At Emory, highly regarded for its academic research and innovations, the unique influence and provocative power of the arts and the creative process involved can often be underrated.

Fortunately, last Tuesday saw the Stipe Society pay its respects to art in many of its forms with its newest creation, The Stipe Gallery, at the Ginden Arts Commons in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.

The gallery, featuring works by student artists College junior Ankit Bhargava, College senior Desi Gonzalez, College junior Jareen Imam, College sophomore Ayanna Ingraham, Emory alum Kombo M. Chapfika and College junior Krithika Srinivasan, presented drawings from an array of mediums, including acrylic, oil, colored pencil and even permanent markers.

As members of the Stipe Society, the student artists aimed to show “the creative process” through their artistic pieces.

Gonzalez, in her work titled “We’ve Had an Accident,” based the drawing off of a short story by Flannery O’Connor that she read in one of her classes. The story, titled “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” describes a series of events from the perspective of a grandmother as she travels with her family to Florida.

In representing the story, Gonzalez depicts a series of figures in chaotic form, including the cat, the grandmother’s hat, and the car, all flying in different directions, in order to represent the car accident. Taking a short story which she truly enjoyed, Gonzalez turned it into an artistic endeavor.

Another student artist, Srinivasan, created lively pieces in colored pencil. The drawings, which centered on human anatomy, represented the importance of the creative process with regards to art. One of her pieces, titled “Queen of Hearts,” depicts a queen-of-hearts card in a very unusual manner.

Srinivasan presents the anatomy of the queen on the card’s surface, her exposed chest revealing a heart and the vessels surrounding it. In another piece, titled “Joker as the Hatter,” Srinivasan shows the joker card in a disturbing light.

Instead of the typical joker, who is dressed in colorful and clown like attire, Srinivasan draws a large gray and white skull, the colors blended perfectly, on top of which lies a bright green hat similar to the hat of the Mad Hatter in “Alice and Wonderland.”

Bhargava, who created drawings using permanent markers and black paint marker, described how these mediums are “clean, bold, and just seem to work for the pieces I’ve made.” His works, titled “A New Perspective” and “A Trip to the Mountains,” were based mostly off of instinct.

Bhargava said, referring to his pieces, “They’re very impulsive pieces, made more on instinct and not much on thought.” The pieces, presenting a collage of chaotic images, including teeth, a clock, a paintbrush, faces, explosions and the image of ink leaking can be interpreted in many different ways.

According to Bhargava, “The idea is there’s not necessarily a right way to look at it. I wanted to make a picture where you could flip the art around and see something new, something that wasn’t as obvious from one viewpoint.”

Other works in the gallery included a series of self portraits by Ingraham, in which she presented images of one face expressing different emotions, as well as a large triptych, a work of art divided into three sections, by Chapfika, representing Plato’s allegory of the cave.

The piece was inspired by a philosophy course Chapfika took while at Emory and symbolizes human ignorance as a form of captivity.

Overall, the gallery presented a series of drawings by a group of talented students, each having their own unique style and expression.

But creativity is just a prerequisite for the Stipe Society which, together with its new gallery, seeks to have the viewer take the time to appreciate the work and to understand the process by which it was created.

In addition to being the host of this student art gallery, the Stipe Society is an organization on campus that dedicates itself to honoring students’ abilities and promoting arts throughout the Emory community.

The Stipe Society is composed of student artists from varying studies, including dance, theater, film, creative writing and visual arts.

The society also provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to exhibit their creativity through artistic grants, soirees and galleries.

“It brings together very creative people from all sorts of disciplines,” Bhargava said. “It’s a great thing to be able to find people who can understand and even collaborate in your artistic endeavors.”

So for those who lack the desire to sit through a two-hour play or hour-long musical performance to be reminded about the importance of art, the Stipe Gallery is a place where Emory’s own student artists can inspire their peers and promote the role of art at Emory.

— Contact Danielle Gensburg.