Opening with a reception Friday, April 24, the BFA Spring 2026 Thesis Exhibition at the Grunwald Gallery of Art features artwork created by graduating BFA students from various areas of the Studio Art program in in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design in the IU College of Arts and Sciences.
Spanning digital art, graphic design, metalsmithing & jewelry design, painting, photography, and printmaking, the exhibition opening drew a large crowd of friends, family, and staff to celebrate the students’ accomplishments and hard work put into their senior theses. The show remains on view through Saturday, May 2; the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 12-4 pm.
Many of the students’ artworks centered around their lived experiences, while others used their thesis as a lens through which to interpret the world around them.
Metalsmithing & jewelry design student Elaine Egyhazi created five figurines for "Passed Presence," an installation that explores outdated technologies that are discarded and become remnants that remain forever in the past.
“When a technology outlives its usefulness and is abandoned, it doesn’t disappear, or die, or get reclaimed by nature. Instead, it lives on – an indelible alteration of a landscape, a ghost from the past of a future that never arrived,” writes Egyhazi.
Each figurine in the "Passed Presence" series represents a piece of human technology that has been abandoned. The figurines have an accompanying recording visitors can listen to that describes the story behind the objects.
In her multimedia installation, "A Seat at my Table," photography student Rose Herron creates an intimate space to center “Black presence, joy, and abundance."
