The Online Reflector

Senior fine arts major Jessica Stucky held her senior thesis exhibition on Dec. 2. The exhibition, which features photographs of mirrors, ran from Dec.  2 to Dec. 6 in the Schwitzer Student Center Gallery.
Stucky’s inspiration to use mirrors came gradually and took a while to finalize into her senior project, she said.
“I hadn’t completely decided on my senior thesis project, but I had started working with car rearview mirrors, and I did use some car rearview mirror group pictures in my senior show,” Stucky said.
She said that about two years ago she began taking pictures using the rearview mirror of a vehicle. That idea originally stemmed from an artist who was taking pictures out of car windows as he passed buildings. Stucky decided to take her pictures of the buildings in the rear view mirror to show them behind the car.
“I wanted to show where we had passed on the way to where we were going,” she said.
She then began to incorporate larger mirrors which were three feet wide by five feet tall. She said that her motivation was to find a mirror that looked similar in length to a door, to show viewers that they were going through another portal into a different dimension.
The show was not without obstacles and challenges. One of the challenge Stucky said she had was that in the process of setting up for the show, two mirrors broke. Eventually she did use mirror fragments in her photos, but at that time the broken mirrors were a hassle.
“I wasn’t trying to use pieces of mirrors yet, so when I was on a shoot and my mirror broke, I had to stop and go get another one, try to do a different shoot at another time because I wasn’t at a point when I was trying to incorporate that [the shards] into my shoot,” Stucky said.
Another obstacle sometimes came when she was capturing the rearview mirror pictures.
“There are times where if we pass something too quickly, we can’t get the picture. Or if you hit a bump in the road, you can’t quite get that picture if the roads are a little uneven,” Stucky said.
Associate Professor of Art and Design Donna Adams, who served as Stucky’s faculty advisor, witnessed the senior’s project developing.
“She was pursuing this interest in mirrors looking backward as she’s going forward,” Adams said. “That slowly developed, became a more in-depth subject she was exploring, which lasted a couple of years. I’ve known of her increasing interest over a two year period, which was amazing.”
Adams also praised Stucky’s exhibit, saying that the work Stucky put forth in her photography was a reflection of her meeting high standards.
“She’s one of those rare students who combines intellect, enthusiasm, hard work and creativity,” Adams said. “She’s going to go far.”