Student Profiles
Frossene King / De'Shan Perry / Tina Buescher / Kim Pendergrass
Frossene King, Fine Arts Senior
What do you hope to do with your degree in Fine Arts?
I hope to continue my education after finishing my bachelor’s degree in order to pursue a master’s degree. My end goal is to be an artist and a teacher.
What media do you like to work with?
That is a very interesting question! I originally thought my art would focus in the areas of painting and sculpture. In the beginning I took more and more drawing classes because it seemed to be such an important foundation for all the other mediums. Just last summer I took a drawing class with Andy Myers through the study abroad program in Rome and found a love for pen and ink drawings. The Rome program was a wonderful experience in that there was inspiration everywhere! Then, after seeing an open studio show, I decided to try classes in printmaking with Yuji Hiratsuka where I discovered lithography. I enjoy this media because it combines drawing with very challenging technical processes. I am finding the combination quite luring.
What classes have you found helpful to you?
The art instruction here at OSU is excellent, but I have to say that it is the interactive environment that has been the most helpful. The professors are inspiring. They are very interested in our artistic journey. I also appreciate the fact that several of the professors actively work on their own art after hours in the labs. We, as students, benefit from seeing their work in progress. The students in many of my classes have also helped to form a community where we can bounce ideas off of one another. The interaction of an artistic community is very helpful. Our art department also provides opportunities for students to work with visiting artists. With each of these types of interaction, I am able to take away a little piece that makes me think and see a little differently. I am excited to see how all these pieces will fit together in my own work.
What do you think you can offer to the world of art?
At this point I am far from being an expert in any field of art, but I particularly enjoy seeing how two different artists can solve a design or artistic problem in two completely different ways. I have an earlier degree in Education and the question about what internal and external influences guide an artist is a good question for a teacher to think about. My interest in art and education seem to be a natural combination. Although I hope to teach some form of art, the creative effort is just part of me. Whether my artistic labors offer something to the world is not the goal. I hope that it will be a result, but we will just have to see!
What or who have been your artistic influences?
I have taken classes from instructors who are insightful artists. I've also had the privilege of being able to travel to see in person many great works of art. My favorite is the classical works in Greece... especially the Caryatid figures of the Acropolis. My grandmother was born in Greece and I still have some family there. I visit as often as I can and I always have to make a trip to Athens to see these impressive sculptures.
What do you find exciting right now in the world of art?
I love that there are so many artists working in many different directions. Art is becoming more accessible in the everyday world and anyone can see the work of independent artists across miles through the Internet. I feel that this diversity opens possibilities. I've enjoyed seeing artists combine technology in their art as well as artists that can create amazing things with simple media and their imagination. One of my favorite artists is William Kentridge. I love his short films that are created through a series of drawings. His art is expressive and insightful. I think he is interesting as an artist because he has so many questions about what it means to be an artist.
De'Shan Perry, Graphic Design Senior
De'Shan Perry is a senior in Graphic Design, on track to graduate in the spring of 2011. He grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, and attended Corvallis High School before coming to OSU.
What do you hope to do with your degree in Graphic Design?
Hopefully find a job! I’m planning like to move to Seattle after graduation, so I hope to find something up there. Ultimately I want to have my own business or firm. I’ve always wanted to get involved with printing on clothing, t-shirts and the like. I’m not really interested in clothing design, but I’m really interested in what goes on it. I’ve always wanted to do graphics for shoes, like Nike® custom shoes. l also like the idea of having my own business where I can design, but also hire people with diverse backgrounds who were interesting and would bring in interesting clients. I’d like to have a firm where we worked on a variety of things, web, print, clothing, etc.
What do you like most about graphic design?
Everything. I’ve always really liked doing art, and this is kind of finding a way to apply it to a career. I love to do web design, package design, print design, just anything, as long as I can play with how it looks, I’m going to like it. I like it all. I like to just keep going with a design till it feels right.
What classes have you found helpful to you?
I would say my Ethnic Studies or Anthropology classes are the most helpful, or at least they give me the most inspiration to apply to my work. I really like incorporating the ideas and images of other cultures into design— they’re classes that provide different perspectives and other ways of thinking than my own, and every time I take one of those classes it shows up in my work somehow.
What do you think you can offer to the world as a designer? In a hundred years, what would you hope people looking back would say about De’Shan Perry? 
I just hope that as a designer my work can show different perspectives or different ideas than they might normally think of. I’d like to think that my work could inspire people somehow.
What has or who have been your artistic influences?
My close friends and family. I take everything from them and let them inspire me. There’s no one specific designer I really think about. I just try to let myself be inspired by everything I see. When I take art history I pay less attention to the artists’ names and the titles of their works, and more about what their thoughts were behind the works—I try to understand what motivated them to create a specific piece of Art.
What aspect of design are you most excited about right now?
The thing I’m most excited about is package design. I love figuring out different ways to engineer a package, to have it do something weird, and the different ways to package objects. Last term one of our projects was to design a package for a t-shirt company and I made a package that was a two-layered tube. The outside layer had an opening in it, and the inside layer had all the images on it, so you twisted it around to see all the images that would pass by the opening. When you pulled it up, it was the box with the t-shirt in it. It’s one of those things where look at it later and can’t believe you thought of it...just some crazy idea that you manage to pull it off!
Tina Buescher, 2010 Graduate, Photography 
What do you hope to do with your degree in Fine Arts?
I hope to make a living as a portrait and event photographer (I love environmental portraiture and documentary photography) in addition to continuing to teach photography (I teach night classes at OSU’s Craft Center and would like to teach at the college level, too). I plan to continue my personal work as well in traditional wet-darkroom black and white photography and hope to show in galleries.
What media do you like to work with?
Light! It’s going to sound hokey, but film and digital sensors are my canvases and light is my paintbrush.
What classes have you found helpful to you?
All of them! But seriously, in addition to my photography classes with Harrison Branch and Jim Folts, my art history classes with Priscilla West and Kirsi Peltomaki have DEFINITELY helped make it possible for me to become a better photographer. I have found a lot of inspiration from artists working in other mediums, and I wouldn’t have known where to even begin to look for inspiration outside of photography if it wasn’t for my art history classes. And I meant it when I said all of the classes I’ve taken at OSU have been helpful. I’ve particularly enjoyed classes like Astronomy 104 with Jim Ketter, yoga with Linda Baskerville, Oceanography 103 with Dr. Wright and Dr. Duncan, and Women Studies 224 with Diane Turner and Liz McNeill to name a few.
What do you think you can offer to the world of art?
That’s a tough one. I don’t really think about what I can offer as I’m producing personal work, I’m usually just exploring my own history and environment. But I’d hope that I could have viewers recall their own history and reflect on their own world. I like to make a connection with viewers, whether it’s memory-recall or feeling an emotion of some sort. It doesn’t even have to be a happy emotion; it can be melancholy, sorrow, or longing. I’d like to think my work could find a niche in the world of art and be seen by others.
What or who have been your artistic influences?
This is a pretty long list, but I’ll try to keep it short and just talk about the big ones. The major styles of art that influence my photography include Gothic Sculpture, Baroque Art (specifically Baroque Realism, both painting and sculpture), Romantic Landscape Painting, and Impressionist Painting. Since I’m working in a 2-dimensional medium, I’m always on the lookout for techniques used by other 2-D artists that create and emphasis a sense of 3-D, and I’ve found a lot of inspiration among artists working 100s of years ago. Gothic sculpture particularly influences how I pose subjects; the “Gothic Sway” appears in my portraiture a lot. I particularly love the “Beautiful Style” of Gothic Sculpture. Certain painters who feature light prominently in their work fascinate me, so Baroque Realism painters and their use of “chiaroscuro” (adding a sense of 3-dimensional modeling to the flat canvas utilizing highly contrasting light and dark values) have been hugely influential. Caravaggio is probably my favorite; he created a sense of 3-dimensions stunningly. Other artists influenced by Caravaggio that in turn influence me are Francisco de Zurbaran, Diego Velazquez, Artemisia Gentileschi, Georges de La Tour, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Bernini is a Baroque sculpture that I also enjoy. In my landscape work, I’m highly influenced by painters that prominently feature light and atmosphere in their work. Romantic Landscape painters are amazing at this: J. M. William Turner, Charles-Francois Daubigny, and Thomas Cole. James Abbott McNeill Whistler is fabulous, too. Which segues nicely into Impressionist painters and their use of light and color in their work. I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here.
What do you find exciting right now in the world of art?
Contemporary, digital photographers are really pushing the boundaries of the aesthetic of photography and I’ve started to incorporate some new techniques and ideas into my own photography based on what I’m seeing.
Do you ever look at the magazine National Geographic? Some of your photos on your website remind me of the photos in that magazine. If not, what magazines do you look at?
Yes! Oh my goodness I’ve loved National Geographic since I was a little kid. My grandfather gave us a yearly subscription to National Geographic every Christmas and it was very influential on my love for photography. Incidentally he’s the same grandfather that gave me my first camera. I probably wouldn’t have been a photographer today if it wasn’t for him. He started me on the path.
What photographers inspire you?
Another long list, but I’ll just go with the first influences. Margaret Bourke-White for documentary photography, she really made it an art form and could find the beautiful in the most mundane of places and things. I discovered her in high school (in Life Magazine back-issues) and was blown away. Then there’s Ruth Bernhard for portraiture. The tonality and sense of light in her images is amazing! She also influences me when it comes to patience (not always my strong suit). I remember reading somewhere that one day she noticed a beautiful light pattern created by a glass doorknob and planned to shoot it the next day. But the next day the light wasn’t quite the same. So she noted the previous day’s date and waited UNTIL THE NEXT YEAR for the same date and shot the light pattern then.
Other photographers include Dorothea Lange, Philippe Halsman, Arnold Newman, Bill Brandt, Helmut Newton, Imogen Cunningham, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Cindy Sherman, Cheryl Hatch, Jerry Uelsmann, Annie Leibovitz, Edward Weston, Brad Trent, David LaChapelle, Dick Arentz, Jeff Hutchens, August Bradley, Frank Eugene, W. Eugene Smith, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ryan Schude, Tim Rudman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Hurrell, Herb Ritts, Weegee, Joyce Tenneson, John Paul Caponigro, Jill Greenberg, Michael Grecco, Sarah Moon, Brenda Manookin, Joe Buissink, Nick Brandt, Mary Ellen Matthews, Ellen von Unwerth, Etc.
Do you like traditional photography better than digital photography or is it the other way around? Do you study and use both?
They both have their place and I like both. I use digital photography for my commercial work and in some of my documentary projects, but I use traditional black and white photography for my personal work.
How long have you had a website?
Since 2007, but I’m in the process of completely redesigning it to make it easier to maintain and add new galleries. I’m hoping to launch the new design this summer (I’m pretty busy with my last quarter so don’t have as much time to work on the redesign as I’d like).
Kim Pendergrass, Art History Senior 
What do you hope to do with your degree in Fine Arts?
I am getting a degree in Art History. I plan on continuing my education and eventually becoming a curator. I am also interested in being an international art broker.
What media do you like to work with?
Although my major does not focus on applying the fine arts in a physical sense, I love oil painting. I have even sold a few pieces in Portland.
What classes have you found helpful to you?
I love taking both art history and studio classes. My favorite art history class was African Art and my favorite studio class was Painting I.
What do you think you can offer to the world of art?
I can offer the art world a fresh perspective. I am not a typical art student do to the fact that I am also a business major. I tend to approach things a little more logical and I can apply these more “business type” skills to my work in the art world.
What or who have been your artistic influences?
At the moment, I am influenced largely by street art especially graffiti. I have been studying the works of a graffiti artist from the UK named Banksy.
What do you find exciting right now in the world of art?
I like that fact that art and science are working together to uncover the past. As technology improves at a rapid rate, art and science are coming together to show us things that we have never seen before, like under paintings or the significance of brush strokes.
