2019 Spring Arts Festival Poster
Michelle Nagri Is the Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival Poster Artist for 2019
Michelle Nagri, a graduate of Santa Fe College and the University of Florida who has a background in both photography and psychology, has been chosen as the poster artist for the Golden (50th) Anniversary of the Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival. The festival is Saturday and Sunday, April 6-7, 2019, on Northeast First Street in downtown Gainesville.
“Michelle Nagri’s unique vision and innovative art ushers in a new and exciting creative era for the Santa Fe College Spring Art Festival,” said Cultural Programs Coordinator Raul Villarreal, who organizes the event. “We’re excited to feature this young artist’s work and we hope it will open doors for her in her artistic career.”
The poster image, titled “Into the Garden of Dreamers,” is based on the style Nagri used for her “365 Project,” in which she digitally manipulated one photographic image each day for a full year. The poster was unveiled at a reception for the artist Thursday, March 21, 2019, at Spring Arts House in Gainesville.
“I had my 30th birthday in 2017 and since that’s an ‘Oh, no’ year for a lot of people, I decided I should start a project,” Nagri explained. “Digital post-processing was a barrier for me, so I wondered what would happen if I edited an image every day for a year.” Her results will appear in a hardcover book, “The 365 Project,” to be published later this year.
Nagri’s interests in both art and psychology date back to her senior year in high school, when she took courses in both subjects. “I got interested in fashion design, but I thought psychology would be a more practical major,” Nagri said. Her interest in photography was sparked by a trip to Titusville with a friend to watch a launch of the space shuttle. “I was playing with his camera and when I saw the photos, I thought, ‘Wow, what a great way to communicate with people,’” she explained.
After graduating from the University of Florida, Nagri worked for a while as a psychology research associate. In 2010, she began to build her photography portfolio and in 2014, she started selling her work at art shows. In 2015, she took a job as assistant to a local professional photographer and is currently working on building her part-time photography business into a full-time career.
Nagri makes interesting connections between psychology and her art. “One of my goals with photography is to get people to stop and think about what they are looking at and wonder where the image was taken,” Nagri said. “I like abstract views of nature and architecture and I love to talk to people about how they view the images, because everyone has a unique way of seeing.” Art and psychology also converge in her idea of “walkabouts.” “I’d like to help photographers and painters who might feel stuck in their creative process by taking them outside, taking photos together, and inspiring them by exploring how they can incorporate new perspectives into their art,” she explained.
For sources of her own inspiration, Nagri lists a Renaissance Humanities class and an Ethics class that she took at Santa Fe College. She names the painter Salvador Dali and the photographers Man Ray and Alfred Stieglitz as artistic inspirations. “Ray and Stieglitz had abstract, surreal ways of approaching photography that were very different from journalistic documentation,” she said, “and Dali definitely saw things from a different perspective.”
“I was surprised to be chosen as the poster artist and that is a huge honor—to be part of this moment, the 50th anniversary of the Spring Arts Festival,” Nagri said. “I really like the festival’s direction of trying to engage younger people and encourage emerging artists. Looking forward and back is a good approach—let’s think about the future but let’s also celebrate the past, because there is a lot of history.”