Eyes on Fire

Reception: April 27th, 5-8pm

Gallery Hours
M-F, 11:30am–2:30pm
Sat, 12–5pm

Meghan Higgins hopes to be involved with a studio and continue to create TV shows and movies that continue to experiment with the medium in the future. Her time building her senior project, both digitally and physically hand crafting, was an experience she hopes to take with her and apply again professionally at some point. Animation is a field that can be made from a variety of mediums, it’s not just one painting, it’s not just one drawing, it would be a shame to be idle and not try new ways to bring storytelling to life.

Rachel Greco uses charcoal and paper to render small moments in everyday life. She captures instants of the world around her, reflecting on important themes in her personal life. The flexibility of charcoal allows her to confidently achieve deep black markings on the page, which can then be wiped clean with a single movement. These responsive materials reflect the unpredictability of the creative process, allowing her to carve out forms in black and white. Rachel layers multiple visuals on top of each other to create one moving image, exploring the relationship between multiple viewing experiences and a single audio track. She enjoys the challenge of activating unsuspected soundscapes with the people and creatures that fill them.

Bronte Pirulli is a 2-D animator who works digitally and traditionally to bring texture and depth to her work. Her film, “?” mixes digital animation with charcoal drawing to arrive at its hand- drawn appearance. The piece was inspired by Bronte’s time spent studying abroad in Viterbo, Italy, and the body of work she created there. “?” focuses on interactions between people and the space around them, incorporating the artist’s love of drawing, storytelling and people-watching.

Ayden Borowski is an animator and game designing. For their thesis, they made a visual novel following the story of a character in a psychiatric ward. To go along with the visual novel, they also made a retro 2D side scroller game, which takes place in the same psychiatric ward. The player controls a pixel version of the main character through four levels, avoiding enemies and collecting medication.
Shelby Hamel makes video games for marginalized groups that are often under represented in media. Her senior thesis, titled, “WomanBorn”, is a video game centering on a girl’s adventure story in a market that is dominated by male voices and sexualized images of women. The player is invited to make choices and use items to solve problems, leading up to multiple endings.

Victoria Vega is a fierce lover of character design and storyboarding. As a 2D animator and illustrator, Vicki’s work is heavily motivated by the notion that people from different backgrounds have stories that deserve to be told. Their senior thesis film, “Convenient” tells the story of a young child who befriends two unusual characters during a hike in the forest.

Brandon Troelstrup is a graduating senior here at Montserrat. His work focuses on board game tradition, the psychic experience and storytelling. He studies ancient societies, their poems, crafts and traditions to make games that reflect them. Through mechanics, he constructs a world that enforces cooperation, empathy and communication “Ashes” is his second board game, and has been in development for 2 years. He plans to hone this game beyond his thesis show over the summer and use crowdfunding to publish it.