Beauty and truth

Why leave campus, or even your dorm, to go to a gallery, when you could have an art exhibit in your own bedroom? Metro fare and energy aren’t required to revel in the beauty of Bianca Rico’s (BC ’19) 3D art installation vivifying her 600 double. Senior Staffer Sarah Dahl has the scoop.

Bianca has always been interested in art, she says, and plans to major in Art History with a visual arts concentration. She’s currently an art intern at the Hearst Design Group, working on the magazines Elle Décor, House Beautiful, and Veranda.

This summer, in addition to working full-time at a summer camp and taking online classes, Bianca envisioned her installation, which compiles a multitude of materials and themes.

She explains, “The big wall behind my bed and desk is covered with xeroxes of my paintings (which are sumi ink and coffee/mixed media on watercolor paper), and the two walls that border it provide color to the room. An assortment of objects that I picked up over the summer (Washi paper, an inflatable Christmas tree, a plastic mask, medical gloves, paper dolls, excerpts from the New Yorker) adorn these walls.”

Pretty dope, right? The piece is also lit up with Christmas tree lights for the special visitor.

Bianca painted a lot this summer, and says she “realized that if I continued to produce images, then I might have enough to transform my bedroom into an alternative kind of sleeping space.”

She was inspired by music, including Loyle Carner, Tom Misch, Alvvays, The Velvet Underground, Mac DeMarco, Ezra Furman, Rae Sremmurd (tbt Bacchanal), and Lou Reed. “I was trying to find a way to visually represent what I was hearing and feeling when I listened to certain songs,” she explains.

Bianca continues pursuing her passion. This summer, she hopes to create another installation.

“I have so many ideas,” she says. “I am fascinated both with the idea of visually and specially representing music, as well as with transforming a person’s relationship with a familiar space, such as their house. If I had unlimited funds, I would rent out houses and apartments and transform them into visual representations of music albums. Each room would represent a song, and would be intended to be experienced with the auditory aid of the song. As an audience member walks through the house, they move auditorily, spatially, and visually through the album. It might sound a little abstract now, but let me know if you know of any empty houses!”

We’ll keep our eyes peeled, and hope you will, too.