Reese Girdner
3D work
Functional Work
Unique Forms
2D Work
Reese Girdner was born and raised in Cozad, Nebraska and is now an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska-Kearney (UNK). He is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Education with a Minor in 3D Art. He has had work displayed in The Brickwalk Gallery in Kearney and has also had artwork featured in The Carillon, UNK's Literacy and Art Journal. He loves spending time in the studio and volunteering with the schools in the Kearney community.
"Inferno"
"Weight of Purpose"
"The Cookie Jar Complex"
"Distant Dreams, Present Dilemmas"
There have always been vessels meant to store wine or valuables as offerings to the dead. With a pitcher that imprisons the spirits of the deceased dreading to be poured into cups still dusted with remnants of their predecessors, the tradition turns itself inside out.Rather than being gifts for the afterlife, it becomes a dialogue between past and present, those who are living and those who have been lost. For me, offerings have always felt less like provisions for the dead and more like a solace for those who remain. The vessel becomes a threshold, where what we have once lost returns to us, and what was meant for the dead lingers to console the living.
Where there are humans, there are also questions, persistent ones like Why am I here? or What am I meant for? Yet I find myself asking something different: Are humans really meant for anything at all? Must purpose be pre-assigned, or even required at all? What do we stand to lose, or gain, when we let go of the idea that purpose is something bestowed rather than created?Across countless cultures, many turn to higher powers for relief from the weight of these questions, hoping for clarity or absolution. This piece takes a more direct, literal route toward confronting them. In a form that fuses what makes a vessel functional or decorative, the sculpted man has given himself an undeniable, permanent purpose: he has become a vase. Still, this is no ordinary vessel. His vivid colors, irregular silhouette, and scattered textures complicate the simplicity of that choice. Was he born into this purpose, or did he shape it through repetition, trial, and persistence? Either way, he claims it fully. He becomes a container for what brings him joy, and for what he may not yet be ready to hold.In this, he mirrors us. Each of us must decide whether purpose is something inherited, constructed, or discovered along the way. And, like a vessel, we are filled with what we seek, what we fear, and what arrives uninvited. This work becomes a reminder that purpose is not a fixed destiny, but an evolving act of becoming, one we author for ourselves.
The goal of The Cookie Jar Complex is to explore the different “faces” humans wear—the ones deemed socially acceptable and also those often not. The main structure is a cookie jar, a vessel traditionally associated with sweet treats but is just as frequently a repository for things left to grow stale. This is meant to represent both the sweetness of conformity and the staleness of suppressing our true selves. Throughout my life, I've been told countless times to smile more, that I looked bored, that I seemed angry, or as though I didn't want to be there. Yet in those moments, I was often simply content. These perceptions from others, whether I wanted them to or not, have shaped my understanding of how society values outward expressions over the inner reality.This piece features a central structure with three interchangeable masks I’ve hand-built. One mask exaggerates happiness, another portrays anger, and the third is modeled after my own features. These masks symbolize the impossible task of curating emotions to make others more comfortable: to be happy, but not too happy, not to be sad because it makes others uncomfortable, to not be too loud but also not to be too quiet. Through this project, I aim to ask “If all we’re ever really doing is constantly trying to make each other comfortable while failing at it, isn't it about time we started looking a little deeper?”. As humans, we are far more complex than the emotions others perceive. Beneath the masks, we carry a rich and often unseen inner life, one far deeper than any expression can capture.
The once-distant years of futuristic movies are no longer far off—they've arrived, or even passed, which has left us to ask: what do we really have to show for it? In 1984, The Billings Gazette asked a group of kids what they imagined 2020 would look like (Novak). One predicted medical advances so profound we’d live beyond 150 years old. Another saw us microchipped and controlled by robots, while yet another envisioned cities with air-filtering bubbles. But here we are, and there's no immortality pill, no universal robot assistants, no flying cars or widespread solutions to the crises we face.The average life expectancy of an adult in the US is 77 years old, Microplastics contaminate our food supply, and companies would rather use AI to generate promotional designs than hire someone to do it instead (KSU) (Leatherhead Food Research). Movies like Back to the Future and I, Robot depicted technological wonders that seemed, at the time, almost too good to be true—and they were. This isn't about kids in the '80s getting it wrong. It’s about how we’re standing in the future they envisioned, only to find a stark disconnect between what was promised and what’s reality. We expected a future brimming with solutions; what we’ve arrived at feels hauntingly more like a future of overlooked problems.
KSU. “The Life Expectancy in the U.S. | Trends, Statistics, & More.” Kent State Online, 18 January 2024, https://onlinedegrees.kent.edu/college-of-public-health/community/life-expectancy-and-public-health.Leatherhead Food Research. “Microplastics in Food and Beverage Products.” Leatherheadfood, 2020, https://www.leatherheadfood.com/white-paper/microplastics-in-food-and-beverage-products/.Novak, Matt. “Kids of the 1980s Imagined the Year 2020 With Robot Butlers, Bubble-top Cities, and Nuclear War — Paleofuture.”
Paleofuture, 28 December 2018, https://paleofuture.com/blog/2018/12/28/kids-of-the-1980s-imagined-the-year-2020-with-robot-butlers-bubble-top-cities-and-nuclear-war.
Pastel Master Copy
"A Snapshot of Color"
"Blood Moon Tea Party"
"Spirits"
"Spring Centerpieces"
A Snapshot of Color
Dec. 2024
Oil on canvas
24 x 30in
A Snapshot of Color is a still-life featuring objects imbued with personal significance, however, its significance extends beyond the objects themselves. The vibrant greens, blues, and purples are arranged at erratic yet strikingly sharp angles. The dramatic composition and deep perspective evoke the feeling of a fleeting moment—a memory frozen in time, seen through a singular, personal lens.
