoes of Process

April 9 - May 17, 2026

Opening Reception: April 9, 5:30-8pm

Featuring Gianna Addesso, Skylar Alexander, Alex DiGiacomo, Callista Freeman, Lillian Hill , Sahr Karimu, Bladimir Lemus, Max Lyons, James Miller, Sev Mize, Mary Beth Williams, and Tess Wosczyna. Metamorphosis: Echoes of Process showcases the culmination of a year-long senior capstone course, where these twelve students reflect on their journey through diverse artistic disciplines. Over their time at SJU, they have explored their passions across art history, graphic design, photography, ceramics, painting, and more. Through hands-on studio work and critical thought, they have been challenged to express themselves in new media and respond to artistic concepts, merging creativity with industry-informed practice.

My Feminine Cognizance

These works are representative of my experience as a woman. This body of work is shaped by my concerns about the expectations placed on us, the experiences we endure, and a desire to encourage others to step into their power.

In my short, yet long twenty-fours years of living, I’ve noticed many things as a woman: the suppression of women’s thoughts, bodies, voices, sexuality, and sensuality in the name of religion; death resulting from restricted healthcare or medical neglect; ageism preventing “too young” and “too old” women from getting jobs; sexual harassment and assault being ignored or mocked; abuse victims being blamed for what happened to them; mothers losing children to genocide, unrestricted gun access, war, and hunger; and the demand to be everything and everywhere all at once—along with betrayals, heartbreak, and disappointment.

My art is here to highlight the things I’ve noticed and experienced, as a woman. I have created a doll that relates to childhood and the inner little girl now grown up. The paintings highlight the struggles women go through, as well as some of the great things women experience. A serving tray highlights the struggle of being a woman, specifically how our bodies are often looked at and judged without us really being seen, coupled with gendered patriarchal social conventions and the idea of women being expected to serve and cater to others.

The deities that I have created in this work are here to remind women that although we face many struggles, we can never forget our power. We can be here for each other and ourselves especially in hard times like these.

Memento Mori

This body of work combines five years of anguish, anxiety, doubt, and a touch of whimsy into several ceramic sculptures. By glimpsing into my psyche, I aim to share how, at times, my unhealthy mental state of mind controls the actions I take. I’ve often thought, ‘Am I enjoying life? When was the last time I felt truly happy?’ My mind is in constant motion, filling me with dread, yet leaving little room to empty it. Through ceramics, I’m creating tangible fragments of the unwholesome thoughts that swirl in the recesses of my mind, which have now been pried open. I believe we all have these thoughts, but are too ashamed to speak on. When others view my work, I wish for us all to feel tethered to the universal foe that is: shunned mental illness. 

When you allow your mental state to fester without remedy, like I’ve done in the past, it will become even more burdensome. I’ve felt this many times, like my mental health is beating up on me, making it hard to enjoy anything in my life, turning the things I used to love into sour memories. My pieces are my way of bringing attention to this feeling, I wish to inspire others to not fall down this path I’ve found myself on too often. I know firsthand how hard it is to open up about what’s hurting you but it’s a much needed step in being to heal yourself. And if you can’t start there, if you need more time to get comfortable with the idea of letting others in, then find some way to alleviate your fears. A healthy way to unpack what’s hurting you little, by little. This process may feel never ending, unpacking that which plagues you, but living with it withers you, down to the bone.

Science is an Art

I am consistently interested in the field of science and complexity of the natural world. When spending time outside, I view nature through an aesthetic lens and always appreciate how such intricate beauty can arise separate from human intervention. Through studying biology and pursuing art simultaneously, I have become passionate about science communication and translating the aesthetics of science in a universal visual language. 

My works are based in watercolor because it allows for many dynamic textures that cover the wide scope of naturally occurring patterns and structures. Also, the technical nature of watercolor is reminiscent of the precision required from working in the scientific field. Using water as a medium causes my pieces to have a delicate nature to them which reflects the fragility of these naturally occurring structures and the importance of light and color in my thesis.

I paint a range of living and non-living subjects considered beautiful due to scientific principles that mimic the world of art. I am sure to maintain a glimpse of the artistic process in my finished works as a reminder of the scientific processes behind each item in nature that catches our eye. In holding the natural world at the heart of my thesis, I hope audiences come to appreciate the natural world for the beautiful, and mysterious, museum it is.

In my life, being creative was something that was gifted to me by my mother. I always had my hands on little art and crafts growing up because my mom was always into doing little diy projects at home. However, illustration, telling stories, and engaging people visually through drawings and speech that directs the narrative really piqued my interest. My project consists of a print graphic novel and a digital version of my five years at SJU, along with all of the times I spent away from school and off campus.

Because of how I began school, my journey is an ongoing roller coaster that is difficult to get off. You often encounter some speed bumps along the way when you’re confused and unwilling to acknowledge that the major you really want isn’t working out for you. Through this graphic novel, I hope to illustrate that college is all about the journey.

While creating this graphic novel, I wanted to create illustrations more akin to those of a cartoonist. I therefore anticipated that my graphic novel’s execution would be difficult. It was intriguing to create in a new style that I was unfamiliar with, yet the work I put in helped me realize my idea. Every page is inspired by my personal experiences and emotions at the time. Each illustration’s layout was first sketched out in my sketchbook - dotting down ideas during the process of designing the panels for the graphic novel.

I started by drawing panels in my sketchbook and then importing them into Clip Studio Paint so that I could finish my base sketch. I opted to draw largely on the computer and then perfect the work when I do line art. Each panel is colored digitally then printed out on a large scale. The final product is 24 pages total including the back and cover page.

Look at me like you love me, Lilly,

I say,

Look at you the way I see you,

You see the scars,

You see the flaws,

Your hand draws

The body you deemed unworthy of celebration,

But, Christ says that “you are My creation.”

Look at me like you love me, Lilly,

You hair fro’s and grows towards the sun,

It twines and coils and curls,

But pretty little girl,

You are made in His image.

See you the way He sees you.

There is beauty in completion, but first, there must be incompletion.

This canvas is your mirror,

So look at me like you love me, Lilly.

There is Divinity in the Everyday 

I want my photography to communicate the complexities, mundaneness, and excitedness of our human experience. My work tells stories of everyday people, places, things, and experiences in ways that allow people to see beauty in everything. My photography gravitates towards the urban experience, looking to explore the candid nature of street photography. I’ve roamed the streets of Philadelphia with my camera in hand, taking photographs of people, architecture, grafitti and more. My subject matter is varried because at some underlying level, experiences, the material, and our relationships all point to the hand of a master artist. That is what I want to display in my frames. I want to communicate this in my work; it all points to the master artist’s creation. I photograph because I truly believe there is beauty within the everyday. So even within the varied chaos, my job is to point back to that Divine work of artistry. My job, I believe, is to draw that beauty out within the chaos of it all.

With the current vilification of the immigrant population, I’ve chosen to explore ideas related to the American Dream with my current project. My project is an audiovisual photo essay on immigrant business owners. Through my photography, I tell a story of businesses and capture the humanity of the owners. The interviews in my project allow the business owners to share their thoughts on the American Dream. Is it thriving, beating steadily, or wilting away? The photo essay includes a series of portraits of the business owners, magnifying them as the faces of the American Dream.

My Christian faith has served as a foundation in my day to day life. It also served as the main inspiration for the series of paintings that I am doing on canvas. Through the use of acrylic on canvas, I wanted to express the different emotions I've felt towards my walk with Christ under the theme of contentment and joy. Each canvas has a dominant color paired with a hand gesture to express a specific emotion in a meaningful way. The colors used are green, purple, orange, yellow, red, and blue. Green is used to represent longevity and life. Purple is used to show royalty to express the pressures I feel as Christian. Orange represents my energetic emotions. Yellow represents happiness. Red represents the frustration I sometimes feel along with my faith. And blue represents sorrow. All of these colors and gestures correlate to my personal faith journey.

The Bible has a theme of Christians being able to be joyful and content regardless of outside circumstances. This idea reminded me of a verse that I held close to my heart for the entirety of my faith journey. “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalms 23:1). During my personal walk with Christ, I have felt a wide range of emotions while trying to understand this joy. With this in mind, I approached each painting while thinking of my experiences with each emotion which ultimately helped me grow closer to God, leading to the joy and contentment that I now feel. Though I am still learning and growing as a person and artist, this series of paintings illustrates the path I took to get where I am now in my faith.

Reimagined Book Covers

My thesis project is titled Reimagined Book Covers. It involves creating cover art for my favorite books, mostly horror and dark fantasy genre books, like Coraline and Pet Cemetery. 

This is a digital art project and I’m creating digital drawings and doing digital painting. All designs are created by using a tablet and a stylus. I like experimenting with colors and I think that digital art gives numerous opportunities for creating interesting colors and color combinations. I believe that digital art is art of the future.

This project was developed because I love the dark fantasy genre, but I don’t believe that covers for books in this genre should be dark or depressing. I’m trying to create something more vibrant.

This body of work incorporates various forms of carved and modeled sculpture to challenge the ways in which we engage with three dimensional art. By examining the relationship between forms of sensation and internal perception, I strive to draw you away from reliance on visual stimuli, into a multisensory artistic experience. Sculptural wooden boxes conceal four figurative works from the eyes, inviting you to experience them strictly through tactile sensation.

Combining the mediums of ceramic, soapstone, aluminum, and wood, the work creates a cohesive exploration of my relationship with sculptural practice. The concealed works tell the story of my engagement with the discipline from its genesis in the death of my father to its role as a continued form of mindful practice in my life. Themes of grief, learning, and recovery reside in the concealed forms, while the boxes serve to shield the vulnerability that is shared in the work. Serving as a metaphor for my exploration of sculpture as a tool for recovery, the counterbalancing abstract vessel references the exploratory swimming patterns of my pet African Dwarf Frogs. Its rhythmic finger-like protrusions recall the tactile intimacy of clay while directly mapping the rhythmic wandering of these aquatic frogs as they, like myself, grasp out for refuge in a landscape of uncertainty. This form is adorned with a wild clay glaze, harvested from a creekbed near my father’s grave and slowly processed over the course of two years, manifesting the transformative role of art making in the grieving process into physical form. Uncovering the concealed narrative requires your direct input, as you must physically investigate, manipulate, and grasp the work, irreversibly changing it through the gradual addition of oils and dirt. Doing so, I invite you to reflect the intrinsic co-creative role of the audience in the art making process.

Studying both Psychology and Fine Art as a route to Clinical Art Therapy, I am interested in the links between neurological processes and the creation and consumption of art. Sensation (the physical process of receiving visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory information through sense organs) and perception (the subjective categorization of sensory information into a unique cognitive map) lie at the heart of the artistic experience. Together, we explore how we have limited the consumption of art to strictly visual sensation, and how tactile sensation can be a powerful tool for connection and understanding.

My work is an exploration and dissection of the self. Through striking visuals, metaphor, and the occasional written line, I deconstruct my own physical body and its ties to identity and mortality. I dissect myself visually just as Leonardo da Vinci dissected bodies in search of the soul’s anatomical location. Only instead of the heart or brain, I find my soul – my selfhood – in the most unlikely of places: the back of my throat, the scars on my chest, and deep within my bones. I represent features of my body as specimens to be studied by the viewer, using a variety of media in order to express the multi-dimentionality of the bodily experience.  Each work acts as a self-portrait, collectively representing my identity as a deeply biological being.

Man’s Best Friend

I have grown up surrounded by dogs, and they have always played an important role in my life. My work combines street photography with painting to illuminate the importance of the human/canine relationship. The relationships between humans and dogs dates back thousands of years, representing a rare bond between two species that has stood the test of time. I draw inspiration from this art history, dogs appearing in cave carvings as early as ten thousand years ago, pottery from thousands of years ago, and in paintings old and new. I find this connection between dogs and humans to be important and beautiful; this body of work represents and honors this connection. My pieces have allowed me to capture the essence of one’s dog in three ways: through photography, through words, and through painting. They demonstrate the unique ability that art has to honor and preserve the bonds we hold most dear.  I began with approaching strangers and their dogs, to photograph them as well as learn about their relationship and story. I hope that a viewer’s experience goes past the art I have created and into the lives of others. My final step with this exhibit is to give the painting to the owner. By taking the monetary value of the artwork away, it is representative of how you cannot put a price on loving connections of the things we love most. 

If I Can Have You With Me

This body of work intends to be something that built bridges between the past, the present, and the future; through a variety of attempts, sketches, lost canvases, and long nights reminiscing with my family, I created paintings that emulate the shadowy, ever present undercurrent that grief and memory leaves behind. In the wake of my grandfather’s passing, I was struck with this omnipresent grief that I felt every day - his passing knocked me off my feet in ways I could not have expected. In a whirlwind of changes, I was handed something stable - a palpable grief that I felt like I had no room to carry, but no room to put down. 

When I returned in the spring semester, I began creating art about it, a slow, tumultuous, and obsessive attempt to lessen the grief that I carried with me every day. I painted remnants of you on photographs, I sculpted hands in an attempt to feel you once more, I sketched the ghosts of you I saw everywhere I went. When I visited your house for the final time, I took pictures on your camera, hoping to be able to capture how I remembered the home where I had you. In these paintings, I hope to showcase the love, loss, and hazy memory of a person who is no longer reachable. 

I carry these obsessions with me in my everyday life, the memories of you and the fleeting time, and the questions that surround everything that I do. What do I still have of you? Can I take you with me? Would you like him? Would you like me? I am so different now from who I was, and there is no way for me to know what you would think of the life I’ve created, the girl I have grown into after all of these years, when I don’t know when you stopped knowing me. What I can hope is that you would like what I’ve created, and would see yourself in the pieces.