Studio Snapshots

We interviewed seniors in the visual-arts program last fall, during an open-studios day at 185 Nassau Street. View photos of the students in their creative spaces and read about their artistic processes, motivations, and friendships with studio mates.

Sandy Carpenter ’18

Jessica Zhou ’19

“Have you ever seen a person of disability featured in art?

“My paintings are portraits of children with cranial facial disorders. I got inspired by this my sophomore summer when I did research on craniosynostosis, which is a congenital disorder in which the cranial sutures of babies’ skulls fuse prematurely, leading to abnormal brain development. While I was working there, I had a great time, but I came to see that I was treating my patient, who was a real person, as sort of like a gene carrier, and I had this epiphany when I met families and went to a conference in which I was introduced to this really amazing community … My project is about addressing the metaphors we use to limit people with disabilities and their potential and including voices that are worthy of inclusion.”

— Sandy Carpenter ’18

View more of her work at http://vis.princeton.edu/artist/sandra-carpenter/

Gwyndolyn Goldfeder ’18

Jessica Zhou ’19

“I do sculpture. This is foam, silicon, plaster, and polyurethane plastic, so it’s all different materials. Currently, I’m making a prototype for a poster for my show. This is going to be kind of like papier-mâché, but I want it to look a little bit more natural, so I’m using wheat paste and paper, and I’m going to put plants in the poster.

“Each plant [in my studio] has some sort of memory or significance to me. … I work on a farm, a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] in Princeton. Also, I grew up having a garden, so each plant is associated with a family member.”

— Gwyndolyn Goldfeder ’18

Heather Grace ’18, left, pictured with studio mate Mihika Kapoor ’18

Jessica Zhou ’19

“I don’t want to say anything [about my work], but I can talk about my process. I’ve been writing poetry in these short phrases, kinda little weird sections, some of them are descriptive, some are wordplay, some are diaristic, and I’ve been doing that for almost a year. I took a printout of some of the phrases and ran it through a scanner bed while it was scanning and got these kinda cool distortions, which was a really cool way to mess with the legibility of the content and what I was saying. It’s all black and white, and this is what we call ‘Heather Pink’, which is a thing now because I always use this bright pink.”

— Heather Grace ’18

Pauli King ’18, right, with studio mate Logan Dziak ’18, left

Jessica Zhou ’19

“We work together well. We both do sculpture and photography, so our practices overlap a little bit, and also we have a lot of space in here to have a lot of sculptures.

“I’m the DJ. We both like oldies though, but this is my pick — it’s my oldies boogies playlist, not to be confused with oldies jam playlist.” 

— Pauli King ’18

View more of Pauli’s work at https://www.paulinaking.com/