WWC Students Get Creative at Expanded Cinema and Installations Event
Ryleigh Johnson | March 24, 2026
Student artists pose for a photo at the Expanded Cinema and Installations Showcase on March 17, 2026 at Warren Wilson College (WWC) in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
News clips of emergencies at Mission Hospital. Field camera footage of deer and vintage pin-up ads. A constellation-specked starry night. These images constituted just some of the student projects on display Tuesday, March 17, in the Pew Learning Center and Ellison Library at Warren Wilson College (WWC) at the showcase for Charlotte Taylor’s Expanded Cinema and Installations class.
Sign advertising the Expanded Cinema and Installation Showcase at Warren Wilson College (WWC) on March 17, 2026 in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Over the course of the semester, class participants have developed their projects, which spanned from reflections on the political nature of hair to the connection between humans and their pets. August Bass, a first-year student in the class, created his piece “At All Times of My Life” as a meditation on what music has meant to him, both in his childhood and today.
“[The installation is] about music, and it's about my relationship with music, and how I've experienced the world at all times of my life through music,” Bass said. “My dad's a musician. I'm a musician. A lot of the people in my life are musicians...It's about childhood and growing up, and being trans and being queer, and all these different things that have happened for me through music; with music alongside them.”
While much of his film focuses on this connection with music, Bass also highlighted how he sees the piece, in a broader view, as a way to bring attention to the often-overlooked role music has played in his relationships. Bass’s father is a professional musician, and Bass has found that music forms a large part of their connection and his connection with friends.
“The second section is my dad playing the fiddle,” Bass said. “I play music with him all the time, that's how we've bonded the most over the years. The whole third section...is kind of about my friends and how our relationship has strengthened through music...Anytime I'm hanging out with my friends, we have music in the background, or we'll play music together. It’s fun to get to hone in on things that we don't necessarily acknowledge.”
Sophomore Gus Larsen took another direction for their piece, choosing to focus on a more overtly political message, semi-jokingly referring to his art as “propaganda”.
“When I say my art is propaganda, I'm trying to point to the idea that it’s all sort of propaganda, and put that on display,” Larsen said. “Propaganda is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It's about your relationship to it and the broader politics and economics at play.”
Larsen also emphasized how they wanted other students to actively engage with the ideas presented in their film, rather than just passively enjoying it. Part of their installation was a stack of handcrafted political posters, which Larsen hoped students would take and disperse.
“I'm deferring the organizing work of putting up posters to other people,” Larsen said. “How do I actually get people to put up the posters better and engage with the prints and stuff more?”
For seniors Finn Zwemer and Kiki Barnett spirituality was a big influence on their installation, “As You Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death”.
“[We] did our piece on the shadow self and parapsychology and the occult,” Barnett said. “We just wanted to kind of make something spooky and thought provoking.”
Zwemer and Barnett chose a dark corner of the library for their project, intentionally creating a cave-like atmosphere for their viewers.
“My concept of an installation was incredibly warped and not what a lot of other people were thinking, because I was thinking, like, ‘Room, we need to make a room,’” Zwemer said. “That's what an installation is. It's in a room somewhere. So that's what the fort situation was about.”
“We wanted to go off of psychology and the shadow self; spooky stuff, occult things. We just wanted to kind of curate a spooky, introspective [atmosphere],” Kiki Barnett said. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Barnett and Zwemer were also drawn to create a fort-like structure to enclose their video to further expand their themes.
“Fabric, to me, is hard to paint and draw and whatnot,” Zwemer said. “It's obviously a solid, but it's kind of liquidy, you can't really control it. You are looking through it. When you think of the concept of traversing through memories, what comes to mind for me is like, pulling curtains aside, and like swimming through fabric, almost.”
Students in the Expanded Cinema and Installation course share their projects in the Pew Learning Center & Ellison Library at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa N.C. on March 17. 2026. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
As the event drew to a close, the artists shared their statements, as students, some attending and some just studying in the library, mingled around the projects. The showcase served as not only an opportunity for the class to display their work, but also for unsuspecting students to encounter art in public, an aspect of the experience that excited students like Larsen.
“Where do people actually, authentically experience art?” Larsen said. “For the vast majority of people, it's anywhere but a gallery.”
A full list of student projects can be found below.
Sy Kizhnerman, “Mission”
“It's about my most recent experience at Mission Hospital here and all this stuff that's been happening as of the past many years,” Sy Kizhnerman said.
August Bass, “At All Times of My Life”
Riley Mallett, “Hear, See, Know”
Dallas Andrews, “Untitled”
Jesse Welty, “Stars”
Kiki Barnett and Finn Zwemer, “As You Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death”
Matthew Gilbert, “Progress of Pogo”
Asheton Glass, “Untitled”
Grey Biaso, “Untitled”
Gus Larsen, “Light a Spark of Revolution”
Lydia Blake, “Together, Apart”
“It’s about friendship and togetherness, and it’s pretty nostalgic because I’m about to graduate,” Lydia Blake said. “If you just take a second with it, I think you’ll feel what it’s all about.”
Maple Alvarez, “Hair Care”
Rowan Derewicz, “Come On Now”
“I mainly just wanted to make some cool shots and edit in cool ways,” Rowan Derewicz said. “Then when I was filming it, it started to become more personal. More about emotions and being stuck in certain emotions and releasing [them].”