Senior Show, Senior Daughter

Adrienne and I arrived in Marquette Friday morning for a 24-hr visit to see our daughter Marjorie's work at the DeVos Art Museum at NMU. It was the closing of the Senior Show, marking 4 years of college for our daughter. One great thing about art is that there are so many creative people out there, and the Art and Design students at NMU really shine at this event. Photography, mixed media, ceramics, sculpture, video, painting, illustration, and so much more. It's not necessarily a statement of what the student has been working on all the time, but what has been prepared especially for the show.


In Marjorie's case, she became quite interested in photographing dead animals and her "Useless Creatures" project is open-ended. You can read more about her project here. One of the things I like about her work is that she challenges the viewer. Death isn't pretty, but her images DO have an aesthetic about them that demonstrates that dead wildlife are part of the natural scheme of things, and that we should respect them as well. It was interesting watching some of the attendees viewing her work at the VERY packed event. I wish she had left a pad for people to record their feelings. That could have been interesting.

My other thoughts revolve around her graduating as a photography and art major from NMU. Hopefully, she'll be able to apply some of what she learned at NMU in a future job. She's a very talented writer (and knows how to spell), photographer, artist, musician, and knows how to work with databases and library and museum specimens. I have no idea what she will end up doing in the next few months, as she and her partner Stephanie (also a very talented artist!) will be coming to Ann Arbor in August to live. Job offers entertained...

I'm very proud of her, of course.