BY Brianna Holcomb
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Hofstra loves mailing us those study abroad brochures with the beautiful pictures of Rome, London, Berlin, and the dozens of other places we can visit. So many times I have looked at these pictures and thought that seeing these places in person would be just as breathtaking as they appeared in the brochure.
The walls of Calkins Hall’s FORM gallery appeared as though those same beautiful brochure pictures had been blown up and placed in frames. Of course those pictures in the brochures are actual photographs. However, that is where the difference lies.
The artist, senior fine arts major Rebecca Kollmer, created these without a camera or even a brush. Each image was drawn digitally and displayed in her exhibit entitled “Peregrinate.”
The word “peregrinate” means to travel or wander around from place to place. Looking at these images the viewer is definitely able to travel with Kollmer to the places she decided to depict in her images.
“From far away my pieces look like pictures, but if you go up close to them it’s like a completely different look at it,” said Kollmer. Each image looks just like a normal photograph, but upon closer inspection you can see the detail in the illustrations.
In one image of the Isola Di Burano, a set of colorful houses in Venice, each house seems to jump out of the frame. The waterfront houses depict a rainbow of colors that capture the eye in a far more interesting way than a photograph. Every picture makes you want to walk closer to it and inspect every detail.
Kollmer used images that she took while she was abroad and used them as the bases for her art. From there she drew all the colors, shapes and shadows in order to build up the pictures piece by piece. What is even more amazing is that this process takes between 25-40 hours to complete for each picture. She has 5 pieces in the gallery.
Although these images may take a long time to create, Kollmer is no stranger to the world of graphic design. She taught herself to use the program at age 15 and designed her entire high school yearbook. She just recently bought herself a tablet in September and admits it is very addicting. The technology led her to add seven pieces to the two pieces she had previously created the year before.
The amount of detail and time that was placed into each of these pieces is very apparent within her work. I admire her attention to detail, which enables the pieces to come to life.
Not only her peers but also her professors note Kollmer’s hard work as well. A notebook left inside the gallery to give feedback on the work express nothing but high praise for this artist.