The BFA Senior Exhibition is put on every year. Its goal is to showcase the final projects that earn UW-Whitewater seniors their BFA, or Bachelor of Fine Arts, degree. This one, which will run until May 2, featured an artist named Sinclaire Casarotto.
Casarotto created a character based on the style of her favorite anime and childhood cartoons, most notably My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Her character, named Sapphire, is a wolf with wings who was created during Casarotto’s middle school years.
The art of the show showed Sapphire in different situations, such as camping with her friends and looking at the Northern Lights.
The gallery had a mix of different art techniques.
There were two large pieces made of wood. One was a campfire scene with several of Casarotto’s original characters cut out of wood and painted with oil paint.
Another was an imagining of Sapphire as a large water creature. It featured the character as a serpent-like animal coming out of the water at night. This piece had an interactive element to it where viewers were encouraged to press a button that lights up the piece.
Casarotto explained that she cut the wood out herself and screwed the multiple layers together. Doing the multiple layers created depth to the pieces, making them look more realistic and less stagnant.
Another medium used was poured aluminum. Casarotto used this technique to create two small sculptures, which were a bust of Sapphire and a full-body sculpture of Sapphire.
The full-body sculpture was made from a 3D printed mold, while the bust was made with a sand mold.
“It was interesting because it was the first time that I had poured [aluminum],” said Casarotto.
Another new experience for Casarotto was the main piece of the exhibit, a very large sculpture of Sapphire made out of styrofoam, wire, and plaster. The piece was then covered in faux fur and details such as the eyes and nose were painted on.
“I did my best with something that I had never done before,” said Casarotto humbly.
Another medium that she used in the pieces in her gallery was digital drawing. Casarotto starts all of her digital work with sketches done on paper. She then takes a photo and uploads it onto her tablet where she cleans up the lines and finishes the piece.
The time and effort that she put into these characters caused them to leak into her real life, as shown by Casarotto’s changing hairstyles.
“I had noticed that not too long ago, every time I changed [Sapphire’s] hairstyle, my hairstyle kind of changed,” said Casarotto as she explained that she would cut her hair or part it differently around the time that she would draw Sapphire in that same style.
After graduation, Casarotto said that she will still be doing art. She plans on using her experience painting animals to set up a small business where she will paint people’s pets.
“It makes me happy knowing that we all love our pets, and having a painting of them is one way to always have them around and celebrate them,” Casarotto wrote in her artist statement.
