Master of Fine Arts Students



 


 


 


 

 

Scott L. Dickson
 
"I constantly drift back and forth between states of pessimism and optimism. These contradictory thoughts impede upon my daily life, thick and thin. I am unconsciously pessimistic, but consciously optimistic. In my work I behave this same way by seeking out contradictions and varying levels of outlook that are available in everything. I do this with the intension of obtaining the range of an idea, and to reflect its opportunities of understanding.
 
The works on paper in this series grow outwards in an organic fashion. Units expand off each other as well as repeat in flowing rows until a whole is achieved. The surfaces behave much like the shore of an ocean—waves build then crash and retreat back to the single sheet of water, whereas the paper is collaged, initially appearing multi-layered, but then compressed because it has been fitted and inlaid to be single sheet of paper."

 

 


 


 


 


 

Caitlin Magner

"I enter into pre-existing situations and adopt previously fabricated structures to use as frameworks to re-evolve from. This allows for a multiplication of contexts and meanings to occur and unfold. A material in its most singular state has the capability to embody a multitude of behaviors. In attempting to cultivate these versatilities in each material, my work forms.

I make accommodations for the materials I use, which carves out the capability for the materials’ flexibilities to cater to my actions. I try to facilitate opportunities where I can have a reciprocal relationship with my materials and therefore with the work that has collected. My goal is to always be in a parallel plane with my objects and materials and work alongside them.

The ideas that spark from myself are influenced by the object(s) at hand. The formal decisions do not require premeditated thought; they are second-hand. I react to what is in front of me, and the reactions begin to accumulate into a rationale. The rationale of how all of the given elements interact within their community composes and invents itself."

 


 


 


 


 

 

Rodney Thoms
 
"A piece of my art may consist of conditions that are fully available prior to my acknowledgement of, or intervention upon, them. In sharing this type of experience, I choose to amplify it just enough, so that it might be recognized and reanimated. This amplification serves not only to indicate it as an art experience, but also to compensate for any gap between the artist’s initial observation and the rediscovered event."

 

 


 


 


 


 

 

Daniel O'Conner
 
"Painting is a task taken on for reasons often guised in the reputation that precedes it. The painter as a fictitious character collides regularly with the sheer practice of applying paint to a surface. I am a student, uninterested in arriving at the place of an artist and in doing so establish in myself an insatiable need for discovery. To say that paintings are made simply to understand the distinctiveness of my vision would not be giving the act enough tribute. It is not my hair shirt, but it is a penance. The humility a painter should feel encountering nature is overwhelming and requires a rigor of looking that would leave the strongest of will fatigued. Nature begets the concentration of the painter and as a reward offers him exhaustion."

 

 


 


 


 


 

 

Sarah Jackson-Moore
 
"I do not use a specific medium. I am not a painter or a drawer or a sculptor or an installation artist. I use the medium that will generate my idea. The surface quality of paintings, drawings and three-dimensional pieces is very important to me. The velvet quality of thick, black charcoal or the chalkiness of thinned gesso brushed on old wood or a piece of blond paper taped to a white wall—these things are crucial in my image-making, perhaps more important than the image itself.
 
My current work is derived from my having lived in 24 houses and my personal search for a habitat. I am resurrecting memories of these places as well as playing with artifacts from my childhood to create a visual diary. I am sifting through these houses, memories and toys and trying to understand what they mean to me and what my experiences might mean to someone else."

 

 


 


 


 


 

 

Joseph Lozano
 
"Imagine an entire ocean in a glass of water.
 
Through painting-installations, I create a world of abstract objects based on narratives of water and our relationship to it. These stories are about striving toward an unreachable goal and the beautiful brokenness that becomes the purpose of the journey: encountering the loneliness inherent in the feeling of awe, the wonder inherent in the banal and the presence inherent in a void.
 
In the space between the visceral painted surface and the constructed image, in the potentiality of a blank sheet of paper, in the edit between frames of a video or in the dialogue between romantic and conceptual practices, in the “Between” that separates memory and experience . . . this is the glass where I imagine—and re-imagine—my ocean."

 

 


 


 


 


 

 

Jennifer Warpole
 
"Painting is a searching process for me. In searching, I paint intuitively and almost desperately. I try one mark, then another and then another. Each gesture is more drastic, more desperate than the last. Eventually I stumble onto a rightness. I do not know how to contrive a rightness or even how to explain it. I am only able to recognize it when it occurs accidentally. In relying on accidents, the only thing I need to know is how to recognize rightness and then how to stop. Once I have found this, I now devote the rest of the painting to supporting this rightness."

 

 


 


 


 


 

 

Kirsten Fisher
 
"Assigning new uses and meanings to found and recycled materials, I make objects that play with their relationship to each other and with their relationship to the wall. I create conversations that are frequently subtle, existing singularly within an object, yet drawing on the dynamic of multiple objects to complete the narrative."

 

 


 


 


 


 

Olive Thomas
 
I have always had an extreme love/hate relationship with fashion magazines. Everything from the shiny pages to the bright colors, the balanced and brilliant layouts, is designed to entice the consumer. To the unaware, they can create emotional unrest and anxiety by dictating an idealized identity. Quite commonly, the authoritative voice within these magazines, created by economic commerce and trend, can end up determining the acceptable material forms of personal distinction. That is the quintessential advertising tactic that we have become desensitized to, the one that decides the category in which we belong. It is for the love of these magazines that they are the foundation for this body of work. But it is my own inner conflict that forces me to deface, deconstruct, and recreate them as I want to see them.