Name/Title
2016 Irwin ScholarsDescription
2016 Irwin Scholars: Jairo Banuelos, Haley Belenis, Thomas Fallis, Andrea Furtado, Jesse Huynh, Jordan Krauss, Erick Medel, Sarah Ploenzke, Caetano Santos, Rachel Smith, Luigi Villanueva, and Chloe Yantis
The Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery’s annual Irwin Scholarship Award exhibition showcases a collection of the most promising undergraduate artists at UCSC. The William Hyde and Susan Benteen Irwin Scholarship Fund was established in 1986 and generates annual merit scholarships to further the education of selected UC Santa Cruz art students. The 2016 award recipients are Jairo Banuelos, Haley Belenis, Thomas Fallis, Andrea Furtado, Jesse Huynh, Jordan Krauss, Erick Medel, Sarah Ploenzke, Caetano Santos, Rachel Smith, Luigi Villanueva and Chloe Yantis.
“It is the most exciting group show of the school year. It is celebratory and an important show,” says Faculty Advisor and Professor of Photography, Norman Locks.
The artists are each working with narratives that range from being deeply personal to appearing as a connecting thread within a body of work. The artworks displayed tell stories by addressing current socio-political issues, imagining fictional California ecologies, investigating personal relationships with cultural identity, illustrating body horror, highlighting the ephemeral and trivial moments of daily life, and more. They explore themes of individuality, infrastructure, politics, myth, chaos, revival, illness, abuse, and reincarnation.
The scholars express these themes through a variety of traditional and new media practices. The exhibition will contain painting, sculpture, experimental and traditional photography, printmaking, installation and interactive installation, graphic novel, digital drawing, glass etching, fashion, and woodworking.
