“A Few Sponges” by Natalya Brill will be featured in the upcoming Senior thesis art show. Natalya created a wall sized black-and-white mural featuring her own poetry for her senior thesis. Natalya is a member of the class of 2018 and will earn a double major in Visual Arts and Russian & Eastern European Studies. Natalya’s work is geared toward all people apart of the digital era, drawing inspiration from social media.

Scrolling through art on Instagram, Brill took notice of an often lack of appreciation for art on social media. She noted how when people are scrolling through pictures or artwork on sites such as Instagram the image is “only cool for like five seconds, and then you scroll to the next picture.” She also took note of captions, “it’s interesting how they enhance the picture.” Working from this inspiration, she began sketching and digging up poetry.

From there, Natalya began working with charcoal and drawing images. Then taking these images to a computer, she would digitally manipulate and refine them. At this point Brill would couple the images with a poem.

These “little stories” are not created with the intention of being related to the image.Rather, Brill hopes the viewer will make their own associations and thus find their own meaning. The pairs are then collaged to become a large black-and-white digitally printed mural. Come check out “A Few Sponges,” along with other senior thesis work, at the Senior Art Show on May 18th.