Senior Art Exhibition 2026 Showcases the ‘Incredible Crossroads’ of Studio Art Majors
Graduating artists celebrate a year of intense focus at the Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art
On the surface, the 17 senior studio art majors whose work is now on display in downtown Waterville for the Senior Art Exhibition 2026 seem to have little in common with one another.
Their senior capstone projects span painting, photography, printmaking, digital media, and sculpture. Some are small in scale, inviting the viewer to come closer to examine intricate details and delicate elements. Others are large, soaring works that demand a person step back to take them all in.
But each of the artists whose work can be seen at the Colby College Museum of Art’s Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art through May 23 has spent the last year immersing themselves in their disciplines, learning as they pushed themselves to combine inspiration, effort, and experience into something extraordinary.
It’s a kind of alchemy, according to Daniel Harkett, associate professor of art and department chair.
“Our studio art majors have a variety of different experiences, and then they all ferment,” Harkett said before the exhibition’s May 7 opening. “And you don’t know what they’re going to ferment into, and I think that’s the beauty of it.”
At the opening, the graduating artists crowded outside the gallery along with their friends, family, professors, senior College administrators, museum officials, and art aficionados. The room buzzed with energy and excitement as Harkett welcomed them to the exhibition, and Jacqueline Terrassa, the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art, described the significance of the annual show.
“We get to see the work … that’s not just the product of the last four years of learning and development of each of the students who are graduating as majors of the art department, but it’s really a moment in a lifetime of creativity, I hope, for those of you who are graduating,” she said. “What we get to see presented is really the product of moments of time in that journey. And it takes a lot of courage to present the work publicly.”
A gallery filled with works of art
This year’s exhibiting artists are seniors Alison Angley, Myles Braverman, Celia Buetens, Maria DiBari, Colin Flood, Katy Jane Hardenbergh, Vivian Hu, Owen Kany, Elodie Koo, Molly Lakritz, Shayna Purow, Julia Reilly, Alex Reitman, Anna Reynolds, Charlotte Turner, Lexi Villamin, and Claire Welch.
A catalog accompanies the exhibition, featuring artist statements, photographs of the artworks, and critical essays by students enrolled in this year’s Contemporary Art Criticism course.
All the artists took the Art Department’s yearlong capstone course, which was coordinated this year by Associate Professor Bradley Borthwick. In his remarks, he underscored the students’ achievements on display in the gallery.
“These aren’t small ideas, or habits, or hobbies. These are works of art,” Borthwick said. “We have work in there that carries on a tradition of making that can go back millennia, mixed with brand-new state-of-the-art technology as well. So there is this incredible crossroads across time.”
Harkett then announced the winners of this year’s Art Department prizes—the Charles M. Hovey Pepper Prize for meritorious creative work, and the President’s Prize, which honors exemplary work within the studio practice.
This year’s judges were documentarian and art journalist Mary Louise Schumacher, who is the executive director of The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation; Kendall DeBoer, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the Colby Museum; and Gwyneth Shanks, assistant professor of performance, theater, and dance.
The jurors were so impressed by the commitment and creativity on display that they decided to award two prizes in each category, Harkett said. Printmaker Vivian Hu and digital artist Claire Welch both won the Pepper Prize, and photographer Molly Lakritz and painter Alex Reitman won the President’s Prize.
Finding a calling
Hu, who is double-majoring in studio art and computer science, discovered her calling as a printmaker while at Colby. She attended an arts high school in New York City, and by the time she graduated, she was “pretty burnt out” and ready to study a range of subjects. But after one semester, she missed art and enrolled in a printmaking course focused on woodblock and linoleum. She enjoyed it and kept on taking courses in the discipline.
In her junior year, she discovered copper plate etching, or intaglio—a tactile, labor-intensive process in which the artist carves an image into a flat surface.
“I absolutely fell in love. That’s when I realized that I wanted to be a printmaker. I am going to do this for the rest of my life,” Hu said. “Before, it felt like I was just kind of going with the flow. But this time, I felt it was speaking to me, and I was responding to it, and it was so magical.”
Hu finds inspiration in natural textures, such as tree bark, and in filtered light. Her work celebrates texture, and her subjects appear almost three-dimensional on the page. In Hanging By a Mere Thread, an old, gnarled tree, based on one she saw while studying in Japan, is delicately and precisely captured in the print.
“There’s something about texture and weird, odd shapes that catch my eye, and maybe something that someone normally isn’t attracted to,” she said.
For the artist, it has been an emotional experience to be part of the Senior Exhibition and an honor to be chosen for the Pepper Prize. After graduation, she will move to Portland, Maine, for a year-long printmaking fellowship.
“It’s just unfathomable to me that I’m on the wall, and I’ve won an award, and my name’s up there,” Hu said. “This has been such a good experience. It’s been very formative toward my future goals and what I want to do in life, and it feels very good and special to have a part of me up for the public to see.”
The power of memory
For Welch, who is double-majoring in studio art and economics, memory is at the heart of her submission to the exhibition. In each of her two works, BlueBird Day and Boatman, she took 15 or so archival family photographs and combined them in a painstaking Photoshop editing process. She blended 100 layers to create a seamless photograph and printed the work on muslin. Then she sewed them into an empty frame with crochet thread, with more thread dangling from each piece.
“Fibers became important because of this idea of woven-together memories,” she said. “At the core of the idea is how memories and feelings are all so intertwined and so loose, because memory is never fixed. There are parts of our memory that fall apart. I wanted to physically alter the images and leave the crochet strings long because memory is always in flux, right? It’s never fully tied.”
The inspiration for the project came over winter break, when she was home in Colorado, going through old family photographs. She took photos with her phone, and when she was back in the studio on campus, she realized there was something powerful about those old photographs.
“It is just really nostalgic,” she said, adding that the more time she spent with the old photos, the more she learned about her family. “It was just a really cool process of asking my mom and dad stories about those moments and about the people in the photos.”
The finished pieces seem dreamlike and mysterious. BlueBird Day, with a strong focal point of a downhill skier in the foreground, uses photos from her father’s family. Boatman, which features several images of women on boats, was created from her mother’s family photos. Her parents were able to come to Waterville for the opening, which was very meaningful to Welch, who plans to move to New York City after graduation to work in finance.
“It was one of the most special moments of the year,” she said, adding that it felt overwhelming to be awarded the Pepper Prize. “Hearing my name, I was just overcome with emotion.”
A deeply felt photo series
Lakritz’s work is also deeply personal. In her series Time Will Tell, the black-and-white photos offer a window into life with her twin sister, Zoe, at their family home in New Jersey. Zoe is a person with autism, and Molly Lakritz has both a sisterly and maternal relationship with her twin.
The photo project was both a way to work through some elements of their relationship and to appreciate Zoe and her family, said Molly Lakritz, a studio art major with concentrations in both photography and digital media.
In a world full of carefully curated images, the photos in the series stand out for their honesty. They aren’t posed, and perfect, but real and very human. They show Zoe looking straight at the camera, cuddling with a dog, and getting her hair braided while wearing headphones. There are pets, outdoor scenes, a clutter of stuffed animals on a bed, and more.
“I was trying to get real moments,” Lakritz said. “I think Zoe probably knows she’s an interesting subject, but doesn’t know the complete intricacies of how I feel about our relationship. And I think this is a way I can show her how I feel.”
Lakritz didn’t consider herself a photographer until she came to Colby and took a photography course with Gary Green, professor of art.
“I just fell in love with photography because of him, and wanted to keep doing it,” she said. “I like being able to capture moments. And I like specifically working in film. I take photos and don’t know how they’ll turn out, and most of mine won’t be perfect, but I like working with them.”
It was a big surprise to learn that she received the President’s Prize for her work.
“It just felt affirming,” Lakritz said. “I think sometimes photography is a hard field. Everyone takes pictures, so you don’t understand how that picture is any different. I feel like that’s the attitude a lot of the time. So it just felt legitimizing, that photography’s real.”
A created world
Alex Reitman’s two massive paintings, rich with gold leaf and saturated color, immediately pull gallery visitors into a created world as compelling as it is unusual. In The Apotheosis of God Emperor Iksander Raymon, an elongated blue figure stands before a gold-hued window. Large blue-and-gold bluefin tuna swim through the air around him. Light seems to emanate from this painting and from The Ascension of Crown Prince Iksandar by Decree of Empress Daena Raymon, which hangs just below it.
The works seem to evoke science fiction, history, and religious iconography equally. To Reitman, an artist who doesn’t think small, that sounds about right.
“Those two paintings are the culmination of four years of trying to organize my aesthetic sensibilities and inspirations, and the purpose of painting, and also my place in the universe,” he said.
Reitman grew up with a love for Star Wars, Dune, Game of Thrones, and other heroic stories. As a child, he drew comics, enjoying the world-building element inherent to them. At Colby, he spent a semester studying in Ireland, where he visited cathedrals and saw the power of religious art. All of these elements became braided into his paintings.
“The themes I’m attempting to figure out as I’m painting them are pretty heavy for me personally,” he said. “I have to have a little fun with myself and take it easy on myself. Kind of lose myself in the joy of invention, and that’s just where it naturally goes.”
After graduation, Reitman plans to attend Southern Methodist University in Texas for a dual M.B.A. and master’s of arts administration program. For him, the exhibition’s opening was exhilarating. He was happy that everyone’s hard work was being shown and appreciated, and that family and friends came in droves to celebrate them.
“I was kind of on a high the entire time,” he said, adding that it meant a lot to learn that he had won the President’s Prize. “It was a nice moment to see my efforts being recognized. But the process of painting is what it’s really about.”
