Two professional artists spoke at the CADE Building on Wednesday about their careers, art styles and processes.

Gina Beavers, a popular multi-media artist, mainly creates work inspired by the internet and social media, using stock photos and people’s social media posts as reference. Amy Applegate, who is finishing her masters in studio arts at the University of Columbia, is currently exploring form-based paintings of household objects that she pairs to compliment each other.

“You just push and push and push until you make a space for it,” Beavers said. “I mean, you just force people to kind of accept it.”

Beavers was selected at the request of visual arts assistant professor Lindsay McCulloch, who helped organize the event alongside academic chair and CADE gallery director Teddy Johnson.

When “we started talking about who was going to come in this year for our national visiting artist, I said, ‘well, gosh, a dream would be to get Gina Beavers to come,’” McCulloch said. 

In addition to her presentation, Beavers also had a critique session with 10 of AACC’s own art students, which Johnson said “[was] a really special opportunity to get feedback from … an artist of her caliber.”  

Arts professor Matt Klos, AACC’s Art Association adviser, asked Applegate to lecture at the college because “what she exemplifies is sort of … a potential future that some of our current students … might be in here living one day. Yeah, it’s like, this awesome, like, ‘Oh, I could see myself doing that.’” 

Learning “about … [Applegate’s] very meditative process that she has was super interesting,” MiKayla French, a third-year transfer studies student, said. “And … seeing how she transforms what she sees into visual art was just a super interesting perspective.”