2013 M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition Catalog

HENRY R ADFORD HOPE SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
MFA CATALOG ����
HENRY R ADFORD HOPE SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
MFA CATALOG ����
INTRODUCTION
How does one transpose a memory into tangible material? How
can one transform a philosophy into an object? How does an artist
communicate through paint, clay, ink, wood, thread? Memory is a remarkably fickle thing. It’s inconstant and
flickering. A memory can be lost, suppressed, and then, in an
instant, it surges forth into the clarity of consciousness. An image, a
song, a photograph, a place can trigger a memory and its attendant
emotions; in this way, it seems memory and objects are inextricably
tied. They are reliant on each other—the outside world and its inner
reflection. Those elements of the outside world—the refrain of that
song, the smell of that perfume—that instigate memories and flood
us with feeling, are particular to us and yet are often insignificant to
others. Art often functions in the same way; it can invoke that flash of
recognition. In becoming an artwork, the object is invested with
meaning, emotion, ideas, memories. Artists create objects, images,
impressions, or spaces that affect the viewer with the force of such
an object of significance. To communicate something, specific or
ambiguous, through material means. Becoming material, becoming
memory.
This class of graduating Masters of Fine Art suffered an
incalculable loss when two of their classmates, Jason Harper
and Aidan Schapera, suddenly passed away over the winter
break. We’re left wondering, can the objects these two artists left
behind adequately communicate who they were? Or must our
memories bridge that gap? We remember Aidan Schapera had the sharpest wit, an articulate,
sometimes acerbic tongue, a critical mind, and yet a penetrating
honesty that was deeply insightful and supportive. We remember
that Jason Harper was an endless experimenter, an unstoppable
tester, an artist who took his materials to the limit, as well as a
compassionate mentor and teacher. Schapera’s paintings and
Harper’s ceramic works give us insight into their practice and
process, and help to form a picture, a sense, however incomplete, of
who they were and what they tried to communicate.
There’s always a sense of inadequacy with words and with objects to
convey something abstract, profound, deep. But what else are we left
with? We always strive to form these raw materials into something
that communicates. We try to convey meaning through words and
pictures. There’s something cathartic about these attempts—the
act of pushing and pulling paint, chiseling wood, winding thread.
Perhaps no other vocation emphasizes the primacy of
communication more than that of graphic design. Yet in the
transmission of a clear and legible message the creator is often
obscured. In discussing James Yount’s work, we spoke of his tenure
at an advertising agency, and how one’s identity is surrendered in
the effort to convey someone else’s message. As an MFA, Yount
has been afforded the time and freedom to discover and reveal
himself through his work, to take chances, to explore, and find
what serendipity can bring. In his thesis work, Yount tackles one
of the most abstract concepts possible—the unknown—through
storytelling, that time-honored device for communication. When I spoke to Anne Fiala in her metalsmithing studio, she
explained to me that each of her brooches represented particular
moments, fond memories. Not only did each of her wearable
sculptures correspond to a personal memory, but each material
represented a particular emotion or feeling. How did these
brooches communicate these memories to the viewer, I wondered;
could they really speak for themselves? Fiala, though, accepts that
the viewer may not understand her brooches in the same way that
she does. For her the making is what’s important; the materials and
the process of forming them, linking them, crafting them, is how
she works through and understands memory and emotion.
Jaclyn Wright’s photographs express particular moments
and memories as well—sometimes recreated and manipulated,
sometimes spontaneous. Artifacts and fragments of herself
compose these various self-portraits, seen, paradoxically, through
the guise of a third person. The presence of mirrors, windows
and screens in these photographs seem to propose the frailty of
memory, the impossibility of truly re-experiencing these moments
once they’ve passed.
Linda Anderson’s paintings are likewise somehow incomplete, and
in that incompleteness lies a more faithful rendition of what memory
may be like. Architecture and interior spaces are deconstructed
and fragmented in her paintings, revealing secret places, hidden
connections, the wavering impressions of the imaginary, the pliancy
of the psyche. Boundaries dissolve between figure and space,
interior and exterior, the mind and the outside world.
Aimee Denault’s whispery lithographs present multiple layers of
perspective. Derived from photographs from different generations
of her family, faces both stern and gracious gaze out from behind
and beneath each other in composite portraits. It’s compelling to
think of the transference of materials: from an old photograph,
to a photocopy, onto the heavy lithographic stone, and finally
transposed onto a few sheets of nearly transparent, fragile, gauzy
paper. It’s almost as if the process embodies the passing of
generations. The papers are unframed, anchored at the top corners
by a couple thin nails, leaving the paper free to waft, ghost-like, as
the viewer passes by.
The viewer plays an important role in the work of printmaker
Rosalie López: on entering into the center of an altar installation,
flanked on both sides with transparent, colorless sheets of papel
picado, the viewer’s shadow is cast on the wall in perfect placement
with the surrounding altar. López’s work explores expressions of
loss and memory—before arriving at Indiana University she lost her
brother, and while in school her mother passed away—incorporating
traditional forms derived from her Chicano heritage, the landscape
of South Los Angeles, and the language of martyrdom and
sainthood. While she draws from the personal, the altar provides a
space for all viewers to project their own feelings of loss, and hope.
paint of a warm, bright, pastel palette—as if the materials’ inherent
griminess is falsely rejuvenated with a lick of paint. Colored lights
add an element of interplay; as viewers pass by each structure,
different colors are revealed in the cast shadows.
Nicole Simpkins also envelops the viewer in an immersive
environment. Her practice, in fact, is immersive: she is
simultaneously a printmaker, performance artist, costume-maker,
bookmaker and poet. This multi-faceted practice—involving
hand-made books, wrappings, animal bones, prints on fabric—gives
form to the interweavings of a personal mythology, the characters
of which she inhabits in her performances. Her art and poetry
revolve around themes of hysteria, loss, war, fear, shelter, and death,
drawing the viewer and reader in with visual, tactile, and narrative
elements.
Painter Daniel Mrva experiments with color and structure in his
sculptural paintings. The traditional support of stretched canvas is
eschewed in favor of unexpected shapes built from fresco on panel,
then coated with resin. Beneath the glossy glaze of the resin, the
fresco’s chalky, almost geological texture is revealed. These thick
fresco panels jut and lurch into the viewer’s space, while their versos,
emblazoned with bright colors, cast beautiful shadowy glows on the
walls behind them.
Suzanne Wyss’ installations extend beyond the boundaries of
sculpture, taking over spaces with masses of raw materials—felt,
thread, wood, canvas, stones. These industrial materials become
like organic forms; Wyss pushes the boundaries of her materials, yet
allows their natural properties to take over. They accumulate and
grow.
Textiles artist Jenna Jacobs’ explorations of form result from
her use of materials, specifically tubular beads strung together
in regular patterns of triangles, hexagons and pentagons. Her
constructions reveal the most essential components of form—
line, shape, plane—yet the shapes that occur are anything but
unsurprising when manipulated with the hands or elegantly hung on
the wall. Form, balance, color and materials play pivotal roles in the work
of ceramics artist Bill Pariso. The material possibilities of clay
are explored through various textures and glazes, emphasizing
the tactile nature of the substance. His forms incorporate natural
materials as well as salvaged building materials, then are coated with
Jonathan Van Tassel’s paintings, which take months to complete,
are formed in dialogue between author, paint, and the various
interlopers of chemicals and turpentine. Van Tassel then introduces
anthropomorphic, sensual forms over the layers of distressed
paint. With his fleshy, carnal color palette the canvas takes on
the quality of skin—blemished, cratered, sometimes bloody, and
denoting disease, destruction, violence and sex.
From still photographs to moving video, Rose Werr explores the
body in flux and its relationship to space and objects. Her work
is composed in layers, both literal (in the digital programs she
uses) and metaphorical, in foldings and unfoldings. Her videos
deconstruct, distort or obscure the body through digital means,
causing the viewer to understand his or her own body differently,
through disorientation, alienation, and objectification.
Peter Kenar uses bodily fluids, namely blood, to invest his
sculptures with an aura of the supernatural and the sacred. His
sculptures, housed in a burnt wood structure, are roughly chiseled
from wood in the manner of Eastern European folk woodcarvings,
then covered with a dark patina of his own blood, extracted in
a ritualistic fashion. The fascination with blood, ritual, and pain
is drawn from the artist’s love/hate relationship with his Polish
Catholic upbringing, a context of idols, relics, mysticism, blind
adoration and the trance-like spectacle of the liturgy. Alison Stinely engages with themes of disappointment, fear, and
loneliness in her paintings, albeit in a rather humorous, tongue-incheek way. A self-portrait as a child sporting a brown scapular obtained
in Catholic school shows an expression of gleeful, ignorant bliss, before
the myth of the promise of the scapular became apparent. Each
painting, rendered in a palette of sickly greens and reds, expresses
an allegory of unfulfilled promises and unrewarded faith.
The sculptures of William Fillmore may also elicit a laugh in their
irreverent referencing of pop culture, yet they also communicate
the tensions between the expectations of society and primal
urges. These figures are composed of unexpected combinations
of allusions as well as materials: Roman and Norse mythological
figures are referenced as effortlessly as children’s cartoon
characters like Transformers and Care Bears; and ceramics, bronze,
plaster, and wax are incorporated together in strange hybrids.
The relationships between figures, environments, space, and art
history is what interests printmaker Josh McNolty. Inspired by
Grecian vases, African art and early art history, McNolty’s prints
picture animals, such as horses, tigers and elephants, encountering
each other in scenarios ranging from exotic landscapes to life-anddeath struggles.
Thomas Agran’s paintings, too, focus on animals, yet they are more
concerned with their relationship to the landscape, to agriculture,
to wildness or cultivation. A rafter of wild turkeys emerges from
a forest; many herds of cows cluster in paddocks stretching into
the distance. Agran’s paintings find an austere beauty in the
rationalization and ordering of nature, yet the muted, gloomy color
palette and blurred details imply the large-scale mismanagement of
the rural landscape.
In Leah Miller-Freeman’s paintings, mattresses accumulate,
multiply, stack, cover, and hide; figures are precariously perched
atop or emerge from below these masses of mattresses. An
everyday object that is used daily in intimate situations of slumber
or sex, yet hidden away, Miller-Freeman sees the mattress as a
metaphor for everyday battles and individual, yet shared, struggles.
The departure point for Stacia McKeever’s paintings is the
ambiguous line between pain and pleasure. The viewer acts
as a voyeur spying on the figures in the paintings, who engage
in inscrutable yet sexually charged activities. The spaces they
inhabit are equally as inscrutable: dark and dingy with improbable
perspectives. Incorporating three-dimensional elements, each
painting becomes a construction: separate panels of mylar washed
with ink and paint are tacked on as needed, making more space,
more room on which we can project our own experiences, our own
ambiguous and inconstant memories.
In the hands of an artist, materials become vehicles for meaning,
become manifest objects that speak of dreams, memories, theories,
philosophies. Yet just as shared memories differ wildly between
people, the process of making and the resultant objects—these
paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, prints—remain
open, flickering, unfixed. In these spaces, between artist and viewer,
between making and looking, between intention and interpretation,
between memory and material, we communicate meaning, however
incomplete.
Natalie Hegert completed the MA program in art history and
theory at Hunter College, New York, where her primary focus was
on contemporary art, photography, and graffiti and street art. Her
master’s thesis chronicled the first instances of exhibitions of graffiti
art in commercial galleries in New York City from the early 1970s to
the late 1980s. Natalie is the editor-in-chief at ArtSlant and serves as
the curatorial director for the public art organization Your Art Here.
THOMAS F. AGRAN
MFA Painting
thomasagran.com
I am interested in torn landscapes. An industrialized agricultural
landscape typically viewed as seductively bucolic actually embodies
ponderous externalities of cost. These environmental, political,
and social ramifications of land-use are difficult to see, but knowing
about them creates a paradigm under which I try to see the
landscape for all its hidden burdens. I think of the Midwestern landscape as oceanic. Vast, beautiful,
and even serene from a distance, oceans become a violent show
of force and momentum in proximity. In the paintings, careful
gradations and calm atmospheric moments disintegrate into violent
and aggressive handling on closer inspection. I try to make pieces
that transcend the ingrained reaction to our landscape as solely
pastoral, pointing the viewer towards the darker ramifications of an
industrialized agriculture that defines our region.
1. Kansas Tidal, 11.5 x 15,� oil, acrylic, spray paint, and cut paper on panel
2. Iowa Washout, 7 x 8,� acrylic and spray paint on panel
3. Great Bend, 28 x 48,� acrylic, spray paint, colored pencil, charcoal,
pastel, and cut paper on panel
LINDA E. ANDERSON
MFA Painting
www.lindaeanderson.com
I am interested in exploring what happens when distance surfaces
between layers of experience. Memory, sentiment, and reality
seamlessly coexist until something happens to fracture them. I build
up and erode imagery through processes in painting that resemble
recollection and forgetting, and allow incongruent versions to
compete. The house is an image that has power in my imagination as a
container of my memory and experience of self. Having secrets
and places to contain them is an innate human impulse, a way of
anchoring the psyche to the world, perhaps to sooth a primal fear
that inner and outer experience might be in danger of drifting
too far apart. In my paintings, the fragmented interior spaces feel
larger than what the exterior house could contain. The structure
of memory, rather than how a place is monumentally perceived,
provides the logic for composing the work. 1. Recurrence, 41 x 48,� oil and mylar on panel
2. Homegrown, 48 x 34,� oil on panel
AIMEE DENAULT
MFA Printmaking
It is often remarked, “History repeats itself.” The observation
alludes to vast insight, but often goes without explanation.
To gain a more profound understanding of the course of history as
it shapes and relates to myself, I began to create artwork inspired
by my ancestry. Two generations ago my grandparents immigrated
to the US, from Eastern Europe, lured by the promise of freedom
and opportunity, to escape their religious and class suppression and
violence. My work explores their emotional/psychological state of
mind (e.g. displacement, oppression, uncertainty, fear, etc) and the
formative context which influenced my forbears’ decision to leave
their homeland, at great risk, leaving familiar community, to pursue
the potential of a radical and idealistic social order. Using layers to separate the “portraits” or symbols that reference
my family and the ideas and metaphors related to their lives, I
portray their relationships and the deep embrace of the unknown
and how they form their new life.
1. Connecting Generations, lithography (portraits), screen print
2. Sisters, lithography and relief (portraits), screen print
ANNE FIALA
MFA Metalsmithing & Jewelry Design
annemfiala.com
In my work I seek to understand emotion and memory through
materials and adornment. Working instinctively, I recreate the
tangible and intangible details from my past; my grandmother’s
rosary, a line in a song. As these fragments come together
into one composition, I remember the story and emotion in a
new way. Though often melancholic, I have fondness for these
memories and emotions and with that a desire to keep them. In
these compositions they are beautiful and inviting.
1. Whatever Makes A Memory: Urban Jam, wood, steel, silver, paint
2. Keeping My Regrets, wood, steel, twine, paint
3. Whatever Makes A Memory: Saturday Mornings (with detail),
steel, silver, glass beads
WILLIAM FILLMORE
MFA Sculpture
williamfillmoresculpture.com
My current body of work deciphers my philosophical and cultural
origins through the reinterpretation of classically depicted
mythological figures. By utilizing traditional sculpture techniques and
materials, I repurpose and combine historic mythological
symbols with contemporary popular references to make my own
iconographic hybrids, which act as cultural and philosophical selfportraits. The heroes and villains from history and my early formative
narrative experiences represent more than just my mythological
and cultural identity; they are ancestors in the lineage of the human
metanarrative. I found my philosophical compass in the television
screen and in the pages of books. Saturday morning and weekday
afternoon cartoons became part of my childhood ritual. These stories
and characters weren’t simply entertainment; they provided a cultural
root for my brother and I. By creating these mythological crossovers
and bringing these historic and modern story lines together I
am able to tap into the dense network of cultural roots from my
personal evolution, and decode my simultaneously universal and
intensely personal understanding about what it means to be human.
The process of researching and creating my iconographic
hybrids provides me with a cathartic and tactile modality, which
reciprocates a profound understanding of my personal mythos and
cultural identity. The process of creating these concrete extensions
of my personal philosophy offers me a means of navigation
between my primal urges and my civilized duties, and I hope they
will eventually offer a path towards knowing my own enlightenment. 1. Swing Shift, stoneware, bronze, steel
2. Cobra, detail
3. Cobra, stoneware, bronze, wax
JASON HARPER
MFA Ceramics
Discovery is at the core of my artistic practice. Much of what I create
could be seen as small experiments, many of which fail. While I give a lot
of myself to the process of art making, I maintain a safe distance because
in using my methods, there is so much room for tragedy. Because of
this, it is necessary to maintain a strict process in order to have results
worth sharing. All of my work goes through some sort of transformation
as a response to heat work of the kiln, which results in my art having the
distinctive trait of being destroyed in order to become new.
The art work I am attracted to has a lack of physical evidence of the
making process. When an ordered production cannot be recognized
a mystery arises in the physical qualities of the work. By taking away
the visible signs of production, concentration on the form itself is
heightened. Inversely the fact that the production is hidden is an
irritant to those who need to decode the process. This is a tension I
focus on when viewing work that fits in this category and it is something
I innately put into my art.
A large part of my interest in process goes into pushing the boundaries
of traditional methods. Working and existing in the field of ceramics,
I resist the use of ceramic terms because every aspect of my studio
practice is atypical to conventional ceramic methods. I call my clay
bodies simply my “materials” because many of my materials don’t
act like clay at all and in many ways are closer to glaze or something
completely other in formulation. The word “clay” evokes immediacy of
touch and mark-making that is obliterated through the transformation
from heat as my materials bubble, melt, and crack. I see the kiln as
a petri dish in which I must create an environment for the event of
heat to take place. Where I differ most with ceramic artists is that
while making I have to view the form with my mind’s eye, predicting
the outcome rather than clearly seeing how the form should appear
post-firing. Discovery is in all these aspects. Opening a kiln to pull
newly transformed work out of the wreckage of supports and bedding is
always a discovery.
Excerpts compiled from Jason’s statement written in 2012
JENNA JACOBS
MFA Textiles
As an artist, my work is rooted in color and pattern. Beginning with
a polygon, I repeat it in a regular manner, which ultimately manifests
into crystalline forms that possess fluid and rigid properties. I use
my skills in beadwork and sewing to create forms from patterns and
color that result in works that invite a visual dance of spontaneous
movement.
I see that my works reference forms that have cellular or molecular
characteristics; they also exemplify basic geometric principles. I see
geometry as the essential mode of inquiry in my work. In my studio,
I am a mathematician and musician of color and form. Guided by
my curiosity, I make my work so that I may learn how shapes want to
align and what other iterations can develop from them.
1. Configuration I, hand and commercially dyed wool, adhesive
2. Smitten, hand and commercially dyed wool, adhesive
3. Smite, hand and commercially dyed wool, adhesive
PETER KENAR
MFA Sculpture
My figurative representations, composed of wood, bronze and
bodily fluids, serve as a linkage of art and liturgy. The concept
behind my sculpture is inspired by a multitude of life shaping
experiences and the subconscious expressions of dreams. I often
find myself drawn to very strange settings, which are saturated
with danger and instability. I tie the roots of this behavior to my
rebellion in the Eastern European Catholic upbringing. Although
I reject the church doctrines, I remain drawn to its rituals and
traditions. Feelings caused by displacement from my Polish
Motherland have led me to develop a nostalgia and curiosity for
that which I used to be a part of. Due to this attraction, I chose to
use one of the Catholic rituals as a matrix for the development of
my own visual language and a personal narrative.
My images integrate elements of manipulated figurative studies
with mythological and religious references. Heavy influence from
religious folk woodcarvings gives my sculpture an unrefined,
honest character. The aged and worn surfaces bring an historical
appearance of a used object, an object that is functional. Upon
completion, each component receives a portion of my own blood
as a symbolic means of bringing it to life. This form of baptism
adds a layer of ritualistic creation and elevates artwork to a spiritual
status. I use a liturgical format to create a sacred space in which I
share a story of the profane.
1. After Retribution
2. Deluge
3. Choosing Thy Path
ROSALIE M. LÓPEZ
MFA Printmaking
My family heritage and South Los Angeles community have
always been a big inspiration for me. I began making artwork that
expressed the dualities of my surroundings by showing strong
family ties and a deep pride in neighborhood contrasted with the
reality of addiction and violence. My recent artwork looks to altar
and offering art forms as a way of reflecting cultural identity and
communicating the common experiences of loss survival, and
hope. I bring attention to the overlooked and under recognized to
create my own saints and martyrs from the defiant survivors and the
veteranos(as) of my experiences.
1. Ofrenda Arco
2. Ofrenda Flores
3. Altar
STACIA MCKEEVER
MFA Painting
staciamckeever.com
I often picture people having sex and fighting. I wonder what
dark underbelly might exist in the lives of strangers and friends,
making up stories to entertain myself. My paintings examine the
balance between pain and pleasure and the grey area where the
two merge into one. This interest is based on my ideas about
relationships. Those we invest deeply in and care most for end up
inflicting the most pain on us. I consider myself a voyeur, only I
am not concerned with actually spying on anyone. The controlled
stories I imagine are a way of exorcising personal experiences. The
viewer is given permission to spy with me as I introduce events from
my own life and re-examine them from different points of view,
emotional pain and physical embodiment of pain.
The paintings are graphic or violent, but in a subtle way. Figures are
pink and translucent but it is unclear why. Are they cold? Is their
skin sore, chapped, or stinging from whatever activities have taken
place? Are they real or imagined? Posing these questions allows the
paintings to remain open ended for the viewer to piece together as
they choose.
1. Desire, 7� 5� x 12� 5,� oil galkyd, ink, charcoal, light bulb, tracing
paper on mylar
2. Trace, detail, 7� x 5,� oil, galkyd, ink, charcoal, wood, found paper
on mylar
JOSHUA MCNOLTY
MFA Printmaking
This Old Rocking Horse
I drank some dirty water. Shook evil’s hand
I done some bad things, and they get easier to do. Then I wrote a Nasty Letter
And I sent it to the Lord.
I told her, don’t you dare, come and Bother me no more. Don’t you bother, tasting the water
And don’t you bother coming close to me.
Cause this old rocking horse, just nods his head
And he’s gonna rock it back and forth
The way that he always did. 1. The Birth of Africa
2. Rocking Horse
LEAH MILLER-FREEMAN
MFA Painting
Everyday objects move through our life in solidarity with our
personal struggles: we all sleep on a mattress, we each wear a hat
and we each carry a suitcase. In my paintings images of stacks, piles
and repeated objects overwhelm the composition and suggest a
baggage or history weighing down the moment. The figures are
depicted in awkward or precarious positions, meant to convey a
sense of being stuck by these accumulations. But are they really
stuck? The ponderous aspects of the work take on a lighter air when they
come together to create bizarre and fantastical narratives. By
depicting commonplace objects in whimsical interactions with
the figure, my paintings set up conflicting realities in enlightening
relationships to each other. In this way my work seeks to overcome
petty obstacles and spark a re-enchantment with the everyday.
1. Princess Problems: Dilemma, 39 x 39,� Oil on canvas
2. Princess Problems: Mattress, 39 x 39,� Oil on canvas
3. Princess Problems: Cabbage, 39 x 39,� Oil on canvas
DANIEL MRVA
MFA Painting
danielmrva.com
My work asserts the power of the author by encouraging submissive
attitudes from the viewer through the lure of beauty, material
curiosity, and illusionistic puzzle. When encountering my work, a
viewer who moves to a particular vantage point (often by kneeling
or leaning against the wall) is rewarded with an interesting color
interaction, beautiful pattern, etc. Other times, visual and material
puzzles encourage the viewer to examine more closely the painting
which juts into the viewer’s personal space. By luring the viewer in
such ways, and then highlighting the compulsive power of visual
pleasure to literally move their body, I remind the viewer of the
nature of beauty as a consensual submission to the power of some
other, in this case, myself as author of their visual experience. I argue for the cultural relevance of the late Modernist project
today, utilizing a language of phenomenology; rooted in color
field painting, minimalist sculpture, and color theory, together
with bright pop colors and materials. By using the late-Modernist
aesthetic as a starting point, I am searching for an objective position
before post-Modernism’s pluralistic evening out. This relates
directly to the project of generously compelling the viewer to points
of beauty, by apprehending their attention and their very bodies. I
argue for some objective truth, and gain evidence of that truth
through the viewer’s physical reactions. My gift to the viewer is a
generosity of visual experience that places a greater number of
objects in the world into the realm of the Beautiful.
1. Phalodnagrey, acrylic, resin, fresco on panel
2. Magentagreycadmium, acrylic, resin, fresco on panel
3. Pinkgreydnagreengrey, acrylic, resin, fresco on panel
3. Pinkvioletbluegrey, acrylic, resin, fresco on panel
BILL PARISO
MFA Ceramics
I am interested in cultivating an active viewing experience.
Specifically, how we enter into symbiotic relationships within visual
systems and how this affects us uniquely and individually. Recently
I use specific characteristics of light and shadow to fill a sculpture
environment that includes the viewer and changes with the viewer’s
interaction to this environment.
As an artist I am drawn to the potentials of inferred instability.
Ceramic’s permanent quality contrasted by the plastic nature of
found materials causes a heighted awareness of each materials
presence. Ultimately disparate components joined together are a
physical manifestation of the possibilities of interconnectedness.
This friction is achieved by non-ceramic materials tensile strength,
elasticity or fragility work alongside the friction of the viewer in
space. The viewer becomes a surface for light to harmonize with the
foreground and to discordantly contrast heightening awareness of
the system they entered.
Any place can be rich with perceptual information. Through
amalgamations of materials made and found and viewer’s
participation in environment I untangle how symbiosis prompts me
to inquire why and how an environment affects me. The smallest
bumping into the noise of our world creates opportunity for new
and unplanned connections to form.
1. Clod, porcelain, glaze, slip, casting slip, plaster, salvaged wood,
paint, found stick, RGB LED
2. Clod, detail
3. Towards the Day, porcelain, casting slip, glaze, engobe, found
stick, wood, paint, RGB LED
AIDAN SCHAPERA
MFA Painting
During the summer of 2012, I started a series of small paintings
using only black and white paint with some kind of weak blue
or sienna pigment to tint the tones warmer or cooler. Some
of these black and white projects took shape as small, frontal
portraits. These paintings were largely concerned with stillness and
static. My interests lay in determining moments for the figures to
emerge or submerge back into the atmosphere they are born from,
and in the manipulation of the kinds of optical transitions that take
place in those moments. As they developed an increasingly particular atmosphere,
the portraits began to feel less generic, and more like specific
characters with an implied history and personality, similar to the
kinds of portraits made by Flemish painters between the 15th
and 17th century, where there is something magical about the
proportions, light, and settings, yet these ingredients amount to
a sort of naturalism that maintains a powerful internal logic. The
mixture of these properties makes those works feel as though
they might be related to a fairytale. This is an idea that has begun
to inform the narrative component of my recent paintings. I
have focused on favoring female figures since they are typical
protagonists of many canonical fables. Many of the characters
we are acquainted with as children face circumstances so dire and
stakes so high that it seems unlikely that these heroines could
triumph over their obstacles unscathed from their journeys. My
current paintings are concerned with a skeptical examination of
the aftermath of a fable. I hypothesize an increasingly macabre
world inhabited by my characters years after their narratives would
traditionally be resolved in a conventional children’s tale. I wonder:
how would the scars from their experiences affect them long after
the fact? Excerpts compiled from Aidan’s statement written in 2012
NICOLE SIMPKINS
MFA Printmaking
Not Ante But Diluvian
An ark is a box in which one harbors a book concealing
the sacred. The sacred is any thing that means. An ark is a ship in
which one weathers the flood along with the books. An archive is
a house in which one keeps an ark. A house is a habit in which one
expects some structure. A structure is a method against a death. A
death is not a dearth but not necessarily a return to the earth.
A return continues along if the house is unsound. A house is too
heavy for travel. A tent is for taking a few of the things one means
to bring when one travels.
A tabernacle is a tent in which one hides one’s ark. An ark is a
box in which one is committed to keep some book concealing the
sacred. The sacred is any thing that means, and that we make
it. One is not permitted to open the ark without permission set in
place. Permission is not given by law or gotten by instrument, for
an authority can say but not see and it is very bad at reading. A
tabernacle is a tent in which one hides one’s meaning. Only
from that agreement to keep, by this can we read, even during a
flood. That is the soul.
A soul is a ship in which one weathers any weather, theoretically.
1. Followed By A Grey Dog, artist book with walnut ink drawing,
xerox transfer, leather, calf fur, emu feathers, fish bone,
upholstery cloth and stitching
2. I Am See, artist book with walnut ink drawing, xerox transfer,
engraving, found papers, canvas, leather, cotton string, rabbit fur,
vertebrae, hemp cord
3. Slumber to the Lees, performance in costume and tent, cloth
relief printed and walnut-dyed
ALISON STINELY
MFA Painting
The Catholic conditions of superstition and paranoia were instilled
in me at a young age. I wore a Brown Scapular for an entire year—
afraid to remove it while bathing lest I drowned in its absence. At
the age of seven I realized Santa Claus did not exist and never wore
the Scapular again. I have lived within many other fairytales since childhood—it is a
cyclical phenomenon. My most recent paintings display the history
of my guiding mythologies and superstitions: many of which are
simultaneously commonplace and highly personal. The characters
that fill the compositions are rendered in different modes to create
visual contrast between those who exist in my reality and the nontangible entities that may only live, or have lived, in my mind. Plot
twists are anthropomorphized and positioned in opposition of one
another. Manipulating the characters has provided an opportunity to expel
some of the muck that was created when I was lied to. They are
multifaceted self-portraits that discuss superstition—the adoption
of inane belief systems and the psychological consequences of
participation. JONATHAN VAN TASSEL
MFA Painting
I like to give the paint opportunity to outsmart me so that I am
temporarily forced out of the process. I like to catch things when they emerge, often while trying to do
something else. I then can have to pay it and the viewer back. In
a finished work the viewer occupies the place that gathers and
reconciles what is happening. They might find an invigorating psychological discomfort…happy
pangs perhaps associated with the place before thought and the
place it falls away. ROSE WERR
MFA Digital Art
rosewerr.com
Since I began making art I have been my constant medium,
most specifically how I see myself through the lens of the
camera. Photography and video allow us to see our bodies, the
site of all our sensual perception, in a way that was previously
impossible. By extending my eye to the lens and turning the lens on
myself, I become more engaged in this cyclical exchange between
perception and reflection.
We tend to think of ourselves as single contained units. I have a
body. Yet bodies move and feel and continually leave behind a trail
of gestures, contacts and previous moments, layers upon layers
of experience at once contradictory and in synch. Everything we
understand about the world is known first by our bodies; what we
see, what we hear, what we feel with every nerve end feeling its way
through the layers of our skin. By the time we begin to think about
it, we are already seeing and hearing and feeling something else.
The camera has the ability to freeze these moments, to reveal
and separate them. Video puts them back together. Through this
process I am able to recompose my own perception of my body
into layers of images familiar yet alien, moments that both reveal
and obscure the complicated and fascinating relationships between
body, camera, image and perception.
1. Insolutio, stills from video triptych
2. Song of Love, stills from video
3. Critical Mass, still from video
JACLYN WRIGHT
MFA Photography
jaclynrwright.com
I have always had a difficult time dealing with transitional moments
in life. Departing from a familiar environment often creates
discomfort, resulting in an unanticipated interaction within a new
space. My perception, in these spaces, of people and experience
is distorted by this feeling. I become preoccupied with my own
thoughts, dwelling on my perception of myself and my speculation
of others’ perception of me.
Photography allows me to suspend these moments indefinitely. It
provides an escape from internal monologue and allows me to
view myself as others might. With photography I can control the
reality of my existence in the images, even when that reality is
unrealistic. It’s impossible to remember an experience exactly
as it was and it becomes increasingly difficult to recall with the
passage of time. Photographs aid memory by providing “proof” of
the events that took place; proof I can experience even after the
moment has passed.
In this work, I am creating a type of journal or diary by piecing
together fragmented memories, experience and my place within
them. I am attempting to reconcile my exterior and interior self
through examination of these moments. I have been exploring this
reconciliation through the existentialist concept of “Other,” viewing
myself from afar. The Other explores the idea that two subjects
simultaneously experience and inhabit the same world. Only
through acknowledgment of the Other can one define oneself.
1. Forgotten Keys
2. Mutable Mirror
3. Looking In
SUZANNE WYSS
MFA Sculpture
suzannewyss.com
My work offers an escape from reality into the illogical forest of
my mind. Through large-scale sculpture and installation I create
fantasy growths, environments and encounters that overwhelm and
create space. I am often astounded by the fact that I perpetually spend my time
in man-made boxes: in a chair, at a table, in a room within a building
that rests on a plot of a block within the grid of a city. This incessant
realization drives my desire to infiltrate, appropriate and transform
living spaces with organic form. I question traditional ideals of what
is habitable space and what belongs within that space. I tickle the
idea of being a tiny creature in the depths of the forest, taking part
in the mysterious growth and destruction of the underbrush. In this
ephemeral and enchanting landscape, with its fallen trees, dense
growths and boulders, my imagination can have its way with the
world. There is great mystery within a world not made specifically
for human existence. Choosing my materials for their malleability and tactility, I turn
industrial materials into organic form. Because I see my work as
a collaborative process between my materials and myself, I strive
to develop an understanding for their desires. Coercing matter
into form, I push, pull and encourage materials to fall out of my
control. Highlighting the often-overlooked intricate interactions
of nature, my work is built to invoke curiosity of place through the
experience of precarious landscapes.
1. Shed, detail
2. Astray, 4 x 3 x 4,� industrial felt, wood, stone, concrete, thread
3. Shed, 3 x 8 x 12,� latex, fabric, dirt, wood, lighting components
JAMES YOUNT
MFA Graphic Design
While I might classify myself as a graphic designer to avoid
confusion, in reality I consider myself to be at some multi-point
intersection of a number of disciplines—graphic designer,
illustrator, architect, industrial designer/constructor, author and
storyteller. I’ve learned that a variety of specializations furnish
an artist with opportunities that might not otherwise be afforded
to him. My foundations in architecture and precise, technical
compositions reveal themselves in my attention to detail, craft, and
my sensitivity to the relationship between form and content. My
industrial design experience informs my considerations of
audience interface and tactile response. The infusion of my analog
illustrations or letterpress work into a digital piece can deepen
the level of audience engagement. As an individual with a strong
sense of memory and sentimentality with an interest in history, I’m
frequently drawn to projects that can provide an emotional frame
of reference or simply inform an audience about a place in time in a
compelling, immersive manner.
This multi-modal ethos recalls Modernist principles, yet suits
the present-day. The method enables one to more efficiently
synthesize and simplify the high degrees of variability in design
while effectively channeling the complex requirements of the 21st
century’s audience.
1. Indiana Bookplates
2. Crate & Barrel Eames Collection
3. Indianan Avis
���� MFA THESIS EXHIBITIONS
SUPPORT FOR THE CATALOG PROVIDED BY
GRUNWALD GALLERY
Grunwald Gallery
1201 E 7th Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
MARCH ��–APRIL �
APRIL �–��
APRIL ��–MAY �
Gallery Talks: Friday, March 29, 12:00 pm
Reception: Friday, March 29, 6:00–8:00 pm
Gallery Talks: Friday, April 12, 12:00 pm
Reception: Friday, April 12, 6:00–8:00 pm
Gallery Talks: Friday, April 26, 12:00 pm
Reception: Friday, April 26, 6:00–8:00 pm
Anne Fiala, Metalsmithing & Jewelry Design
Nicole Simpkins, Printmaking
Thomas Agran, Painting
Bill Pariso, Ceramics
Jason Harper, Ceramics
Jenna Jacobs, Textiles
Linda Anderson, Painting
Stacia McKeever, Painting
Peter Kenar, Sculpture
Suzanne Wyss, Sculpture
Aimee Denault, Printmaking
Leah Miller-Freeman, Painting
Jonathan Van Tassel, Painting
Rose Werr, Digital Art
Rosalie López, Printmaking
Master of Fine Arts Organization
Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts
Friends of Art Bookstore
The IUSA Funding Board
Pygmalion’s Art Supplies
IU Auditorium
The Comedy Attic
The Bishop Bar
Atlas Ballroom
Landlocked Records
Vega Stylista’s Foxhole
Panic Strikes a Chord
Sweet Retreat
The High Planes
APRIL �–��
APRIL ��–MAY �
Gallery Talks: Friday, April 12, 6:00 pm
Reception: Friday, April 12, 6:00–8:00 pm
Gallery Talks: Friday, April 26, 6:00 pm
Reception: Friday, April 26, 6:00–8:00 pm
Jaclyn Wright, Photography
Daniel Mrva, Painting
Aidan Shapera, Painting
William Fillmore, Sculpture
Alison Stinely, Painting
James Yount, Graphic Design
Joshua McNolty, Printmaking
MASTER OF FINE ARTS ORGANIZATION
Officers
President: Linda Anderson
Vice President: Rose Werr
Treasurer: Leah Miller-Freeman
Secretary: Josh McNolty
Board Members
Publicity Coordinator: Alison Stinely
Auction Coordinator: Suzanne Wyss
CONTACT
The Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts offers Masters of Fine Arts
programs in Ceramics, Digital Art, Graphic Design, Metalsmithing and Jewelry
Design, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Textiles. Contact
the Graduate Services Coordinator at sofagrad@indiana.edu or 812-855-0188 for
more information, or visit us online at www.indiana.edu/~finaweb.
IU ART MUSEUM
IU Art Museum
1133 E 7th Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
The Master of Fine Arts Organization would like to thank the faculty and Paul
Brown, Director, Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, Indiana University,
for sponsorship of this catalog.
THE FRIENDS OF ART
Founded in 1965, the Friends of Art supports the programs of the Indiana
University School of Fine Arts and the IU Art Museum. Funds from friends of
Art activities and profits from the Friends of Art Bookshop provide scholarships,
fellowships, and travel grants to assist promising Studio and Art History students
in their training and education. For more information about Friends of Art membership or contributions to FoA
scholarship funding, contact the Friends of Art at:
812-855-5300
foart@indiana.edu
www.fa.indiana.edu/foart
PRODUCTION NOTES
The 2013 Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts MFA Catalog was printed
by World Arts in Spencer, IN, on Creator Silk 80 lb Text and Curious Metallics
Cover. Design by Michelle Winchell. Type set in Verlag by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
www.michellewinchell.com
Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts
1201 E 7th Street, Room 123
Bloomington, IN 47405-7509