Fisher Gallery was flooded with Oberlin students, teachers and families last Thursday, Dec. 6. Conversation flowed between students toting wine and crackers, there to witness the progress this past semester of this year’s senior studio majors. Showcased were the works of Laura Einsel, Gabe Cohen, Fiona Ritter-Davis, Virginia Wagner, Chrissy Spallone, Marie Barnett, Kantara Souffrant, Kyla Krug-Meadows, Samantha Mitchell, Kelly Lloyd, Georgia Wall, Jackie Bousek, Jolie Signorile, Lizzie Harper, Roni Ginach and Willie Thurlow.

The show’s most striking works were focused and creatively conceptual. Some were literally kinetic, involving moving media such as film, performance and interaction; others were kinetic in the energy infused in the form. Some pieces were extremely elaborate; others seemed somewhat incomplete or in need of more focus. The pieces were informed by themes including natural cycles, identity negotiation and the re-contextualization of values and experience. Overall, the pieces seemed to embody process and re-evaluation.

Kelly Lloyd’s piece is an oil painting in warms and cools that captures the release of a visceral reaction to the analytical drone of academic pursuits of a disturbing issue. An intellectual is seen lurching over in an abstracted bathroom, holding her stomach as she regurgitates scraps of printed text and glimpses of bodies and maps. The text reveals what has sickened her: It is an index of titles about female circumcision. There is the hint of a non-descript masculine figure standing in the background. The same shape is repeated in pieces of regurgitation. A group of same-shape figures also serves as a pictoral title.

Laura Einsel’s piece, titled The Work We Do, is a striking video of the artist’s mother describing and dramatizing the work she does in a washing machine part factory as her hands and body are responding to an invisible machine. This piece had a strong effect on viewers.

As College junior Rebecca Grodofsky put it, “While a lot of art here can be hyper-intellectual and socially removed, Laura’s [is] socially poignant. This factory she works in is just a few towns over from Oberlin and a few towns over from Fisher Gallery. Laura put her mother’s story on the white gallery walls because it deserves to be there.”

Another piece that stood out was Virginia Wagner’s Between Turns. In the large oil painting, Virginia skillfully uses hyperrealism that treads on surrealist territory. The subject is a stunning nude — a naked older woman who towers over the viewer like an Amazonian from a stark backdrop of textured darkness. In her arms is a small infant. The infant’s arms visibly blend into the woman’s skin. She stares out of the painting with her wrinkle-lined blue eyes as she clutches the infant and appears a kind of mythical figure: a luminous embodiment of the afterthought of motherhood. The child is the predecessor. They are bookends, condensing the life that passes between them, merging into one another.

Gabe Cohen’s piece is a creative take on the communicative utility of art. His work consists of thousands of postcards with six different phrases attractively printed in blithe colors. The cards are neatly arranged in six stacks on a tall, clean white block. A large white cylindrical lamp hangs down from the ceiling and washes the cards in an intense white glow. The viewers are invited with this pleasing display to take some of them. The phrases have tones ranging from political (“If your home gets taken away where should I send this?”) to sentimental (“If you could write me in five years I would feel calmer”). With his piece, Cohen successfully inspires and practices artful, succinct communication.

One very striking installation by Kyla Krug-Meadows is an untitled series of large bulbous hangings. Strung on different lengths of twine from the gallery’s high ceilings is a succession of brown beehive-like pods. In a typewriter scrawl materials are listed: wire, paper, flour, water, twine. With just these, Krug-Meadows has created a suspenseful rendering of amorphous natural forms. They mimic beehives and enormous egg sacks. Though the piece is manmade, it still maintains natural qualities. They are formed from geometric structures (chicken wire) and precariously rely on only a bare thread to exist within their space. The dramatic presence of these objects in Fisher reminds the viewer of the power of the natural and simplistic in our own worlds.

These are only a few pieces from the show, and they do not fully represent the successes of many particular students in a variety of media. The senior studio class is a small, elite group of studio art majors who have stood out in the department with their work ethic, choice of content and skill. Judging by the high quality of work produced so far this year, students are both interested and engaged in unique processes. Each student’s body of work is going through its own development. The quality of the outcome reveals the extent to which each student has devoted his or her time and intellectual energy to the process so far. At this point, some students have come further than others. It remains to be seen what growth will be revealed in their work next semester.