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Resident artist at Christ’s College and Cambridge graduate, Vanessa Hodgkinson, has linked town and gown through art and she is unveiling her final exhibit in a way to make it widely accessible. As well as the museum display, she will welcome visitors into her studio and put on a window exhibit so passers-by can see her work as they walk about town.

Vanessa’s residency was financed by the Levy-Plumb fund which supports a graduate artist under the age of 25, providing them with a studio at Christ’s College for a year. To make her tenure count, she created projects to engage the student body with Cambridge residents.

“I wanted to make new opportunities for art,” said Vanessa. “ ̽��ֱ��artist in residence runs a life drawing class for students and I decided to open this up for the public to create a more vibrant mix of people.”

Her exhibition is based on Islamic geometric designs, presenting grids with different colours, which at first seem beautiful patterns, but at a closer look appear to be images which we are just beyond deciphering.

Vanessa developed an interest in Islamic art whilst doing her undergraduate degree at Emmanuel College. She has lived and studied in the Middle East in Kuwait and Iran.

̽��ֱ��exhibition title, ‘This being human’, is the first line of a poem by Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi poet. ̽��ֱ��poem speaks about the human body as a site for spiritual experience and the exhibition aims to provide an inspiration for spiritual reflection.

̽��ֱ��exhibit is from June 13 to June 26 in the Inner Courtyard in ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum, the Visual Arts Centre at Christ’s College on Saint Andrew’s Street and in the window of 9 Portugal Place, Cambridge.