Lorretta Park. Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
President: Dr. David P. Nelson Interim Dean of Graduate Studies: Paul Paturzo Director of Curatorial Programs: Lisa Tung Creative Director: Ana Torres (MFA ‘15) Design: Rachel Morrissey (MFA ‘16) Editor: Jackie Knight & Nadia Savage Photographers: Eddie Rath (MFA BLR ‘16) & Eduardo L. Rivera (MFA ‘16) © Copyright 2016 Massachusetts College of Art and Design. All rights reserved; no part of this book may be reproduced without the express written permission of the publisher.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) is one of the top colleges of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1873, MassArt has a legacy of leadership as the only freestanding public college of art and design in the country and the nation’s first art school to grant a degree. The College offers a comprehensive range of baccalaureate and graduate degrees in art and design, all taught by world-class faculty, along with continuing education and youth programs designed to encourage individual creativity for students of any age and background. MassArt’s Graduate Programs have a long heritage of excellence, exemplified by the faculty and visiting artists. The urban campus along Boston’s Avenue of the Arts gives students access to over one million square feet of studio, classroom, living, and exhibition space. The opportunity to work and create in a diverse community of innovative artists, designers, and educators fosters a learning environment of multidisciplinary practice and collaboration—a central value of the Graduate Programs at MassArt. For the 2015-2016 MassArt MFA Thesis Exhibition we are proud to feature the most recent work of the College’s graduates. To find out more about Graduate Programs please contact the Admissions Department at gradadmissions@massart.edu or 617 879 7166.
Brittany Marcoux. From the Outside Looking In (installation detail), 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS Sixten Abbot..........................................................................................................................................16 Maya Anderson......................................................................................................................................18 Lucy Wood Baird..................................................................................................................................20 Ann Barrett-Hicks.................................................................................................................................22 Casey Blake Ausman Jr.......................................................................................................................24 Paul S. Briggs........................................................................................................................................26 Darren Alexander Cole.......................................................................................................................28 Patlapa Davivongsa............................................................................................................................30 Mark Dellelo..........................................................................................................................................32 Adell Donaghue....................................................................................................................................34 Ann Forbush..........................................................................................................................................36 Gabriela Gamboa.................................................................................................................................38 Philip Gedarovich.................................................................................................................................40 Krista Hipp.............................................................................................................................................42 Haining Li..............................................................................................................................................44 Brittany Marcoux..................................................................................................................................46 Rachel Morrissey..................................................................................................................................48 Yukiko Nishino......................................................................................................................................50 Ashley Normal.......................................................................................................................................52 Loretta Park..........................................................................................................................................54 Colleen Pearce......................................................................................................................................56 Diana Jean Puglisi...............................................................................................................................58 Andrew Ringer......................................................................................................................................30 Eduardo L Rivera.................................................................................................................................60 Clara Jane Schuster.............................................................................................................................62 Will Suglia..............................................................................................................................................64 Steve Sullivan.......................................................................................................................................66 Morgen Van Vorst................................................................................................................................68 Christina Huilan Wang.........................................................................................................................70 Stephanie Wagner.................................................................................................................................72 Sara Wichterman...................................................................................................................................74
MFA: (LOW-RESIDENCY IN BOSTON) THESIS SHOW JULY 5 - AUGUST 10, 2015
MFA DYNAMIC MEDIA THESIS SHOW APRIL 19 - APRIL 30, 2016
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MFA THESIS SHOW APRIL 19 - MAY 7, 2016
SIXTEN ABBOT MFA DYNAMIC MEDIA studio610.us
Altar, a user interacting with Altar
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Altar, a piece which pulls the 20 most popular BestBuy.com products and displays them on an artificial illuminated manuscript atop a 7-foot tall black lectern facing the wall
MAYA ANDERSON MFA 2D mayaliljaanderson.com
Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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LUCY WOOD BAIRD MFA PHOTOGRAPHY www.lucywoodbaird.com
At its most basic, photography is a map of light, three-dimensional space translated via light and shadow into a two dimensional realm. In this series of works, I probe the gap between two and three dimensions, asking what can be lost and found in translation. Emphasizing the inherent truth that the camera sees differently than the human eye, and that combination of the camera eye and human eye challenge each other when both views are present simultaneously. The work is made not only of the space in which it exists, but also relies on the way our minds and eyes see and understand the combination of image and object in space. I am interested in the way images have the potential to play with illusion and perception. They can be experiential, existing as fixed moments in time space and perspective and then reintegrated into the world to be viewed. The pieces are composite realities constructed to play with what we understand to be factual. A printed photograph is simultaneously a tangible object and representation; it is unique in this duality. Each work in the series is an elaborate visual puzzle, comprised of image and object, or image and site, creating hybrid works that are materially ambivalent.
Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016.
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Pyramid, pigment print, plexiglass pyramid, 13” x 17” x 15”, 2016
Eryada, Oil on Canvas, 48” x 36”, 2015
ANN BARRETT-HICKS MFA LOW RESIDENCY annbarretthicks.com
My paintings describe the workings of nature, the processes by which life thrives, and the threats that it encounters. Through my process I show adaptation and transformation. Early inclusions undergo change or erasure as everything finds a balance. In nature, the struggle for survival results in diversity, as species evolve to fit available habitats. Similarly, through an openness to the many possibilities of what each painting can become, I search for a diversity of form and space and emotion in my work. My work is a fantasy, but one no more fantastic than life itself. The response of species to the pressures of life has brought about some of the most break-the-rules creativity to be found. It is all around us every day. The myriad of species on our planet shows that life is about creative answers and open possibilities, a reality that I explore through painting.
Luos, Oil on Canvas, 48� x 72�, 2015
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CASEY BLAKE AUSMAN JR. MFA 3D www.caseyblakeausman.squarespace.com
My goal as artist is to feed off of the repression of sexual awakenings while simultaneously fleshing out my personal journey as a human caught in-between states. Using multimedia materials I am exploiting a visual tipping point where objects walk a line between this or that. Pulling from the familiar visual pools of cartoons, toys and the body I design objects that refuse to be pinned down to one thing, constantly pivoting on a point. That point being the uncanny experience of growing up, objects that have one foot in childhood sensibilities and the other in a post-pubescent desires. My aim is to create works that generate multiple reads, to trigger associations and drive an emotional response from the confusion of seeing objects that are ambiguously human, food, animal and toy in postures that are both sexual and comical. Each encounter is unique, personal and dangerously close to something repressed. Sculptures with orifices, priapic structures and lurking figures implicate and beckon the onlooker as I prompt a conflict: to eject or become the voyeur—dredging up our own hidden memories. The artwork wallows in the abject experience of becoming, the hidden locations of sexual awakening, and surface of skin and what lies beneath.
(Left to right) Peepers, Pinch, Other Mother, Limp Limbs, Lurk, (installation view), Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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Sick Lips, 2016
Disruptive Actions, laminated plywood, felt, glazed stoneware, 24” x 19.5” x 14.5”, 2016
PAUL S. BRIGGS MFA 3D paulsbriggs.com
The plastic indexical qualities of clay, the geometric ceramic or plywood infrastructure components and the felt mediation ironically form a visual equilibrium. The work is literally the bringing together of varying opposing physical and visual expressions harmonized by the syncopation of their materiality. The materiality of felt is both malleable and yet has structure bringing mediation to both wood and ceramic. Felt is durable whether it is exposed to water, heat or compression. The clay is in relentless pursuit of fleshiness. Glaze is not to vitrify the surface but adds a beguiling layer of invasive action. The work recalls many forms from nature and architecture but none were initially an impetus, therefore the pieces are at once minimal, abstract and expressionist. What these materials form together, their visual, material and spatial dialogue, is their truth. Ultimately, I am interested in balance, equilibrium and equality. The plywood has a hyperbolic solidity but its structure refutes its support. These constructions are not held in place by gravity but in constant threat by its invasive presence. The clay hand/body/ self struggles against being boxed in. The felt mediates the mystery of continuation in overwhelming odds. This work primarily raises questions about the possibility of ongoing equanimity and peace existence in the face of a failing infrastructure and are formally, literally and metaphorically on the edge. Like gravity, the present does not need to be sought after for it always asserts its fleeting imperceptible presence. The effort therefore must be, and is often, toward not being grounded but working creatively with groundlessness.
Judges, Benches, Pews, laminated plywood, scale ranging: 48” x 48” x 12” - 48” x 48” x 30”, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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DARREN ALEXANDER COLE MFA FILM/VIDEO
Branching between cinematic realism and art fiction, Cole seeks to investigate motion pictures’ relationship to sound as a tool to impact the viewers’ immediate relationship to color and gender politics. Nostalgic symbols are produced to guide the discourse, allowing Cole to showcase his ideas about sustainability amongst community in a world reliant on technology and interaction as an icon.
(Left to right) Digital - B, interactive midi, variable dimensions, 2016. Azul, acrylic, oil, variable dimensions, 2016.
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Blue Hat, digital, variable dimensions, 2016
Sequencing, Doran Gallery, 2016
PATLAPA DAVIVONGSA & ANDREW RINGLER MFA DYNAMIC MEDIA patlapablr.tumblr.com andrewringler.com
Andrew Ringler Sequencing allows users to compose music through the simple act of moving blocks between physical shelves, providing opportunities for musical composition, learning, and collaboration in a multi-sensory environment. Expert and non-musicians can find interest and challenge in a learnable musical composition system. Six composition interfaces are distributed throughout the gallery, each interface contributing to the entirety of the musical soundscape.
Patlapa Davivongsa Sequencing allows for exploration through the ambiguity of tangible interfaces located separately in physical space. Participants can navigate, discover, learn, and compose music individually and collaboratively.
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MARK DELLELO MFA LOW RESIDENCY markdellelo.com
Sewn is about the moment when a relationship must transform or end. Though the actors portray this moment with emotional realism, the settings are symbolic and the narrative becomes fragmented by the tricks that anxiety and vulnerability can play on perception. This film is a spiritual sequel to my earlier rite-of-passage films, Rise and Risk, in which my solitary characters struggled with a decision about whether to embark on a journey away from the symbolic spaces in which they had trapped themselves, alone. In Sewn, a journey of two people is already well underway—but their quest is in jeopardy. The film’s editing creates a rupture, framing a single moment of consciousness. The couple proceeds on an interior journey that separates them from one another. There is suspense about whether their repetitive cycle will break and whether the outcome will involve a metaphorical death or transfiguration. Sewn fits into a lineage that originated with Jean Cocteau’s surrealist work in 1930 and continued in the ‘40s and ‘50s with a group of American avant-garde narrative filmmakers. The critic P. Adams Sitney called their psychodramas “trance films.” They have a deeper ancestry in the dream plays of August Strindberg, which inspired the films of Ingmar Bergman. Bergman, along with David Lynch, taught me how detailed acting can serve as a compass for guiding a viewer through the world of a character’s dream. I built this film through a method of image association that goes back to the Symbolist poets. A quotation from Kandinsky inspired the opening image from which Sewn grew: “Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, wood, trees, flowers, but even a white trowser button glittering in a puddle in the street. Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.”
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Sewn, short film, 24 min, 2015
Artist Proof, The Wizardry of Frozen Lemonade, etching with rainbow viscosity roll, 34� x 44.75�, private collection, Boston, MA, 2014
ADELL DONAGHUE MFA LOW RESIDENCY www.adelldonaghue.com
I create art by funneling the world through my psyche in peculiar ways. The secret for me is to remain open to exploration, allowing the soul of a place to reveal its magic. Standing in my studio in the middle of the night, I remember the dusty afternoon light falling across a carnival ride in western Massachusetts. Sifting shapes through my mind and memory, I push homely images towards the iconic; the carnival ride takes on the majesty of a Biblical passage or a Mayan temple. Light is the only presence in art that time cannot erode. It is the constant in my work. It enables me to forge connections between the present and the past. How is Rembrandt’s light different from my own? The nocturnes of Turner, Whistler and Hopper continue to enlighten me. My drawings, paintings, prints and videos are documents. They evidence my perplexing feelings about the time we live in. Growing up in the United States in the twentieth century, I have spent my life observing an empire in decline. Creating scenes of vernacular architecture, carnival and the empty spaces along the American highways in light and shadow, I ask my work to whisper across time and space—this is how it felt to be here!
Installation view, Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, 2015
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ANN P. FORBUSH MFA LOW RESIDENCY www.apforbush.com
My work is very process oriented and focuses on my love of tactile materials and words. I feel that the language of art, like the language of dreams, helps us to process our lived experience.
Haiku By Chance, volumes 2,3,4, 2015 (Top) Installation view, Arnheim Gallery, 2015 (Bottom)
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The Things She Forgot to Say (detail), mixed media, 2015
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Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2015 (Top and Bottom)
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GABRIELA GAMBOA MFA LOW RESIDENCY www.gabrielagamboa.com
For over ten years my work has been informed by the devastating political agenda of the current regime in my country, Venezuela, and how it has transformed the landscape, both physically—as in the breakdown of infrastructure—, and socially—as in the transformation of language and behavior. The Silenced Files installation examines the process of erasing and rewriting history, in this case specific to the steel and aluminum industry, once considered an alternative source of income for an oil dependent economy. Manipulating both archival and current material where alterations go from the very subtle—a shift in tone, an almost indistinguishable overlay of images—, to the obvious and crude—obliteration of entire parts of a photo or video frame—I refer to the process of ‘redaction’ of images and sounds contrasting the reality presented by those in power with a personal and collective memory which is at odds with the ‘official’ history. My installations rely strongly on video and photography as my main media. From video I exploit the transitory and ephemeral nature of the medium itself and it’s relationship to mass media, and from photography I explore memory through the archival and historic discourse attached to it. For me, both video and photography are recorders of reality and current mechanisms to interrogate archival and historical materials. Through this aesthetic platform I question the presentation or representation of reality.
Red Panoramic, 2015
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PHILIP GEDAROVICH MFA DYNAMIC MEDIA www.creategreatstudios.com
Philip Gedarovich is a Boston-based designer and educator who specializes in animation, motion and computer-based design. This, on top of his love for comics, cartoons, avantgarde film, and just about anything clever and creative, has helped to inform his process of prototyping, user testing, and playful project work which sit at the core of his methodology. Focusing on the design of engaging, immersive experiences with strong opportunities for play and expressive communication is the sort of work he enjoys most. Philip has had the opportunity to work on a wide range of creative projects for clients such as Hasbro, Continuum Innovation, Monster Cable, Trip Advisor, and Fisher Price.
Outputs from the TriMe installation with color distortion effects added
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A player dances wildly in front of the TriMe installation
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Pearl River Plunder, 23” x 12” x 33.5”, 2015
KRISTA HIPP MFA LOW RESIDENCY A series of four miniature storefront windows contain themed displays that relate to the toxic effects of fashion overconsumption. Frantic techno music entices the shopper closer only to reveal the traumatic sounds of far-away sweatshops. Flashy sales banners create an upscale façade for the exported experience: ‘Factory Collapse Sale,’ ‘Too Hot to Handle Prices.’ In Bangladesh, over 1100 people died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse and over 800 people were injured in various factory fires in 2013. The Pearl River in the Guangdong province of China runs blue from the dumping of untreated chemicals used in blue jean production. Meanwhile, garment factories in developing countries rarely compensate their workers with a living wage. While factory labor conditions in the United States have improved immeasurably since the turn of the 20th century, the dangerous conditions of our past have been exported to developing countries. Stories of factory fires, sweatshop conditions, child-labor and industrial pollution receive intermittent news coverage, but the media constantly reports sales and new fashion trends. Right now clothing is undervalued and under-priced. The fashion industry is not yet conscious enough to assess the value of sustainable practices, healthy workers and environments. We cannot yet quantify the true cost of the industry’s destructive practices.
Installation view, Arnheim Gallery, 2015
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HAINING LI MFA FILM/VIDEO
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlcmGzccNFI
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Theater of the Absurd with Chinese Characteristics
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From The Outside Looking In (installation detail), mixed media, 2016
BRITTANY MARCOUX MFA PHOTOGRAPHY www.brittanymarcoux.com
From the Outside Looking In/From the Inside Looking Out: Since my parents’ estrangement four years ago, my perspective has shifted into a realm of contemplation, analysis, and critique. With divorce proceedings just underway, I notice that the effects of this are altering everything; I look at places, people, and (most significantly) objects with different eyes, questioning their purpose, truth, and meaning. This shift accounts for the way I photograph. I take my subjects out of context into a separate environment for singular speculation. By making installation, editing home videos, and producing a photographic book, childhood memories are re-created and transformed into tangible layers of self-reflection. Through the use of furniture, objects, wallpaper, carpeting, lighting, and scent, my installation transports viewers into my childhood home and my past—growing up as a middle class white girl from small town Massachusetts. As the old console TV flickers between repeating birthday parties, analog static, and cigarette smokers, members of the audience may recall moments of their own family histories. The video serves as a connector between past and present, personal and universal, and also the installation room and the book of photographs. Images from the ‘80s repeat on the TV screen while scents, objects, and the book bring the audience to the present day and to their own immediate experience. All of the elements together mimic the way that memories are recalled, questioned, forgotten, confused, and replayed.
From The Outside Looking In (installation view), Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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RACHEL MORRISSEY MFA 2D
www.rachelroses.com
Sparkles, pink, sequins, stickers, bling and glitter. All things you would find at strip clubs and in little girls rooms. Little girls are told to be teenagers, teenagers are told to be 20-somethings, and 20-somethings are told to be little girls. My frustration with socially constructed ideas of femininity, and the objectification and consumption of the female body drives the focus of my practice. The work is supposed to be silly, absurd, bedazzled and offensive. I use materials that young girls are so often steered towards such as fake nails, sparkles, stickers, make-up and gemstones. These materials serve as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the way marketing companies influence how young girls form their sense of identity. I draw parallels between these materials and the clothing worn in strip clubs. I find the idea of using the fabricated color pink and combinations of these materials completely captivating. The ‘fake-ness’ of the materials becomes the link to the highly photo-shopped, airbrushed, staged and altered image of the perfect female body. I point out the hilarity in the use of the color pink, mocking society’s idea of femininity and incorporating this irony into my work
Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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Super Pu$$y, pleather, studs, acrylic gemstones, acrylic paint, glue, spray paint, sequins, 40” x 72”, 2016
Aware (installation detail), collage videos with TV screens, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
YUKIKO NISHINO MFA FILM/VIDEO yukikofilm.lv9.org
“Fragile temporary beauty,” I can see it everywhere in the world. Cherry blossoms, snow and even human lives are beautiful because they are limited. When I was a child, I liked throwing ants into doodle bugs’ nests. I liked watching as the doodle bugs ate the ants. The moment between living and dying was stunning. My aunt committed suicide when I was 17 years old. She was my babysitter when I was a child. I did not know then that she had schizophrenia for over 20 years. I saw her talking with her imaginary friends sometimes and believed she had the ability to see what everyone else could not. I believe that she felt ephemeral. She might have been able to capture beauty by controlling her death. I make films because I can create the momentary fragile bloom of death using fiction. I do not need any real objects. I create beauty.
Aware, (installation view), collage videos with TV screens, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016 (Top), Where I was Born, HD Video, 7 minutes (Bottom Left), No Melody, HD Video, 15 minutes (Bottom Right)
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ASHLEY NORMAL MFA LOW RESIDENCY www.ashleynormal.com
The truth is often stranger than fiction. Altering materials I create domestic scenes where nothing is as it seems. Seemingly normal from afar I use personal and found objects to communicate issues around mental illness, family, gender, and social taboos. I make observations in the everyday, finding the bizarre and absurd in the familiar. I play with materials and find interesting and odd juxtapositions. Hiding and revealing a steam of contradictions. In the studio I make interventions through assemblage, drawing, and fibers. Sometimes I find the pairing right away, other times the material of interest will sit with me for months before I find its mate. I connect with the Japanese ceramic method and philosophy Kintsukuroi, which treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object. Rather than the something to disguise, the imperfections of an object adds to its allure, making it more beautiful for having been broken. Surrounded by mental illness and a dysfunctional social structure I subscribe to the truth that everyone creates and lives in their own reality. I do this work to understand myself and what drives me as a caregiver. To understand that by fixing something you must also deem it as broken. I want the viewer to examine my work and their own surroundings with a sense of curiosity. What is the evidence we leave behind? What is normal?
In all its glory! Collage and Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, 10� x 21�, 2015
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Beauty is In the Eye of the Beholder, Collage, 6” x 6”, 2014
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Seat, Acrylic paint, wood, colored hot glue, yarn, threads, plastic lacing, fabrics, plexiglass, vinyl, dura-lar; 16.5” x 24.25” x 13”, 2015
LORETTA PARK MFA 3D
lorettapark.com
When is a work finished? This question is not easily answered, as my work is temporal. While some of the pieces are small, quick to make and can be held in one’s hands, my other works might continue to grow indefinitely. Each piece relishes its constant state of flux, made of combined diverse materials that are manipulated in a variety of ways. Through this generative process, I can create pieces that inhale and exhale the haptic and the optic. As the shiny and slippery plastic lacing is woven through soft, tightly braided cotton fabrics, these contrasting textures repeatedly touch each other. This allows us to see and feel the tactility of the materials. The quick gestures in my work—such as leaning against the wall, being propped up by braided fibers, and a vibrant strand of yarn attaching two details—draw bold lines that cut and connect the space that my work inhabits. I combine various craft techniques such as sewing, braiding, woodworking and painting to create works that are impractical and function-less. In doing so, I create abstract shapes that are non-representational but reference the real world. Although the forms in my work do not depict any specific ideas or items, my work is embedded with a sense of figure, especially the hand of a maker. Woven fabrics, stacked and joined wood scraps, and painted surfaces all suggest that they were touched and altered by my hands. As I manipulate my chosen materials, the small tactile and visual elements accumulate and turn into large structures. These densely detailed structures are combined with simple passage of lines, becoming at once two and three dimensional, sculptural, and durational.
Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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COLLEEN PEARCE MFA LOW RESIDENCY colleenpearceart.com
Using the ancient tools of burnt charcoal, ink, graphite, oil paint and handmade paper, I create an expansive encounter with trees, our backyards and ecology. Axis, a montage of ten monotypes grafted together at different depths, bespeaks the lush experience of climbing into a tree. Suspended from the ceiling Flux, with its vellum overlay floats, undulating and meandering through space, extending an invitation for engagement. Inspired by some of my earliest memories on our Michigan farm, climbing a favorite tree, or seeking the cool beneath a massive willow, I noticed the flutter of leaves, the shifting of light and shadow. Even the slightest movement of air creates a dance, an interplay between bough and breeze. When feeling nothing but still air, the willow whispers another story, its long delicate branches picking up the slightest movement and I see, as I had not seen before. I translate this memory as I embrace the graphite’s slick slide, the soft caress of an ink soaked brush, as well as the skittering of a hand-sized chunk of charcoal to evoke the motion of a tree in the wind. No longer can we ignore the advancement of climate change and it’s devastating consequences. Hope lays in the act of embedding ourselves in reverence for the natural world. I look to the strength of the tree’s structure to turn toward courage in the face of grief. To protect it’s shallow roots the willow adapts, receiving the breeze and does not hold fast against it. I am interested in what holds us up and how we learn to let go—flow and frame, both essential.
Installation view, Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, 2015
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Axis: “Let me say to you and to myself in one breath, cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil.” Henry David Thoreau (Top) Flux: “It takes two to speak the truth- one to speak and the other to hear it.” Henry David Thoreau (Bottom)
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the stitches stopped themselves, 2016
DIANA JEAN PUGLISI MFA 2D
www.dianapuglisi.com My work studies the metaphorical and visual delineation of presence and absence. Currently, I am focused on tulle because of its materiality and cultural constructs. The delicate and porous material interacts with architecture by draping on, off, and out of walls. The forms are surrogates for the body and adopt the language of clothing. They veil and fragment space as they disappear and reappear in response to the viewer’s body moving around them. The tulle allows air and light to pass through. The gendered material is worn during various ceremonial events throughout a woman’s life: baptisms, dance recitals, communions, proms, weddings, and funerals. I arrived at these works at least in part as an investigation of my personal history and my grandmothers’ jobs; one was a lace maker in 1940s Croatia and the other a seamstress in New York. Those concerns expanded to include the history of sewing, domestic female rituals, memory, and the phenomenology of space.
Installation view, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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EDUARDO L. RIVERA MFA PHOTOGRAPHY www.EduardoLRivera.com
Almost Out Of Sky Installation, Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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Nightly News, Archival Pigment Print, 24” X 30”, 2016
Trummelbach Träumen, Walnut ink, watercolor and salt on paper, 37” x 30”, 2014
CLARA JANE SCHUSTER MFA LOW RESIDENCY
Influenced by the rhythms of the environment, the focus of my artwork is landforms. I am fascinated with geologic formations and processes. IInspiration is drawn from the microscale- mineral collections, geodes; and macroscale- glaciers and mountain ranges in Norway, Switzerland and Austria. Rather than documenting geological terrain, I create images by a method that echoes geological processes of erosion and sedimentation. Marks transform the surface of the material, like water transforming the terrain of the landscape. The elements of earth and erosion: water, stones and clay, in addition to salt and pigment, are used to form the image upon the surface. I embrace entropy; beginning by loosely forming the image, then allowing space for chance to intervene with the topography. These images reveal the rhythms and structures in the natural world. A heightened awareness and appreciation of the environment is evoked by condensing it to a human scale and time frame, an expression of intimate immensity.
Installation view, Arnheim Gallery, 2015
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WILL SUGLIA MFA 2D
Picnic series, (installation views), Bakalar & Paine Galleries, 2016
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I Ko hondun waadata (what will you do)? Wood Palettes and Pulverized Recycled Crayon, 2014-2015 (Top) Detail of Ko jeelu yettata (how much will you take)? Wood Palettes, Unused Popcorn, and Recycled Crayon, 2014-2015 (Bottom)
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STEVE SULLIVAN MFA LOW RESIDENCY bysully.com
What are the common and uncommon practices of two labor-intensive communities centered on food production: a farming village in Senegal, West Africa, and a corporate chain restaurant in an East Coast city of the US? Materials from the restaurant are laboriously measured, quantified, and arranged to evoke the crops, soil, and landscape of the Senegalese farming culture. How does one reconcile the enormous gulf of production, value, and use between such different cultures, places, and producers? I began with materials destined for a landfill, collected daily from my job as a waiter. The two-meter square hanging Plexiglass pieces organize unused popcorn, cashed out checks, and my own order notes. Sorted, mounded, and designed restaurant waste are repurposed to evoke the village market and gardening environment. These include pulverized and melted crayons from kid’s menus, one-time use K-cup coffee saved in small-portion prep bags, and unused popcorn. I spent three years in the village of KÊkÊressi in Senegal as a sustainable agriculture Peace Corps Volunteer. I was tasked with weighing the harvest to determine the crops overall yield, and thus its value to the village, through the measure of a two-meter square. Similar strategies are used in my creative practice in which the dimensions of found materials are carefully considered for their size, quantity, and arrangement, emphasizing the labor inherent in the production of food. Whether alluding to the feel of the village, its marketplace, and the agricultural environment as I remember them, or the daily work of being a server with all its emphasis on speed and quantity, resulting in carelessness about waste, these pieces challenge our understanding of the hidden world of food production. Through this installation, waste materials transform to address abundance, attempting to tell, not just my story, but a human story of value and preciousness.
The Value Series (installation view), 2015
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MORGEN VAN VORST MFA PHOTOGRAPHY morgenvanvorst.com
Approach of the Horizon is a photographic allegory examining one girl’s coming of age in an uncertain landscape—a place set back from culture, in the shadowy territory of the American woods. Part real, part imagined, it offers entrée into the cosmology of a young person facing an unknowable future. Juxtaposing straight photographs with multiple exposures that suggest an unsettled environment, these pictures yield a visual myth about personal transformation.
Above, 2016
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Rising, 2016
Cube, 2016
CHRISTINA HUILAN WANG MFA PHOTOGRAPHY oeildeperdix.blogspot.com “The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.” —Sun Ra Why space? What is the inverse of music? Does it sound like the sea? Does it sound like a stone freezing? How do you deepen perception? And how do you make that deepening an act of humility and generosity that isn’t just taking? What is something whose alienness shares your alienness? How do you preserve ‘honesty’ without letting it ossify to become something brittle like ‘truth’?
Azurite, 2015
What shape is consciousness? A prism? A tetrahedral? A sphere? Is there anything more important than to create spaces where people can feel safe and honest enough to try to to be themselves? Instinctively, my photographic eye has always responded to variance in space: space as location, as cosmos, as science fiction; space that contorts the metaphysical realm; the driving amoebic force of space which inexplicably shapes consciousness. To approach space is then an exercise in generating resistive sites; cultivating difference and multiplicity. My work draws upon space as the raw material with which to construct other realities and render the constricting forces of surviving irrelevant, if only briefly. The pictures I make are meant to hold space outside of the persistent state of conflagration our world is in. They are meant to disrupt our ability to name things; to quantify, qualify, commodify. Disrupt, even, the body’s own sense of itself, in order to create a space that seeps from within. The tradition of art making I participate in is a radical one; one that engages not in just a mirroring of our hard realities, but in creating alternatives where we have the possibility to be present. To be.
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STEPHANIE WAGNER MFA LOW RESIDENCY stephaniewagnersincrementalshaping.org
Memories are always the-memory-of-a-memory-of-a-memory. From their initial encoding, memories are continually altered from past-lived experiences on through to a present day state of recollection. Memory replays are never quite identical to the original event, and are influenced by the circumstances involved the moment they are evoked. Therefore, even though they are believed with fervor, memories are always false. In my art, memories are a medium together with multitudes of collected materials that are incorporated into each performance art video. Each work is, at once, a combination of autobiographical and borrowed memories gestured through the characterized embodiment of a woman along with her proverbial objects, and indications of space, place and time. Every portrayal uniquely grapples with its own issues: loss inside labor, joy and cognitive decline, love amidst dysfunction, refusal of cultural/societal expectations, insistence upon personal beliefs, and the self-reflexive desire to achieve individuality in spite of influential recollections and familial histories. As ‘memory objects’, performances projected on the screen operate as interiorized spaces wherein memories unfold in such a manner that each story leans toward what is one of numerous potential iterations, depending on who might recount it. We understand that specific objects often trigger memories of particular people, places, circumstances, and emotions, as well as ignite the senses. Through embodied personages, illustrated environments and evocative objects, my art practice investigates where self-identity and the interstices of multiple histories exist when memory falters, or is discovered to be faulted.
Hettie, performance video still, 2015
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Mrs. Payne: Gone Fishing, performance video still, 2015 (Top) Mrs. Coxey: Kwitcherbelliakin, performance video still, 2015 (Botton)
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Hooves, Dig, Dwell, 2015
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SARA WICHTERMAN MFA LOW RESIDENCY sarawichterman.com
Harsh, unsettling, scraping, digging, clanking. Singed fur peeks out from a black curtain. Rocky protuberances drape from the ceiling and shoes scrape against the gritty uneven floor as you enter the confined, dark, and otherworldly space. Scraps of decrepit fur trail along the wall leading into three vignettes. A hooved woman swats, rolls, plays, and cradles a crystal ball in her den. Larger in an aura of blue light, the hooved lady incessantly and repetitively digs into snow and rocks. Elongated headless beings dwell, loom, and scurry against a basement’s cavernous wall. The three looped, short, grainy, mysterious, awkward, disturbing videos consist of personal, private performances captured on a low-quality point and shoot camera. Enigmatically compelled, my body repeats monotonous actions in the exotic wilderness of suburbia. Dark archetypes dwelling within me emerge as I unleash from my mere civilized human existence. Notions of human superiority lead to selfish, destructive behaviors and create a false sense of entitlement to justify abuse and disregard of other living beings and all facets of nature. I mourn the loss of inherent connection between humans and all other life forms, especially animals. I am a being: an animal, a human, a female, a monster, a creature.
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