Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of profiles of seniors pursuing an honors degree in studio art.
Even as corporate recruiting approches its blistering climax, some members of the Class of 2009 have realized they will not need a suit and tie to prepare for their futures. Candidates for the honors studio art major prepare paintings, sculptures, jewelry and other fine art pieces, gradually realizing their long-planned visions through independent work.
To complete the honors studio art major, students choose to concentrate in architecture, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking or sculpture.
Over the course of Winter and Spring terms, they enroll in senior seminars and produce a body of work with the guidance of two art advisers. At the end of this process, they exhibit their work.
Case Hathaway-Zepeda '09, a sculptor, is one of these studio art majors. Since her sophomore fall, Hathaway-Zepeda has led the Tucker Foundation's Prison Project, a group that volunteers at the women's prison Windsor Correctional Facility in Windsor, Vt.
Volunteers interact with the inmates through a variety of humanitarian programs, such as sending the inmates' children DVDs of their mothers reading to them. Getting to know these women's stories has helped to motivate Hathaway-Zepeda's artistic community service.
"I believe that the incarcerated female population is the most disenfranchised in this society," she said.
One piece inspired by her volunteer work is a small, embellished metal box used to keep unconventional "treasures" such as small vials of cast silver flies and maple tree seeds. The label on one of the vials reads, "The simple things in life that make reality bearable," words that the artist believes are at the heart of the women's situation.
The work recalls the lonely women at the prison who sometimes catch flies to keep as pets. Hathaway-Zepeda also put maple tree seeds in the box to represent the time she saw an inmate interrupt a volleyball game to toss seeds into the air and watch them flutter to the ground. Earlier, Hathaway-Zepeda considered recreating this moment in a performance piece instead.
"A lot of my works are performance pieces or artifacts of performance pieces; you find a lot of tools and instruments," Hathaway-Zepeda explained.
Hathaway-Zepeda recently performed two pieces for her sculpture class. In one of these she sat on a stool and reacted to sounds she heard around her, wearing a papier-mache mask with no eyes or mouth.
"Normally for these group critiques, we go over to the environment where the work is and we look at how it's presented," she said.
"For this, my emotions and movements were the environment. It was not about the mask because I was the piece. I stumbled around the room, feeling around with my hands. Everyone was really, really quiet as they watched me."
Hathaway-Zepeda also tackles sexual assault in her art. In a controversial work that she called her "rape piece," she played the role of a rape victim by laying naked on the floor in a dark room wrapped in a blanket.
As part of the performance, she held the rape whistle distributed to Dartmouth students through the Sexual Abuse Awareness Program and placed a mock Committee on Standards letter of the victim's claim of rape beside her.
A video showed a man walking on a dark sidewalk and a naked woman with her lower body covered in blood, while Hathaway-Zepeda curled into a fetal position and began to hyperventilate.
According to Hathaway-Zepeda, her critique group was stunned.
One student asked if the artist had experienced sexual assault. She responded by saying that no one who had been raped would be able to perform such a piece. It would be a reenactment of their suffering.
"I believe very strongly in all my work," she said. "Society and culture expects those who have been oppressed -- those without voices -- to have a voice. I was never artistic until I did this as of way of trying to reach a broader audience."
Originally from Pasadena, Calif., Hathaway-Zepeda was always creative, but she initially planned to study ecological biology and English at Dartmouth. After graduation, she hopes to work as an art educator with art institutions on the East Coast and eventually pursue a master of fine arts degree.
"It's funny because back in high school I was the sports kid," she said. "But I found that making art objects is a powerful form of communication. Art is a reiteration of humanity, to acknowledge that you are human."
