BY BRYAN SABELLA
Staff Writer
Photos by Miguel juarez staff Visitors examine the graphic design work on display at the MAD exhibit at Middlesex County College in Edison during the opening reception April 8.
EDISON — Today’s students may be tomorrow’s media arts professionals. And through the end of April the cream of Middlesex County College’s crop of photographers and graphic designers will have their work on display in the Presidential Art Gallery at the campus’ Chambers Hall.
A reception was held April 8 to unveil the best work of the chosen students in the 11th annual Media Arts Department (MAD) Senior Student Invitational Exhibition.
Curator Maria Marshall, a professor of graphic design at the college, described the process of selection, which is handled by the instructors in the MAD programs.
First off, eligibility is contingent upon being a senior and enrolled in a portfolio class, which is the last course in the program before a student graduates.
Media Arts Department students Jan Clark, left, and Reeta Raab stand next to displays of their work in the MAD exhibit at Middlesex County College in Edison. The exhibit is an invitational with senior-level students chosen by professors to be allowed to exhibit their best work.
"When we select the students, it’s by consensus," she said. "We really look for students who’ve done consistent work throughout all of our classes."
Photography professor Alane Poirier estimates there are between 30 to 40 students in the portfolio programs, of which eight are selected for the invitational.
Because the advertising graphic design program is so large, five students are chosen from it and the remaining three are selected from the professional commercial photography program.
Once the students are notified that they’ve been chosen, they submit eight to 10 examples of their favorite work from which the curator selects the final pieces, usually five or six.
This year’s participants are graphic designers Shon Chen, Loubert Anne DeGuzman, Ryan Guijo, Fang Jiang and Joanne Li, and photographers Jan Clark, Chris Lyczen and Reeta Raab.
"I think it’s an honor, because it’s not like everyone’s selected," Raab said.
Some of the students expressed a desire to work in the media in the not too distant future.
Anybody who’s ever visited the college’s MAD Lab knows it to be a lively place with creative energy and frenetic activity as students scurry to meet assignment deadlines. The courses are generally taught by professors who stress the demands of the real world workplace, so perhaps they’re off to a good start.
Raab already works jobs in graphic design and video editing, and said she aims to make a career out of creativity. "Ideally, I’d like to take pictures that people would buy for $10,000 each and I wouldn’t have to deal with deadlines," she laughed.
Lyczen also aims for a media career, though not necessarily as a photographer.
"I’d like to work for a magazine, maybe," he said, adding that he’d like to do "more on the digital end — photo retouching and stuff, since I’m really into computers."
Jan Clark submitted action shots of the New Jersey Devils that he took at their practice facility in West Orange, and hopes to make a living in sports photography. "That’s definitely my main thing," he said. "Because everything is fast-paced."
Clark, like some of the others, expressed surprise that he was chosen for the exhibit. "I thought it was pretty cool, I was pretty honored. It’s like, ‘Wow, an exhibit!’"