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MASTER OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART 2014

1— Hover Archival Inkjet Print Brittainy Lauback

2014 MASTER OF FINE ARTS EXHIBITION UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART 270 RIVER ROAD ATHENS, GEORGIA 30602 APRIL 12 - MAY 4, 2014 OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 6-9PM

COLOPHON SPEAKER KATIE GEHA ART DIRECTOR KIM KIRBY DESIGNERS JORDAN CONNER SARA MORGAN

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GRADUATE PLAYTIME ON MY FIRST DAY OF GRADUATE SCHOOL I MET WITH DR. JOHN CLARKE, A PROFESSOR AND, AT THE TIME, MY ADVISOR. AT THE END OF OUR AWKWARD MEETING HE LOOKED ME IN THE EYE AND SAID IN A STERN TONE, “THIS IS GRADUATE WORK, NOT GRADUATE PLAY TIME.” IT IS A PHRASE THAT HAS STAYED WITH ME ALL OF THESE YEARS AS I REITERATED IT IN MY HEAD AS A KIND OF JOKING MANTRA THROUGHOUT MY GRADUATE STUDIES. BENT OVER BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY OR STRUGGLING WITH A TRANSITION, I’D SMILE TO MYSELF “REMEMBER KATIE, THIS IS GRADUATE WORK, NOT GRADUATE PLAY TIME.”

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"THIS GRADUATE WORK, NOT GRADUATE PLAY TIME."

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his phrase remained for its relative truth (graduate school is work) but also for its absolute falsehood.

Who is to say that work and play are mutually exclusive? That a playful interaction, a flirtatious conversation say, could not be just as generative as struggling through a passage of Derrida? How about a flirtatious conversation about that passage?!

I often wonder how much more a student may understand about her work through a discussion with colleagues at the bar after her critique rather than during the event. It is the most important part of graduate school, the interaction with others struggling in the same space as you.

While I’ve been at the Lamar Dodd for just a relatively short period, I know that these graduate students, soon to be masters of the fine arts, are also interested in combining work and play. The students held an auction last fall to fundraise for this very catalog where several wore platinum wigs, vamping as Vanna White, or others played rabblerousing auctioneers. I marveled at these students—how fluidly they

set their artistic egos aside to be silly, to have fun. A sense of play is also visible in their work— Tzvi Izaksonas’s blue bottle wrapped in orange plastic, a twig casually inserted crosswise, for example.

Or Lyndey Clayborn’s “Post-Selfie,” a smart inversion of a self-portrait through html source code. Jourdan Joly’s plaster “Cloud Columns” look as much like plaster as they do clouds or any other abstraction. And Brittainy Lauback’s Lynchian series of photographs appear simultaneously threatening and mundane.

This is all just to say that to be playful is to be skillful. It takes hard work to make an art object look casual, to allow it to just be. Perhaps the best work emerges when the art student does not take him or herself too seriously but instead is merely playing at it, playing around. It is the gift of graduate studies—the luxury to fail and succeed miraculously. These 16 students are presenting their best work, or the work that brought them to where they are now after three years of critiques, studio visits, heated discussions at the bar and late night dance parties. Three years of working, playing, and, finally, making really good art.

Katie Geha Director LDSOA Galleries

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2014 MFA CANDIDATES CAITLIN BIELETA Page 8

NATALIA ARRELANO-BLAMEY Page 20

JACOB BRAULT

LAUREN BULLOCK

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Page 22

LYDNEY CLAYBORN

MANTY DEY

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Page 24

HONG HONG

ELIZABETH KLEENE

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Page 26

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TZVI IZAKSONAS

MICHAEL LEVINE

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Page 42

JOURDAN JOLY

YU-HSIEN SHEN

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JENNA KRIEGEL

PATRICK C. WALTER

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Page 50

BRITTANY LAUBACK

QUAN YUAN

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Page 52

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CAITLIN BIELATA

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1— Removing Mountaintops / Wasp Nest Encaustic, graphite drawing, and mixed media on panel ( 24”x 40” ) 2— Ladder Encaustic, graphite drawing, and mixed media on panel

3— Holy Fools / Ziggurat Encaustic, graphite drawing, and mixed media on panel 32”x 24”

Caitlin Bielata was born in Cleveland, Ohio and received a BFA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2007. She creates encaustic wax paintings that incorporate graphite drawings, intaglio prints, and other mixed media. Each painting is the result of methodical, repetitive detail as well as intuitive, improvisational decision making. Images are buried in layers of wax and paint to be later revealed, fragmented into cutout patterns and shapes. Representation and abstraction coexist in nebulous spaces with elements coalescing into strange, dreamlike landscapes. In her current work she is exploring spirituality as an individual construction, a reconciliation of the seen and unseen. Her working process – collaging, building up layers, cutting, scraping, carving, filling spaces back in – represents the process that goes on in each of our minds as we attempt to build an internal framework for dealing with the world.

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JACOB BRAULT Jacob Brault was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point in 2007. For three years Brault lived in Italy and worked for the University of Georgia Studies Abroad Cortona Program.

His creative practice investigates the everyday, Deluzian philosophy, shared and personal experience, utilitarian objects, and postminimalism. Working as a multi-media artist, Brault employs a multitude of materials and processes to engage the viewer physically, seductively and psychologically.

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Now, Then, and Again, 2013

Three Ideas Sitting, 2014

Trees, Motel Room Dimensions Variable

Bronze, Bucket ( 18" x 14" x 14" )

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Body With Out Organs, 2014

Mix, 2012

Stainless Steel ( 46" x 36.5" x 4.5" )

Still from Video Installation Dimensions Variable

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LYNDEY CLAYBORN

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Raised in the pine forests of north Louisiana, Lyndey Clayborn received her BFA from Louisiana Tech University in 2010. At this time she is a MFA candidate in the printmaking program at the University of Georgia in Athens. Lyndey’s work attempts to examine the structures of contemporary society through new technologies and media. She currently resides in Athens, where she teaches and “tumblrs.”

1— Post Selfie Html Source

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HONG HONG

Born in Hefei, China, Hong Hong immigrated to the United States when she was 8 years old. In 2011, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from State University of New York at Potsdam. She currently resides in Athens, Georgia, where she is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia.

Hong is interested in collective events that humanity experiences. Her work can be seen as material attempts to understand and mimic cycles that ebb and flow, in spite of us.

1—2— Day-Rain, 2014 Handmade Kozo ( 8' x 12' )

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NATALIA ARELLANOBLAMEY

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Natalia travelled to UGA to study Fabric design with a BFA in Graphic Design from Universidad Mayor in Santiago, Chile. Her fascination with textiles from a young age took her to create materials that trigger in others the need to touch and experience the material for themselves.

The conceptualization of feelings into textiles is the main drive behind her work.

1—2—3—4—5 Last Life, 2014 Handwoven. Natural, metallic & plastic thread.

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LAUREN BULLOCK Lauren Bullock is an MFA candidate in Fabric Design whose research involves issues of waste, mass consumption, working class, and labor. Throughout her time at the University of Georgia she has integrated a variety of skills to construct fabric from discarded materials, using methods such as weaving, sewing, and soft sculpture along with other contemporary and traditional techniques.

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MANTY DEY 1—2—3—

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Offerings. Vermilion

Offerings. Jade

Hand dyed kozo-shi

Hand dyed kozo-shi

Manty Dey was born in Kumarghat, India and grew up in Atlanta, GA. She received a BFA in painting and drawing from Georgia State University in 2010. She is currently a MFA painting candidate at the University of Georgia. Dey works with materials and processes that engage the senses, encourage closer observation, and slow the viewing experience. In current pieces, she layers hand cut sheets of paper to create undulating forms.

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ELIZABETH KLEENE 1—

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A Shorter Way of Writing (Bananas)

This is Where the Magic Happens

Medium: Sticky note

Medium: Studio door

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Elizabeth Kleene was born in Belfast, Maine and received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003. The main subject of her recent body of work is the mysterious relationship between physical states and conscious phenomenal states, and the strange mental spaces and modes artists engage while

in the act of creating. Synthesizing elements from systems used to comprehend and communicate information including languageparticularly jokes and humor, data graphics, puzzles, and mathematics, her work exploits and documents the absurd mental and physical processes involved in it’s creation.

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TZVI IZAKSONAS Tzvi Izaksonas was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota and received his BA at the University of Minnesota in 2010. Through drawing, print, collage and found object sculpture Tzvi explores the tension of internal and external space. By depicting organic, crystalline and human made structures as equals in a shared field, his work explores the precarious relationship between perceptions of human constructs and the natural world.

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Further Notations on Crackling Blueness, 2014

Dreaming of Viking One; 1, 2014

Dreaming of Viking One; 3, 2014

Blue Bottle, Orange Construction Fencing, Lichen Covered Stick, Map Pins

Pen and Ink, Matte Board

Screenprint, Collage

A Deep Inhale While Attempting To Catch Ones Breath, 2013 Digital Collage

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A Sudden Bolt: Sympathy of a Thing, 2014

Seed/Cede, 2014

Rising Collapse, 2014

Ink on Paper

Ink on Paper

Screen Print, Mate Board, Lichen, Stick, Paint

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JOURDAN JOLY 1 —2

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Cloud Column

Microcosm

Carved Plaster

Mixed Media

As a multi disciplined artist Jourdan Joly received a BFA from Florida State University in 2010. Currently he has continued his studies at the University of Georgia concentrating in three-dimensional mediums.

Fueled by a joy of making and fascinated by the epic, Joly explores surreal thoughts of infinity and perceptions of scale to access and activate the imagination.

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Phobetor & Co.: Whisperer

Phobetor & Co.: Scuttler

Phobetor & Co.: Infantry 1

Wood, Steel, Cast iron, Leather ( 20” x 40” x 8” )

Bone, Twine, Hardware, Thread ( 10” x 10” x 10” )

Bone, Leather, Hardware ( 15” x 5” x 5” )

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Phobetor & Co.: Messenger

Phobetor & Co.: Infantry 2

Phobetor & Co.: Scout

Leather, Feathers, Bone, Hardware, Thread ( 3” x 3” x 2” )

Wood, Leather, Bone, Crocheted twine, Hardware ( 20” x 4” x 2” )

Hand-felted Wool, Leather, Bone, Thread ( 2” x 2” x 2” )

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JENNA KRIEGEL

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Using herself as a model, mixed media sculptor Jenna Kriegel ruminates on the intersection of anthropology and consciousness. Kriegel has studied and exhibited in both the United States and Europe as well as delivered talks at symposia with discourse over both art and social justice. Kriegel received her BFA from the University of Oklahoma in 2011, and will soon complete MFA study at the University of Georgia in May 2014.

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3— Brittainy Lauback was born in Columbus, Ohio.

She received a BFA from the University of New Mexico in 2003. Her current work addresses a desire for the real. She seeks to locatsigns of life in an increasingly fragmented culture that is high lighted not by actuality but by the appearance of the actual.

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Dark wood

Sign

Baby in the Corner

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Hover

Bedroom

Hole

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Splash

Gone

More Time

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MICHAEL LEVINE Michael Siporin Levine was born and raised outside of Hartford, Connecticut and received his BFA in printmaking at the University of Connecticut.

His work is informed through a combination of personal experience, narrative, and

process, using a mixture of observational and imagined drawing as a foundation.

Through printmaking, drawing, experimental animation, and video installation, he seeks to create loose narratives, often based on autobiographical events & everyday interactions.

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Work, Chill, Play, Oy Vey (Version 1)

Between Pines Video Still

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YU-HSIEN SHEN

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Yu-Hsien Shen grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her BFA in Jewelry and Metals from Iowa State University in 2010 and is a 2014 MFA candidate in Jewelry and Metals at the University of Georgia. Shen cuts paper silhouettes sourced from photographs, she takes of her homeland Taiwan. Most recently she began combining the paper silhouettes into fragments of the photographs. These collages are meant to evoke a longing and emotions she associates with home.

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PATRICK C. WALKER 1—

No Reception, Dropped Call

Patrick Walter is a multi-media artist whose practice includes working in metal fabrication, collage and video art.

Walter was born in a small town in Northwestern Wisconsin and is influenced by the post-industrial architecture left behind by generations of loggers, miners and factory workers. With diverse interests in history, industrial design and metalworking, Walter’s work is focused on examining contemporary issues through a historical lens.

Steel, Silver Solder, Cast Cement, Steel Springs 2014 2— …oohhh the humanity! 1938.

Steel, Silver Solder, Oak, Found Object 2014

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1— Hotel Lounge Chair 3D Rendering Digital 3Ds Max Rendering 2014

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QUAN YUAN Growing up in China, Quan has been exposed to different kinds of artistic forms. With a unique eye for color and design, Quan creates his works in varying artistic forms that address issues of both art and design. In 2010, Quan received his BA degree in Beijing Institute of Technology. With his passion and determination in art and design, he came to Lamar Dodd School of Art to achieve his goals in interior design.