WCU MFA Thesis catalog

WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

MFA 2012-13 THESIS CATALOG

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For information about the MFA program at Western Carolina University, please visit mfa.wcu.edu.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

KARA BENDER

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JULIE BOISSEAU

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JONNY CANTRELL

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NORA HARTLAUB

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LUZENE HILL

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RACHEL BOSTROM PIERCE

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JOHN SEEFELDT

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AMANDA STEPHENS

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BRAD WINES

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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

KARA BENDER Within my work I am attempting to create a narrative space that records the ethnography of my generation. Everyday objects, fractured bodies, and the juxtapositions between them are utilized to relay the enchantment/disenchantment of a being existing within our everyday world.

Travelogue 16” x 20”, framed, linocut print Relief print on Lenox paper

Almanac 16” x 20”, framed, linocut print Relief print on Lenox paper

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JULIE BOISSEAU My work revolves around creating surreal objects and worlds contradicting the mad reality we live with every day. These objects and worlds represent the contradictions that I personally deal with. These contradictions include: life/death, love/hate, beauty/ugliness, reality/fantasy, fear/courage, war/peace, good/ bad, heaven/hell, confinement/freedom, and even Caucasian/ Native American. All these contradictions hinder one’s ability to feel secure and whole, and though I present on these contradictions as personal, in the end they are universal. I further the idea of contradiction by utilizing glass and porcelain together.

I like the fragility of these mediums as they speak about the fragility of life itself. I believe this fragility adds to the idea of contradiction. I find a voice for my work through individual pieces as well as through installations.

Bird of Paradise Installation detail Glass, ceramic, stones

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JONNY CANTRELL In an attempt to make an immediate connection with the viewer, life-size figure drawings in a classical mode will forgo any representation of place or time. This is in order to focus the attention solely on the body. By removing the social context, all that will remain are the conditions of the viewer’s own experiences. The work arises from an investigation of this de-socialized figure and how this will affect the viewer.

Traditional figure drawing informs this practice as a means of representation, yet basic ideas of composition and framing are de-emphasized in order to focus attention squarely onto the human body. In these drawings, all secondary information, such as environment and objects, is absent. By engaging the viewer with the comfort of the classical ideals of beauty, these notions may then be challenged through representation of physical damage to the subject. Mirroring the familiar knowledge of the viewer’s own body, in a slightly altered state, will reflect back and challenge the viewer’s own experience. What traits are unchangeable? To what extent is this violence self-inflicted?

The subject will be placed in a framework of objectification of the individual, serving to remake the body as an injured object.

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Untitled 122” x 91” Charcoal on paper

NORA HARTLAUB The camera functions to alter and influence the way lived experience is represented, commodified, and controlled due to its alignment with mainstream media and its overwhelming infiltration into private lives and public spaces. The presence of the lens, as a means to record intimacy, leisure, and public spectacle, is intrinsically tied to our understanding of experience and memory.

Protest Approximately three minutes Still images from digital video

Elaine Approximately one minute Still image from digitally manipulated 16 mm film (Grandma on the beach)

Lenore Approximately one minute Still image from digitally manipulated Super 8 film

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LUZENE HILL Vulnerability is a recurring theme in my work. Transformations, both physical and psychological, interest me. The process of change – voluntary or imposed, subtle or wrenching – is, paradoxically, a constant in life. I explore this fluid experience through media that are tentative, fleeting, easily altered/ destroyed. The materials I often employ – paper, ink, charcoal, beeswax – are fragile and capricious, qualities that define my view of life.

Untitled 11” x 14” Tea, ink, charcoal on Canson paper

Retracing the Trace Detail of installation Tea, ink, and gouache stained satin cords

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RACHEL BOSTROM PIERCE I am interested in photographing communal spaces throughout North Carolina. Uninhabited most of the time and not overtly commercial in use, these sites remain predominantly unaccounted for by domestic or market-driven considerations yet make up a significant part of the region. By photographing these sites I hope to explore impulses evidenced in these structures and to introduce questions around hospitality, exclusivity and inclusiveness. Unpeopled, these photographs focus instead on suggestions of human presence inherent in the formative articulation of the sites themselves. It is often by way of the slant, suggestive evidence of the photograph that intricacies of cultural signification may begin to be seen.

Second Baptist Church Shelby, NC 12” x 18” Color photograph

Grace and Mercy Cathedral Monroe, NC 12” x 18” Color photograph

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JOHN SEEFELDT I create work that focuses on familiar objects, spaces, and relationships. Using traditional materials that serve as intermediaries between the viewer and digital interfaces, I invite the viewer to engage with the less familiar, more detached nature of digital media.

My studio practice begins with a design process that integrates wood, clay and metal work with interactive, electronic media.

Technologies commonly used in the production of the work are a mixture of graphic, sound and video editing software in combination with interactive game technologies.

The objects and spaces I create are informed by my own experiential understanding of human relationships in our contemporary, commodity-focused culture. The objects and environment’s serve their expected mechanical function; however, they also set an anchor for the viewers to explore their own habitual interactions and relationships from an immersive yet comfortably detached perspective.

Inverted Interface 8’ x 8’ x 12’ Custom software, custom electronics, wood, glass, fabric Video at johnseefeldt.com

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AMANDA STEPHENS Consciousness begins when an experience with the physical world initiates a perception and response feedback cycle as one acts, absorbs, reacts, processes and rationalizes information.

French phenomenological philosopher Merleau-Ponty wrote, “The body is the vehicle of being in the world, and having a body is, for a living creature, to be involved in a definite environment.�

This bodily experience of which Merleau-Ponty speaks is a biological one. My thesis exhibit investigates this idea of the biology of consciousness through an installation environment that enfolds the viewer. The multiple layers that make up the environment encourage a closer look in order to echo the idea of the whole and the outward-inward feedback of perception and to assert the importance of firsthand experience with the world.

Faux/Real: The Biology of Consciousness Installation details Plants, soil, stones, sand, fish tanks, bird cage and stand, jars, bowls, chains, cedar posts, lights, antique medical carts, fake grass, plastic, cameras, projectors

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BRAD WINES I approach art-making from both spiritual and bodily perspectives.

Spiritual in respect to my own personal practice of finding silence within the distractions of life, bodily in respect to physical impression in material such as clay, or mark-making with the use of paint and my own blood. I focus my concepts on the connection between the mind, body and soul, as personal balance can only be achieved through consistent evaluation of each of these three states.

My Meandering Spirit 9’ x 9’ x 42” Charred wood, copper, wool string and artist’s blood

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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT This catalog showcases the work of the 2012-13 graduates from the MFA program at Western Carolina University. Our program advances an interdisciplinary approach, where students develop individual creative directions ranging from traditional painting and ceramics to experimental work in sculpture and new media. The core of the program is a set of shared courses that empowers students to conduct research, to make connections between their work and the work of others, to communicate visually, and to speak and write about art.

The MFA program culminates in a thesis exhibition and written defense. This rigorous combination of visual work, writing and critique encourages students to create work of high quality, to understand the conceptual basis of their work, and to place their work in the context of other contemporary and historical artists.

I salute these graduates for their achievements in the studio as evidenced by the strong and diverse work presented here.

Matt Liddle Director, School of Art and Design Western Carolina University

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Special thanks to the Western Carolina University Graduate School for its support of this publication and to the Fine Art Museum for hosting the 2012-13 MFA thesis exhibitions.

WCU is a University of North Carolina campus and an Equal Opportunity Institution. 750 copies of this public document were printed at a cost of $1,320.00, or $1.76 each. Office of Creative Services | June 2013 | 13-267

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