Clay, Clothes and a Couch at the 2025 Juried Student Exhibition

A grandmother’s couch that traveled to California and back rested in the corner of a small Chicago art gallery.

Well, the couch itself didn’t actually return, but rather an oil painting of it shone under fluorescent lights, revealing all its floral, coral-pink glory.

The painting — “Grandma’s Living Room” — began as an assignment for fourth-year English major Lindsey Hunsinger’s painting class last semester. So, Hunsinger said, they were surprised when “Grandma’s Living Room” won first place at this year’s Juried Student Exhibition awards ceremony.

“Grandma’s Living Room” was one of 14 artworks selected for the annual exhibition put on by the Ralph Arnold Gallery. The gallery — located at 1131 W. Sheridan Rd. — is run by Loyola’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts, and hosted an opening reception and awards ceremony the evening of Jan. 30.

Hunsinger, 22, said their grandmother brought the couch from Chicago to San Jose, Calif., where Hunsinger grew up.

“It’s just cool that she’s here with me,” Hunsinger said.

Ralph Arnold Gallery Director Gina Hunt said the exhibition received 143 submissions in the fall, which were then whittled down by independent juror Sam Jaffe.

Jaffe, an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, wrote a juror statement explaining her reasoning for each work for gallery attendees to read as they perused the pieces.

The tilted perspective and stuttered brushstrokes of “Grandma’s Living Room” accentuated what Jaffe called “unnatural colors” — sage green shadows and pastel pink outlines. Hunsinger said they were inspired by French painter Édouard Vuillard, whose avant-garde treatment of light and color highlighted the private homes of Parisians in the 1890s, according to the Museum of Modern Art.

Hunt, who taught the painting class Hunsinger took last semester, said the juried exhibition is competitive, with students allowed to submit up to three works.

The mood at the gallery opening, though, was far from tense. Instead, it was flooded with smiling students, professors, friends and family.

“It’s really great to see so many students getting to know one another,” Hunt said. “It’s really cool to see students outside of Fine Arts being able to experience the creative work by our students as well.”

Fourth-year studio art sculpture, ceramics and communications studies major Marky Salvati won second place for his stained glass and lead ribbons titled “Girly Ribbons,” Niko Zvodinski won third place for a photograph titled “Flow” and fourth-year psychology, studio art sculpture and ceramics major Lilly Allan won an honorable mention for their handmade, straitjacket-like shirt titled “Stripes.”

Salvati’s piece hung from the ceiling, intertwining in coils of opaque orange, red and pale green. The ribbons curl, pop and wrinkle, but never quite touch each other. 

Zvodinski, a third-year photography and video art major, said he experimented with different camera shutter speeds when taking “Flow.” The slower shutter speed captured the windblown grass in front of a door to the Information Commons, imbuing energy into an otherwise still image.

“I really wanted to step out of my comfort zone when I took this shot,” Zvodinski said.

Allan’s striped shirt hung in the corner opposite “Grandma’s Living Room,” and was accompanied by a short video of Allan writhing around in its mismatched, stitched-together sleeves.

“Visual beauty and humor can draw us more deeply into challenging territory rather than steer us away from it, as the works of these artists demonstrate,” Jaffe wrote in her juror statement.

Similar pieces at the gallery played with aesthetics and absurdity. Anjonae’ Coleman’s “Sleep Hurts, Dreams Destroy” was a pointillist depiction of a pillow composed of tiny images of Coleman’s spit. 

Dior Taylor’s “Woman’s Leg and Bathtub” painted a portrait of a woman shaving, with wispy hairs that looked less like hair and more like Vincent Van Gogh’s wheat fields. And in the center of the gallery stood Muhammad Khan’s ceramic bust, “Ɱ? / / 🯄 ꟽ? ♢△�x?Ѭ.”

Khan, a fourth-year software engineering major, said he signed up for an independent study last semester to work on the piece, which took months to complete. He said the title came from the mixed-up letters of his first name, with only the “M” remaining the same.

“Life throws so much — too many things — at you, and you still have to preserve your identity,” Khan, 23, said. “I’ve had my fair share of trials and tribulations, and I thought it’d be fitting to just make an entire piece about it.”

The black bust was a featureless head tilted upwards, pensive, with its edges kissed by gold. Khan — who wore a black-and-gold suit to match at the opening reception — said the hardest part was making the ceramic flowers adorning the shoulders of the bust, along with the custom glaze he made himself by mixing together different metals.

“Every single thing that I’ve been through, I tried to kind of put it all into clay,” Khan said.

Jaffe’s juror statement, which Hunt read aloud at the awards ceremony, praised the selected artists for the ability to find joy in the face of adversity.

“This exhibition is a reflection not only of individual artistic expression, but also of a collective response to our moment,” Jaffe wrote. “It captures the resilience and the thoughtful engagement of a generation of young artists who are shaping and reflecting their world through acts of creativity.”

Students can access the exhibition with their student IDs Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. until March 8. The gallery is open to the public Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.