Jaime Salmonson’s Senior Studio Explores Time, Memory, and Material

The Bachelor of Arts (BA) Senior Studio is offered each year to Stamps BA students in their final year of study. In the class, students and instructors combine individual studio work with a collaborative project: the production of a fully self-directed show from start to finish, emphasizing the skills and practices associated with producing professional exhibitions. This year, students under the direction of Professor Nick Tobier and GSI Michaela Nichelle also invested time in getting to know one another, conducting a series of peer-to-peer interviews to learn more about the process, inspirations, and practice of their classmates. Over the next few months, we’re reprinting some of these interviews, which were combined into a collection featuring studio portraits by Urvi Joshi (BA ​’25) and a cover by Riley Huhta (BA ​’26).

Jaime Salmonson

Interviewed by Julia Bonanno

Bonanno: Firstly, I know you are finishing a dual degree this year. I would love to hear how important that is to you when you are making art. Do your two areas of study interact with each other? Do you find yourself forgetting everything else when you’re making art? And do you think your project or process would have been different if you were only an art student?

Salmonson: Finishing a dual degree this year has shaped this project more than I realized at the beginning. When I’m creating in the studio, it becomes one of the only times where the distractions and noise of everything else I do – UX research, design ethics, tech, data – quiets down a bit. I dont just ​‘completely forget everything, but the parts of my brain that are constantly solving soften a little, and I’m able to sit with something more ambiguous. And though this is true, my studies definitely interact with the art. I’m very often thinking about systems, perspectives, how people interpret things, and the ethics of what we create. That’s why this project transformed into a work about time, memory, and the tension between color and graphite. If I were only earning my degree in art, I think the project would’ve been more romantic, more intuitive, and maybe less structured. The dual-degree part of me made this project more analytical in a way: I was thinking about how people move through the three pieces. But the studio let me let go enough to make work that actually feels like the dramatic side of creation.

You’ve worked with a lot of different materials — wood, illustration, and more. What role do materials play in your process? And in this project specifically, where did you feel the work succeeded the most from a materials standpoint?

Materials played a huge emotional role in this project. I appreciate the contrast between delicate materials and heavy backstories; colored pencil is quiet while graphite is almost ghostly. Using them together helped me express that balance between saturation and stillness – the times in life where things feel overwhelmingly vibrant and the moments where everything feels silent. The project succeeded the most in the transitions in the graphite sections, as well as the areas where colored pencil becomes layered, as those feel like the strongest gestures. I find that these aspects show memory versus immediacy. In terms of the sculpture, the wood piece acted as a symbolic clock of broken time, a reminder of how moments fracture in memory. I first worked with parametric wood design in my sophomore studio and was in awe of the process, so I knew I wanted to do it again while I still had access to CNC machines and CAD software in college. And the scale mattered too, of course – working large let the materials immersive, a purposeful part of the composition.

Speaking of your process, I would love to know how this project felt different from, or similar to, past processes. Did you have any moments that taught you something new about yourself as an artist?

This process was different from my past work because I actually gave myself permission to sit with an idea for a long time. I researched, iterated, got feedback, re-iterated, sketched, and got feedback again. The drawings unfolded slowly, but also required one of my favorite characteristics: patience. I also worked with references that were personal people in my life, which I usually avoid. That made the process more vulnerable but also more honest. Moreover, I learned that I’m more expressive and sentimental in my art than I am in my design practice, and that those two sides don’t need to be separate.

Finally, what did this studio change or reinforce in your mentality toward your art career moving forward? What was it like to have your own time and space to create something that felt aligned with you? What emotions are you left with now, and how do you see yourself moving forward? 

This studio reminded me that I am an artist who is free to explore with any and all mediums. Having the time and space to create without a rubric brought me back to why I love making things. It was grounding to have weeks where the only goal was to show up, draw, and create a composition of works that felt meaningful to myself and its viewers. Emotionally, I’m walking away with a mix of pride and clarity (and maybe slight exhaustion). These three drawings feel like a snapshot of who I am at the end of college: someone who is always in between worlds, always balancing saturation and graphite, always trying to hold onto fleeting moments. Moving forward, I want to keep making room for slowness. I want my career – whether in design, tech, or art – to have room for work that feels genuine

Path Forward, the 2025 Stamps BA Senior Studio Exhibition, was on view at Stamps Gallery from December 3 – 13, 2025. The exhibition worked to weave meditations on nature, the inner and outer workings of our human bodies from the functional to the phenomenal, the paces of daily lives whether reading or rushing, in friendship or in family and exploring memories of real and imagined pasts as they intersect with the here and now. Featuring work in experimental video, fashion, painting, illustration and sculpture, Path Forward postulates stepping stones for near and possible futures.