Students and alumni are using the hands-on education they receive at Liberty to propel their artistic careers to new heights and share their creativity with the world.
A Work of Art
Liberty University Master of Fine Arts student Adara Jensen works on a portrait painting. (Photo courtesy of Alba Lux Photography)
Master of Fine Arts student Adara Jensen sent her artistic gift across the globe through a summer internship with the Richmond, Va.-based Hillside Missions. While working with the organization’s “Art as a Mission” ministry, Jensen helped to assemble an art collection for a gallery in the Middle East.
The gallery is designed to stimulate conversation about Scripture for those who have never heard the Gospel before. Jensen assisted by collecting pieces of art from her fellow art students. She contributed her own oil painting, “Always Remember,” a portrait of a Middle-Eastern refugee girl whom Jensen met while serving as a childcare volunteer during the internship. Jensen said the motivation behind her work is to tell the stories of people through portraiture — her favorite medium — and hopes that those stories have a lasting effect on all who encounter them.
Revolutionizing Fashion
Luis Quijano (Photo by Jessie Rogers)
Liberty University senior fashion design student Luis Quijano has spent the last year creating what he thinks could be the most innovative trend in fashion: growing your own clothes.
By merging fashion with microbiology and mechanical engineering, Quijano has produced a leather-like material that is much more sustainable than animal skin or modern-day textiles and cuts down on pollution and waste
from manufacturing.
The material is made through a fermentation process that uses water, sugar, green tea, and kombucha (a type of fermented tea created from a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast).
Quijano’s project has attracted the attention of leading industry professionals and the media. He has been featured in a number of publications, including The Washington Post.
Quijano started experimenting in his dorm room last fall, mixing ingredients together in large containers and setting them on the floor to ferment for a few weeks. Now he uses incubators in Liberty’s Center for Natural Sciences.
Through a Provost Research Initiative grant from Liberty’s Center for Research & Scholarship, he spent last summer at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, where he experimented with using different types of sugar for the fermentation process.
He hopes to develop the material commercially and will showcase an entire outfit at the Department of Family & Consumer Sciences’ annual spring fashion show in April.
Big-box Success
Liberty alumni are showcasing their art on the shelves of major retail stores after landing jobs that have enabled them to share their designs with millions. They credit Liberty’s graphic design program with helping them create strong portfolios and opening doors for them to become successful early in their careers.
Cassie Vitale (’14) works for ACCO Brands, a leading school and office supplies company. Planners and a calendar she designed are being sold at Target, Staples, and Office Depot.
Haley McVey (’16), who works with C.R. Gibson in Nashville, has created stationery, cards, and gifts that have been featured in stores such as Target, T.J. Maxx, Paper Source, and Pottery Barn.
As a freelancer, Carla Miles (’14) worked with C.R. Gibson and Magnolia Market to design a 2018 planner for the Hearth & Hand with Magnolia spring collection at Target.
