An Artist’s Medium: Art Around Campus
Solie Lawson | Feb. 24, 2026
Art takes many forms, with different means of expression utilized by each creator. On the Warren Wilson College (WWC) campus, students are surrounded by different pathways to make art.
Lilikoi Loomer is a freshman on the WIDE Crew. Her preferred art mediums are colored pencils and ceramics. For her, the slow process of blending colors with colored pencils makes the process of creation more thoughtful. With clay, she likes how messy it is and how it challenges her within the process.
“I like both [clay and colored pencil] because they're very accessible for movement,” Loomer said. “They're very hands-on. I like the amount of different things that you can create when you're doing either of them.”
With ceramics, Loomer loves how the process forces her to be slow and intentional. She feels that her feelings are intertwined with the clay as she molds it, and that makes her all the more connected with this medium.
“I really like how challenging ceramics can be, because you could create this entire thing and feel so proud of it and put your tears into this shit, and then it just explodes in the kiln,” Loomer said.
The open studios on campus are something Loomer wants to explore in the future, as she highlighted the importance of artistic spaces.
“I feel like it's [important] with all mediums to have a space [of expression], and even if there isn’t a studio or a forgery,” Loomer said. “I feel like the environment [here at WWC] is just naturally creative. The people here motivate me a lot to create art.”
Kathryn Cellerini Moore, the assistant professor of art, painting and drawing, finds the most inspiration from creating artistic installations. She was introduced to this medium when she was in undergrad, unaware that art was something she could pursue career-wise until college.
“I took an art history class [in college], and they were talking about artists who were not wanting to make objects, they wanted to make experiences for people, and that they were going against the gallery system by making non-commodifiable things...,” Moore said. “That class transformed my idea of what art could be, [that art is] not just about an object, but about what you can offer to somebody to experience and then [they] take from that what they will. That's the magic of installation work.”
Moore explores other mediums as well and loves the physical movement involved in creating any piece of artwork, as it brings her fulfillment.
“Making installation work, making drawings, making large scale paintings, I'm physically moving my body in and around in ways that I wouldn't otherwise throughout my day, not just walking from place to place or sitting,” Moore said. “I’m reaching, I'm crouching, I'm climbing, I'm doing whatever I need to do to collaborate with the architecture that I'm that I'm dealing with, and so it is cathartic in that it helps me stretch and move my body in ways that help get some emotion and energy out. It also reminds me to play and experiment and figure out what's possible.”
Last year, Moore was asked to provide art for an exhibit in Iceland, and collaborated with the Holden Crew to create patterns out of chain-mail. Students were assigned to make a Hurricane Helene recovery-themed work out of clover seeds to regenerate the soil, with pieces spanning over two-hundred feet wide.
Charlotte Taylor is the chair of media arts at WWC, as well as a teacher of media arts. When they were younger, it was an ambition of theirs to make music videos, and in that they found a love of experimental film. Now, Taylor works with photography and video production. They note how expensive film making is, but they still deeply enjoy it despite this challenge.
“There's something liberating about making work outside of the industry and outside of expectations, and also something liberating about making work that fully embraces the weird accidents that can happen in the process,” Taylor said. “Mistakes are learning experiences, so letting go of the white supremacist voice of perfectionism [and] the capitalist voice of perfectionism [has] allowed me to connect with people.”
Taylor found a way to connect their passion for photography with nature, an interest that came from a backpacking trip to the Rocky Mountains a couple of years ago. They work with prints of leaves, which they believe helps keep them in tune with nature. This process is harder in the winter as leaves are harder to come by, but this is not the only nature-oriented medium that interests them. They also make cyanotypes of the clouds in their free time.
Taylor finds that teaching art is their favorite way to build community, and inspire those around them. In the summer, they run Fierce Flix, a queer and trans youth focused film camp on campus that they enjoy administrating.
Art production is something that connects many people on campus, whether through teaching or being surrounded by other artists. Loomer, Moore and Taylor all found different ways of producing art. They discussed the importance of movement within creation, and their journey to find their own processes of creating art. They all testify that the art community on campus is one of inspiration and ambition.
“Everybody is making such cool work, and it's so different, like we're all making stuff that's not overlapping with each other, but [is] also super interesting,” Taylor said.