Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University, nestled within the sea of skyscrapers and concrete that neighbors
Downtown, is home to the next generation of artists. Every floor of the main building houses projects from the students and staff to showcase the vibrant nature of Cornish and their mission to inspire and educate their students.
“My favorite thing is to wander the halls of the floors of the main Cornish building and see what current projects the students have up along the walls. Always something new and interesting,” Calley Morrison, technical services librarian at Cornish, said.
The projects displayed around the Cornish halls are diverse in medium, ranging from sculptures to paintings. Even the floors of the buildings feature artwork, including painted sunflowers that lead to the library, as well as simple tile designs near the entrances.
“I make a point to visit each hall every once in a while to see the new art put up,” Corry McNutt, a third-year art major at Cornish, said.
McNutt has art displayed all throughout the Main Campus Center (MCC), specifically their own writings as a part of the “In Other Words” collection held by Cornish’s writing center.
“A lot of art is shown casually after class projects; I’ve had a fair amount of painting projects put up in the halls,” McNutt said.
McNutt also touched on how interconnected the different programs at Cornish are with one another, and how that was a deciding factor in their own personal decision on attending Cornish, rather than other art colleges they toured.
Cornish’s variety of art allows for crossover between different mediums. Associate Professor of Design Jacob Fleshier provided insight into one of the current projects on display on one of the floors in the MCC: cardboard sculptures based on photographed poses of the students. This process interconnects two distinct art forms, allowing inspiration to be drawn from multiple sources.
“They photographed each other in different poses, then sculpted said pose. The poses of course had to be focused on a feeling or a mood or a message,”
Fleisher said.
The variety of art and artists on both Cornish and Seattle U’s campuses brings opportunities for collaboration. With the campuses becoming more connected as the merger continues, artistic communities will continue to work together.
A Cornish Faculty Visual Arts Exhibition called “Tempo/Tempus: Rhythm and Time in Visual” Art is currently up at The Behnke Family Gallery, which features Seattle U arts professors. Other upcoming events on the South Lake Union campus include a faculty music showcase, a visual artist lecture, and “The River Bride,” a play put on by Cornish’s theater department.
