D-E welcomed back Sophia Seriale ’22, a “D-E lifer,” as the Swartley Gallery’s featured alumna artist, with a meet-the-artist reception on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. Her exhibit, “Until Now,” includes sketches she created as an Upper School student and in her art classes at Marist College, where she’s currently a junior.

Shortly before the reception, Swartley hosted a Middle School sketching workshop, where Sophia taught a group of sixth graders how to draw squeaky ducks by using the concept of “shapes and values”; that is, starting with bigger shapes and then moving on to smaller shapes and details. The duck theme was inspired by one of Sophia’s more prominent sketches—an oil painting that depicts a compilation of multicolored rubber ducks.

“It was my most challenging work… and it’s probably the only self-portrait I’ll ever do.”

On the self-portrait that appears as her marquee poster, Sophia recalled it was for a college assignment for which she was the only one of her peers who had chosen to draw a self-portrait. Sophia says it was meaningful because it was based on a photograph taken by a friend, though she admittedly wishes she was smiling. “I was able to see myself through someone else’s lens,” she says. “It was my most challenging work… and it’s probably the only self-portrait I’ll ever do.”

Other works include a few of Sophia’s favorite people and things. There’s a sketch of English singer Harry Styles; a drawing of her grandparents, who she says fell in love when they were 11(!) and for whom the work “represents them and their love”; and a sketch of a duck pond in East Hampton, “where I like to sit and sketch a ton.”