The Black Family Visual Arts Center’s current lobby exhibition “Day In, Day Out” transforms everyday experiences into visual narratives. Annie Qiu ’24 and Tristan Macdonald ’24 have developed the exhibition — exploring routine moments through painting and printmaking.
Qiu and Macdonald are both studio art interns — a program for recent Dartmouth graduates.
The idea for the exhibition emerged from an unexpected artistic conversation, the two said.
“We hadn’t really talked about it before,” Macdonald said. “Then we saw that we had an interesting dynamic between the exterior buildings I was looking at and the interiors Annie was exploring.”
Both artists realized they had a shared thematic interest in routine and everyday observations. Macdonald’s work centers on architectural exteriors, particularly those that he sees during his daily walk. His screen-printed and hand-bound books, which sit on a table in the center of the exhibit, capture building silhouettes against the sky.
“It was originally based on my walk back and forth from my car every day,” he said. “I was thinking about routine moments that break the routine — the moments where I really noticed the buildings and the silhouettes they made against the sky.”
Macdonald added that they wanted the layout to create “conversations” among the pieces. He wanted to disperse the paintings to inspire people to walk around and engage with them. The artists’ pieces are also linked through recurring visual elements — shared hues of blues and oranges — that connect Tristan’s exterior scenes and Annie’s interior landscapes.
Qiu’s oil paintings offer a complementary perspective, diving into interior spaces with a high level of detail. Her work ranges from large-scale pieces created from memory to smaller, more intimate works based on specific references.
“The big ones tend to be painted more from memory,” Qiu said. “I would sketch up the composition — not really based on one photo — and then collage different elements.”
Some paintings feature familiar details that connect to her broader artistic exploration. Sliced apples, for example, are featured in a large kitchen scene painting as well a slightly smaller painting of a bedroom.
Qiu and Macdonald hoped to inspire viewers to reflect more deeply on their daily habits.
“The exhibit is about taking moments from everyday life — routine moments that have to go in your memory — and what it means to focus on those very mundane moments,” Qiu said. “They might be moments for reflection, or they might represent more.”
The installation process was deliberate and collaborative, they said.
“We literally moved the walls, installed the paintings, and figured out how to organize each piece,” Qiu said. “We wanted to create a journey that would make sense to viewers.”
