Post-Grad Reflections: My Senior Exhibition Experience

After just graduating from Alfred University, life has felt like a bit of a whirlwind—between packing up, moving home, and navigating the maze of job applications, I’ve finally had a moment to catch my breath. And I realized... I never really shared much about my senior exhibition. It was such a meaningful culmination of my time at Alfred, and I’d love to let you into that experience.

This past semester, I poured myself into a project that combined three of my biggest artistic passions: analog media, movement, and memory. I worked with VHS film, archival footage of dance, and recordings of dancer duets to create a multi-sensory immersive installation. My goal was to build something that felt intimate and nostalgic—something you didn’t just look at, but felt.

The space was designed to draw people in. On the left screen, soft, flickering interviews with dancers played—each voice fading in and out, sharing how dance has shaped their lives in powerful, personal ways. In the center: a pulsating montage of movement—partner dancing, club dancing, disco—all in bursts and flashes, like memories surfacing. And on the right, a small, static-filled television glowed quietly, only fully visible from the vintage couch placed just in front of it. Across from the screens, bench seating encouraged viewers to settle in, absorbing the left and center visuals simultaneously.

And then, there was the live element. On opening night, May 10th, I had three rotating pairs of dancers perform in the space, bringing the energy of the footage to life in real-time. It was one of my favorite parts—watching the boundaries blur between screen and stage, past and present.

What surprised me most were the reactions. People—especially dancers and deeply empathetic souls—felt it. They connected. Some cried. Some sat quietly for a long time. Others approached me afterward to say it reminded them of something they had forgotten they loved. That kind of emotional resonance is what I had hoped for, but to actually witness it was humbling.

This project was a love letter to dance, to memory, and to the analog mediums that remind us art doesn’t always need to be polished to be powerful. Sometimes, the grain and glitch are what make it real.

Here’s a little documentation of what it looked like—I hope you feel a piece of what we felt inside that space.