Two students from among Hope College are among 11 participants in a New York arts residency program to have work chosen for an exhibition being featured in Berlin, Germany.
Seniors Nikolas Burkhart of Brutus and Emilie Puttrich of Arlington Heights, Ill., each have artwork included in "B'Lyn to B'Lin," an exhibition of work by alumni of the New York Center for Art & Media Studies (NYCAMS) that is being featured in the Galerie Kollaborativ in Berlin from Thursday, June 12, through Saturday, July 26.
NYCAMS, a program of Bethel University of St. Paul, Minn., is a faith-based undergraduate semester art residency program in Manhattan and has educated more than 100 students since its inception in 2005. The 11 alumni of the program with work in the exhibition were chosen from among six semesters of NYCAMS students by juror Donata Wenders, a NYCAMS advisory board member.
The artists will display work in a variety of media including sculpture, installation, video, photography, book art, drawing and painting.
Burkhart and Puttrich each participated in the program during the fall 2007 semester. The program included two courses on art history, one on contemporary art and one on the impact of the Christian faith and spirituality on art; a hands-on studio art class; and an internship experience in art. The semester culminated with an exhibition of the students' work in the NYCAMS studio/gallery in Midtown Manhattan.
Burkhart's work in the Berlin exhibition is a series of computer-assisted drawings titled "Spatial Arrangements." The piece addresses the way that written words and language affect the way the world is seen. Rendered in black and white with a heavy emphasis on line and shape, it features abstracted compositions based on passages from the Bible. He started working on the piece while in New York and completed it at Hope this spring.
Burkhart is majoring in studio art and minoring in Spanish, and is currently studying in Queretaro, Mexico and thus will be unable to attend the opening. His internship during the NYCAMS semester was with artist Chris Anderson; he also worked with The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.
Puttrich's work in the Berlin exhibition, titled "Gesso Triangles," is a study of gesso and canvas, basic materials used in producing a painting. The work is presented as a painting, but shapes in the gesso give it sculptural elements as well. Puttrich completed the piece near the end of her semester in New York, and it was in the NYCAMS student exhibition in December 2007.
Puttrich is a studio-art major who is minoring in art history and chemistry. Her internship while studying through NYCAMS was with the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea. She will be attending the opening of the exhibition in Berlin.
The NYCAMS alumni with work in the exhibition are graduates of or students at eight different universities around the United States and Muenster, Germany. In addition to Hope, the institutions represented include Azusa Pacific University, Biola University, Concordia Moorhead, Judson University, Messiah College and Roberts Wesleyan College in the U.S., and Fachhochschule Muenster in Germany.