The Medici Circle Provides grants and funding to creatives at Bowling Green State University. This volunteer board meets to discuss meaningful ways to grow their donor base, provide financial support to emergent creatives, and offer study abroad opportunities to young artists. Primavera is their annual gala congratulating their recipients, honoring their donor base, and celebrating their mission.
Each year The Medici Circle selects a senior design student to take part in designing their Primavera invitation.
Recipients of scholarships and awards study any of the fields of art & design offered at BGSU including Design, Painting, Illustration, Glass blowing, Sculpture, Digital Art, Metals, Printmaking, and everything in-between.
I selected an oil painting from the library of congress by Gustave Courbet "Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase" featuring spring flowers supporting the theme of spring growth and renewal. I added the painting to Cinema4d and generated 3d prisms allowing the colors of the painting to refract through the prisms, creating a colorful abstraction of the theme.
Before I started the invitation, I did research on what The Medici Circle was known for in terms of events so I could design with their brand in mind. I found little to no information as such. This led me to investigate what the brand of Medici itself was like so I could design in line with this vernacular, and once again found little to no information. It dawned on me that the organization was somewhat of a ghost in the machine, a team of volunteers somehow raising funding for hundreds of artists each year, but with little brand support and little university integration.
Working with this team has been rewarding and moving forward our improvements will hopefully impact many students. I hope to see many of these changes live within a year. As I recently graduated, I passed the responsibilities onto members of the university but have subsequently been asked to become a permanent board member for The Medici Circle to help usher in the next steps of funding talented young creatives. I am truly humbled by the opportunity.
Thanks for looking!
