ABIGAIL MILLER
Special to The Leader
SUNY Fredonia’s Emmitt Christian Gallery, located in Rockefeller Arts Center, showcases the work of Fredonia students with week-long exhibitions throughout each semester. This past week, the gallery featured work by Fredonia visual arts and new media alumna Nica Gray.
Decorating the plain white walls of the gallery space were 250 paintings, each the size of a Polaroid picture, with a format similar to Instagram posts. Every piece in this series, titled “The Commemorated,” shows a different facet of Gray’s artistic creativity.
As a whole, the series gives insight into the changing perspectives Fredonia students experience throughout a semester. Every day for her last two semesters before graduation, Gray completed one of the pieces in the series.
One of the first things I noticed when I walked into the gallery was the placement of each piece. Instead of every painting being lined up in a row, they were each placed at a different height.
Gray explained that the placement of each piece was reflective of her mental space at the time she created them. Regarding the formatting, she said that by having each of the pieces include a caption, as well as the time and date of creation, the series was given a sense of consistency and cohesion despite the vast difference of their content.
The inclusion of the dates and times Gray said it meant to ground the pieces by making the viewer focus on the brevity of the individual moments that were captured by each piece. The captions were an additional artistic feature, giving viewers a glimpse into her state of mind during these seemingly mundane moments.
Starting out as a required project for one of her classes, Gray was taken aback by the freedom she felt when creating anything that came to her mind within the confines of a small canvas. This newfound liberty was the motivation that drove her to continue the series past the project’s original due date and into her last semester at Fredonia.
Gray said creating art is something that comes naturally to her. Going into college, she noted that there was never a question as to what career path she would pursue. She explained that she is still learning as she goes, finding what she needs improvement on and practicing.
One of her biggest artistic struggles is her perfectionism, which is something that she said she was dedicated to overcome during the creation of this series.
Since none of the pieces were predetermined, she was able to work without being held back by the notion that she had to wait for an idea to be worth pursuing. Whenever she got an idea, she created a piece. Gray said that this was one of the most freeing parts about working on this project.
However, not every goal she envisioned for this project turned into a reality.
Gray said that she was thinking of extending the project further to include 365 pieces, but after the semester concluded, she was very tired. Despite being unable to fulfill this idea, she doesn’t regret stopping the series at 250 pieces.
When she graduated, she felt ready to move on from the series, as she was wary of it becoming a source of stress should she continue. The ending of her undergraduate career served as a natural conclusion.
Gray’s favorite piece encompasses the sense of relief she felt as she neared the end of the semester, an easily identifiable feeling among all college students. The piece, dated Nov. 15, 2021, is captioned: “For a brief moment, I can feel this elusive sense of freedom.” The piece was a depiction of Maytum Hall as the sun sets in the background.
Gray offered advice to current Fredonia students.
“It seems daunting when trying to take everything in as a whole, but if you take things day by day and put forth effort, you’ll have a great outcome,” she said.