photo courtesy of Ricky Washuk Ricky Washuk's work, like this piece, will be shown along with the work of nine other advanced photography students in "Coalesce," an exhibition that is a culmination of the students' semester.

Exhibit displays semester of art work

The advanced photography class' "Coalesce" exhibit is the culmination of work for the student artists as they prepare to graduate.

The class is the senior photography capstone, and all students are fine arts majors.

Each student is exhibiting a project produced for the class. The artists were allowed to choose his or her media. The students produced work using traditional color and black and white photography, as well as silver-based photography, digital photos and 3-D installations.

Studio arts senior Brian O'Sullivan, whose work is part of the exhibition, used an unusual process to create his work.

"The work that I will be exhibiting at the 'Coalesce' show is a group of 12 abstract minimalist photographic prints," he said. "I made the prints using only a color enlarger and paper masks because I wanted to take an inherently realistic and 'true-to-life' art form and turn it into something completely abstract and non-referential."

In the past, the class has shown work at the Center for Creative Photography, but this exhibit marks the use of a new gallery space in the Kachina Lounge on the third floor of the Student Union Memorial Center.

O'Sullivan is looking forward to seeing the project through to completion.

"I'm very proud of the work I will be showing, and I think the work being produced by my classmates is quite exceptional as well," he said.