to the Biola BFA Class of 2020
You were already on track to be a group of students we remember long past your graduation. As one of your faculty members, I noticed you as you came to our department as freshmen – exhibiting a level of curiosity, ambition, work ethic, and creative expansiveness that we don’t always see. These qualities grew as you did, leading to a senior class prepared to be exceptional. And then March of 2020 arrived, and circumstances became exceptional as well. The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shifted all of our plans and expectations. Classes moved to remote delivery, the campus emptied, and the gallery closed. Daily life was upended and uncertainty defined almost every expected activity, provoking questions we had not previously considered such as – what is the role of art in a pandemic? How can creativity and community flourish under quarantine? And how do we keep doing what we do as artists and designers: making meaning from visuals and materials, and putting that meaning into the world, when we can no longer share space together? While these questions were being felt throughout the worlds of art and academia, they were felt with particular urgency by this BFA class. The week we began our remote delivery of courses was the same week that BFA shows were to have begun showing in the campus gallery. Suddenly, the work that had been progressing with such promise all semester was thrown into a state of uncertainty and a daunting challenge loomed – to give up or to persist? To take the easy way out, and simply mourn that which had been lost, or to do the hard work of re-thinking, re-imagining, even re-making something new?
I’ve never been prouder and more amazed as a professor than by what I saw this group of exceptional students do. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The same energy,
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker