The annual Westmont Graduate Exhibition in early May has reliably charted the upward course of Westmont’s art department while giving its emerging artists access to the walls of the college’s Ridley-Tree Museum — our county’s finest new art space of the 2010s.
When said venue was shuttered in May, the annual exhibit was postponed. It opened briefly to artists and families in August and now continues online at westmont.edu/museum/adjacent . Twelve student artists have created the aptly named Adjacent, with themes hovering around notions of isolation and alienation: signposts of the times.
Spirituality, biblical resonances, and a probing sense of self and artistic voice converge in Alyssa Beccue’s life-size self-portraits. A similar identity-questing buzzes in Julianna Carl’s color-coded portraits of subjects in the throes of grooming.