Hello, my name is Riley Gunderson, I am finishing my freshman year at Parsons School of Design. I am a photography major who also has interests in fine arts and mixed media. I have been passionate about art for as long as I can remember. I learned a lot my first year at the New School, not only about art but about myself as well. I look forward to continuing to learn and perfecting my craft and really narrowing in on the messages behind my work.
I have found that throughout my work I tend to be focused on people, whether that is portrait photography, self-portraits, or just figurative work in general. I also think that I tend to work with bright colors, movement, and abstraction a lot in my work. I find that I like working best in 2D and 4D mediums such as photography, painting/drawing, and video. I also see elements of performance in some of my work as well. I had never really tried 3D work, so Space and Materiality was definitely one of my biggest learning curves this year. I went into the class feeling really insecure in my sculpture and building skills. I came out of it fairly confident in working in the making centers and using tools that I before thought scary and intimidating. I plan on using the skills that I learned in this class throughout my four years here as well. I also had never really tired my hand at video prior to this year and through my Integrative Studio 1 and Time classes I learned that I really love it. Photography and video have a lot of similarities so I always knew that I would probably liked it if I tried, but now I know Adobe Premiere really well and feel confident in making more videos moving forward. I also think that art history informs my work a lot, so Objects as History was really interesting. I know a decent amount of art history from the 1800s-Present but didn’t really know much from before that so Objects was definitely a good class for me to take. I also am definitely going to make my work more sustainable moving forward because of Sustainable Systems.
I would say that the biggest highlight from my first year would definitely be my Integrative Studio 2 class where we had to make a magazine from start to finish. I was really intimidated going into this class because I didn’t know if I was capable of the amount of work necessary to create a magazine from scratch. I am really happy with the result of this project and feel as though I learned a lot in the process about myself, my work ethic, planning, dealing with other collaborators, and design overall. I am someone who makes lists when I get stressed, which definitely came to my advantage in this class, so I didn’t really struggle with the time management portion of the assignment. I did really struggle with creating so much content and being so focused on this one project for so long, which is something I had never really done before. I did fashion illustrations for the first time, I learned how to use Adobe Indesign in depth, I bettered my craft in photography, and I learned how to plan elaborate photoshoots in New York City, all skills which I will definitely be carrying with me in the next few years and on.
The second highlight of my freshman year at Parsons would probably be my Space/Materiality class, specifically the project where we worked with plaster and alginate and casted parts of our bodies. I found this class to be very challenging, as I had never really thought in terms of 3D as I had to so often in this class. I would probably say that this is the class that I learned the most in all year. I specifically liked the paster assignment because it is something that I had always wanted to do. I have always found clay and plaster and casting to be very intriguing. I thought that I would never have the resources or opportunity to cast something myself, so I was really excited by this assignment. I ended up deciding to cast about fifty fingers to make a crown with. I planned everything out with sketches and a collage and then proceeded to execute the idea in plaster. I think I will definitely work in plaster again in the future and think that I could incorporate it into photography in very interesting ways.
Moving forward, I just want to keep learning I guess. I don’t feel as though I have found what I want to say with my art so I think that would be one of my next goals. Now that I know the technical aspects of my work, I can move forward to thinking deeper about what I am making, why I am making it, and what I am trying to communicate with it. I would also like to expand my network in New York City. I feel as though I was really focused just on my schoolwork this year and next year and on I would like to get more involved in the art and design community in New York by attending more events and galleries and shows, and hopefully showcase some of my own work in some of them. I am very excited to be entering my major of Photography. I struggled a lot this year with deciding which major I wanted to be in, I was really torn between Fine Arts and Photography. I look forward to learning more about photography and finding other mediums that I like to work in as well.
