With the end of the spring semester drawing near, Hannah Wall is preparing for the opening of her Senior Art Exhibition.
All art majors at Asbury University are required to complete a Senior Thesis. As a three-credit course, students focus on deciding what medium, theme, and pieces they want to display.
“Everything as an art major works up to this,” Wall said.
For her show, Wall decided to combine her photography and Photoshop skills to take classic fairy tale imagery and twist it into an exhibition entitled “Fractured Fairytales.”
“I grew up loving fairytales. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped. But what really got this vision pounded into my head was when I took Printmaking last year,” Wall said. “When I was making all my prints, I was doing a little bit of illustration on the side and they all had this continuous theme of being fairytalesque. And then someone put the idea into my brain, they said ‘those are kind of like fractured fairytales.’ And so from there, I became hyper fixated and started working on my exhibit.”
Wall draws inspiration from several places, including films, books and other photographers.
“Fractured fairytale by definition is anything other than what we deem the original story. Our original story would be the Disney movies. So a fractured version of that would be something that’s not the Disney movie, something that brings something different,” Wall explained. “I’ve read a lot of fractured fairytale books by Melanie Dickerson where she takes those original Disney stories and places them in 16th century Germany, for example.”
Since creating her first piece in March 2023, Wall has been continuously working to complete her exhibition.
“I’ve been working on it nonstop for about a year. But if you’re passionate about something, you want to work on it,” Wall said.
Wall’s passion for art and creativity stems from her childhood love of nature.
“I’ve always loved nature and God’s creation. When I was little, I would just craft and make things that looked like flowers or butterflies. I’ve just always liked stuff like that, and I think a lot of that contributed to me liking art because God created such beautiful nature. Why shouldn’t I also create beautiful things with the talents He gave me?”
Wall described the feelings and thoughts she hopes viewers take away from her exhibit: “I want them to feel a bit of escapism—escaping from reality into nostalgia and stories and diving into a different world. I don’t want them to be settled into a piece, and thinking ‘oh it’s pretty.’ I want them to actually ask ‘oh what is this?’ or ‘what is this story? I want to open that book.’”
Wall’s exhibit will feature 11 mixed photography and Photoshop pieces as well as a few sculptures.
“I just want to invite people in and to feel like they’re in an old library. The show’s going to be great…I’m also going to have cheesecake,” Wall laughed.
The “Fractured Fairytale” exhibition opens in the Blue Gallery at Asbury on Feb. 12 and will remain open until March 8. A reception will be held on Feb. 15 from 4-6 p.m.
Feature photo by Hannah Wall.