Trépanier will graduate in April 2023 with a BFA in Art
Art major Liza Trépanier is graduating from BYU and will be presenting at the Art and Design Convocation on April 28. Trépanier will share about her unconventional path to art and how it has shaped her time at BYU.
“I started four other majors before I finally realized that I just love making things with my hands,” Trépanier said. Art helps her meditate on and think through questions, and works well with her learning style as she physically handles materials to make art pieces. “I keep pursuing art because it keeps haunting me with new questions and curiosities.”
Trépanier’s mentors during her college career include professor Peter Evertt. She said Everett has “gone above and beyond to share his knowledge about materials and processes, and show care about his students as human beings.”
Those other students have also been role models for Trépanier, who said, “I also learn a lot from my peers, who are always willing to learn alongside me.”
As a visual artist, Trépanier says she finds inspiration in the natural world and in others’ art. “I grew up by the ocean in San Diego, and every May there are bioluminescent plankton that light up the waves at night,” she said. “I'm fascinated by how nature can seem artificial at times, and how artists like Shezad Dawood and Max Hooper Schneider use these themes in their art.”
Trépanier’s degree has not been without its challenges. “During the fall and winter semesters from 2021-2022 I was experiencing some severe mental health obstacles that made it really difficult to feel like I could connect with others and succeed in my schoolwork,” she said. The artist found comfort and connection in “slowing down and trying [her] best to focus on [her] physical and mental health,” as well as “becoming more involved in the art department community.”
One way she has gotten involved in that community was by working in the art department’s woodshop. She said that this experience connected her to many of her peers in the program and allowed her to give back to the art community. More generally, she said she has “found community and belonging by participating in as many experiences as [she] can that the art department offers.”
Trépanier said that the coolest project she worked on as a student was an experiential learning opportunity. She traveled to Brookly, New York, for a neon sculpture workshop. “I learned how to bend a glass tube and pump it full of neon gas so that when plugged in, the neon molecules get excited and glow,” she said. “I also learned a lot about art handling from carrying my sculpture on subways and as my carry-on item when traveling home!”
After graduating from BYU, Trépanier hopes to get an MFA and eventually open a neon studio that is accessible to people of all financial, educational and vocational backgrounds.