Fine Art

Untold Stories

Soheila Mirzaeifard

Irvine Valley College

This Mixed Media Modern artwork portrays a serene woman standing gracefully, embodying strength and poise amidst an atmosphere of hidden complexities. Her calm exterior contrasts with her skirt, inscribed with evocative words such as love, loyalty, betrayal, justice, pain, devotion, illness, and silence. These words capture the unspoken truths, struggles, and emotions that define her existence—mirroring the untold stories of countless women.”Untold Stories” explores profound themes like loneliness, the sacrifices of being a single mother, raising a son alone, and the anguish of growing up without parents. These silent struggles, which often go unrecognized, are central to the lives of many women who navigate life with extraordinary resilience and grace. The Mixed Media Modern approach of this piece combines contemporary artistic techniques with deep emotional narratives, emphasizing the layering of textured words and their juxtaposition against the woman’s serene figure. Each word etched into the painting is a fragment of her journey, symbolizing personal struggles and universal experiences of love, loss, and survival. This painting invites viewers to reflect on the untold stories women carry within themselves and challenges them to see beyond the surface.

Headspace: Dissociative Feelings Visualized as Metaphors

Stevie Bennett

Western Connecticut State University

The 3 outlined paintings are part of an ongoing visual discussion of “Headspace” and the unique feelings connected with dissociation, an undertaking I began in the summer of 2024. Ever since I was a child my mind has, metaphorically, had a mind of its own. From spacing out at the table, to feeling “transported” to different places, or simply feeling nonexistent altogether, “dissociation” of varying degrees is something I find glaringly familiar in my everyday life.

Through this I’ve learned two things. Firstly, “headspace” does not define character. To this day I still can’t anchor my mind in the present as much as I wish I could, but I have also come to accept that there’s no “correct” way to experience reality. Instead of trying to drown out what I see and feel, I can turn it into something tangible and even beautiful, which is what I wanted to pursue through my work. This led me to the second of my realizations: while others may not be able to split my head open and peer inside, many have had experiences akin to mine, providing me both emotional solidarity and inspiration for my own work in portraying dissociation’s manifestations. Our minds are so intrinsically unique, and each person’s brain presents feelings in different ways, which sparked me to hear and visualize the thoughts of those around me. This introspective experience has left me with both an artistic concept and an investigation of craft, while simultaneously leading me through an investigation of “self” and the mysteriously macabre brains that rest inside of our skulls.

Highlights from previous editions

Confronting Internalized Transphobia My Own and Society's

Kaci Sullivan

Madison Area Technical College

This series emphatically insists on spectrums in a binary world. While I consciously know there isn’t anything wrong with being transgender—that there’s absolutely no shame in it, this knowledge hasn’t protected me from internalizing all the transphobic messages integrated into every aspect of our “progressive” society. Glittering glass slivers, they dig in deep, prepared to stay a lifetime. So I decided to sit with myself. Naked. In front of a mirror and canvas. I would paint my body until it became one grounded, plein-air-inspired stroke after another. Until I accepted that it’s a perfectly valid body. This journey isn’t mine alone. This series challenges viewers to address their own internalized transphobia. To ask themselves again, “What does it mean to be transgender?” or “What does a normal body even look like?” and most importantly “Maybe I should expand how I think about gender and sex.”

Mixed Media Collection

Jacob Smith

Westminster College

This body of work reflects on the two-dimensionality of visual art, specifically in the realm of illustration, painting, and digital art. The pieces address the increasingly strict guidelines imposed on the artistic community, what it means to be an artist, and how we define art. Furthermore, the body of work questions the temporality of visual art, specifically in a physical form. The work is very important to me as it illustrates much of my world view: people and places exist as different from one another, but have the ability and propensity to blend, interact, and harmonize.

1 in 4

Audrey Miklitsch

University of Denver

The statistic that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted has been repeated over and over again. I wanted to create a piece that allowed women to react to their experience with sexual assault. Through the Red Tape Project at the University of Denver, as well as my own friends and family, I found a variety of women to participate in the piece. Some participants chose to do it together, while others made their creation in private. Each participant was given six cardboard squares. They were simply told to react to their experience using the squares. They could do anything they wanted to the squares, with the only requirement that at least one shred of cardboard was left. They could add things, build things, take things away, draw, write, paint, whatever they wanted. It was powerful to see the similarity of the women’s reactions. The piece is also interactive when it is displayed. Viewers can pick the pieces up and as each piece is put back down in a different spot, the individual experience becomes woven together.

My Paintings Would Be No Different than a Picture in a Biology Textbook

Andi Kur

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

I find that there are innate balances in life, universal dichotomies that permeate our understanding of the world. My paintings are about a duality such as this that exists between art and science. We are told from youth that these subjects are poles in constant strain, as miscible as oil in water. I spent thirteen years in school believing that I must choose between the two, that it is unnecessary to carry both with me. Drawn between a distinct love of each, I realized how vehemently I disagreed. Everything: every rock to every tree to every person is suspended between the two and therefore requires both to be fully understood.

NCHC & UReCA Information