For Molly Harnischfeger, “art studio” and “bathroom” are one andthe same. That’s because the senior art theory and practice major’sprimary photography workspace is her apartment bathroom.
“It started essentially because I wanted a room without awindow,” Harnischfeger says. Eventually she decided that she likedthe bathroom’s lighting and intimacy so much that it became herprimary creation space.
The fruits of her and ten other senior art majors’ labors can beseen in “Junction,” a month-long exhibition in Norris UniversityCenter’s Dittmar Gallery.
Harnischfeger, who with fellow art senior Jenny Rozbruch is theunofficial student coordinator of the show, has four pieces in theexhibition. They’re a continuation of her tendency to usechildren’s food in her photography.
She has gained a reputation as “the Froot Loop girl” referringto her photographs of the sugary cereal displayed in and around theWeinberg College of Arts and Science’s Dean’s Office. She has alsoworked with marshmallows and cherries and now has startedphotographing her appendages encrusted with marshmallow fluff andsprinkles.
Today, Harnischfeger is demonstrating her sprinkle work. Shedemonstrates how she put sprinkles in the toilet and capturesimages of them as they swirl down the drain. “My work is oftenbasically hours and hours and hours of putting sprinkles in thetoilet and flushing them down the drain,” she says. “The water billmight be particularly high one month because I worked three weeksstraight on the sprinkles.”
Harnischfeger pulls her long brown hair back into a highponytail. Dressed in her typical work attire — a large men’s dressshirt and sweat pants — she starts applying marshmallow fluff tohalf of her face. She takes a plastic container of sprinkles andbegins to pat them onto her face. She uses a digital camera to takepictures of herself in the bathroom mirror. “I’ll walk around inthis, I’ll answer phone calls like this, talk online,” she sayslaughing.
Permanently situated on her bathroom counter is the unusuallineup of marshmallow fluff, frosting, sprinkles, and foodcoloring. A set of Home Depot lights have also taken up permanentresidence in the bathroom as well as a container of potting soilshe uses for color contrasts in some of her photographs.
“I guess what I go for with all of this is stimulating theexcitement you get as a child when you see all this brightlycolored food,” she says. “My work really relies on how people reactto it.”
Harnischfeger also works with the Weinberg Multimedia LearningCenter, designs Web pages and has considered Web design andconsulting as potential careers. While she isn’t sure that she’dever go into art full-time, she says that art will always be a partof her life.
She is double majoring in math and art, which is typical of manyart majors. “Art majors tend to be eclectic,” says Harnischfeger.This year’s graduating class of art majors includes studentsmajoring in psychology, math, communication studies, economics, andenvironmental sciences, as well as one minoring in business andanother in pre-med.
While NU isn’t widely known for its art curriculum, theclose-knit program remains one of the university’s “quiet” thoughhigh quality departments.
“Part of being a small department … is that we have fullprofessors teaching 100-level classes,” says senior art lecturerPamela Bannos. “You don’t get that at other schools with larger artdepartments.”
Jenny Rozbruch likes the relationship NU art majors have withtheir professors. “The professors in the department are verysupportive and interested in our work,” she says. “Everyone’sangered that they can’t get into art classes, but I think it’simportant for them to be that small in order to have that closerelationship.”
A visit to Rozbruch’s work space in the studio set aside forsenior art majors on Kresge’s third floor shows the marks of anartist at work.
Rozbruch’s cubicle is at the very back of the studio, next to awindow that on this late afternoon fills her workspace with brightlight. A high wood table with wheels sits in the middle of thecubicle. A set of partially used watercolor paints lies open on thetable next to cups of brown and black water with paint brushesresting in them. A paper pad with splotches of test colors on thesheets hangs halfway off the table.
On the wall are nine sheets of vibrant watercolor paintings,most of which will become a part of her senior honors thesis.Rozbruch works on one unfinished piece that is tacked on the wallas she explains her project, which focuses on the idea of skintelling someone’s history. One of the pieces in her series isdisplayed in “Junction.”
“My work is an investigation of lines and marks on the skin as avisual map of a person’s unique experiences, whether they are aresult of day-to-day practices or traumatic, momentary incidents,”she says. Inspired by her Holocaust survivor grandmother, Rozbruchtook a series of pictures of relatives and has been turning theminto paintings.
She holds up a taped off photograph of her grandmother’s face,covered in wrinkles and age spots, as she looks at the half-donepainting. She dips a brush in water and dabs it onto the paper. Shethen dips it in watercolor and layers that over the water, whichmakes the paint drip down in lines off the bottom of the paper. Thelayered colors and lines have started to form an abstract image ofher grandmother’s face.
“I’m interested in the drips as much as the rest of thepainting,” Rozbruch says. “I chose brighter color to balance thenegative connotations that scars and wrinkles and age spots have.When you take the marks out of context, they can speak in their ownright, they can be beautiful because of their history.”
Rozbruch came to NU undecided about art. While she had enjoyedher high school art classes, she didn’t intend to pursue art as amajor or a career.
“After not taking art for awhile, I realized how much I neededit,” she says. She liked the close-knit feel of the art departmentand eventually declared an art major as well as a businessinstitutions minor. “I majored in art not because I wanted to makea career out of it. This is the first year I’ve actually begun tothink of being an artist full-time.”
However, Rozbruch is keeping her options open. “I’m sort ofapplying to everything I could possibly want to do next year,” shesays, which includes publishing, advertising, business, museum workand graphic design.
“Junction” is the culmination of Harnischfeger and Rozbruch’swork as well as the nine other graduating seniors exhibiting piecesin the show. The Thursday night opening has brought dozens ofpeople to Dittmar Gallery. There is live music, a table of horsd’oeuvres, and visitors slowly traversing the exhibition space. Theshow’s nearly 30 art pieces range from photographs to oil paintingsto a DVD narrative.
“This show is basically the experience of how to put up a show,”says art lecturer Charlie Cho, who advised the seniors. “It’s kindof like a slice of what the students would do if they choose topursue art. The challenge is to bring everyone’s work together as acoherent exhibition.”
For these seniors, the lines on the “Junction” announcementcards ring true: “Similar to a bus stop, this exhibitionmomentarily links the artists in time and place before they embarkon their separate journeys. Each will depart on a different route,yet will remain influenced by this junction.”
Medill junior Anna Weaver is a writer for PLAY. She can bereached at [email protected].
