From Studio to Spotlight: Celebrating Student Artists at SU

Unknown to most, when I first came to Susquehanna, I was actually a Marketing and Graphic Design dual major. This was before I found my love of Communications and had my Advertising & Public Relations major replace my Graphic Design one. Although the major wasn’t for me, I still had an amazing time taking Professor Ann Piper’s Foundations of Art I class. 

Foundations of Art I is a beginning level course that introduces students to the principles, theories, and aesthetics of two-dimensional artwork. This class is open to all majors and really focuses on the improvement of the students. At the end of the semester, Piper chooses pieces from the class to be featured in the Blough-Weis Library spring art exhibition, along with pieces from her Printmaking class. 

I had the opportunity to speak with Piper to learn more about her classes, the exhibition, and her own art journey! 

Who is Ann Piper? 

After taking her class, I was really interested in learning more about Piper’s journey in art, and how that led her to becoming a professor. I first asked her how she found her passion for art. 

“I was just always wanting to draw,” Piper told me, “but I didn’t think of it necessarily as a career until probably when I was 15 or 16.” Piper explained that when she was 15, she began attending Norwich Free Academy, a private school that had an amazing art department. It was through this department that Piper was able to explore different mediums of art and realize that she could turn it into a career. 

In 1995, Piper began to focus on her skills. She explained that she primarily works with figures and people but does so in a wide variety of mediums and sizes. Interestingly, Piper told me about summer trips she takes to Switzerland, which make her explore doing art in a smaller setting. Large isn’t really going to be easy to do,” she told me, “transporting it and all the materials. So, I made a travel studio that I took with me. It had a couple of small boards,” Piper continued. “It had space for all my materials. And I would just set up in the hotel room and do some small pieces.” 

In addition to her life as an artist, Piper has been a professor at Susquehanna since 2008. In that time, she had the chance to teach several different courses and create the exhibition partnership with her classes and the library! 

Art at Susquehanna 

Piper specializes in Studio Art: Painting & Drawing, but her classes are taken by students across the School of the Arts. Piper teaches five core art classes, Foundations of Art I, Foundations of Art II, Printmaking, Painting, and Drawing. 

As I mentioned previously, Foundations of Art I is an introductory course. It focuses entirely on 2D art as Piper teaches students about composition, color, design, and specific techniques. Piper explained that this class does a little bit of everything. “We do a little bit of drawing, you know, with different methods and materials with drawing,” she said. “We also do a little bit of painting with the same thing: different methods and materials. We do a little bit of collage.” Piper also explained that Foundations I is more formal than her other classes due to the learning curve that is built in. The class is used to truly introduce the principles of art to students that they can then apply in their other art classes. 

The next class she teaches is Foundations of Art II, which she explained is more conceptual than Foundations I. Both 2D and 3D is allowed in this class, and Piper usually lets the students have more freedom when it comes to their projects. I asked her what a typical assignment looks like in this class. “Each student is given the same prompt and then they’re to solve that, to think creatively, to brainstorm, to come up with a way to solve that problem visually,” Piper explained, “and so, a lot of different materials are used.” “We’ve used plaster,” she continued, “used fibers like knitting or crocheting. Some people have used wood, papier-mache, and found objects. It’s really cool. A lot of resourcefulness happens in that class.” 

In her Printmaking class, Piper teaches a variety of techniques to introduce students to printmaking. One technique is relief printing, which is when you carve into linoleum or wood to create a stamp. This class also explores monotype printing, dry point printing stencils, as well as working with an etching press, and sometimes screen printing. 

Piper told me that in her Painting class, she tries to expose students to materials that they may be less likely to try on their own, and so they mainly use oil paint. “People on their own are more likely to try watercolors, acrylic, or tempera. Oil paint soft of has a mystique to it. It can be scary,” she said. “I say that if you’re going to have a painting experience and it can be guided and it maybe not be something you’d try on your own, I think oil paint is the way to go.”  Finally, Piper’s drawing class focuses on using different materials. These materials include pencil, pen and ink, brush and ink, and charcoal. She told me that this class experiments with both additive and subtractive techniques and usually works on larger canvases.  

Each of Piper’s classes is traditionally taught with 18 students, and they complete about 6-8 projects during the semester. These projects are then complied and submitted as a portfolio. By having students submit a final portfolio, Piper is able to see how their art has grown and changed throughout the semester. “I think it’s really important to see everything; to see the arc of the semester when you look at all the work that’s happened.” She continued by saying that “you can see the confidence growing just as you look at the trajectory of the work. And so, it’s good for me to see all of the pieces together and say, oh okay, it goes from maybe a little timid to much more confident!” Once the portfolio are all submitted, Piper then goes through them and chooses work from them to be displayed in the library exhibition. 

The Exhibition 

Piper primally chooses work from her Foundations I, Foundations II, and Printmaking classes for the exhibition,. The reason for this is that the projects in her other classes can be quite large, while projects in these classes are more manageable. All the works come from projects that the students completed during the semester and are then submitted in their final portfolio.  

I asked Piper to talk about some of the techniques that may appear in this exhibition, and she gave me a detailed explanation of the different projects that are completed by her Foundations I class, which makes up most of the exhibit. She explained that they start by using pen and ink and brush and ink to draw an object that they bring into class. Then they move into using the same material to create patterns, and then they complete a stippling project. “A lot of students do really well with the stippling project. That’s just a way of making marks with lots of little dots. And as long as you take your time and map it out, it’s pretty satisfying and many students get great results.” 

After that, students dive into working with cut paper and collages, before moving into painting. The Foundations I class uses gouache painting, which Piper defined as forgiving due to its reactivation nature, making it easier for students to fix their mistakes. They begin working with natural colors, before creating a painting with any color for their final project. This project also has students create a companion piece of any medium to go along with it. I remember for my final project, I created a college that actually was featured in last year’s library exhibition. 

Pieces from her Printmaking class will contain relief prints that were made out of carved linoleum. Piper also said that we are likely to see more collages from this class. “I have them save their mistakes and mistake prints,” Piper said, “to cut up and reassemble. This is opening the door for using prints in mixed media.”  

I asked Piper how she chooses works for the exhibition, and she said that she tries to provide a variety among the different techniques her students explored. Once she has a few pieces that represent each technique, she then matts and frames the pieces before hanging them in the library. 

Art as a Storytelling Device 

After talking about her student’s pieces, I asked Piper how they found inspiration for their work. She said that she always encourages her students to look at other art, and that she hopes they can draw inspiration from that. “I want them to look up artists,” Piper said, “and I encourage them to go to the library. We’ve got great oversized books with good pictures.” 

“When they’re working too,” Piper continued, “if I see something that somebody’s doing that reminds me of an artist specifically or an art movement or an aesthetic that I think they are starting to gravitate to, I try to give them names and encourage them to go look the artist up.” She explained that by doing, she can help students either better understand their artwork, and help them to decide if that specific style was something they would want to continue to work in. 

As the interview concluded, I asked Piper why she thought art was such a powerful form of storytelling. She answered by saying that as humans, we are “visual creatures.” 

“[With art] you can tell as much of a story as you’d like, or you can reserve bits of a story to make it a little bit more ambiguous. It might open it up to more people if they’re seeing something that resonates with them and makes them feel.” 

As a final question, I asked Piper if she had any advice for aspiring artists, and her response was what I believe to be incredible advice. 

“Immerse yourself,” Piper said. “Look at art, look at art in person, look at it as much as you can, do it as much as you can…For anything that you really want to get into, the best way to be good at it and learn about it is to just dive in.” 

I hope that if you are an aspiring artist, you learned something new about art today. I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in the arts to take Foundations I next fall and explore their creative side. I hope to see you all in the library to take a look at the artistic accomplishments of Piper’s students! 

Madeline Davis (’28) is a sophomore at Susquehanna University.  She is a Marketing and Advertising & Public Relations dual major. In addition to her marketing work at the Blough-Weis Library,  Madeline serves as the Public Relations manager for Susquehanna’s Best Buddies chapter and as an editor for Ginkgo Magazine. Outside of school, she enjoys reading, writing, and antiquing with friends.