Artist Statement

How might we… weave an honest account of the diverse history of Loyola into the campus experience and highlight stories of the people who have made Loyola what it is today? This was one of the five challenge questions posted during the Fall of 2021, in BA 210: Design Thinking and Innovative Solutions.  In this course, students spent the semester learning about and applying a human centered design framework to develop a socially just solution. The group that focused on this question concluded that the most effective way to offer a more accessible account of Loyola’s history is to implement more art on campus that incorporates student stories.

This fall, in SA400: Professional Practices for Artists, I executed the design-thinking process for the creation and implementation of an interactive public art walk that engages with Loyola’s past, present, and future. To do this, I will collaborate with Dr. Carey and Dr. Zimmerelli’s Aperio Project, which explores Loyola’s relationship to slavery and its legacies. Students participating in this project produced historical accounts and analysis through a variety of genres and perspectives. Their work will be published as a monograph which will highlight the history of slavery and continuing ramifications in our University, city, state, and country. It will also influence the design for this interactive art project.

The monograph will be the center of inspiration for each piece in the art walk. Each piece will be painted and digitized by Loyola’s Art Association with the input from various student organizations. These artworks will be placed at the landmarks in which they are spatially and historically tied. QR codes will lead the viewer to a virtual webpage that explains the artwork in greater detail and will also offer reflective questions and additional resources for further exploration. This virtual experience will articulate how these artworks are connected as a sequence of events that play together as part of Loyola’s true history.

The purpose of this interactive art walk is to use art as a visual language to mediate an engagement with Loyola’s historical environment. This immersive experience will confront the prideful and painful pieces of our past at Loyola University Maryland, while pointing to our potential for growth in the future. Each piece of art will be an invitation to engage with representational, visually abstract art that tells a story, hopefully leading the viewer to the student-published monograph and Loyola’s rich archival collection where they can read more about Loyola’s history.

Randi Little

About the Artist

Randi Little is an interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, MD. She will earn a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Visual Arts with a minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship Studies from Loyola University Maryland. Randi was born in Millburn, New Jersey, and is the youngest of five with her (younger) twin brother Ramsey.  Randi's passion for human-centered design stems from her curiosity about human interaction and perception within the “common, ordinary, unspectacular flow of everyday life” (JM 23’). Her project, “Creative Histories: Using Public Art as Tool for Community Engagement”, uses art as a visual language to mediate the engagement with Loyola’s historical environment. Randi enjoys combining psychological principles in visual mediums to educate and communicate ideas that are often difficult to express. A lot of Randi’s inspiration stems from her relationship with her six-year-old niece, Maddie. Randi channels Maddie’s probing imagination and curiosity into her design projects to create meaningful and simplistic designs that articulate educational concepts. Randi values creativity, collaboration, and continuous learning.