UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
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UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
UMASS AMHERST
MFA STUDIO ARTS GRADUATE CANDIDATES 2012 / 2013 / 2014 2.
Foreword by Mario Ontiveros
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Katie Baker
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Courtney Cullen
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Chad Seelig
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Theresa Antonellis
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John Michael Byrd
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Ariel Lavery
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Joe Morelli
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Lauren Pleveich
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Caroline Valites
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Nour Bishouty
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Lauren Kohne
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Priya Nadkarni
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Nathan Schiel UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
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FOREWORD Mario Ontiveros, Assistant Professor Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History
This Brochure and the Open Studios project developed from an expressed interest by the Student Association of Graduate Artists (SAGA) to draw further attention to UMass Amherst as an art center, to highlight student cultural production happening within and on our campus, and to reach audiences beyond the Five College community and the Pioneer Valley. On one hand, both endeavors are student generated, student organized, and student produced. That is, they wrote grants, secured funding, develop the complimentary public programs for the Open Studios project, as well as planned, designed and produced this Brochure. On the other hand, both demonstrate the ways in which the UMass MFA community is a collaborative group. For the Brochure, SAGA’s goal was to circulate and publicize current MFA work to the campus in particular and to the larger art communities in general. For instance, copies will
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UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
be given to our University Museum of Contemporary Art, the W.E.B Dubois Library, and UMass’s New York Professional Outreach Program. It will also benefit SAGA members because they will be able to include the Brochure when applying for postgraduate exhibitions, teaching positions, residencies, and grants. By offering an overview of the projects and processes produced in the Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History, the Brochure also provides an important context for and examples of the work produced by our MFA students at this stage of their practice. Rather than simply a visual and artistic resource for visitors to the Open Studios, it places their work in a realm of professional practice that extends beyond the campus, beyond studio critiques, and beyond graduate school. It is (and will be) a significant document for us and for them because it gives an account of their MFA work, their intellectual/artistic interests,
and the artistic methodologies they embrace. From the initial planning phases to the final self-published project, the Brochure underscores their investment in and reliance on working collectively. The Open Studio project was built on collaboration, so to speak. Following on last year’s success, this year’s Open Studios project surveys current work from our MFA and BFA candidates in the Studio Arts Program. This new dimension helps facilitate a greater intra-program group exchange and dialogue between undergraduates and graduates. It also recognizes and underlines the breadth and depth of the work produced by our students. Another new element, and one that signals an important inter-program collaboration between our students, is the reading of recent literary work by UMass’ MFA Program for Poets and Writers. The Open Studios project and the
Brochure are excellent opportunities for the campus and the larger art communities to experience firsthand the diverse process, practices, and media disciplines used by our MFA/ BFA candidates. By opening the doors of their studios, they give visitors a too-seldom offered glimpse of their research and work in real time and in process. Said differently, as visitors we have the chance to encounter the completed project alongside the just started, the as-yet-unfinished, and perhaps – should we query and press for more information – the barest trace of projects, processes, and/or performances to come. To be sure, the Open Studio project affords us – with Brochure in hand – an occasion to engage their work in the intimate and productive space of their studios.
successful Open Studios project. We should be equally impressed (though not surprised) by the publication of this topnotch Brochure. As MFA studentdriven undertakings not linked to any academic requirement, these efforts call attention to our motivated, groupdirected students who are unafraid to take risks. Indeed, we have an exceptional group of MFA students/ emerging artists.
We should be excited by SAGA’s aim to make more inclusive the scope of the Open Studios project; and, we should, I think, acknowledge and support the group’s ambition to organize another
UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
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Katie Baker, I Do Not Feel Safe, 2012, Charcoal and Acrylic 6
UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
KATIE BAKER 2012
katherinelesliebaker@gmail.com
UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
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COURTNEY CULLEN 2012
ccjeanhill@gmail.com
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UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
I have always been interested in mythology, cryptids (my favorite being Bigfoot) and the space between attraction and repulsion. Hybrids, whether they be animal, human or inanimate object litter my work. Where do these bodies meet? What are the myths-in-progress circulating today? There's an undercurrent of abjection that directly relates to contemporary fears and violence that lurk just below a glittery and seductive surface. I know the monsters are under the bed and I've gone looking for them.
Courtney Cullen, Lift Up the Curse, 2011, steel, mixed media, 7»x11»x4» UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
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Chad Seelig, 24312, Spring 2011 Sound Installation 10 UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
CHAD SEELIG 2012
Using analogue methods, mathematics, electronics, and coding languages I am interested in creating interactive sound environments which invite participants to help create the work. Playing with aural phenomena, I focus on basic methods of producing and processing sound to stimulate human interaction.
www.ctseelig.com chadseelig@ctseelig.com
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THERESA ANTONELLIS 2013
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What begins as a gestural drawing in light, finds completion in an archetypal and utopian object, floating in a gray primordial soup. Evidence of the hand is captured in lines of light, by the split second sweep of the camera. Gray represents the potential to become; it contains all and reveals nothing. Symmetry represents the human longing for unattainable perfection and stability. The line is materialization of the immaterial, in its most pure form.
Theresa Antonellis, Revolution, 2011/12, 8x8in, Archival Inkjet on Muso Max paper UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 13
John Michael Byrd, Membrane Apparatus, 2011, Watercolor and acrylic on acetate 14 UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
JOHN MICHAEL BYRD 2013
I am interested in creating paintings that highlight our lack of coherence between our delusions, denials and absurd realities. My paintings feed off of a legacy of figurative painting, the homoerotic, Feminist and Queer theory and a flux between explicit hard image and atmospheric soft abstraction. My work as a painter is to merge the world of internal desires with a space for language we define and construct for ourselves.
johnmichaelbyrd@gmail.com www.johnmichaelbyrd.com
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ARIEL LAVERY 2013
www.arielmakesart.com simpsoar@gmail.com
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Much of our living experience is fabricated by institutionally produced order. Individuals navigate prescribed orders that are assumedly universally accessible. Yet, we are consistently disillusioned when the reality of non-universal order brings drama to our human experience. I aim to reveal the subjective nuances in orders that present themselves as universal. I often use found objects and appropriated moving imagery in an awareness of how we displace materials and images, eliminating specificity. I employ a method of remixing in order to generate restructured narratives that emerge from ungrounded, institutionally produced identities.
Ariel Lavery, A Fragment from the Fragments from Travels Eastward Collection, 2012, found curtain fabrics and curtain rods UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 17
Joe Morelli, Taxa, 2010, Dimensions Variable, Acrylic on wood 18 UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
JOE MORELLI 2013
I flirt with scientific methods of taxonomy and classification, but being an outsider, my work is often composed of systems which are largely fictitious. They serve as manifestations of a compulsion to classify, simplify, understand, and record natural phenomena.
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LAUREN PLEVEICH 2013
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I use painting as a way to explore ideas of infinite space. The use of perspective allows for an ever expanding universe and therefore time.
Lauren Pleveich, Heat in Winter, 2011, 84in x 89in, Oil on Canvas UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 21
Caroline Valites, A Thing Among Things, 2012 sound and video installation 22 UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
CAROLINE VALITES 2013
It is the human body that sees and also sees itself. Within this consciousness exists a paradox where we find ourselves aware that the body is sacred but also vulnerable. At the core of my work is a dialogue between science and philosophy. I am fascinated with the physics of light, the body, time, and the phenomenology of human perception. Â Through antiquated photographic processes, light and sound installation I explore the complexities that exist between human suffering and the phenomenon of the physical world in which we live.
www.carolinevalites.com Carolinevalites@yahoo.com
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NOUR BISHOUTY 2014
I find the most intriguing and challenging aspect of art-making to be the perpetual state of seeking; a state in which one learns to become aware of and sensitive to a subject matter›s ephemeral conditions. The act of investigating the space which exists between the fleeting present moment and the nostalgic recollection of past experiences and memories is the subject of my work. My projects drift between the two and three-dimensional and often take the form of drawing, installation, objects and text. Most recently I have become interested in investigating the act of un-making (unraveling, disentangling, resolving) as opposed to making (art,) and if that act can in itself become a means of artistic production. The physical nature of the work reflects my interest in organizing structures, fragments, multiples and layers that form larger entities. It can often be characterized by compulsive repetition of simple gestures and repetitive mark-making—sometimes slight and often extreme.
www.nourbishouty.com nour@nourbishouty.com
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Nour Bishouty, White Crumb (with detail,) 2012, 26x80in, Traces of needlepoint stitches on Rives. UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 25
LAUREN KOHNE 2014
In my work I use various materials to make arrangements. The layout of these collections can be two dimensional or sculptural. Paint; mixed and poured, dried, peeled then layered together and carved into specific forms are fabricated by hand into objects. Used coffee filters or left over egg shells are saved and reworked into a form with an alternate purpose. Objects discarded and left for dead, like pieces of scrap metal, are brought back to life. These items and their subsequent reincarnations and combinations express my reaction to materials and how I experience them. However unrelated the materials and collection cycles might seem, rhythms do emerge. Rhythms for tracking my subconscious to reveal the visual apothecary of my interior world; a display of my impulses proud and mundane that captures, comprehends, or recasts different parts of myself in different orders.
www.laurenkohne.com
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Lauren Kohne, Bolt and Fuse, 2011, 9x12in, Thread and paper UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 27
Priya Nadkarni, Two Women, 2011, 13 x 10in, Digital Print 28 UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
PRIYA NADKARNI 2014
In my work there is a metamorphosis from figure into fabric. The mounds of fabric and disappearing bodies are an exchange between fact and fiction. The images, through a range of media, seek to develop the racial and political questioning that is assumed from certain signifiers—vocabularies that point to a feeling of ethnic. The work references the history of the image as a site for documentation.
www.priyanadkarni.com nadkarni.art@gmail.com
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NATHAN SCHIEL 2014
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The process I use to develop my paintings carries as much importance as does the finished work. Addition and subtraction, or variations of this idea are crucial elements in reaching an end, and it›s only through these actions that an end presents itself. As a result there is often a space or depth within my work that can only be achieved by destroying, or building upon previous elements. Nothing within a painting is too precious that it can›t be altered or deleted. Yet these pieces of the paintings have value even in there absence, they are the foundation that allows the painting to exist. My work ultimately speaks about universal ideas of opposition, and harmony, uncertainty and confidence, concealment and revelation.
Nathan Schiel, Untitled, 2011, 30 x 30in, Oil on Canvas UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 31
Designed by Nour Bishouty
Thanks to: UMass Arts Council The Engage, Serve, Connect, Acheive Grant funded: Center for Student Development and the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life 32 UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014
University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Art, Architecture and Art History Studio Arts Building 128 110 Thatcher Road University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts 01003-9330 www.umass.edu/art/ UMass Amherst MFA Studio Arts 2012 / 2013 / 2014 33
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