An artist’s studio can be many things: a sanctuary, an office, a classroom. For the students in Wellesley’s senior art seminar, the studio they share in Jewett Arts Center is a curious blend of all three. The wide rectangular room has moveable dividers separating each artist’s individual space and a communal area in the middle, making for a warm, collaborative atmosphere.
The two-part seminar, ARTS317H (fall) and ARTS318H (spring): Advanced Independent Projects, is geared toward studio art majors and minors but is open to all seniors, regardless of major, and encourages students to explore a range of media, from painting to photography. Each spring, the class invites visitors to an open studio night where they explore their work and learn about their process. At this year’s event, on February 21, students, professors, and other Boston art scene enthusiasts moved from space to space, traveling between vastly different dimensions of art.
The open studio experience is critical to the journey seniors embark on over the course of the academic year, creating a key moment of reflection. Genevieve Cohn, visiting lecturer in art and the instructor of the seminar, points out that having people enter the studio space and ask questions and learn about the art leads also to “a shift, where [students] really start to see themselves as artists.”
While dedication, discipline, and skill are crucial to their progress this year, so is the element of community. “We are truly friends,” Ahana Basu ’25 says of her peers in the seminar. “Art making is so personal, so when you commit to working on art in a space that you share with other people, you commit to being vulnerable with them.
In Cohn’s view, community is “foundational” to the seminar experience, as students learn from and lean on each other in ways that contribute to their growth. She asks them to make a group chat and facilitates conversations between them from the beginning of the fall semester so that they can get to know each other as soon as possible. To foster mutual support and even friendship, she encourages the artists to go on walks after critiques, either in pairs or small groups, so that they can process responses to their work together.
“In the seminar, we talk explicitly about community building,” she says. “We talk about how important it is to feel like you belong and to look out for other people, and [how] so much of art making is easier when you have a buddy.”
Maria Ordal ’25 says it is incredibly special to work with, and learn from, artists she deeply admires. Though their subjects and processes might be vastly different, she always learns something new from her peers. At times, she shares similar struggles with one of her classmates, or is in a similar place in her process as someone else. These unexpected moments of resonance remind her that she is never truly working alone, she says, which is both comforting and motivating in a world where artists are often expected to be solitary.
Amelia Clark ’25 has also reflected on how important working alongside her peers has been to her own process, particularly the diversity of the projects students are developing. This diversity is “bringing things to my own work that I wouldn’t have expected if I were taking a normal painting class,” she says.
“I feel so honored and excited to be able to do [the seminar],” she adds. “Getting to talk to people, getting their feedback on what I’m working on, and being able to help them. I think that’s what’s super exciting to me, that we get to see what’s going on with so many other projects.”
The seminar has also been crucial to each student’s development of an art practice that works for them on their own terms. This year, the 12 seniors will present at Wellesley’s Ruhlman Conference, and their chosen theme is a looming question for many artists at Wellesley: How do you sustain an art practice as an undergrad and beyond?
Basu mentions that many of Cohn’s exercises, including one called “the river of life,” in which students draw their life from their earliest memory, helped her resolve questions she had about her own work. “When that [clarity] happens, when you have a clear idea of where you’re coming from and what your art really is about, I think it becomes easier to sustain it,” she says.
As in other art classes at Wellesley, the senior art seminar has a strong focus not only on making art—whether that be by putting brush to canvas or developing film—but also on things that seem to be separate from the practice, such as finding a good schedule, caring for oneself outside of working hours, and learning how to be vulnerable with others. Now in her fourth year teaching the seminar, Cohn says she has truly come to see how much of an impact the class can have on students, whether they are studio art majors completing a thesis or enthusiastic painters who are trying to make more time for their art.
“My goal, in any of my classes, is to figure out how to change your life with it,” Cohn says. When you make art, she adds, “the way that you see is different, the way that you connect with yourself, the way that you’re able to be introspective … It’s a way of being in the world.”