Peripheral Presence features a collection of 2D and 3D work by recent alumni, Zoe Potter and Anakin Saephanh. Although the artists utilize distinctly different formal approaches and methods, their work shares an often elusive relationship to the figure that can take time to unwrap. Potter’s oil paintings and steel sculptures capture fleeting gestures that intertwine both a feeling of intimacy and distance. Saephanh’s mixed media assemblages and paintings.

This exhibition opens at the Cornish Alumni Gallery on September 2 and is open until December 12, 2025. There will be an opening reception on September, 26th from 4:30 - 6:30pm.

Zoe Potter, a Seattle based fine artist, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornish College of the Arts in 2025. Her work reflects a constant inquiry into form, materiality, and the human experience. Every piece challenges the viewer to question their own perceptions, as deep rooted as they may be.

"I create out of a necessity - a driving need to express, to struggle, to analyze, and to make. Sculpting with metal, plaster, clay, glass, and fabric is my medium for exploring the associations we have with materials and their meaning when juxtaposed with the human figure. My work oscillates between representation and abstraction, painting and sculpture, as I dissect themes of relationships and vulnerability. The figure is key to my practice, serving as both subject and symbol. Through my art, I scrutinize the perception of the female body, striving to articulate the complexity of inhabiting one. My process begins from the inside out, building structures with dynamic negative space that invite both visual engagement and introspection."

https://www.zoe-potter.com/

Anakin Saephanh, is a Seattle based artist. They recieved their Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornish College of the Arts in 2025.

"My work intermixes photography, painting, digital illustration and collage that center around the interplay between the fictive or digital and reality within the framework of a personal narrative. With diaried words, I describe that relationship melancholically to evoke a sense of standstill and reflection for myself— which simultaneously fuels a visual endeavor of compiling imagery that speaks to those words and emotions.

That research then informs a body of work that reflects on my multifaceted identity: Fractures of Asian American descent in tandem with the more specific identity of being
Iu Mien American; the oddities of maleness and gendered desire, and it in context to my position socially— all largely narrated by a life led in isolation and alienation. My work reflects aspects of that isolation, looking at a laptop in my bedroom as I let its digital escape become my life. I project myself upon the digital comfort of anime characters, consuming its media and entering its subculture as an artist.

With a fractured identity coinciding with multiple lines of thought, my pieces compile images to sequence meaning as a collage. An oil painting of my bedroom might rest next to a photo transfer of a long feed of video recommendations, then with another piece of self reflective text, another image of an anime girl, and another digital collage that looks like a glitch. Layers upon layers of careful consideration that intermix media to result in work that, while fractured, implies a relationship of abstract storytelling.

I’d like to think that making each piece is saving myself in different ways. That can be pressing Command-S and saving a document of my life in an abstract way, or finding catharsis with the content of each piece I make— which again takes on many different forms too."

mayu-hojo.uwu.ai