Maiah Deogracias, Zion Gifford,

Emily Graves, and Ashley Vernon

are proud to present…

In Plain Sight: A Senior Art Walk

About the event

In Plain Sight features four senior art majors: Maiah Deogracias, Emily Graves, Zion Gifford, and Ashley Vernon. The exhibition will be available to the public April 13 - May 11, 2024, and spans five campus locations including Loke Hall, Mueller Hall, the Christopher Center Library, Harre Union, and the Brauer Museum of Art.

This senior art walk was created to highlight the importance of art, particularly student art, on Valparaiso University’s campus. Despite unhindered access, many public artworks remain “hidden in plain sight”. Thus, the narrative of the walk serves to reveal and celebrate the integral role that artwork plays in shaping the visitor's experience.  As their steps are guided by a recorded narrative, visitors will discover the implicit messages, both personal and universal, underlying individual pieces. “These buildings have become such a large part of our time at Valpo,” says senior Ashley Vernon, “it seems only right that we show this by taking a closer look at the artwork they hold.”  The grand finale, located in the Brauer Museum of Art, invites visitors to view the artists’ final undergraduate creations. Each displayed piece represents the culmination of the student artists' undergraduate journey.  

On April 20th, visitors will have the opportunity to participate in a tour led by the artists. This tour will start at Loke Hall at 2 pm and be followed by a reception and refreshments in the lobby of Valparaiso University’s Center for the Arts (VUCA). 


Meet the Artists

  • Maiah Deogracias

    Maiah Deogracias is a graduating senior triple majoring in Digital Media Arts, Humanities, and Communication. While having experience with a variety of artistic mediums, she primarily focuses on graphic design and photography. She seeks to create work centering around themes of human interaction, senses of identity, and how people engage with the spaces they occupy. Inspired by installation artists like Yayoi Kusama who is famous for her infinity rooms, and artists creating with similar mediums like 3D printing, such as Guillaume Lachapelle, Deogracias sought to merge the two concepts of infinity and liminal spaces in this work. Upon graduation, she will move to Indianapolis to work as an Orr Fellow as part of the Orr Fellowship program, a two-year fellowship centered on entrepreneurship and leadership.

  • Zion Gifford

    Zion Gifford is a senior Studio Arts major with minors in Psychology and English. His work emphasizes cultural maintenance, queer experiences, and European folklore. He has a great appreciation for the symbolic nature of medieval art, as well as such arts’ potential for queer readings. He has previously explored these topics in artworks such as Natural Law and literary analyses such as Hotwives and Puppyboys: Queer Kink in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight & Bisclavret. His senior thesis, WOLF-SICK, further explores these queer themes and potential histories. More of his work can be viewed on Instagram @zeihhan.

  • Emily Graves

    Emily Graves is a history and art double major. She is influenced by her work in history museums and archives. Her art has previously been exhibited in Das Gallery and The Lighter Literary Magazine, and she was a creative fellow at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute.

  • Ashley Vernon

    Ashley Vernon is a senior majoring in Art. She has spent her time at Valpo working to gain experience in museums, archives, and curatorship. As an artist, her work centers around the human experience, specifically exploring the subjectivity of mental health. As the curator of this year’s senior art walk, she wanted to challenge herself to see how she has grown within the last four years. Her artwork exemplifies this as she explores Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as it appears in her own life. Upon graduation, Ashley plans to attend graduate school to earn a master’s degree in Art History.