Visiting Artists

Kat King is a fourth year industrial design major. She showed her current portfolio of work, which concentrated on work for the community and enhanced environmental design. Kat's work shows the amount of time and research is put into each project, yet she loves what she does. Industrial designers have to think of every possible problem, and create a design that will enhance people's lives. As an Industrial Design major myself, I was very interested in what Kat had to say, and the fact that she was actually a student here gave me an idea of what I could be doing in 3 more years. Following her love for kids, after college Kat hopes to get a job creating toys for the community, such as for playgrounds. In her most recent project, she designed a set of gears that children could play with at local playgrounds; later that day she was headed over to a local school to have children play with her prototypes and critique her work. The criticism from children, Kat said, is more severe than that of adults.

Varvara Mikushkina is a art photography undergrad whose passion is to photograph her family and Russian girls. Just because she's a photography major doesn't mean that's all she does. Varvara also paints and draws, which keeps her creative. She has found a way to combine her love for photography, painting and drawing by combining the three in unique ways. In her photographs, Varvara takes slightly staged photos, trying to capture the small moments in life that many people may not focus on. Most of her photos are portraiture which focuses on her life and heritage: the clothing of her models gives us a sense of her Russian heritage. Looking at her photos from mikushkina.blogspot.com, you can see that Varvara repeats the same models in her work, but although the subjects are the same, the photos are all different, giving a view into the mind of the artist.