Student Work Gallery: Summer 2024

Lauren Arabia

Lauren Arabia (StratComm’24) created a social justice poster for her Visual Design class with Diane Elliston, a teaching assistant professor. Focusing on the fair trade movement within the cocoa industry, she chose to highlight the issue of child labor—an estimated 1.56 million children work in cocoa farms in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which collectively accounts for nearly 60% of global production. Arabia will continue her education at the Art Center, in Pasadena, California.

Zion Atwater

Zion Atwater (CritMedia’24) recruited two other students to participate in her documentary exploring the creative process. All three student creatives balanced work and social lives while navigating their academic journeys toward.

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Ruby Begay

Singer-songwriter Ruby Begay (CritMedia’24) recorded an EP, Bones of Being, which was featured in the spring showcase for the Department of Critical Media Practices. This album was largely inspired by forest ecosystems and her love of wandering through the woods. There are three distinct songs, but much like the wilderness, they are a part of a bigger whole, leading listeners deeper into the sonic terrains of Begay’s compositional explorations.

Lauryn Iverson

Inspired by her involvement with CU’s Sandbox Series, Lauryn Iverson (CritMedia’24) created an installation of three adapted Shakespeare scenes from The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet. Each scene features an iconic ingénue, and the colors and flowers in the installation reflect the characters’ personalities.

Student interacting with Iverson display

Kristine Petilo

Kristine Petilo, a media production major,��made an animated short as a tribute to her Filipino childhood, and dedicated the capstone project to all her Filipino viewers.

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Artwork by Noah Molinaro, @gojigochi on Instagram

Lore Whittemore

For her thesis project, Lore Whittemore (MPE’24) centered her research on “spidersonas,” a type of fan art where the artist envisions some aspect of themselves or personal interest as a spider-person. This research draws upon interviews with spidersona artists, as well as an interview with a former Marvel Comics associate editor, to explore how spidersonas can advocate for social change through furthering diversified representation and providing a meaningful form of self-exploration through art.

There were two primary components produced by Whittemore for this “Expanding the Spider-Verse” project—a 55-minute documentary and a written chapter contribution for the upcoming Entering the Multiverse collection, edited by Dr. Paul Booth. The full documentary, biographies for all featured artists and updates about the release of Entering the Multiverse can be found��.

Sharing student perspectives

Students across CMCI find ways to bring together their personal interests and academic pursuits. Since the college’s founding, we have regularly showcased this diverse collection of student work.

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