Jason Hanna is a senior art major student with an emphasis in general studio. He is holding his senior exhibition in the John R. Adams Art Gallery during the last two weeks of August 2019. The exhibition is loosely about the end of the world. He described his art as “the result of frustration.”

“I think most of it came out of my frustrations from seeing so much bad stuff going on, everywhere. It seems like collectively humanity is just acting foolish. They (humans) are ruining the earth. They’re ruining politics. The people that rule the world are corrupt. It’s kind of just like me, over the past 10 or 20 years, just watching the world fall apart. It gets pretty depressing at times,” Hanna said. “Art allows me to vent about it or to get that out. Because if you leave all that trapped inside, it becomes like a heavy load. You need to let it go sometimes. So that’s why there’s a lot of pictures of me screaming.”

Hanna has been inspired by a lot of artists such as Rauschenberg. One of his paintings, Self Portrait as David and Goliath, is inspired by Caravaggio. “It’s based off his (Caravaggio) David with the Head of Goliath. But with mine, I’m holding my own head. So I’m David and Goliath. It’s kind of like a weird thing to where you can choose whether you want to be a good guy or bad guy. Everyone has that choice,” said Hanna.

There are numbers of collage works in the exhibition. Every collage work is well-designed. “It (collage) is not randomly put up there. I spent hours and hours arranging all that just like I wanted it. I don’t know how many people will stand there and look at it long enough. But it actually tells a story. There’s all kinds of hidden stuff in there,” said Hanna.

Danielle Head, the assistant professor of the art department admired the complexity of the exhibition.

“Looking at it (exhibition) I thought what was really unique is all the different media that he’s using. It seems like he uses collages and combining either photographs or combining painting in a mixed media,” Head said.

After graduating from Washburn, Hanna will continue pursuing art. He wants to make a name for himself. “I want to make a difference in the world. I want to try to make it a better place. And part of what this is doing so far is kind of the beginning stages of that, where you have to point out what’s wrong before you try to fix it. So right now, I’m pointing out what’s wrong,” Hanna said.

Hanna encourages students to be open-minded and pay attention to everything in the world. To listen to Hanna talk about his art, join his Art Talk on Wednesday, Aug. 28 at noon in the John R. Adams Art Gallery.

Edited by Adam White, Jessica Galvin, Shelby Hanson