BFA CATALOG 2017-2018
ART DEPARTMENT BIOLA UNIVERSITY
EMILY HAYASHIDA In Particular Photography emily.hayashida@gmail.com www.emilyhayashida.com All the prints in my show were made with a Risograph printer, a tool traditionally used to mass-produce prints cheaply and quickly. The Risograph ink is semi-transparent, which allowed me to overlay multiple images on the same sheet of paper. My work explores the confusion and complexity of navigating information in a globalized world in which we are subjected to an endless stream of world news, instagram lattes, political agendas, and cat videos. Does unlimited access to information via Facebook and Twitter make us into better citizens and more compassionate people, or do the bizarre juxtapositions they create muddy the waters as we try to distinguish fact from fiction, serious from frivolous, sacred from sacrilegious? My work wrestles with the modern reality of disembodied social interations and public discourse—the fact that we increasingly experience meticulously manicured, two-dimensional representations of people rather than real, particular people. This body of work is an invitation to consider the amount of information we consume, the way in which we consume it, and the implications of our consumption.
Emily Hayashida
MARIKA ADAMOPOULOS Cross Over Move Into Photography hello@marikalimited.com www.marikalimited.com
Cross Over Move Into is an art experience, inviting you to participate in the mindfulness of rituals. By habituating a practice of self-care, your soul can be healed, your body made well, and mind restored. An individualized take on the ancient practice of a Matcha tea ceremony is how we will engage with self-care here and now. The water is hot, the tea is bitter, and the combination is invigorating. As you blow away the steam, sip intentionally. As you finish your portion, notice the sensations and notice what remains. As you wash out your cup, reflect on restoration, healing, and simplicity. As you stack your cups with the rest, see the impression you have made for those to follow you. Self-care not only rejuvenates your soul, but the results extend outwards to enrich the lives of everyone you touch. Engaging in self-care allows you to find yourself kinder and wiser, more driven and more generous, more loving and more successful. The fulfillment you experience will overflow into the souls of others as a natural effect of investing in yourself. So, welcome, gather, think, breathe. Come open. Engage mindfully. Leave enlightened.
Marika Adamopoulos
SHELBY MONTELONGO In Progress Photography shelbyplease@gmail.com www.shelbymontelongo.com
Every human being is simultaneously a masterpiece and a work in progress. All individuals exist in a constant paradox: learning through and processing experiences to improve while having already been created perfectly. Portrait photography and performance art offer a holistic view of the mind, body, and spirit of this personal growth. Time to Wake Up is a visual recreation of a prophetic dream, addressing the growth while diving even deeper to encompass the conversation of mental health. Grow Your Own Garden is a revisitation of a past performance art piece, representing an emotionally positive and crucial shift in personal productions, attributing to the broader themes. Eat Thou Honey For It Is Good is a collection of large format, polaroid film shots depicting a recreation of an emotional response to receiving God’s blessings. Each work exists to offer an affirming message to individual experience while giving the necessary validity to the challenges and refining experiences. Being both a masterpiece and a work in progress facilitates the space to grow in a healthy, worthwhile way while still remaining true to the core of ourselves.
Shelby Montelongo
JORDAN WILSON have a dream and have a job and Photography jordan.elyse129@gmail.com www.jordanelysephotography.com
have a dream and have a job and is a series of explorations on the memories and recollections influential to a personal interpretation of home. The work is honest, humorous, and nostalgic, while reflecting on the cultivation of personal identity as a young woman. Self-portraiture and cheeky, conversational text are significant in creating a sense of connection between the viewer and suburban culture. have a dream and have a job and is an introspective reflection on an upbringing in suburbia and informative to a present identity.
Jordan Wilson
KAT ASHDOWN One Thing at a Time Frankie. Drawing & Painting www.katashdown.com
Storytelling is a rich way of teaching and learning. Such traditions, either formal or informal, pass down wisdom, legends and histories from generation to generation. Inspired by modern storytelling forms such as film, graphic novels and video games, I share a story of another world, one that reflects ours but is ultimately separate. Like ours, it’s a world that contends with themes of fear, hope and grappling with impossibilities. It is an unfolding narrative to be discovered and explored. It is my delight to share with you the story of Frankie and Bobby.
Kat Ashdown
JANNA CHRISTIAN
”How’s Your Family?” Interdisciplinary janna.e.christian@gmail.com www.jannachristian.com
Five and a half years ago, my family adopted my younger, special-needs sister. Because her disability and recovery from orphanhood demanded much more than we ever expected, our relationships strained and completely changed. Over time I have come to realize that although my family gained another person, we lost so much of what we used to have. I am still in the process of grieving that loss, and am faced with many tensions: I had an expectation. But reality is far from it. I am grieving. But I feel like I should be happy. I know what it’s been like. But what others perceive makes me question what’s real. I feel like this story should be complete by now. But it’s still unresolved. So much has gone wrong. Is there any good that can come out of it? I use black and white film photography together with handwritten quotes and journal entries to explore these tensions and to communicate a story that not many have experienced or understood. In a deeper way, I tell my story in an attempt to build connections to others’ stories, connections formed through the shared but varied human experiences of grief and struggle.
Janna Christian
REBECCA MOTT Transept Drawing & Painting rebecca.r.patton@gmail.com The history of church architecture is a history of installation. In the modern age I seek to make religious installations relevant. My work is in conversation with artists such as Bill Viola and Ann Hamilton, but is also deeply inspired by religious art from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. In my work I emphasize time in the form of personal, immersive installations, encouraging meditation and silence amidst the fast paced society that we live in. My acrylic paintings have an abstract, intensely colored foundation upon which I incorporate representational and symbolic elements. Conceptually, I focus on the mysterious nature of the interactions and tensions between the transcendent and the material and articulate these complexities through technique and color choices. I aim to create a sacred space that will embody the way in which physical symbols illustrate spiritual truths and I hope through my work to evoke reverence and contemplation of the divine.
Rebecca Mott
DELANIE ENG Mr. Pareidolia Interdisciplinary delanieeng@gmail.com
Pareidolia is a term to describe when the human eye sees faces in a pattern. The material cork is an organic, detailed pattern that I am drawn to. When I look closely and study cork’s pattern I begin to see pareidolia. Pareidolia gives me the perception to see cork’s circular pattern come to life. It is in these moments studying cork where my play and imagination dictate my perception of cork. Someone may see a squiggly line, but I see a braid, a thumbs-up, a bat wing, a bunny ear, a shiny helmet. This logic is the birthplace of Mr. Pareidolia.
Delanie Eng
TREVOR LUNDE Mojo Interdisciplinary trevorjlunde@gmail.com
I explore the relationship between auditory and visual art, specifically the relationship between multimedia painting and alt-blues rock. I relate physical materials to the music I listen to in order to express what I experience when I hear it. The songs influence my art-making and in an analogous way, my work affects the way I listen to the song. What I see affects what I hear and what I hear directs what I see.
Trevor Lunde
MICHELLE PARADA Gas Bill Drawing & Painting michelleparada04@gmail.com
To house an object is a risky, harrowing thing. An uncomfortable something from childhood, something thrashing or dancing. A stately performance by nightlight. A devious maneuver from sofa to bed. Leave the containers, they are for medical dissection. For slow-rotting in the corner. Strain hard to remember the in between or leave so quickly your head jolts back.
Michelle Parada
AMANDA DELAPLANE Exactly Not It Interdisciplinary amandashaedelaplane@gmail.com www.amandadelaplane.com
For as long as I can remember, I have seen the world from two perspectives. The first, as a whole and coherent system. The second, as a series of unique moments or memories, each individually complex and worthy of attention. I use drawing and painting to deconstruct, analyze, and reassemble what I know of these perspectives. In the smaller work, color is present and there is a sense of personal experience, yet it remains unrefined, much like a memory. In the largest work, I have used the individual moments as a basis from which to construct something new. My memories – and the visual and emotional elements associated with them – are used to expand the process of looking and understanding, but are not invalidated as a part of the whole. It is exactly what it was, now something new. It is exactly not it.
Amanda Delaplane
BRIANNA ENG I’ll Be There for You Sometimes Interdisciplinary briannapauleng@gmail.com www.briannaeng.com This is about you. But it’s mostly about me. This is about the value of genuine relationship and human connectedness. Not handing someone your business card with the promise of some service or an effort at professional network building. Where is the honesty that builds trust and allows an individual to be heard, where is the understanding that allows for mutual and continual giving and taking? I want to put in more effort than that. So I make business cards with as much sincerity as I’ve got because I don’t want our connection to be solely based on your career or my career. I send postcards out because I want most of the work to be about the interaction between me and another person. I know these pieces of paper are not a primary form of connection or communication as much as they once were, but there is realness I find that I love in the physicality of a piece of paper we both touch.
Brianna Eng
LAURA WEBSTER Recovered Drawing & Painting lau.a.webster@gmail.com My eyes are so easily clouded, unable to see the world around me with the wonder appropriate of a creature in its creator’s garden. All around me are glimpses of the divine hidden in the familiar, gifts of overflow that are there to be enjoyed—if I only took the time to look. Instead, in my rush to please others and prove myself, I fail to appreciate the intricacies of this Everyday that I am living. Flowers and cloud formations are, like all matter, transient, but that does not detract from their value. My lack of attention does them a disservice, as though I were too lofty to listen to what they may have to say to me. My work blends scientific cataloguing with creative intentionality in order to restore dignity to these fellow creatures, presenting them in a fresh way to weary eyes. I invert their colors in an effort to express what I felt when I first painted them in natural light. My artistic practice is a lifelong attempt to recover my sight, and, with it, my hope.
Laura Webster
WESLEIGH BYRD Embody Drawing & Painting wesleighbyrd@gmail.co
There is a familiarity we all share simply by being human. These pieces embody facets of that experience. This visual language has come by way of generous voices, laughable quandary, and by creating a practice of open receptivity. I now see that the giving of time, listening, and finding form for perception is a way of caring. And if the care of humans will never be obsolete, then art will never lose its necessity. It will always extend its gift of discovery, if we’re willing to pay attention. My desire for things to hold presence and beauty will be a life-long journey, But this was certainly a beginning.
Wesleigh Byrd
LISA TIXIER More Accidentally on Purpose Interdisciplinary lisa.tixier.art@gmail.com
As a ceramic artist, I use clay to make useful and beautiful things. My process of creating does not always result in a useful mug, bowl, plate, vase, pot, often it leads to unpredictable or unexpected outcomes. Tension arises from the risk of creating leading to imperfection: a bowl becomes too thin and starts to collapse, a cup falls slightly off-center and gains a wobble, a plate appears unusable and impractical, a vase incurs an accidental bump or crack leaving it in disarray. However, these artworks are not left for failure. In the life of a pot, unplanned happenings along the way bring a uniqueness that does not take away from their individual value or their remarkable purpose of existence. The precariousness and risk, accentuated by the fragility of pottery, is not lost, but neither is it wholly defined by that tension, instead it is completed by its ability to exist and live out a new life of purpose. All these vessels contain.
Lisa Tixier
KAILA WILLIAMS The Darkness He Called Night Drawing & Painting kailawilliamsart@gmail.com www.behance.net/kailanwill3364
The Book of Genesis starts with the Creation account and how the world came to be. Out of all that God created, I find the creation of night to be the most beautiful. The night invokes a feeling of peace and wonder, while giving anyone the opportunity to feel God’s presence. Therefore, my show consists of telling the narrative of how God created night. The pieces will detail the origins of night by showing God’s hands fashioning each of its characteristics through the process of mixed media paintings.
Kaila Williams
KIBBI PENG Invitation Sculpture abby.ranpeng@gmail.com ohyellow@126.com
Fashion design is incorporated into almost every part of my life, and this interest is the source of my practice. These sculptures are more than just three dimensional, structured, and irregular extensions of the body. They are reaching for a minimal yet complex vibe, grounded in formal quality. By utilizing high fashion and architectural form, my installations incorporate a limited color palette and choreography that speaks of the avant-garde, living around and above the runway. Form is all.
Kibbi Peng
TONY WALSH Dynamo Genesis Design tonywalshdesign@gmail.com
My practice is defined by an innate curiosity to unearth the nostalgic value in both hardware and its projected media. I am fascinated when two or more generations of child cultures collide, simulating an experience that becomes both familiar and displaced simultaneously. I am forward looking when it comes to nostalgia, thinking about how it affects us in the present as well as in the future. By manipulating, sampling, and recycling popular culture and technology, I strive to create a chain of harmonies and tensions that start in the 80’s and surpass our current era. Presenting the challenge of how much we resonate and connect with objects, images, and culture. The content for my work is collected via the internet, video games, television, movies, and takes the forms of installations, video, and sculpture.
Tony Walsh
CHAD SWANSON Ambient Design www.chadswanson.studio me@chadswanson.studio
The blue light is a catalyst, sending our bodies into motion. Participants join in this ancient form of expression, seeking their sense of being through movement. These movements allow us to travel while the tactile keeps us present; a rhythmic exchange of tossing and turning becomes our pendulum. The sounds and the smell of the earth remind us of one another. We move as an act of reverence; both for ourselves and for our creator. Our skin becomes a palette, and we are tarnished. Our bodies become a living artifact of exchange; showing evidence of our encounter.
Chad Swanson
JEDIDIAH ANGKASA December Eleventh Interdisciplinary jedidiahangkasa@gmail.com jedidiah-angkasa.squarespace.com
Memory is not indelible. When driving past a sunset that lasts for only two seconds, take up a camera and capture it. Despite the loss of emotion and enjoyment, keep it in its best form. Lose to save. I thought one could always re-attend space and time by looking at a picture. But the experience became one of documentation instead of a looking at and absorbing from. A trade happened. A permanent keeping for a temporal one, even when a sacrifice of presence was involved. Documentation uses the moment to make a picture. I use the picture to make a painting. This painting, toward which I, the artist, am present to, dignifies the past. The physicality and the fluidity of the medium celebrates the interplay of vividness and the ephemeral nature of recordings, as I reminisce persons in places past.
Jedidiah Angkasa
SEAN LEONE Side Eye Design seanleone.myportfolio.com sleone722@gmail.com My last two therapists told me to paint about my feelings. Which is stupid. I make real art, not therapy crafts. When it came time for my exhibition, I decided to make paintings of people that are about painting people as a way to beat my inhibitions regarding painting people. In the painting world, unrelenting self-awareness is considered sophisticated and respectable. While I was working on my show, I spent my free time painting for fun. By “for fun,” I mean “to satisfy the deep, unresolved yearnings of my soul through an exhausting process resulting in the beginning of closure and healing.” I learned to cry, pray, and express the sympathy I have always had for those who are close to me. (Thanks God.) So yes, I am painting my feelings. But I am painting my feelings particularly well.
Sean Leone
The Art Department The Biola University Department of Art creates an academic environment that thrives on the interrelationship of biblical Christianity and artistic practice. It offers students a professional visual arts program with a rigorous curriculum that reflects a strong liberal arts emphasis and a solid Christian worldview. The Biola art program is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD). www.Biola.edu/Art The Green Art Gallery The Earl & Virginia Green Art Gallery presents a program of rotating contemporary art exhibitions on the campus of Biola University. Located in the greater Los Angeles area, the Green Art Gallery is well positioned to represent a vital Christian worldview within the critical dialogue of contemporary visual art and to produce engaging exhibitions that grapple with issues concerning the intersection of faith with art and culture. The Green Art Gallery also provides professional development opportunities for Biola art students through gallery exhibitions and internships. www.Biola.edu/ArtGallery
The B.F.A. Program The Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in Art is the professional undergraduate degree that is highly desired by serious students intent on pursuing careers or advanced degrees in the visual arts. The program is designed to give art students flexibility to choose from one of five emphases: design, painting, photography, sculpture, or interdisciplinary. Design integrates a fine arts perspective into a curriculum that emphasizes conceptual thinking and develops technical proficiency in a variety of areas including printbased graphic design, web design and motion graphics. Painting embraces traditional and non-traditional approaches to drawing and painting while engaging students in current discourses within the discipline. Photography focuses on integrating the skills of black and white darkroom techniques with contemporary digital color practices to produce conceptually driven, photo-based art. Sculpture equips students to think creatively while developing proficiency in a variety of three-dimensional fabrication techniques including additive and subtractive processes, modeling, carving, mold-making and casting. The Interdisciplinary emphasis allows students flexibility in developing a custom art curriculum that blends upper-level studio courses from multiple disciplines.
All artwork images provided by the artist; used by permission. Book design and layout by Rafik Abousoliman. Cover design by Rafik Abousoliman. Spring 2018 B.F.A. (exhibition catalog). Copyright Š 2018 Biola University Art Department All rights reserved. Published through Issuu.com Biola University Art Department 13800 Biola Ave., La Mirada, CA 90639 562.903.4807 • www.Biola.edu/Art