Graduating Art Students at GW Prepare to Show the Community What’s NEXT

April 13, 2026

Authored by:

Greg Varner

The annual NEXT Festival is here, celebrating the work of graduating George Washington University students across the disciplines taught in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, housed in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. This year, 150 degree candidates show off their talents for studio arts, photography, dance, music and other fields.

For Lauren Onkey, the Corcoran School's director, the NEXT festival and exhibition is the most fun time of the year, lasting for several weeks until Commencement weekend. But sometimes, she said, she is perplexed by how many people miss it.

"Every year, there are some GW folks I talk with, students and faculty, who say, 'Gosh, I didn't know about NEXT,' so I want to shout from the rooftops," Onkey said.

"I hope everybody at GW realizes that they have an opportunity to see shows and talks and come into the Flagg Building to experience wonderful art and design," she said. "The work that will be available for people to experience is really powerful-it represents our students' creativity, their research, their interest in engaging with complex problems and their interest in collaboration. People at GW have the opportunity to see things you wouldn't see anywhere else."

The festival kicks off Thursday, April 16, with a spring dance concert performed three successive nights through Saturday, April 18, and opens in the Flagg Building on Thursday, April 23, with the Extravaganza, a big party to which everybody's invited. (Advance registration is requested.) There will be exhibitions of student work, performances and various pop-up experiences. Music students will be giving capstone presentations in the newly renovated Hammer Auditorium, now with superior acoustics.

In the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, an exhibit titled American Made is on view, organized by students in the Curatorial Research and Planning class in the Museum Studies program. Artworks on view come from the GW Collection, with a few on loan from other collections including the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, this was an appropriate time to think about an exhibit about the United States of America.

Students selected works spanning more than 200 years and representing 11 states, as well as Washington, D.C., with interactive features developed by students in the Collaborative Design Project class in the Interaction Design program.

The wider NEXT exhibition provides a look at what Corcoran students have on their minds. Some perennial themes, such as social and political critiques and questions of personal identity, will be familiar to visitors from past years. Sustainability and environmental awareness are also top of mind for many students.

"Students are really interested in how they can center care as a practice in their lives," Onkey said, "and they're very sensitive to the needs of artists and creatives and audiences around experiencing work and making work. And then, of course, students are also always interested in engaging with the community. Our New Media Photojournalism students are installing on the main atrium floor. You can see the way they engage with the communities that they're exploring and think about how to represent the stories of others. One student has got some really interesting work exploring the biker community around the DMV, and I think we may end up with some motorcycles in the atrium."

Visiting the NEXT exhibition is like listening to a conversation-sometimes, maybe, a disagreement-between many voices. Shifting metaphors, it's like looking at a roadmap to see where the work of emerging artists points us. To the new generation, Onkey said, interdisciplinarity as a method seems especially important.

"Their interests are really broad, and because they're here at the school, they're getting to see the creative production of other disciplines right across the curriculum. Our students' work showcases the spark and inspiration they get from across the arts and from combining research and creative practice."

Two more aspects of the NEXT Festival may speak less to the public than to Onkey and Corcoran faculty members. One is the pleasure of seeing students exhibit their work in the beautiful Flagg Building spaces, and the other is seeing the value to students of faculty mentorship.

"One of the things that strikes me every year is the impact of the mentoring and support that our faculty provide our students," Onkey said. "When we see the work go up in the end, you see the result of the kind of investments that our faculty have made into helping the students develop. You see faculty present when students are installing their work, and you think of all the time they spent helping, pushing, encouraging, challenging students to get to that moment. This is student work, but we see the infrastructure that the faculty provide, too."

A complete schedule of events is available in the NEXT Festival guide. The NEXT exhibition is open to the public in the Flagg Building at 500 17th Street NW through May 14, Wednesday through Sunday from 1-5 p.m. The exhibition will remain open to the GW community during graduation weekend, May 15-16, for students' families to enjoy.

GW Today asked a group of students to briefly describe the work they will be presenting at the festival. Their responses are shown below.

Ben Cunningham, B.A. in Fine Arts

For NEXT, I'm presenting a large six-panel painting based on a press image of a burned Waymo autonomous rideshare vehicle. The image was taken during the Los Angeles protests that followed federal immigration operations in June 2025. The work is titled Ecce Machina, or "Behold the Machine," and uses that image to think about what it means to place so much faith in engineered systems and what happens when that faith breaks down in public. The painting was built at the scale of an altarpiece, borrowing some of the drama and authority of religious art, but turning that language toward a machine at the moment of its collapse. I'm interested in the tension between spectacle and collapse, and between technological promise and material ruin; I feel it reflects my interests in systems of power, belief and destruction.

Eve Harclerode, B.F.A. Graphic Design

My thesis project, "Greener Pastures, Greener Aisles" explores how graphic design can bolster interest in sustainability in the commercial food and beverage industry. Our generation is confronted with climate change, pollution and unethical and exploitative labor practices. The world is looking for solutions to mitigate these problems. Decisions made in the grocery aisle may seem like an unlikely place to start but can have a direct impact on the climate and our future. Through imagining a conceptual green coffee brand, Utopia Coffee, I'm exploring how branding design can be used to increase engagement with sustainability and ethical labor practices, such as organic, fair-trade and direct trade.

Ivy Johnson, M.A. Art History

My research is focused on the intersection of gender and politics in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire, and I'll be presenting my topic at the Corcoran Research Showcase.! I also work for the Corcoran School of Arts and Design as an exhibitions assistant. Recently, we've been pretty busy installing all of the exhibitions for the NEXT Festival, which has been super fun. I really enjoy the challenge of installation work, as every day there is something new to learn or figure out. Installing exhibitions allows me to experiment with creative curation and design, and I like the hands-on aspect of it. I also love collaborating with the students and interacting with their awesome work.

Kelsey Kirker, B.A. Dance

My work is a choreographic exploration of the neural underpinnings of major depressive disorder (MDD). I use various choreographic and sonic structures to represent the chemical formulas, neural pathways and chemical structures of three main neurotransmitters hypothesized to be heavily involved in MDD: serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. This intersection of neuroscience, psychology and dance draws near to my heart, as these are the fields I've specialized in during my time here at GW and it's so special to create a project that is so uniquely me. My cast and I are ecstatic to bring this work to the Dorothy Betts Theatre on April 16, 17 and 18.

Kendall Larade, B.A. Music

My senior capstone project celebrates my love for dance music and the movement it inspires. It redefines the format of a traditional recital by breaking the audience/artist boundary, allowing the community to influence the musical performance. Being involved in the music scene has made me feel more connected to the campus community. Since I don't come from a traditional musical background, I took the opportunity to explore all that the music department has to offer, leading me to become the first student to take turntable lessons with Professorial Lecturer Ron Brown (DJ RBI). Like many college students, I started DJing by performing at parties in crowded dorm rooms and off-campus apartments. As music director at WRGW District Radio, I developed a program to teach other students how to DJ. During the performance, I hope to inspire the same sense of community that has made me feel at home at GW.

Ariana Mayeri, B.A. Interaction Design

For NEXT, I am displaying my thesis, softSyntax, which explores the intersections of tactile craft and digital interaction by transforming crochet into a responsive interface. A camera tracks hand movements and translates gestures into a shifting visual pattern on the screen. As participants mimic different crocheting movements, the grid responds, forming a flower-like structure that looks like a crochet pattern. The visuals form soft, organic patterns that expand, cluster and dissolve based on movement, creating a fluid and continuous interaction. Without the use of physical controls, the interface responds directly to proximity, motion and positioning, encouraging users to explore through gesture alone. Because there is no pressure to produce a perfect object, attention shifts toward rhythm and presence. This visible growth, on the screen, is designed to foster a feeling of contentment and joy in you-the participant and viewer. These emotions do not come from achievement or speed, but from witnessing their own motion transform into structure.

Cora Olson, M.F.A. in Fine Arts

My ceramic practice investigates matriarchal lineage. I make offerings to the past and future generations of women in my family. My great-grandmother, and those who came before her, worked every day to perform acts of care, service and protection. With clay I aim to reinforce and honor these threads of lineage. My work preserves memories and labor of motherhood through the transformation of clay to ceramics. While in process with my sculptures, and I care for my work through mending cracks and maintaining a slow drying process. I then start the ritual of transformation from clay to ceramics. For me, this process of heating clay to extreme temperatures to create its sturdy form is akin to my current experience of carrying and forming life in my womb. I often feel the work of motherhood easily fades into the distance with each generation passed. I am interested in elevating the voices of mothers. My work seeks to honor and become an offering to not only generations of mothers within my own family but to mothers everywhere.

Caley Plank, B.A. Theatre

My thesis, "Clowning Around Can Be Such a Drag!" (or "Clowning Around" for short), brings together the artforms of clownery and drag to express and examine my own queer experience. Petunia, my clown drag persona, is based on the Idalus herois moth, also known as the Clown Moth. She has a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around her, loves anything sparkly and wants nothing more than to be a real human. The persona inspired an original costume design which will be on display at the NEXT exhibition. I have created a watercolor rendering of my design, sourced fabrics and various other materials, and have been adapting patterns to create Petunia's unique look. All the intimate details of the process are recorded on my blog. Keep your eyes peeled at the NEXT Festival Extravaganza to see Petunia live in an improvisational piece. (See image at top of page.)