School of Art MFA Thesis Catalogue 2018

MFA THESIS CATALOGUE MFA THESIS CATALOGUE MFA THESIS CATALOGUE MFA THESIS CATALOGUE MFA THESIS CATALOGUE MFA THESIS CATALOGUE MFA THESIS

Foreword Rod Parker, Director of the School of Art as the range of disciplinary studies available in the School of Art in the focus areas of ceramics, digital art, graphic design, painting and drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. All aspects of concept, execution, presentation, and installation are considered in a way that makes it clear that this work emerges from a close-knit, professionally-oriented community of makers and thinkers.

The culmination of each student’s unique studio experience, the exhibitions are free and open to the public in our two exhibition spaces: the Foster and Glassell galleries.

These highly anticipated graduate thesis The School of Art’s MFA Thesis Catalogue

exhibitions draw an audience of faculty and

showcases selected works by our 2018

peers from the LSU community as well of

graduating students in conjunction with

people throughout the Baton Rouge area and

installation views of their exhibitions. These

beyond—providing an opportunity to see the

exhibitions represent the outcome of three years

work of these artists and for sales to public

of research, critical thinking, and the making of

and private collections.

art as the students complete their studies with our faculty and launch their professional careers.

The MFA Thesis Catalogue celebrates the accomplishments of the class of 2018 and of

The exhibitions reflect the influences of the

the creativity these emerging professionals will

interdisciplinary aspects of the program as well

bring to the world after graduation.

Convenient Camouflage As part of my visual lexicon, my current practice attempts to bring the language of the streets to fine art. This body of work is an exploration, examination, and embracement of the power and presence of Black masculinity, in a country that alternatively marginalizes, fetishes and vilifies countless lives. Abstraction of image and surface is an attempt to de-stress stereotypes of the Black male. Images of the Black male depicted in my work are derived from a series of photographs, which were taken inside local barbershops as hair was being cut.

The acts of silk screening, tearing, cutting, pasting, scribbling, and “tagging� are meant to enact a sense of complexity, resulting in an uncanny familiarity that at best feels appropriate in the process of creating. In addition, themes such was the Caribbean, African diaspora, Christianity, Hip-Hop, and urban street culture reflect my creative process, and by proxy, reflect my lived experience. My aim is to create a

John Alleyne Painting & Drawing

space for experiences often ignored by the art-historical canon.

Catharsis Catharsis is a series of eight works that highlight the spiritual and emotional benefits I receive from repetitive manual action. Pulling loosely from Catholic iconography and practices, my work discusses the personal solutions I’ve found to the adverse effects that organized religion can have on the psyche. Using both ceramic and found object sculptures, I aim to discuss both the internal and external results of this catharsis.

Matthew Barton Sculpture

That Survival Apparatus As a point of departure, my work uses the poem “Mask� by Maya Angelou as a lens to view various Black mediascapes. Central to this idea are notions of black fugitivity, improvisation, and negation. This position questions notions of the archive and how it thinks of itself in relation to African diasporic ontology. The work is concerned with how things are kept and dispersed in black culture. Because of such concerns, there is a strategy within the imagery to leave things rendered visible and in other places invisible. The work is not concerned with changing this positionality in an explicit way that makes aware a critique, but rather the function of the work is to seek for a more implicit critique that brings about an understanding of ontology that is not always revealed on the surface

Justin Bryant Painting & Drawing

Primal Matter Primal Matter is a physical representation of the intuitive process, through two and three dimensional forms. The pieces convey motion and tension while telling the story of their own creation. Working instinctively has always fascinated me, in the way of allowing our subconscious mind to make decisions in the place of preconceived planning. My work is heavily influenced by Intuition and the transformation of energy. I am constantly searching for the underlying image or object through scraps of wood and pieces of charcoal, and this body of work is the visible evidence. It explores the curiosity of our unknown ideas, demonstrating a process of creation through organized chaos.

Lucas Bush Sculpture

Yes We Can Can My work is an examination of pejorative societal devices that pronounce positions of racial inferiority and feelings of alienation, providing a context to the dissonance between my Tejano heritage and childhood aspiration to feel “normal� in a white space. I re-contextualize family stories in relation to cultural signifiers, social mobility, and ethnic representation to decipher my understanding of our present political climate.

Eliseo Casiano Painting & Drawing

Home Is As an exploration of identity and personal history, Home is. aims notonly to chronicle my own experiences and memories, but to touch upon the innumerable definitions of the word “home�. The objects are rooted in personal reflection, but each one refers to an aspect of play, love, loss, or regret, inherent in familial relationships. Through umbrellas, hats, cups, plates, and fruit, I analyze my past and explore the complexities of family.

Jodie Masterman Ceramics

Scattered Feathers The erosion of the landscape by human means irrevocably altered the habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Actions like these have led to the implementation of systematic conservation methods. These methods, while helping to raise public awareness, have also led to a distortion of perceptions about endangered species.

Within this world of conservation, the act of observation stands apart for me. Bird watching is an action that is separate from intervention. It is the act of seeing that most intrigues me. As in photography, observation, not just seeing, helps us to understand the world we live in.

The acts of watching, archiving and remembering are critical in constructing this work as a meditation on the fragility of existence. Our memories are mutable, our experience subject to alteration. Like the ivorybilled woodpecker, our existence is constantly in peril. We live our lives

Dason Pettit Photography

under the threat of multiple existential problems.

The examination of the narrative of the ivory-billed woodpecker has exposed these philosophical concerns for me. Inside that story, our own existence and meaning is interwoven. The cyclical nature of our lives becomes more transparent in this context and the paradox of our actions clearer. For every problem we look for a solution and with that solution we create another set of obstructions.

Moments of Metanoia Collage as a process is essential to the development of my work. The directness and physicality of cutting apart and splicing together fragmentary parts from fashion magazines appeals to me as a method of sketching much more than putting pencil to paper. The selection of source images is an intuitive process and stems primarily from a desire to handle and feel the fabrics and textures depicted in glossy magazine pages firsthand. The collages act as material studies that form the basis for larger material-driven objects; they become assemblages that blur the distinction between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects; they create an environment by shifting into abstract but tangible, objective and figurative forms that interact with the space around them; and they are a personal performance as a pseudo coping mechanism to transform my fantasy for physical contact into reality.

By crafting forms through careful consideration of color and visual relationships, I develop illusory and suggestive figures. The combination of seductive fractions—often recognizable as isolated body parts or as allusions

Miah Pickett Printmaking

to anatomy— create an abstract whole that is at once sexual and grotesque without inherently being either. The collages are intended only to suggest forms that evoke attraction or repulsion. I often deliberately exclude images of actual body parts and flesh. The absence of human corporeality emphasizes the vibration of innocence and lust that drives my compulsion to make collages. For me, it’s about making what I can see become something that I can touch and feel. Tactility, thus, is a fundamental property of my work.

My process affords me the freedom to recontextualize traditional Greek myths using a contemporary visual lexicon. Instead of emphasizing the ideal aspects of Greek mythological figures which divide the subject from the viewer, I use this traditional iconography to create soft installations that, while abstract, are more sensuous and approachable. By using materials and fabrics that are easily recognizable and appeal to our sense of touch—such as satin and tulle—I evoke a more subjective and intimate relationship between the figure and the viewer. And by using Greek mythology and archetypal motifs to talk about coming of age and similar life-changing moments, I emphasize the universality of the human experience. As evidenced by their thematic appearances in ancient mythology, these dramatic episodes of transformation have existed as a part of the human condition for millennia.

While the circumstances surrounding personal metamorphoses often feel deeply personal and singularly isolating on an individual level, they aren’t quite that profoundly unique. Details in each of our particular dramas may vary, but it is rare that we have ever experienced a life-changing moment that hasn’t been experienced by many others before us. It is this duality between the universal and the highly subjective within these metamorphic interludes that I find so captivating and forms the conceptual heart of my work.

Altar to Uncertainty In coping with the most difficult facets of life.

Whether extreme or mild, most all of us have at some point experienced the sometimes inexplicable onset of a depressive episode, the hardship of surviving a traumatic experience, and the emptiness of a heartbreaking loss. While these events often seem insurmountable, and the passage through them vague and daunting, we alone hold the power to evolve into a more enlightened version of ourselves by learning to transmute the damaging nature of these experiences. If you’re here reading this statement, then you will likely already know the strength of spirit necessary to conquer traumatic adversities.

The book you will see in this exhibition opens itself up and projects onto these walls the story of a little girl named Minerva who faces similar trials as she is plunged into the harsh realities of the human experience

Kel Stombaugh Printmaking

and overcomes each of these immense obstacles. In doing so, she emerges, as well all do, a stronger, more self-assured individual. This is an invitation to take this journey with her, and I, as we navigate the difficult uncertainties of life and celebrate this hopeful testament to human perseverance; a virtue worthy of veneration.

Dearest Dearest is the examination of what remains of a person, looking to the objects they cherished most while contemplating the inevitability of their certain absence. The work questions the futility of preservation in the measure of time, the failure of memories held in fragile containers, and the decay of the physical body. The materials that compose Dearest are chosen for their innate longevity and their ability to evoke remembrance.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve collected objects as a connection to the past. These objects become proof of my existence and reveal a piece of my history. Even as an object invites recollection, the subject of the memory is never true or real again; the details are forever warped and fragmented by time. By using the pieces of my personal narrative presented through the heirloom, souvenir, and relic, it is my intent that the viewers feel a connection to their own stories

Grace Tessein Ceramics

held within their most cherished objects. I hope that they will reflect on what memories manifest in the belongings they collect and what objects will hold their presence after they draw their last breath.

Scavenge Scavenge unveils an accumulation of discarded items within the limits of Baton Rouge. Various materials are discovered on the trail between my apartment and studio. Others are taken near numerous roadsides or are donated elements. Each item arrives from the natural attributes of a wild exterior and is transformed into a controlled interior space, offering an alternate context that introduces a panoply revealing connection between each minimally altered possession through arrangement.

Jessica Thames Painting & Drawing

In-Between: The Spaces of Modernity During the past three years as a graduate student, I have experienced loneliness. Having recently emigrated from Italy, I have often asked myself why I am experiencing such hard times adjusting to a different country. My thesis explores this question. Referring to Marc Augé’s idea of non-place, I have chosen a geographical and spatial starting point to approach my work. Italian cities are built around the central piazza where social, political, and economic life revolves. With my photograph, I depict American spaces that lack specific location and create solitude within the urban corridors. In my videos, I wander “in-between spaces,” to symbolize my experience of loneliness as a foreigner. Private feelings, such as loneliness, are paradoxes that we all share, no matter where we come from. I attempt to engage with people, breaking the cultural barriers of speaking a different language.

Elisa Fabris Valenti Digital Art