"18" GFS Senior Art Show

An exhibition of artwork by the Class of 2018 from Germantown Friends School, curated by the Senior Studio Art class taught by Megan Culp.  The theme of the show explores the number 18, what it means, feels, and looks like to be 18 in the year 2018. The show includes diverse works, including installation, video, drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography.

Senior Studio Art Team

Alex Boyd  ✿  Liem Buckley  ✿  Cassie Coale  ✿  Emily Ecclestone  ✿  Adina Gewirtzman  ✿  Theo Kocher  

Teasha McKoy  ✿  Celia Meyer  ✿  Connor Pailas  ✿  Lexi Pickering  ✿  Sophie Starr

Megan Culp teacher

SCOTT FOLEY " No Pressure, Baba"

In January of 2018, photographer and videographer Scott Foley, was fortunate enough to visit South Africa with Germantown Friends School, wherein he experienced a mingling of vivid colors, rich smells, loud music, and purposeful people. Upon reflection, he was left with a living catalog of ever-growing questions born of his over 10,000 photos.

What had been real? What was not? How much did he see? How much was there that purposefully hid from his foreign eyes?

These images hold either a smile or a turned shoulder. There are very few gestures in betwixt. This illusive grey area only becomes apparent when the photos are physically placed beside each other and the viewer is made starkly aware of the distance between them. This space is both a familiar present and nostalgic past, a feeling that pulls rather than pushes, and sometimes a graveyard for those strong of mind who cannot fathom an existence not painted in the palette of a zebra's skin.

The viewer, just as the artist, is left wondering what dreams haunt the woman singing into the hairbrush, what thoughts plague the lonely man looking out upon the blue sea, and perhaps more importantly, how much weight these thoughts hold when a child’s face-full smile washes over them?