M F A 2020
This catalog is a collaboration between MFA Studio Art candidates and MA Art History candidates at Kent State University’s School of Art. Critical essays by the MA students regarding the MFA students’ work are featured alongside images of MFA thesis exhibition artwork, on view March 31 - April 10, 2020 in the galleries at the Center for the Visual Arts.
School of Art Collection and Galleries Kent State University 325 Terrace Dr., Kent, Ohio galleries.kent.edu
FOREWARD On behalf of the School of Art at Kent State University, I congratulate the graduating MFA students on their work. This catalog is a tribute to the outstanding artists who will receive their Master of Fine Arts degrees in May 2020. These images are only a sample of the compelling work in the thesis exhibition, and the exhibit shows only a fraction of the large bodies of work completed throughout the duration of the MFA program. This catalog is a collaboration between Kent State’s graduate students in Studio Art and Art History. This collaboration offers an interpretation and navigation through the artwork that will allow viewers to create their own narratives. These are the artists of a new decade. As we enter this decade, the spirit of art is a force gaining traction online and in critical circles. This new decade will be shaped by these artists, testing the limits of support between art worlds with opposing beliefs. This catalog of written and visual work brings humanity to the surface, where art brings with it a vulnerability to knowledge and where art acts as the power of transformation. I extend my sincere thanks to the following individuals for the opportunity for students to present their thesis work to the public: Peter Johnson, Graduate Coordinator; Anderson Turner, Director of School of Art Collection and Galleries; Shana Klein, assistant professor of art history; Roza Maille, Marketing Assistant, and all the thesis advisors: Gianna Commito, professor of painting; Davin Ebanks, assistant professor of glass; Isabel Farnsworth, associate professor of sculpture; Andrew Kuebeck, assistant professor of jewelry/metals/enameling; Janice Lessman-Moss, professor of textiles; Taryn McMahon, assistant professor of print media and photography; Darice Polo, associate professor of drawing; and Shawn Powell, assistant professor of painting. A final thank you to all the graduate students participating in this collective endeavor, in both Studio Art and Art History. Congratulations to all the students highlighted here within these pages. Marie Bukowski Director & Professor School of Art
JACOB BAKER Since the prehistoric beginnings of artistic practices, war and death have been a powerful subject matter for artists. Jacob Baker’s paintings perfectly mingle with this rich tradition. Drawing inspiration from the European painterly traditions of the 1920s and 1930s, Baker demonstrates a particularly rich connection with the grim images of the German Otto Dix, who, in the early decades of the 20th century, painted shocking representations of the aftermaths of the First World War. Jacob Baker has experience with armed conflict; he started painting after being medically discharged from the army due to a severe injury. Without having envisioned an artistic career for himself, he enrolled in university with plans to graduate with a degree in Criminal Justice. After an accidental encounter with art, he later understood how beneficial art could be for him personally and professionally. Using the pictorial practice to cleanse his mind from the horrors he experienced in the army, Baker paints a surrealist world in which war and dehumanization are disguised, but always present. Influenced by European art of the early 1900s, Baker’s art originates from automatism. If chance governs the first moments of creation, his personal experience drives the subsequent stages. On the canvas, shapes and forms are drawn first by the unconscious mind and later interpreted by the conscious psyche. This established process of creation opens the door to a true dialogue between the artist and the material world, in which the canvas and its shapes first speak to the painter. The artist is then called to interpret and claim ownership over the drawn forms, and Baker does so through his life experiences, having been deployed in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. In the first series of Baker’s paintings, the artist always identifies the automatic patterns in his work as memories of the war incidents he experienced in the Naray Valley in Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border. This way, the practice of art becomes for Jacob Baker a true form of therapy, through which he is able to pour his memories and emotions onto the canvas. This series is composed of three large pieces in which sinuous shapes rendered in bright colours emerge from a barren, desert landscape. The titles of his works are only strings of numbers to represent the exact coordinates where the represented incidents have taken place. The palette of colours is also deeply meaningful; while ochre and earthy tones describe the barren locations of war, bright red, abstract, and surrealist shapes resemble muscles and sinews. These suggestions of a human presence are purposefully dehumanizing, as if to reinforce how soldiers are dehumanized and reduced to founds of flesh and blood. In this series of Master’s thesis work, Baker’s paintings draw from personal experiences that also speak powerfully to wider audience by more broadly commenting on war. Gloria Rusconi MA Art History Candidate
35.209837, 71.522044, 48” X 96”, oil on panel, 2019
35.212115, 71.523185, 48” X 96”, oil on panel, 2019
My work narrates conflict using an autonomous system that simulates the parameters of longrange ballistic probability. Though each painting addresses a specific event, it is my intention to create images that encompass broad, disjunctive narratives using inconsistent voids, various forms of symbolism, and biomorphic forms produced by intuitive reactions. All elements are arranged in subtle grid-like structures and address the physical and psychological effects of warfare on both the individual and the surrounding environment. This collection of narratives represents a sampling of events that spans ten years of my life, during which I completed four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. - Jacob Baker
PATRICK BELL The latest ceramic works of Patrick Bell raises profound questions about the internal body, anomalous sensations, and anxieties about health. Bell is inspired by the idea of the abject and the sense of being cast-off and rejected. Illness, body parts, and bodily functions are often ‘abjected’ by our society, but not by the artist. As Bell explores the fragmented and impure body, the viscera are brought to your immediate attention and given new meaning. Rather than viewing the human anatomy as grotesque, the artist views his creations as a tangible answer to questions about health and body acceptance that he has been looking for throughout his life. The artist’s thesis work includes a figurative abstraction of the human torso, with a solid black exterior and a beautifully glazed and hollow interior. Upon first glance, the abstraction of this human form reminds viewers of the mystery of the human body, projecting a sense of uneasiness and the anxiety that accompanies a potential diagnosis. In search of a diagnosis, the upper surface of the exterior is open, revealing the hollow interior, as if to imply a dissection or an examination. This sensation of a dissection reads to the viewer as the beginning of the artist’s quest for alleviation of internal anxieties about of his health. While the torso might not appear immediately identifiable to the viewer, the other organs of the exhibit are less subtle. Bell renders the heart in a more representative manner, as far as form and color. The artist’s depiction of different flesh tones and surfaces of the heart is a symptom of both healthy and unhealthy tissue. The intestines he represents are abstracted yet remain figurative. The healthy portion of the intestine is represented in pink with acrylic paint and an epoxy resin gloss in contrast to the abnormal section of the intestine, which he represents in a green glaze with a rough and unnatural surface texture. The artist leaves evidence of his hand, allowing the viewer to see not only his making process, but his thought process as well. The work also implies the hand of an outsider. Protruding from the unhealthy intestine are pieces of wire, suggesting acupuncture was practiced, or perhaps, a more menacing force. Such Eastern and nontraditional medicine practices suggest the vastness of his search for answers and a diagnosis. As viewers, we can see and understand his deep contemplation of the organ, medicine, and human body, as if a dissection were at play right before the eyes of the viewer. Like the other works in his collection, the ceramic brains are abstracted and coated with a striking reds, pinks, greens, and blues, which were painted in acrylic and coated with epoxy resin for a glossy appearance. The bright colors seem to resemble a brain PET scan performed by doctors when they are checking for abnormalities. Projecting from the brain is the skull cap, which is attached with a steel rod. Whether it is his objects representing the brain or heart, Bell creates his own solutions to his health by making new tangible organs and body parts that remove his malady and provide an alternative answer to his health. Madeline May MA Art History Candidate
Road to Nowhere Ceramic, acrylic paint, epoxy resin 6” x 4.5” x 4” 2020
Heaven’s Vault Should Crack Ceramic, acrylic paint, epoxy resin, steel rod, gridded wire 7.5” x 9” x 7” 2020
With my work I dissect human forms, allowing me to further understand the bodily systems within them. By intervening on the wholeness of figures, I reveal intestinal, arterial and other biomorphic forms that exist in a state of tension and disorder. Bodies, flayed like frogs in a high school science class, are my explorative responses to my own anxieties and fears about my body and health. Physically embodying sharp, tight, and sporadic pain, my work exists between a measured, scientific inquiry and a chaotic, manic probe of the human anatomy. These bodies exist incompletely, with their viscera missing or entirely separated, either discarded or selected for further survey. - Patrick Bell
CRAIG HARTENBERGER
Abstraction unties the tether between the artist and the necessity of translating the physical world in their art. Craig Hartenberger has long-explored ceramic sculpture from an abstract perspective with an emphasis on the medium’s inherent tactility. His thesis exhibition displays an essentialist approach to production in which the final sculpture is rid of extraneous elements. For Hartenberger, abstraction and the clay medium become the perfect devices to explore the large and unwieldy concept of change from a hapticallybased perspective. Clay’s plasticity naturally invites our tactile sensibilities, both for the maker and the viewer. Hartenberger accentuates this quality by allowing imperfections, irregularities, fingerprints, and the natural cracks that occur in drying to inhabit the visible surface. Rather than aiming to display his mastery over the medium, Hartenberger instead reveals his intimate knowledge of the medium by allowing it to reveal its innate qualities. Eliminating glaze and other imposed refinement to concentrate on the fundamental nature of the medium, the divots, fingerprints, and fine lines in the surface become significant for their simplicity, and the artist’s non-action becomes action. Hartenberger carries out his conceptual investigations on the notion of change across two basic forms, the cone and the curved plane, each producing a different effect. While the cone appears as a complete and independent form, the plane reads as an excised portion of a larger whole. Where the scalloped pattern falls off the edges of the plane, it suggests the surface that is absent. Yet in both structures, the patterned shapes act as a protective cover to the underlying form, especially evident in the cone covered with tints of blue circles. The regular pattern covering the form combined with the imperfect human hand causes an organic irregularity in the blue tonal pattern, creating a shimmering effect. It is these irregularities and fluctuations that prompt the viewer to closer study before returning to viewing the work as a whole. In all of Hartenberger’s work, a definite beginning and ending of the patterns is evident. For the plane, it is the edges from which the layers of scallops fall. For the cones, the pattern begins near the base, but does not originate with the beginning of the form. An explicit beginning allows the viewer to see how these two elements remain distinct, yet affect one another when combined. Attracted to movement as we are, we more often observe subtle shifts in a pattern in motion. In the stationary object however, gradual transitions can more often be overlooked. Noticing change in the rhythm of a motionless sculpture has no urgency, but rather is like a secret one stumbles upon. Our society is no longer accustomed to slow looking, to noticing the subtle shifts both repetitive and irregular that appear in smoke rising from the top of a chimney, or the movement of flames producing it below. Craig Hartenberger’s work asks for this kind of patience and reflection, and serves as a reminder of what is available through quiet observation. Marissa Tiroly MA Art History Candidate
Cone Stained Ceramic 48” x 32” x 32” 2020
Bend Stained Ceramic 24” x 16” x 7” 2019
In these recent large scale ceramic works pattern is imagined in a flat space and becomes the substance from which a three dimensional form is built. In moving from two to three dimensions, adjustments are dictated by the logic of the pattern moving across a dimensional form. These shifts, along with the use of gradient, imply slow change over time; action is found through gradual repetition of individual units. Assumptions related to material and process are subverted as color is used inherently as part of the material rather than something applied, surface and form become one and the same. - Craig Hartenberger
PAIGE KOENIG Paige Koenig is a contemporary jeweler working primarily with fiber and metal materials. This mixing of traditional metal materials and “alternative materials,” as she calls them, initiates a major shift in the jewelry world. With an undergraduate degree in Jewelry Metals under the tutelage of artists Cappy Counard, Sue Amendolara, and Adrienne Grafton, Koenig’s work has expanded to include felt and reclaimed materials. Paige describes how she exists somewhere between being a metalsmith and “material-smith,” which is captured in her MFA thesis work that uses tactile and recycled objects to connect the viewer to nature. Her art also rests somewhere between jewelry and fashion, blurring the lines between the two disciplines. Her artworks from Hyperflora, the name of her MFA thesis show, are not meant to just be decoration put on by the wearer; they are filled with purpose and intention. Koenig’s work shows a particular interest in felt material, which was inspired by an arm injury that provoked her to consider how the felt material has healing properties. In the exhibit Hyperflora, the artist exploits the qualities of felt to bring forward the often overlooked parts of the natural world. The islands, animals, moss, and barnacles from Maine have found a prominent place in Koenig’s work. Her pieces are seen as living objects actively seeking a host, whether the hosting site is a person wearing it or a gallery wall space that displays the work. She cites her travels to the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine, as her source of inspiration for the repeated barnacle forms in her MFA work in felt. The Haystack School also provided Koenig with the knowledge and confidence to integrate technology into her practice. She learned how to use a laser cutter to make intricate designs out of felt, a technology that carried over into her MFA work. By using such technology, it has allowed the artist to become more risk-taking and free-flowing when designing her pieces. In talking with Koenig, she is not only progressive in the materials and technologies that she uses, but also the way she presents her work to the viewer. By encouraging people to touch her work, the barrier between artwork and viewer is broken in a world where museums and galleries do not allow visitors to touch the artwork. She wants people to physically feel the materials she is using, which in turn also connects them to the artwork through touch. On another level, in the same way museums do not allow for touching objects, there are many animals and plants that we as humans are told not to handle for fear of poison, biting, and more. By having the viewer touch her biomorphic works, Koenig hopes the viewer can feel reconnected with nature through her art. Maria Kuhn MA Art History Candidate
Mantle of the Fortified Heart Natural Wool Felt, Plastics, Wood, Laser cut, Flocked, 2020
Armor of Lessening Rumination Natural Wool Felt, Sterling Silver, Copper, 2020
My work is an examination of coping and healing, and the thinking that lies behind it. An injured soul seeks protection from what has harmed it, and can seek safety in withdrawal, isolation, or depression. I use biomorphic forms that cluster, cover and consume the wearer as the physical manifestation of emotional shelter. These adornments, referencing magic, tarot, and fantasy, are imbued with a protective and healing aura. This sense of protection, in whatever form it takes, acts as armor fortifying the wearer and allowing them to confront their trauma. - Paige Koenig
CATHERINE LENTINI Within the realm of the non-objective, there lies two distinct thresholds of activity typically associated with the abstract painter’s process; to either formulate painted forms steeped in logic and precision; or to lunge oneself into automatic meditations of color. While contemporary abstract painters have mastered a multifaceted negotiation of this mid-20th century dichotomy, notions of gender are oftentimes still assigned to an artist’s non-objective output. Line + logic = male. Color + fluidity = female. Grappling with this inherited dichotomy, Catherini Lentini’s newest group of paintings subverts these biased equations, wielding orderly mathematical formulas and visceral deviations in color and shape throughout her practice to craft a generative process of “unintended consequences.” Lentini’s paintings ask viewers, as a womxn artist, is it possible for one’s artwork to be stripped of its gender identity and to be seen solely as the final product of these practiced and re-worked processes? Lentini understands that due to her identity within nonobjective painting, her artworks might only be taken at face-value, as a “nice” painting by a “nice” girl done with “nice” lines and colors. However, this surface-level observation degrades her clever integration of line and color. Her work, in turn, instantly disturbs everything we have been forced to perceive about gender identity in non-objective art. Lentini’s thesis exhibition pushes back on misogynistic notions with her latest paintings by fusing together exact edges with thin traverses of masking tape and fields of color which are determined only by her aesthetic judgements in that very moment. Untitled (A) subscribes to this process; it is a model for inadvertent lines and forms. The negative space of the painting is purposefully left between the edges of curved geometric forms, exquisitely configured by acute red lines. Finely colored in an ethereal shade of mint green, these negative spaces materialize as independent and autonomous forms. Birthed from a subtle paradoxical energy, these unanticipated forms extend themselves in irregular points while remaining organic to the precise linear motifs of the painting. Ultimately, these incongruent shapes debase the arithmetic of non-objectivity and loudly resonate with sentiments of generative art, which relies on unforeseen and unplanned systems. In a similar vein, the curved geometries of Greens mimic the positive shapes of the previous image, but demand to be viscerally processed by the viewer. Given a sense of depth while suspended in an atmosphere of flat color, these shapes dismantle one another’s sense of uniformity and logic through deviated hues of green. Instructed to cling to linear forms, these shapes fight to become breathing masses with delicate cores and a sense of gravity pulling them to the bottom of the composition. Caught between this exchange of composite rationality and intuitive divergences, Lentini’s painted shapes claim the right to self-determination. In Lentini’s visions of the non-objective, the question to be feminine or masculine needs not be asked, only disrupted. Abby Hermosilla MA Art History Candidate
Greens Acrylic on canvas 54”x 54” 2020
Untitled (A) Acrylic on canvas 60”x 60” 2020
Using shapes that draw from tropes of geometric abstraction and graphic design motifs, each painting is a combination of shapes that relate to the proportion of the canvas. The shapes interact with the picture plane in ways that imply space, movement, or both. Each painting starts as a drawing on grid paper, and as I translate the drawing into a painting moments arise when I deviate from the drawing. I make a note of these unintended consequences, and the next painting is based on those surprises. - Catherine Lentini
DIANA PEMBERTON Diana Pemberton’s MFA exhibition, The Sacred Transfigured, is a body of textile works embedded with personal narratives that also enters broader realms of the ritual and sacred. Pemberton’s work reflects her perspective on the transformative textile, or the ability of objects to transcend their physical make-up and become the essence of a symbolic experience. These are not simply tactically proficient textiles; they are objects that elicit a profoundly emotional appeal. As a result, the greatest success of Pemberton’s exhibition is her ability to assimilate personal experiences into physical forms, which encourages viewers to undergo personal reflection and community engagement. The title of one piece, I,Land, is an amalgamation of different colored sections of felt, conjoined into an elegantly arranged form. Diana has constructed an implied topography laiden with iconography from her personal experiences: the eclectic mix of colorful washes recalls her time on the beaches of Cape Cod; crescent moon and two-headed snake motifs conjures the unconscious realm of her dreams; and the oak and pine leaves emblemize the bountiful forests in her home of East Texas. Additionally, Diana has embedded the piece with varying pockets containing leftover yarn and alluring fragrances, each of which work in tandem to produce a symbolic functionality. The yarn represents stored memories, which when combined with the fragrances produces a sensual aroma that activates those “leftover” moments; our past experiences. Furthermore, she has highlighted the pockets of the felt textile with sparkling beads, a metaphor for the preciousness given to our most cherished recollections. The unmistakably personal effects of the garment are further heightened when adorned by the wearer. The felted-mass drapes over the wearer’s body, and when the hood obscures all sight, the wearer is afforded an opportunity for isolated meditation. As a result, the piece interjects beyond mere functionality into the realm of introspection and affective whole. The corresponding element of her MFA exhibition is an expansive table cloth titled The Artist is Eating. Like I,Land, Diana has interwoven personal narratives into the very fabric of the piece. It is composed of linen, a traditional material used in Lithuanian textiles, a symbolic reference to Diana’s heritage, and constructed by combinations of plain weave, basket, and twill techniques. The purple and yellow shades comprising the cloth were made from naturally-dyed foods, including yellow onion skins, red cabbage, and beets; a pervasive fixture of her family dinners. The choice of three structures, as well as the selection of colors were deliberate decisions; they are reflections of the repetitious nature of ritual traditions. The varying densities, some loose and others more tightly-fixed, were arbitrary resolutions, which are a reference to the unplanned interactions from those very ritual traditions. The continuities between materiality and intended narrative become splintered by the prominent split in the cloth. Once again, the transformative nature of the piece is emphasized as it moves from a ritual object endowed with a history of communal engagements to a wearable statement that has the ability to be thrust into an illimitable array of individualized experiences. The artist’s exhibition, The Sacred Transfigured, weaves the material with the personal, and the sacred reverence extolled to the object is only activated when met with the viewer. Thus, the impersonal becomes personal and the detached becomes attached in a series of strategic decisions made possible by the imaginative scope and material practicality that are entrenched in Pemberton’s artistic practice. Jon Gonzalez MA Art History Candidate
I,Land (A, B, C) 65� x 112� Materials: hand dyed wool, beads, thread essential oils, cotton rope, shredded paper, 2020
I,Land (A, B, C) (detail), 2020
My research has led me to exploring the ideas of autonomy achieved through isolation and community achieved through shared experience and how they express identity through the language of textiles. The Sacred Transfigured is a specific focus on this juxtaposition and how these memories and are carried with us wherever we go; becoming key ingredients to our personal identities. These works are transformative textiles which function as art objects that transform into wearable garments. These textiles have been constructed using a variety of techniques including weaving, felting, hand dyeing, and embroidery. The processes themselves are repetitive and meditative thus becoming personal ritualistic acts for contemplating my own memories associated with these ideas. - Diana Pemberton
Kent State University School of Art 325 Terrace Dr., Kent, Ohio kent.edu/art - artinfo@kent.edu