Seniors in the Southeast Missouri State University's Department of Art will feature their work in the River Campus Art Gallery as a final step before graduation.

The BFA Graduating Seniors Exhibition, which is held every fall and spring, is used to present senior students' work as they are heading out of college and into the work field. Students are completing this artwork as part of their last class in their major courses.

Students start working on these projects at the beginning of the semester and show an outline of their design to a faculty committee. After the design is accepted, the work for the project starts, and the students have to check in regularly with their committee to monitor their work.

The exhibit will feature all different types of arts including graphic design and illustration, digital art, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking and painting.

The student exhibit will be featured for four weeks with different styles of art featured each week.

Kristin Powers-Nowlins, gallery coordinator of the River Campus Art Gallery, said that it is important to have senior student work featured as they are leaving to start their careers.

"Many of them go on to use this work in their portfolio for graduate school or for showing in galleries outside of the university," Powers-Nowlin said. "So it's the first time they would get this amount of space to show their own work at the university."

Senior Caitlin Brinker is having her work exhibited in the gallery and said she always wanted to be a graphic design artist.

"I've always been involved in art or really interested in art since elementary school, and I came to Southeast because some of my friends were here, and I ended up falling in love with the program," Brinker said.

Brinker will show a graphic design piece that will focus on "band identity" and will feature an all-girl group named "Teal Top Knots." With this idea in mind, she created a logo for the album cover, poster and T-shirts.

Grammy-nominated rock band Paramore influenced this design to make a mock rock band.

Brink said that she feels having students' artwork shown in these exhibitions is important to their success as professionals.

"It's a really good way of getting your artwork shown and getting it out there," Brinker said. "Another way students can feature their art is there is a student show every spring, but I'm one of the ones who never got chosen, so I believe it's a good opportunity to actually be able to, for sure, get to show your artwork."

Brink also said that the process has been a very stressful one, but, in the end, it's helped her as an artist and hopes this shows another side of herself.

"It's been stressful with heavy time deadlines, but other then that, its been really fun, and I've been able to be myself and really explore my own design and creativity and getting a lot of influence from other artists," Brinker said. "This is different than anything I've ever made in my class projects, so I hope this just shows another side of me that I can put out in the world."

The BFA Graduating Seniors Exhibition can be seen in the River Campus Art Gallery starting Nov. 17 and will end Dec. 19. The exhibition will be open Monday through Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. with a reception every Friday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to students and the general public.

For more information about the student exhibition contact Powers-Nowlins at (573) 651-7825 or gallerycoordinator@semo.edu.