By Olivia Janis
An avocado and a strawberry walk into a grocery store. Sounds like the setup for an elementary school joke? It’s actually the subject of one of Cleo Wynn’s favorite art pieces from her recent exhibition in the gallery outside of the chapel.
The avocado and the strawberry are doing the shopping. “I thought it was funny,” she said. “A play on words.”
She hosted her show on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. She displayed 24 artworks, provided scrumptious food, and entertained a whole crowd of people excited to celebrate her.
Cleo’s introduction to the art world was during her freshman year when she took Foundations of Art. She has always liked to draw, and Lovett art classes have given her the space to grow and develop her artistic lens.
But how did the idea for an art exhibition come about?
Cleo knew she wanted to do a senior project related to her art. She thought smarter, not harder. “I decided to take all the [pieces] I already had done and put them all together. And I’ve always liked the idea of having the opening party and inviting all my friends and family,” she said. “So I was like, Oh, I’ll just do that for my senior project. And I wanted to have food and stuff.”
She posted her senior project statement on an easel as well as a link to her blog.
I was so impressed walking into the gallery, and even more impressed as she explained the meanings and hard work that went into her art. Starting at the art pieces close to the theater were her drawings, screen painting, charcoal, and photography from her freshman and sophomore years.
“I didn’t want to take drawing, but Ms. Story forced me to take it,” she said as we stopped to look at her portrait, which ended up being a piece she was very proud of (so shoutout to Ms. Story). Her photography pieces caught my eye, which were scenes from New York City. The photos captured fireworks from the Fourth of July and the classic New York subway.
As we continued through the gallery, we went to the next section. “My first art assignment sophomore year was to do a series of three paintings,” she said. She decided to do a bunch of humans with animal heads in New York. “And at the time, I was obsessed with Dunkin’ Donuts, so I put a poster, obviously, of Dunkin’ Donuts,” she said laughing. “And then the first painting was for my mom. She really likes cats and pandas. And she’s from New York.”
Cleo will be attending Syracuse University next year, and we laughed at how she practically manifested it with so many of her works taking place in New York. Art truly can show our purest ambitions, I thought to myself.
We moved to the last section of her gallery, probably my personal favorite. These were all works she had to complete for the AP art portfolio her junior year, which she admitted to not doing too well on (I was shocked, and those AP graders can catch these hands).
She created 12 paintings, all of which were straight from her imagination. She considers a lot of her pieces abstract art. She created some of her works based on songs like Pyramids and Self Control by Frank Ocean, See You Again by Tyler the Creator feat. Kali Uchis, and Congratulations by Mac Miller. We discussed how her art process evoked the idea of synesthesia because of the way she imagined her art after hearing the music. In her piece inspired by “See You Again” she painted a very detailed bumblebee, which we were able to match to the lyric “Sugar-honey-iced tea, bumblebee on the scene.”
She said the paintings took her a very long time–specifically from about halfway through the first semester until May. “I start one and then I get bored with it, and then I go on to the next one,” she said. “So, a lot of them overlapped. The longest one I took to make was the pyramids. I started that one first and didn’t finish it until May. I procrastinate a lot.”
Cleo’s work is all very creative, and she considers her work similar to surrealism. Her favorite artist is Ashley Longshore, and she likes the works of Basquiat. While she’s not majoring in anything art-related she wants to continue doing art in clubs or on her own time.
For now, if you see any fruit walking around in Publix, let Cleo know. It will be her dream come true.
Bravo, Cleo!