Art supplies get nailed to wall in student exhibit

DEFIANCE — Supplin Nailette’s student exhibit pushes incredibly intense, complex metaphorical and physical boundaries with simple art supplies attached to simple white walls in simple ways. (Hope College Art Department)

They say that ‘art is what you make of it’, and in the last week,  a student here at Hope has interpreted that to mean making  holes in the wall. 

Supplin Naillette is an art major here at Hope and has recently opened her personal exhibit  to the public.  Visitors can expect to see numerous brushes, pencils, small  canvases, tubes of paint, erasers and even photo film nailed to the wall.

Some of the supplies appear to have been previously used,  while others still have their original price tags on them. 

There is no backdrop of any kind aside from the white paint  on the wall itself which Naillette explains was an important  component of the theme in her exhibition. 

“I wanted to capture the constant battle between light and  dark, old and new, and despair and joy. My exhibit represents  strength through struggle, bravery through fear, and the will to  turn your eyes to the dawn of a new day while the black of night fades behind you.” 

Naillette found her inner artist at a young age, where she  spent recess time smearing cafeteria pudding on her homework. 

“I was too much of a revolutionary for my grade-school  teachers, but my parents reluctantly supported me in my selfdiscovery.” 

Though this is Naillette’s first official exhibit, she has made a number of other pieces in her  art classes that have sparked intrigue from classmates and professors alike. 

“One of my favorite pieces is entitled ‘Sight’, and features dozens of small fish bowls filled with plastic spiders and gummy worms. I feel it approaches the  issues of segregation and political corruption in a way that too  few artists are willing to even touch.”

There is more to Naillette than merely her artwork. In her  free time, she enjoys leisurely activities such as watching the rain  fall, attending tea tastings and photographing people’s toes.

Nailette has a lot of artistic growth ahead of her, and unlike the many art supplies nailed to the walls of her exhibit, Supplin will continue to keep moving forward.