Samantha Bruno, a student at CSU East Bay through the National Student Exchange displayed her three-dimensional art compilations at this year’s Annual Art Exhibit, an art style rarely seen on campus.

At the ceremony, Bruno was the recipient of the Hayward Arts Council Award and the Portfolio Award for her piece “Everybody Hurts.”

Bruno, who was born in Foley, Minnesota, started out in her Grandpa’s letterpress print shop, where she cleaned, placed orders, ran the printing presses and assisted her Grandpa as needed.

In high school, she won awards for her art and became president of the art club her junior year. Every summer since 2009, Bruno has participated in shows where she sells art pieces, which include what she calls her “creepy button-eyed” dolls made out of socks and recycled plastic bags, which children readily buy.

She describes herself as a depressed artist who finds peace and her own identity in her artistic creations.

“I struggled with depression for four years, so art
makes me make sense of it all,” said Bruno. “I didn’t even decide until the day of the art show to be a part of it because I was too ashamed of my art.”

Bruno is a “book maker,” meaning she personally sketches the illustrations, designs the covers and stitches the pages of her books containing her original work. Bruno explains that her R.E.M.-inspired “Everybody Hurts” bandage book that she showcased at the exhibit was more of an interactive art piece that dealt with depression.

In order to enhance “Everybody Hurts,” she displayed a message via Facebook asking people if they wanted to contribute to her artistic piece on depression and people immediately responded.

“Although there were gloves next to my art piece in the exhibit, people were reluctant to touch it because it is traditional that people not touch the art pieces,” said Bruno. “But I needed them to interact with my piece by pulling back the bandages and reading the stories, so I had a friend pretend to try out the gloves to show the others that it was okay and it actually worked.”

Kyle Milligan, co-founder of Studio Quercus in Oakland and one of the judges of the art exhibit, said that he was taken by both of Bruno’s artistic pieces.

“I had no idea that the two pieces were done by the same artist,” said Milligan. “Her bandage book had a lot of soul, I could tell she wore her emotions on her sleeve and it showed in her artwork. Bruno is a talented artist who should reach out more to Funk Art, it can help her get more of her message and ideas out to audiences.”

There is a strong history of sculpture art that has come out of CSUEB, with artists like Misty Gamble who in 2004 expressed her art through the use of ceramics and Mel Ramos who in the early 1960s created Pop Art to celebrate the mass media’s portrayal of the aspects of popular culture.

“With so much history, it’s really important to keep art alive at CSU East Bay,” said Milligan.

Bruno is double majoring in Studio Art and Art History at the University of Minnesota, where a semester of classes for her is over $50,000, so she will be using the money from the art exhibit to pay back some of her student loans.

“With that kind of debt, I have to do even more with my art,” said Bruno. “My goal after graduation is to come back to the Bay Area and work as a gallery curator.”

Milligan believes Bruno should consider entering her art into the Museum of Fine Art, then enroll in a great art school, preferably in California, where her art can flourish exponentially across diverse forms.