ART + DESIGN SENIOR EXHIBITION
Alex Russell
BA Graphic Design
DESIGNER STATEMENT: My senior project is not only a culmination of the things I’ve learned during my art and design studies at Mason, it’s also a comprehensive example of the kind of stuff I’m passionate about, both in terms of art media and subject matter. Having to write and design my own book was often a challenging enterprise, but it was also a welcome opportunity for me to dive deep, conduct research on a topic that I cared about greatly, and to depict my research, my interpretation of the subject, and my own style using the specific format of a bound book. The main idea behind the book was to do an easy-to-digest historical retelling of CBGB’s heyday, from when Hilly Kristal opened up the bar, on through the 1970s and early 80s, and fill in some gaps at the end. Even though I did a lot of research for it, the book overall is more like a story celebrating the existence of the bar as opposed to an exhaustive encyclopedia.
What attracted me to CBGB was the music that was born there: punk rock. Not only do I still listen to and love a lot of the bands that started out at CBGB, but I also have a deep respect for punk and thought that focusing in on the bar was a good way to keep the book concentrated and grounded in the reality of a very specific time and place. The visuals I created for the book represent a mix of the things I learned at Mason. I had the chance to take some fine art classes, as well as a lot of design courses, so I decided to combine the two approaches and create the “base” for each illustration by hand—with ink and colored pencil—and then digitally refine each drawing later on. I would also incorporate my love for collage by “cutting up” and distorting found images, geometric shapes, old drawings that I did, and rearranging all of these pieces into colorful, erratic backgrounds to be used in the final version of each visual piece.
“Nights of Pure Energy” was, often, a pretty nerve-wracking experience but I am proud of the work I accomplished. I am pleased that I was able to find a really cool conduit for all the different things I’ve been learning and falling in love with, like research, writing, traditional art, and digital design. Even though this is technically the last, big step in my art studies at Mason and is supposed to be an example of the things I learned over the years, I feel like this project was also a kind of lesson. I ended up learning some really useful, lasting things about design and about myself, as an individual thinker and creator.
