Student spotlight | Art & Design | At the end of each semester, you can walk in to the Stevens Art & Design Center’s gallery and find a collaboration of work from the senior class. Instead of collaborating with other students, Jake McCoy, a senior graphic design major from Beloit, Wisconsin, had the opportunity to combine his passions into an independent show featuring a collaboration of his love for music and art into a cohesive presentation. “I’m really involved in jazz music, and I love that culture,” McCoy said. ”I love art history as well, and I love graphic design. And so I wanted to find a way to put all of those three things together.” McCoy’s senior show, which was on display on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, contained works of art about jazz musicians and was presented in partnership with a concert in which he performed classic jazz pieces and original pieces he had composed for fine artists. In order to continue expressing a collaboration in music and art history in his love of and talent in graphic design, McCoy has considered possibilities of careers that could allow him to continue exploring the collaboration of his passions. It has caused me to think a lot about how I can incorporate art history into my design,” McCoy said, ”and to think about some possibilities of working in museums or working for music labels or just trying to find some way of doing what I love in the field of graphic design and still keep those connections with art history and with jazz.”
