The Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery presents the Thesis Exhibition 2022 showcasing the thesis work of the following students: Trang Duong (Serena), Logan Hampsey, Emily Parish, Mark Parella, Julian Wagner, Abby Snopkowski, Jonathan Paine, Jennifer Caswell, Angie Morales  
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Exhibition Dates: April 14th - May 13th
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Abby Snopkowski
Nana's Everlasting Love
There is nothing in the world like a grandmother's love. I am beyond blessed to have had my grandmother as my best friend, biggest supporter and my Nana for 22 years. At the beginning of February, heaven gained the sweetest, most patient and kind soul. This time of grief correlated with the creation of my senior thesis project. This series of paintings has carried me through the most difficult time of my life and supported me the same way my Nana would have. I am eternally grateful to have been loved by such a wonderful woman and my thesis presentation is a way to honor my Nana. 
My Nana and I used to spend hours in the garden, just working and chatting. The hydrangea flower is one of the many connections I have to my Nana. I have been fascinated with hydrangeas for many years, this body of work captures how I see them. Watercolor has given me the ability to capture the delicate nature of the hydrangea. Additionally, this medium allows for layers of color and texture. The colors I have used in the paintings represent the color palette to my emotions, thoughts and relationships. The scale of the piece titled “Heaven’s Garden” allowed me to capture the grandness of the hydrangea. Additionally this piece gave me a great deal of time to reflect on the changes in my life as well as a deeper appreciation for this incredible flower. The piece titled “Toodle Loo” is a way to honor the fun and bright spirit of my Nana as well as capture the vibrant colors of the hydrangea. Lastly is the piece titled “Maureen” which is named after my Nana. This piece is pure and delicate just like my Nana. 
This body of work is an “I love you” and a “goodbye” (or as my Nana and I would say toodle loo) to my Nana on this earth. I know her spirit will forever live on through me and my art.

Emily Parish
Aviculture
“Aviculture” means “the keeping and breeding of birds,” usually in captivity. However, through my project Aviculture, I also want to create a fantasy society in which the term also relates to a culture of the birds—their own world, in which elements of our own culture and history may be recognizable. The dolls represent real species of birds, all with their own interesting personalities and symbolism, but they have human-like bodies, dressed in historically-inspired clothes modeled after the American fashions of the 1860s.
Like the double meaning of the word “aviculture,” I was very interested in exploring duality through this project. The dolls embody both movement and motionlessness: they are unable to move on their own, but their button-jointed bodies have the capacity for a wide range of motion. The materials that make up their forms are both hard and soft. Also, they are of a hybrid nature: the dolls are both human and bird. This dual existence means that they are both a representation of the Victorian ideal of womanhood (a cooing, nesting “angel of the house” in layers of restrictive clothing), and simultaneously a symbol of freedom and self-determination.
Through this project, I wanted to combine my love of history, especially the Victorian era, with my own modern ideas and feminist viewpoint. I also wanted to connect to the past and explore the feeling of nostalgia. For this reason, I felt it was important to use only hand sewing to create the dolls and their clothing. 
​I think dolls let us connect to and examine our own emotions. This series was a way for me to express my sense of self along with the different aspects of my personality and modes of interacting with the world, and I hope to encourage others to reflect on this as well. Dolls also give us a fun and playful opportunity to engage with more serious topics, such as our relationships with the past and criticisms of our history and current society.

Logan Hampsey
Night Terrors
​My final Capstone Project is a collection of four dark, yet introspective Horror Art mixed media pieces that I have created over the course of my senior year. As my mediums I used various shaded pencils, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, watercolor paint, acrylic paint, an x-acto knife, paper cement, construction paper, magazine paper, my own cats’ fur, a bird leg, and my own blood. In this project, I intentionally leaned into the darker side of humanity and emphasized things that are not talked about or created as much. I strived to create visual representations of different human horrors we may fear on some level and/or could relate to. Not only did I collect inspiration from my personal life, I was also influenced by different Abstract Art and classic horror tropes we have all been familiarized with at some point, and decided to put my own spin on them; i.e., the apocalypse, death, monsters, blood, toxic people, etcetera.
I created the first and second pieces as distorted Cubist-inspired images of different real-life tragic horrors. The first big Cubist-horror piece titled “Gaslighter,” is depicting a man and woman who are in a dangerously toxic relationship and it is showing what that could be like in real life. The second smaller Cubist-horror piece titled “…im fine…,” is showing a girl with many scarred limbs bathing in her own blood that she has cried out in mourning.
The other two pieces are displaying a dystopian falling world that is breaking by the second. The first bigger mixed-media piece titled “Vide Quid Feceris Mihi,” focuses on a monster that is actually a self-portrait with many deformities; each representing a demon within myself. The second smaller apocalyptic piece titled “My World?!,” is a more fleshed-out street-level view of a broken society that shows what monsters have done to the world.
Score for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

    My score for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead views medieval and renaissance stylings through an absurdist, modernist lens. It seeks to subvert the expectations of the audience; to disturb, confuse, and surprise them. In this way it follows a similar goal to the play itself, as my job as a composer is to enrich the same sentiments as the script and staging do. 
    My creating this score is an exercise in balancing self-fulfillment with script-fulfillment; creating something that plays to my personal goals as a musician but is tailored to suit exactly what the play calls for. One goal of this score is for each piece to be able to stand alone outside of the theater; hence the format in which the score is being displayed in this gallery.

Trang Duong (Serena)
Under the Sea 
Nature is one of the main inspirations for my artwork. This body of work is titled Under the Sea. I have a special relationship with water and the immense ocean which helps me to immerse my thoughts and feelings.
The human figure with an imperfect head represents human thoughts, and the image of a marine animal comes out from the human head which conveys the message "when you do something for the marine world; Please! Put yourself in our situation to understand better what we want or don’t want".
The colors used in the project are carefully chosen and show its unique meanings. On the one hand, the colors of the marine creatures are bright, and colorful which symbolize a gorgeous underworld and a lively ecosystem. On the other hand, the color used for the background behind the male figure is light blue and behind the female figure dark purple. This dark purple shows how deep, different, and complicated are women's thoughts as compared to men.  
I created this project to send the message to people that we need to protect the marine ecosystem as well as take care of our own world.

Angie Morales
A Window into the Teacher’s Experience
Education and the Arts have played a major role in my life and my education itself. My mom is a teacher that has always nurtured my passions for the arts and encouraged me to express myself in all the ways I could. So going into Early Childhood education and Visual and performing arts as my education was a no brainer. As I went through school I saw and experienced a lot. So In creating this art piece I honor those two major parts of my life, bring them together. I also honor the many teachers that have gotten me to this point and the ones that I’ve seen struggle and succeed in the same passions as my own. 
For this piece I interviewed 5 different teachers and pulled from my own experiences the ups and downs of the profession, the success with students and the downside of administration. I wanted to showcase what a lot of people don’t see, that teachers go through, the sacrifices that they have to make. I wanted to show that being a teacher isn’t just “playing” or “hanging out” with children. Because teachers deserve to be celebrated and not unseen. 

Thank you to the teachers who helped contribute to the creation of this peace, 
Nea Sann 
​Amber Oleski 
One of the teachers that inspired me the most 
My mom, Annmarie Morales

Jennifer Caswell
The Beauty of Entanglements
The Beauty of Entanglements became my source of inspiration for the last 9 months while I observed mother earth and her sensational surroundings entwined in the most unusual poses both tightly knit and others more on the loosely connected side.  Fascinating to me was how nature runs wild naturally unless we try to tame it down in formal gardens, for instance.
My goal was to study entanglements everywhere, from natural settings outside to old buildings with creepy vines all over and get in touch with this phenomenon which really excited me. During my documentation of these tangles” more ideas came and I soon was hoping to involve other disciplines in the arts in my examination.  I knew music would be a necessary part of this investigation and prose and dance as well. It became clear to me, after a short time, that choreographing a dance with entangled performers might take more time than I could schedule, so, I took another interesting turn instead.      
One  beautiful, windy, summer’s day, I noticed an elaborate, graceful ballet  taking place in my hedge with a leggy, long armed, bittersweet bush extending out from it and performing an exquisite dance.  At this point my focus changed to nature’s movement. The final 2 additional experiments were my interference in the natural entanglements I found, with some  of my artificial materials and then, as you’ll see here in the gallery, I felt the urge to create my interpretation of some lively and colorful versions on this theme.

Mark Parella
Spirit Connection    
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“Spirit Connection” is the first chapter of a longer children’s graphic novel concept of the same name, dealing with the emotional burdens that children carry and the negative coping mechanisms they take on as a result. The story is told from the perspective of Tamara, an 8 year old girl with violent outbursts stemming from feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. Her struggles manifest in the form of a ghost whose hauntings only become more drastic when she retaliates. “Spirit Connection” is inspired by the many students I have taught that have been labeled as “bad” kids due to their inability to cope with the dire circumstances they face at home.

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Jonathan Paine
The Moon God
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This is the story of an ancient god who resides in the moon. At the start of the piece, he awakens to rise in the night sky, shining his bright light on his worshipers in the village below. The worshipers are having a festival to celebrate the existence of the Moon God, and he watches happily. However, during the celebration he experiences disturbing visions and he notices the sinfulness of his people. He puts an end to the festival to warn them all that if they stay on their current path, all their descendants will know is pain and suffering through wars, famines, and sorrow. He also shows them that they can live in Utopia if they leave their sinful ways, and be forever in peace.