Salt Lake Community College’s seventh annual alumni art and design show, INK, opened Monday at South City Campus.
Kerry Gonzáles, associate professor in the Visual Art & Design Department at Salt Lake Community College, serves as the caretaker of INK, an online source for graphic design students. Since 2015, Gonzáles has held the event and showcased the work of her alumni students in the halls of SLCC.
For the show, the finished products of many students and alumni include elements that present the design process: brainstorming, preliminary drawings, color studies.
“It is to show how our students, no matter what career they end up in, a good foundation in graphic design can help them,” Gonzáles said when describing the purpose of the exhibit.
Although these students received a degree in graphic design, not all pieces portray that form of art.
Layla Burchett, 2020 SLCC graduate and senior graphic designer for Associated Food Stores, is showcasing an isometric poster she made for her job. She explained that this piece is a welcome back tribute from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a piece of celebration after this long time that everybody had to be apart,” Burchett said.
Burchett discovered her love for graphic design through multiple design courses in Barcelona, Spain. After receiving a bachelor’s in hospitality at University Anhembi Morumbi in Brazil, and working in the field, she wanted to pursue her passion for creative work.
Above all else, for Gonzáles, putting on the INK show gives her an opportunity to honor her alumni and stay connected with her former students.
“I absolutely love my students,” Gonzáles said. “I feel honored to be lucky enough to consider them my friends after they’re graduated.”
The 2021 INK alumni art and design group show will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the South City Campus art gallery through Jan. 14, 2022.
Farewell Hali Ann Vanderburg
In this year’s INK alumni art and design group show, there’s a piece made by Hali Ann Vanderburg, an SLCC alumna and a former production supervisor in printing services, who passed away from cancer in July.
“I wanted to include her in this show because she was an excellent student and a friend of many,” Gonzáles said.
Rachel Tonkavich, a friend of Vanderburg, honored her with a piece that portrays the process of creating a recycling logo for SLCC.
The bottom of the piece reads: “In loving memory of one of my favorite people to walk this Earth: my go-to friend for life advice, graphic design critiques, ridiculous shenanigans, last-minute-coffee-runs-even-though-we’re-already-late, and overall wonderful human being. I love you Hali. I miss you. I barely know how to design without your expert feedback, but I hope I made you proud.” -Rachel.
While enrolled as a student in the graphic design and illustration program at SLCC, Vanderburg accepted a position as a specialist in the Taylorsville Redwood Markosian Library.
In July, President Deneece Huftalin sent out an email to the SLCC community in remembrance of Vanderburg: “She has left her mark on many SLCC campuses with remarkable design and graphic installation skills, including her visionary and bold graphic revamp of the South City campus, and the halls and windows of the fitness and strength rooms at the Taylorsville Redwood Lifetime Activities Center.”
