MCAD MFA Thesis Catalog 2016

MASTER CATALOG OF FINE THESIS ARTS

LESLIE BARLOW

JULIE RENEÉ BENDA

ANNA LEIGH BIEDENBENDER

JOHN THOMAS BIVENS

KELSEY BOSCH

ALLISON BROWN

KAYLA CAMPBELL

SIQI CHENG

LIZA DORSEY

PRESTON YATES DRUM

ANDI FINK

ROB GOODING

CONG HU

ESSMA ELAINE IMADY

RACHEL JENNINGS

PATIENCE LEKIEN

QIUWEN LI

KATIE LUPTON

MANDY MARTINSON

JOHN MATSUNAGA

SARAH FAYE McPHERSON

HEIDI MILLER

KATHRYN MILLER

ALEX MITCHELL

NIKY MOTEKALLEM

AMBER NEWMAN

NICK RIVERS

CHRISTOPHER SELLECK

ERIC YEVAK

SIJIA ZHANG

FROM THE DIRECTOR

This year we have the largest graduating class in the history of our Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies program. This special group’s creativity, courage, and passion has shown us an approach to making a life in art and design that is enlightening and inspired.

This lively international mix of thirty-two students came together in the MFA program with the single purpose of developing as artists and designers. They galvanized their practice through the act of making, research, laughter, rigorous critique, comradery, and a collective challenge to be the best.

Bound together by a common language of art and design, personal expression, and cultural engagement, this class has never avoided difficult questions and challenges in their work. As you look through this catalog, I am sure you will find extraordinary creative work that reflects the times in which we live today and the future that is ahead.

This is also the inaugural graduating class of a new home for the MFA program—a building near the college’s main campus that includes fifty beautiful individual studios and an expanded gallery space.

These graduates will now engage in professional practice beyond the academy, and they are prepared to become productive members of society and make meaningful, serious contributions to the creative culture.

The mentors, faculty, and staff of the Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies and broader Minneapolis College of Art and Design community are honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to the education of these graduates, and we wish them the best of good fortune as they pursue their chosen careers.

Tom DeBiaso Director and Professor Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design's Master of Fine Arts

program is a community of makers, thinkers, theorists, researchers, and creative professionals working in a mentorbased, interdisciplinary educational environment. This incredible collection of work represents the capstone activity of two years of intensive study and a relentless pursuit of creative excellence. The candidates graduating this spring reflect the truly interdisciplinary nature of our mentor-based program and demonstrate the importance of personal expression and achievement.

LESLIE BARLOW

JULIE RENEÉ BENDA

ANNA LEIGH BIEDENBENDER

JOHN THOMAS BIVENS

KELSEY BOSCH

ALLISON BROWN

KAYLA CAMPBELL

SIQI CHENG

LIZA DORSEY

PRESTON YATES DRUM

ANDI FINK

ROB GOODING

CONG HU

ESSMA ELAINE IMADY

RACHEL JENNINGS

PATIENCE LEKIEN

QIUWEN LI

KATIE LUPTON

MANDY MARTINSON

JOHN MATSUNAGA

SARAH FAYE McPHERSON

HEIDI MILLER

KATHRYN MILLER

ALEX MITCHELL

NIKY MOTEKALLEM

AMBER NEWMAN

NICK RIVERS

CHRISTOPHER SELLECK

ERIC YEVAK

SIJIA ZHANG

COMIC ART

JOHN THOMAS BIVENS

Comic Art—Quad Cities, Illinois, USA

I am an award-winning visual storyteller, focused on the comic book medium. My work reflects my love of watching society and interpreting the cause of social actions. Like a rubbernecker driving by a highway accident, it is easy to be drawn into the worst aspects around us. Instead of turning away in reaction, I use dark humor to help me digest the information I absorb.

In my thesis, Lil’ Charlie, I’ve created a new universe that is not completely unlike our own to help me understand the idea of the superorganism, the placement of sociopaths/psychopaths in our society, and the current tool of shame as a form of social control. Where does religion come from and how has it evolved in its influence? Is the ability to ignore emotions entirely of benefit to the population? When technology allows for a person’s life to be torn down in an instant, how do we comport ourselves? I feed all these questions to my audience inside the candy shell of my irreverent avatars: Lil’ Charlie, Lil’ Death, Duncan, and Lilith.

johnbivens.tumblr.com

bivens.john@gmail.com

DRAWING AND PAINTING

LESLIE BARLOW

Drawing and Painting—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

My current body of work consists of oil painting, collage, and drawings. I use the figure and narrative elements to talk about issues related to multiculturalism, “otherness,” and identity. Working within the history of figurative painting, the figure offers me fertile ground to push the boundaries of our known visual language and inject that history with a new generation of faces and stories. Although my paintings are rooted in tradition, the relevance and urgency of the subject matter make my work fresh and contemporary. I enjoy layering colors, subtleties, and symbolism in my work. These techniques help me to construct works that allude to the multiple layers and complexities of race, experiences, representation, and identity. As a person of mixed race, this work is vital to my understanding of myself as well as the world around me. Through my investigations, my ultimate goal is to create visually stunning and complex work that is socially aware, engages people in conversation, challenges the status quo, and presents thought-provoking contemporary figurative painting.

lesliebarlowartist.com

leslie.barlow.artist@gmail.com

Two Grandmas (detail), 2015 Oil, acrylic, charcoal, and photo transfer on panel 84 x 48 x 2.5 in.

Of Other Paths (Heterotopia), 2015 Oil, acrylic, and photo transfer on panel 48 (diameter) x 2 (depth) in.

Untitled, 2016 Oil on panel 48 x 36 in.

After Sze II, 2016 Ink on paper 20 x 16 in.

ANNA LEIGH BIEDENBENDER

Drawing and Painting—Glenwood, Minnesota, USA

I am interested in the human condition. Specifically, I question one’s ability to be vulnerable and empathetic with others. In my work I dissolve figure/ground relationships into compositions of gestural line and mark. These compositions have tensions between figuration and abstraction, and fluctuate between the ephemeral and the concrete.

I work from multiple sources—referencing photographs, direct observation, and other renderings. I combine and translate this information through painting and drawing. This process is part depiction, improvisation, and alteration, so the work hovers between clarity and obscurity. Through this process, I am able to reflect on the intersections of personal identity, sanctuary, and relationship.

annaleighbiedenbender.com

anna.biedenbender@gmail.com

Superfluidity #4, 2015

Ink and acrylic on Painter’s Plastic

9 x 12 ft.

Superfluidity #1, 2015

Ink and acrylic on Painter’s Plastic

9 x 12 ft.

LIZA DORSEY

Painting—Nashville, Georgia, USA

Much of my youth has been defined by an enthusiastic participation in competitive sports. The particular training that comes from focused physical activity has instilled in me a drive to continually develop and challenge methodologies for investigating the concept of work ethic, process, repetition, and competition. I view the immediate act of painting as an action of the body—painting as a form of mental and physical exercise. Driven by my competitive nature and a desire to create work that evolves with practice, my gestural abstractions display the evidence of an event, defined by my body in motion.

Through my attempts to turn the art object into a spectacle, or a display of the proof of the physical performance by the artist in the studio, I seek to create shared experiences for the viewer. I strive to entertain and allow my spectator to become a part of the arena of painting. In this sense, my work equates art to sport, as both activities are voluntary forms of creative expression and showcase the ability of an individual engaging in an activity.

My paintings are products of an endless creation cycle of obstacles designed to defy my notions of what painting is and how the physical act of painting affects the end result. This bodily process allows me to challenge materials and create restrictions to test the viewer’s expectation of how a painting and its medium is viewed. I am interested in what happens within the square or rectangle and how the event translates itself out onto the viewer.

lizadorsey.com lizado20@gmail.com

A Saturday in the Summer, 2015

Multimedia installation: guitar, voice, India ink on paper

10 x 30 x 15 ft.

Hollow Log Pawn, 2015

Multimedia installation: signs, wrestling belt, bathroom, security camera, a TV, a baseball, other screens, radios, music, cash, money, dollar dollar bills

10 x 20 x 6 ft.

PRESTON YATES DRUM

Painting—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Though trained as a painter, I have recently turned toward building interactive sculptural installations using cardboard, garbage, and other recycled materials. These installations are pseudo stages where the viewer becomes a part of a performance. There is no script for these plays—the work is driven by narratives of the downtrodden souls from my North Carolinian roots. In my own past, art has always equated to a confrontation between maker and viewer. When you scream, they listen. I learned this from playing in punk bands. With age and experience, I have found how to harness the energy of shock and spectacle and use it as a catalyst for dialogue. My goal is not to dictate a meaning to the viewer, but provide the raw material for the viewer to construct their own. This interaction provokes questions regarding how we define the author and what role power plays in the cultural context of art. We fabricate our own truth with the things we see, hear, and do. My only request of the viewer is that they use my work as an opportunity to ask questions of themselves and their past.

prestonpaintings.tumblr.com drum.preston@gmail.com

RACHEL JENNINGS

Painting and Installation—Dawson, Illinois, USA

With a front yard of rolling cornfields and a backyard of dark timber, there is an ongoing presence of seclusion. I come from a rural landscape and my work is reflective of my upbringing. A sense of place acts as the central theme in my work, whether it is the subject matter of my work or reflected in my creation of a physical environment. My fascination with objects and a corporeal presence is embodied through my material choices, the manipulations of them, and the spaces they occupy.

I make physical manifestations of my fleeting past. In the initial stages, I work intuitively and respond to impulses, often creating the actual work on-site, instead of in the studio. The work grows upon itself through this process as I direct the narrative that emerges. I pull from memory and nostalgia to recall an existence where everything past, which was beautiful to me, marries current experience and culture.

My process pulls toward collage and installation because of the expressive, unconfined nature of my work and the corresponding impermanent, transitioning subject matter. Through folklore, religion and morality, place, possessions, and nature, I am able to visually translate my world, curating my memories into culturally reflective narratives.

rachel-leigh-jennings.com

rachelleighjennings@gmail.com

The Pond, 2016

acrylic, charcoal on fabric

ERIC YEVAK

Comp:578.1, 2015

Ink jet ultra chrome, spray paint, acrylic, and resin on canvas and wood

44 x 72 x 4 in.

ERIC YEVAK

Painting—Brooklyn, New York, USA

I use traditional painting methods combined with digitally created work to address the concept of transcendence inside of the contemporary sublime.

The work apprehends loss and desire: loss of self, of the moment, of faith; desire for security, understanding, and identity. It approaches struggle as a method to transcend conscious existence.

The work is not a visual representation of the struggle leading to the point of transcendence, but the enticing loss of self inside the apex moment.

ericyevak.com

ericyevak@gmail.com

T-REX, 2015 Film still

His Eyes Have Seen, 2014 Film still

ROB GOODING

Filmmaking—Bloomington, Minnesota, USA

People often categorize films as an escape, but that is not what I seek in them. My films aim—through hyperreal visual storytelling—to make you feel cornered and look at things you do not normally see. Within the short films I make, emotional trajectories of years are concentrated into stories under twenty minutes to create an immediate experience.

These emotions are expressed through my psychologically complex characters that deal with an ongoing inner struggle and are forced to alleviate it outwardly. Following the great French filmmaker, Robert Bresson, I mistrust the psychological motives for my character’s actions because of their instability. The character may state an intention in one scene, but in the very next their actions betray the complete opposite.

My thesis film is loosely based on a Vice article about a young lonely man who moonlights as a pedophile hunter. While the article provides plenty of detail regarding his process and confrontations, it omits anything about his past and gives little attention to his motivations. I take his past and motivations as the main foundation of the story while slowly revealing details of the young man’s daily life.

robjgooding.com

robjgooding@gmail.com

ESSMA ELAINE IMADY

Filmmaking and Installation—Damascus, Syria

My medium of choice is film. Film is a very visual experience. I challenge this through using limited imagery or a layered surface that does not allow the vision to penetrate to its depth in order to present questions about the limits of vision, and to trouble the relation between vision and knowledge. I am also interested in creating environments for my films through the introduction of concrete objects that speak to the themes and premises within my work. These objects are sometimes handmade objects and other times are objects infused with meaning through their proximity to the film.

My strategies include asserting the personal experience in the face of the collective, disassembling the essentialist narratives through the interrogation of the historical archive, and the constant suspicion of the transcendental claim for structure through questioning the system of referents that become associated with war and religion.

With my work, my goal is to heighten the emotional experience of viewer—to communicate a completely foreign occurrence in a manner so that emotional investment occurs. That the viewer leaves my work not feeling that this is the plight of another, but a shared human experience. To translate emotions and experiences into a common tongue that can be understood in a space that is beyond the specificity of language and culture, residing within the collective human experience.

essmaimady.com

essma@outlook.com

Descent into Heaven, 2015 Prayer carpets, 20-inch video screens, video

Bahmout, 2015 Film still 32-inch screen

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Promise you’ll write, 2015

A broken ship from the bottom of the sea, Stories of Jesus, naked lady s+p shakers, rabbit ear(singular), airplane with no destination, 2 cassette tapes, Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, baby Jesus times two, 5 blade scissors for the best fringe a lady should never buy, the world, a tennis racket to feign athleticism, Mama duck & baby, 4 full ketchup bottles, 7 horsies, chihuahua and it’s detailed butt hole, lil’ timberlands, 3 (times a) lady- trophies, paddle ball, cop car with it’s windows long gone, liquor decanter with its contents long gone, Let’s Travel in Japan, 2 skeletons on a string, a torture tower with no power, 7 rabid red rabbits, wise one-winged owl, a microscope, VW bug cologne, rhinestone panther head, 2 a duo of rats, clown mask, an odd number switch plate, hand mirror, monkey, t rex, 2 telephone receivers, 3 guns bang bang, cartoon teeth, cafeteria tray, avian themed coat hook, mallard planter, Woman’s Lib wall decor, toy grenade, 3 rats & a trap, shaved head Barbie, unicorn, light-up my life Shepard, grate cover, box of coffee, ladle, 2 binoculars, First Alert Medic panel, an alarmingly large spider, the numbers 0-1-6, 2 flat birds, a doll house armor, the shell of a man, a baby, a dolly, 6 electrical outlet converter, a candelabra for cake, boring pencil holder, peeping tom binoculars, plastic miniature manger manager, tiger head lunch box, a scale with no numbers, power box, stray lid, some kind of gauge, faux gold winner, the three wise men, mirror mirror mirror on the..., cocktail fork, tandem geese, not actually vintage but looks like it might be -locket, a whole slew of construction equipment, a red wagon, some flowers even faker than your moms balloons, buns o’ steel, cupid and no arrow, watch that tells no time, cow, the nose knows no face, the kind of blinds people think are tacky, technicolor projector, a family, Styrofoam snow/globe, a traveling case for the business person, a big book of psychology, 12 cats that go meow, and someones guardian angel

Two 55-inch TV screens

it's my party, and I can cry if I want to., 2015 Tears, marque sign, 1 balloon, giant present of expectation, glitter party hats, green shag rug, 5 tiny chairs, 5 candy colored television sets, 5 crying videos 10 x 19 x 12 ft.

KAYLA CAMPBELL

My work is directly influenced by the nature of campy kitsch, pop culture, and the never-ending search for some waterfront property in the uncanny valley. It’s something with which I have been fascinated before I knew what it was, or that the concept had a name. I’m interested in how these campy, kitschy, pop phenomena correspond to me directly, and what role they play within society due to our overexposure to them. Vibrating color palettes, collages of objects, and varying amounts of humor are constant themes running through work I produce. Trained as a graphic designer, I’ve begun using my background to get off the computer and start creating experiences and spaces with which you can interact physically and mentally. Utilizing the design skills I have honed over the years, these installations illustrate how I work and solve problems and where I draw inspiration, all while maintaining the love of excess in which I’ve come to find comfort. The pairing of audacious colors and nostalgically-simplified settings are merely the stage for the short snapshots of surreal creepiness, voyeurism, and hysteria for which I’m striving. I’m on the hunt for juxtapositions of content and where you find the underlying humor within these situations.

kaylacampbell.com

kla.campbell@gmail.com

33.1 x 23.4 in.

SIQI CHENG

Graphic Design—Hefei, Anhui, China

My name is Siqi Cheng and I come from China. I am a graphic designer who focuses on typography, specifically the relationship letters have as twodimensional forms with three-dimensional forms. Typography has different definitions in different fields. In researching different types, I investigated the legibility and display within various type forms. I used experimental methods to make diversified groups of type.

I am interested in the relationship of typography to our daily life. In most cases, our understanding of typography is limited to a two-dimensional environment, which we can see but cannot touch. The differentiation between two-dimensional fonts and three-dimensional fonts is that the latter can present more information and details. In the development of modern visual arts, the application and display of type is no longer limited to two dimensions. In the two years of my MFA program, I have furthered my research on the relationship of type and 3D forms, and created a combination of this relationship with word structures.

ssssiqi.tumblr.com

csiqi9299@gmail.com

CONG HU

Graphic Design—Beijing, China

Philosophy is a pivot for me to balance my creation between logic and sensibility. Art is a language that gives me the supplement to fill up vacancies in my design world. I never get tired of enriching my skills and expanding my design vocabulary. As a graphic designer, I am working through multimedia to explore the threshold and transform it within different forms.

Currently, I’m exploring time. In my work, time is implication, surrealism is metaphor, and I use my design as a form to give invisible time a tangible figure. I create work in the manner of Surrealism with the help of 3D software. I use the regulated clock to create irregular movement to visualize disordered trajectories with ordered rules. The trajectories of rotation suggest the flow of time. In my 3D video, the poems and music I created are like the columns and grids in the book I designed, using different rhythms to embrace viewers. The precise calculation changes the way people think about time naturally. This body of work was made to help viewers consider time and space as well as dispense with the notion of objective temporality, and let people change the way they perceive time.

cong-hu.com

cong126@gmail.com

wave, pave, 2016 Video still

x 17 in.

Quiet Chaos, 2016 Video still

x 26 in.

PATIENCE LEKIEN

Graphic Design—Manchester, New Hampshire, USA

My creative practice is an engine with which I communicate and express blackness and issues that encompass it. I use my practice to both define what culture sees as blackness, but at the same time dissect its core meaning and the chaotic beauty it embodies. I aim to capture the varying spectrums that allude to both the individual and the black collective. I often reflect on and look to personal experiences, current events, artistic, cultural and historical trends within the black diaspora, and the critical discourse on blackness within modern culture. In all my art, I aim to spark thought and create dialogue. Within my work, I explore themes of identity, history, and cause and effect. Though I am a designer and approach every artistic problem as such, I have found that my way of making varies, and is ever-changing. I allow my method of making to vary depending on the best way to approach and communicate a problem or message.

patienceblekien.wix.com/portfolio

patiencebelieve@gmail.com

Africa America and Me 01, 2015

print

Uncanny 01, 2015

Randomness, 2015

Digital print

36 x 72 in.

Colorography, 2015 Gallery installations, digital prints, video, web

72 x 108 x 72 in.

QIUWEN LI

Graphic Design—Zhuzhou, Hunan, China

In my designs, graphic elements (shapes, color, pattern, type) are constructed, deconstructed, and then reconstructed in order to create a richer experience and extend their meaning. As a designer, I understand the need for legibility, but I am more concerned with communicating something more visceral, expressive, and imaginative. My work engages viewers in a way that evokes playing games and figuring out puzzles; they simply can’t get enough of it, and that’s a good thing, because that’s the key to engagement. As a Chinese woman living in the US, I am in an in-between position, which also brings a distinctive perspective for my thinking, being, and making.

With the development of the Internet, new requirements are proposed for design. I view design as a process of self-improvement, which emphasizes interaction between different media, different cultures, and different concepts. I design my work as a system to be used across various media. Each medium follows specific rules based on the design limitations of that medium. These rules not only give me a direction, but more importantly, they work around the constraints of a given medium, such as the screen size and format on an iPad.

qiuwenli.com

qiuwendesign@gmail.com

NOW: A play installation, 2015 Paint, rubber tubing, wooden shapes, tape, vinyl sheeting, plexiglass

Blokk: A Pop-up Print Shop, 2014 Wooden stamps, ink pads, folding table, wooden shelving, canvas banners, poles

KATIE LUPTON

Graphic Design—Maple Grove, Minnesota, USA

I am a cross-disciplinary designer currently living in Minneapolis. My work aims to investigate relationships between design constraints and parameters within play and fun. The tactile nature of my work is heavily influenced by my interest in play and participation and how both can be incorporated into design solutions. The work I produce reflects the traditions and motifs of my Norwegian heritage, championing effortlessness and functionality and emphasizing the use of organic and geometric shapes while still employing playful characteristics. The purpose of Scandinavian design is to improve everyday life, valuing durability, functionality, and accessibility, but also less tangible values such as simplicity, joy, courage, and daily pleasure visible through the simple, colorful forms. Most recently, I have been interested in experiential graphic design and alternative display installations. My work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

katielupton.com

hikatielupton@gmail.com

HEIDI MILLER

Graphic Design—Coon Rapids, Iowa, USA

My practice questions social constructs that persist in society and provides a dissenting voice to this structure, particularly regarding gender politics and mental health. Through this questioning and unearthing, I bring to the foreground a critical discussion about how we see, what we see, and what those observations and resulting judgments mean in the contemporary landscape.

I tactically employ humor, meditative spaces, enigmatic approaches, and product-based solutions for social criticism, to create an escape, or to provide consumer alternatives. Using the “design for good” movement as a guide, I explore how graphic design can be revealing and have ethical impact. While Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity informs my work, I’m equally influenced by everyday events and observations, human interactions, and news sources. My practice evolves as the world does; as new injustices take hold and new opportunities for change arise, I’m investigating inventive ways to make an impact.

Often, I use appropriated materials. Engaged with these design relics, I deconstruct them to pave a new pathway of meaning, and to achieve something beyond or in opposition to the original graphic design contexts. In selecting these materials, I am both a curator and a creator— roles that lead me in the visualization of my practice and its future.

heidimillerdesignmpls.com

heidi.miller.design@gmail.com

Cloak on a Ghost (1 of 5), 2014

print

x 28.25 in.

A Trail of White Pebbles (On White), 2015

prints, suspended balsa wood panels

x 84 x 72 in.

AMBER NEWMAN

Design—San Antonio, Texas, USA

I am interested in the phenomenon of images naturally becoming the face of movements, but I am also interested in the way technology and the Internet has increased global awareness of serious situations with videos, sound recordings, and still images. We form a relationship to these violent and disobedient stories through the narrative in the image, and this begins to transform into a critique and a movement through (Internet) activism.

I use graphic design and new technologies as a way to critique these images as a spectacle and a form of entertainment through constant sharing. My work becomes a portal for me to discuss other issues of racial identity, national identity, globalization, and how the presence of the Internet informs these ideas. Through sharing images and forming user-generated content, I begin to question different levels of power dynamics as well as the tools we use to get this knowledge faster. We live in an increasingly aware society through globalization, but I want to create a space in which dialogue about the spectacle of the image and the entertainment of sharing can be discussed.

ambernewman.com newman953@gmail.com

“ART”, 2015

Digital print

33 x 11 in.

Impression West Lake – Summer, 2014

Digital print

22 x 12 in.

SIJIA ZHANG

Graphic Design—Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

With a solid background in advertising and public relations, I believe that design is about communication and making mutual connections with the target audience. As a graphic designer, I strongly focus on visualizing abstract concepts and text using digital media. My digital art and design has a strong foundation in traditional design forms including typography and iconographic design. To me, a successful piece is interactive and the user has a positive experience. This is my focus, in addition to maintaining a consistent and clear aesthetic. My practice in the MFA program works to present familiar things in a different way, renewing the forms that are based on past experiences and memories.

sijiazhangalexis.tumblr.com

sijia.zhang@yahoo.com

What Came of Picking Flowers: Page 12, 2015 Digital illustration

ALEX MITCHELL

Illustration and Comic Art—Champaign, Illinois, USA

I tell stories.

As an illustrator and as an artist, I think of myself as a storyteller.

Sometimes I tell my own stories, and sometimes I tell the stories of others. Thematically, my interests tend toward explorations of myth, mystery, and the creation of meaning through narrative. If myth is order—the cause and effect of the world, the description, delineation, and development cosmos (literally the opposite of chaos)—then mystery is the negative space of that intricate design—the unexpected, the unexplained, the unique. We humans insatiably crave a mixture of both. I am particularly interested in the way we employ myth and mystery to tell stories about ourselves and our world, thereby constructing identity and reality through narrative.

We live out our lives adrift on the infinite sea of stories, and all of them are based on real events, and all of them are fictions, and all of them are true.

I tell stories because we all tell stories—because I want to understand why.

alex-mitchell-studio.com

redfathoms@gmail.com

NIKY MOTEKALLEM

Illustration—Dayton, Ohio, USA

Before becoming an illustrator, I was a painter and printmaker. I found that my work could exist comfortably within illustration, which straddles the realm of both commercial and fine art. My work has the feeling that a cabinet of curiosities may give to its viewer. This stems from my background in biology. I’m inspired by oddities and have a collection of my own from which I draw ideas and reference. Things that are perhaps eerie to others are some of my greatest treasures.

The work I make revolves around an esoteric mythos and the natural world. I make decay beautiful and depict animals and figures rotting, surrounded by plants and fungi in a state of exchanging matter. The atoms that compose bodies have a history that stretches far into the recesses of time. This includes us. Our atoms were forged in the heat and pressure of stars from billions of years ago. Everything is composed of countless stories. We are a myth in our own right, existing since the beginning of time and until the end of time.

nikymotekallem.com

nikymotekallem@gmail.com

His Kiss, The Riot, 2015

Colored pencil and gouache on frosted acetate 9 x 7 in.

Where’s Your Mother?, 2015

L L U S T R A T I O N

INTERDISCIPLINARY

92 Theses (Journals 76 & 77), 2015

Watercolor, ink, and graphite on notebook paper; notebook covers; didactic copy

10 x 15 ft.

Depersonalization as Escape Behavior, 2016

Sound installation

10 x 15 x 6 ft.

ALLISON BROWN

Sound and Performance—Mooresville, Indiana, USA

A wise friend once told me that the greatest human desire is to be known. Artists do this in many ways, the prism to each discrete outcome being our practice; my prism is storytelling. Medium is less important than product, but I frequently gravitate to sound and social media due to their respective performative natures. The millennial experience is steeped in the truthiness of the Internet—so much of our identity is recorded where crafting a persona is key to existing in those spaces. When so much of our digital identity is comprised of selected fictions, I craft fictions that live in those spaces as truth.

The majority of my work is grounded in my working-class childhood in south-central Indiana. Feminism, politics, and class are central lenses through which I construct my narratives; populism versus authority acts as the tension that colors context during distribution. How does format legitimize my character’s struggle? Do institutional frameworks magnify the importance of my stories? Often, the most difficult aspect of being known is the number of people who witness your truth—and the amount of powerful people who lift you up to be witnessed in the first place.

NICK RIVERS

Interdisciplinary—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Things felt first in the body, before the mind, reinforce a philosophical belief that I am, therefore I think. My work deals with violence, destruction, love, and creation. I consider gestures between the specific toward the universal, then examine displacement and dislocation in the world and myself. We are all related. All things are in relation to one another. The core of my work is grounded in this belief. As an artist, I prefer to blur disciplinary lines of medium and focus my work on examining my Being and being in the world, alongside our Being and being in the world. Can the artist be the medium, the poet, the philosopher? I believe yes.

Being concerned with evidence and the mark, I create gestures of things occurring, things which occurred, and things yet to occur. The work suspends itself in anticipation, challenges narrative, pushes towards self-realization. For me, everything is about the experience in the body, and the significance between ourselves and the rest of the world. Through sculpture, performance, and video, I address the body as a spiritual, ontological vessel.

nicholasseanrivers.com

nicholasseanrivers@gmail.com

Anchor, 2015

Broken glass, taconite, spike, wood frame, strap, dolomite, irregular bluestone

36 x 48 x 24 in.

Broken Loop, 2015

Video still of sculptural performance in MCAD alcove

10 x 10 x 10 ft.

Untitled, 2015

Archival inkjet print

14 x 18 in.

Untitled, 2015

Archival inkjet print

14 x 18 in.

ANDI FINK

Photography—Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Trained as a photographer, but working with many mediums, my work investigates the many facets that make up a contemporary feminine experience, especially as it pertains to the body. My work examines the body as a canvas to act upon, a refuge against the world, and as a personal penitentiary. In a practice that involves drawing, painting, installation, and photography, my current work explores the experience of pain, especially chronic pain, and its effects on a person’s physiological and psychological state and how these, in turn, affect each other. These investigations seek to explore pain, not as a separate entity tacked onto an individual’s personality, but as an ever-changing fluid part of the body and sense of self.

Inspired by the imagery and process behind the creation of wax anatomical models from the eighteenth century, biological textbooks, medical scans, and surgical photography, my work is part documentary, part amateur scientific investigation. In much the same way a scientific study takes the form of many different experiments, I investigate these concepts across many kinds of media, the objective of which is to present a multifaceted aesthetic experience to the viewer and explore how different modes of creation promote different ways of understanding.

andifink.com andijfink@gmail.com

2002-2012 (Case Files) Detail, 2014

Archival pigment print

17 x 22 in.

Aquatic Sexual Sadism PowerPoint, 2014

Archival pigment print

20 x 28 in.

MANDY MARTINSON

Photography—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Growing up, I heard endless stories from my father about his work as an investigator of violent crime. At the dinner table, it was just as common to hear about disturbing cases as it was to talk about how our days went. With this type of upbringing, I became interested in criminology and the merging of his work life with our family life. The dichotomy of these two worlds has influenced me to focus on the dysfunctional relationship between what is conventionally seen as “normal” and what is not.

Using photography, video, and installation, I create my own personal investigations exploring the impact of this merger, exhibiting the collision between the mundane and the macabre. The investigations are not set up to be completely solved, but to examine these convoluted ideas as a way of understanding the many intricate layers connecting these opposing forces.

mandymartinson.com

mandy.martinson@gmail.com

JOHN MATSUNAGA

Photography—Los Angeles, California, USA

I am an artist who uses photography and artists’ books as my main media of expression. In my work, I focus conceptually on history, memory and forgetting, and racial identity and inequality. Overall, my goal is to create social commentaries that promote an awareness of the constructed nature of and the biases within our histories, identities, and visual representations. I often employ a documentary visual style, with the main subject matter being landscapes, architecture, and objects. My approach to photography, both conceptually and in regard to my subject matter, is inspired by my background in archaeology. As an archaeologist, I studied people indirectly through the careful analysis of the material objects that they made, used, and left behind. In making the transition from archaeologist to artist, I have maintained my interests in examining the quotidian aspects of the material world as a way of accessing and addressing human sociality and history.

My most recent work focuses on the ways in which the racialized identities, experiences, and histories of Asian Americans have been silenced, marginalized, manipulated, and misrepresented within mainstream American society. My intention in this work is to inspire dialogue and raise awareness about contemporary Asian American experience.

johnmatsunaga.com

jmmatsunaga@gmail.com

Untitled, Nidoto Nai Yoni series , 2014 Archival inkjet print 24 x 30 in.

Untitled, Nidoto Nai Yoni series , 2014 Archival inkjet print 21 x 30 in.

CHRISTOPHER SELLECK

Photography—Duluth, Minnesota, USA

I have been making photographs for twenty-five plus years, and for me there still exists the same wonder and excitement that was present when I watched my first print appear in a tray of developer. Over the years I have explored various analog, instant, and digital methods and love how the medium has expanded for me.

Growing up as a closeted gay man, I felt like an outside observer to masculinity. Using sports and masculinity as a lens to view identity, my various projects of the last few years have focused on this area of identity construction. Working primarily in portraiture, my work has tried to explore the tension between social ideals of what is it to be a man and how I react to that.

When I began the MFA program, I felt committed to making photographs exclusively. Over the last few semesters, I have been supported and encouraged in making video, sound pieces, sculptures, installations, and printmaking that work to support my photography and function independently.

christopherselleck.com

Cselleck@gmail.com

Untitled, body building series, 2015 90-second silent video loop, gym mats, weightlifting chalk

Untitled, body building series, 2015 Archival inkjet print 34 x 24 in.

Untitled, fighters/fighting series, 2015 Archival inkjet print 34 x 24 in.

JULIE RENEÉ BENDA

Through text, image, and social exchange I explore human/landscape relationships and how they deepen both a sense of selfhood and community. Drawing from a background in ethno-botany, as well as my childhood lived deep in the woods, I perceive the natural world as a primary reality. I think of the lake, rocks, and trees as an original vocabulary—one that infuses my understanding of the world through story and experience. In my artwork, I use my own and others’ narratives of place to promote and strengthen this communication, guiding the audience to notice the symbiosis that exists between nature and culture.

The work builds upon my explorations of creating thoughtful environments and subtle interactions that act as catalysts for sensing connection with one another and place. Earth, dirt, water, seed, plant, animal, and landscape are my subjects, and their colors, sensations, and significance are all part of a dialog of rootedness and interconnection. Whether working in print, book, or installation, I prefer to engage the audience through small gestures that speak to the insight each element provides. I then choose to figuratively and imaginatively present these themes as a means to enliven our dormant understanding of self in the world.

Print Paper Book—Houghton, Michigan, USA jreneebenda.wordpress.com

Plant Library, 2015

Houseplants, garden herbs, ligneous specimens, library cart, library cards

48 x 24 x 24 in.

Two Seeds, 2014 Monoprint collage 22 x 28 in.

KELSEY BOSCH

Sculpture and Media Arts—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Iceland and the ideological ice land inspire my work and research with which I create installations in moving image, sculpture, and sound reflecting on our mediated relationship to nature. Despite the complete cartographical imaging of Earth, much of the natural world remains terra incognita: we have only mapped and understood its surface. For the two past years I focused on ice, linking my experience of winter, living in Minnesota, to the abstract and absent phenomenon I hear occurring in polar regions. My work is rooted in looking and listening, being observant of the environment in which we live, and finding value in our connection to place.

The relationships between landscapes, resources, and aesthetic commodities define our experience of place. I study these correlations in juxtaposition with the historical ideology of nature, particularly in nineteenth-century Romanticism and exploration. The age of reason was an era during which man felt himself in control of nature, transcending the natural world. Now environmental disasters alter how we experience nature. This juxtaposition is important in looking at our current relationship to nature, climate change, and ecological awareness. In re-examining our desire to be “eco-conscious,” I find that it is humanity that is at stake, not nature.

kelseybosch.com

k.e.bosch@gmail.com

See Sound, 2016 Archival inkjet print

20 x 30 in.

Scenic Outlook: Kirkjufell, 2015

Digitized Super 8 film, volcanic sand from Vik, glacier blue plexiglass, polar white paint

SARAH FAYE McPHERSON

Window Scene, 2015 Inkjet print of digital 3D rendering 44 x 30 in.

Through and through, 2016

Projection of 3D digital rendering, MDF, and paint

SARAH FAYE McPHERSON

Sculpture—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

In this body of work, I am exploring ideas of impermanence and the connections I see between three distinct spaces: nature, architecture, and the digital realm. I am fascinated by the concept of a mediated experience—where the digital realm, architectural space, and the natural world all collide to create a contemporary vocabulary relying on the cyclicality of these realms to create connectivity and meaning. I investigate nature and architecture in these works as elements of constant change and movement, while the digital realm contributes an aspect that reflects, distorts, and presents an artificial alternative where control is key. For me, these artificial spaces permit an escape from reality and also allow me to build without the constraints of gravity and physical limitations.

My ongoing exploration of these ideas is expressed in my work through sculpture, drawing, 3D digital fabrication, video, and performance. Through my curation and installation of these various mediums, I reiterate the notion of a mediated experience and blur these different realms—nature, architecture, and the digital realm—recombining them in an integrated space.

sarahfayemcpherson.com

sarahfayemcpherson@gmai.com

KATHRYN MILLER

Sculpture and Drawing—Richmond, Minnesota, USA

A pair of prize-winning toucans look through a frosted window out onto the boreal forest. One says to the other, “What do you think?”

Geological gestures in landscape inform my process and guide my inquiries in drawing and sculpture. I’m interested in the gestural action of a landscape and how that gesture might inform human response. My work directs material and scale to question ways of working and being in the world: How do we measure human physicality in the spaces we inhabit? What is the essence of physical work? How might we reassess perspective in space? As I locate perspective through drawings, writing, and three-dimensional forms, I recalibrate how we might tease, use, manipulate, and lie with the world as it is. The materials are indicative of regeneration and my experience collecting, charting, and researching in landscape. With this work, I mean to distill an oblique quiet and assert a new treachery that is generative and vivid.

kathrynmiller.info

kathryn.r.miller@gmail.com

Salt (Perspective II), 2015

CREDITS

TOM DEBIASO

Director and Professor

Master of Fine Arts Program

KILEY VAN NOTE

Assistant to the Director

ANN BENRUD

Director of Communications

GRETCHEN GASTERLAND-GUSTAFSSON

RITA KOVTUN

Copywriting and Editing

JOE LETCHFORD

Designer, MCAD DesignWorks

SHAPCO

Printing and Binding

Minneapolis, Minnesota

MFA GRADUATE FACULTY COMMITTEE

ANDY DUCETT

Visiting Faculty, Fine Arts

KINDRA MURPHY

Associate Professor, Design

RIK SFERRA

Professor, Media Arts

GRETCHEN GASTERLAND-GUSTAFSSON

Assistant Professor, Liberal Arts

MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN MAIN CAMPUS

2501 Stevens Avenue Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 mcad.edu

MCAD MFA GALLERY

2201 1st Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 mcad-mfa.com

©2016 MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN

All artists and their corresponding artwork published in this book are copyrighted materials. All rights reserved.

ABOUT MCAD

Recognized nationally and internationally for its innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to visual arts education, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design is home to more than 700 students and offers professional certificates, bachelor of fine arts and bachelor of science degrees, and graduate degrees. Founded in 1886, MCAD was one of the first colleges to offer the BFA degree. The college has earned the highest accreditation possible and has the highest four-year graduation rate of all Midwestern visual arts colleges. And college facilities contain the latest in technology, with multiple studios and labs open 24 hours a day.

MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN VISUAL STUDIES AT MCAD

The MCAD MFA program is a community of makers, thinkers, theorists, researchers, and creative professionals working in a mentor-based, interdisciplinary educational environment. A majority of credits are earned through one-on-one work with a faculty mentor throughout the two years. In addition to the mentorship students take a critique and liberal arts seminar each semester and have the option to pursue internships and a range of engaging educational opportunities. The final year culminates with a capstone thesis exhibition and paper. Our student body is diverse with a robust international presence. The subject of student inquiry responds to social, cultural, and professional needs as well as to entrepreneurial opportunities, stretching across art and design practices. Students in the program pursue creative work in a mentor based, interdisciplinary environment that includes graphic design, printmaking, paper and book arts, painting, photography, illustration, sculpture, drawing, animation, interactive media, filmmaking, comic arts, furniture design, and installation art.

For more information, contact or visit the following sites:

ADMISSIONS

mcad.edu/admissions/prepare/graduate

OFFICIAL MFA PROGRAM SITE

mcad-mfa.com

mcad.edu/academic-programs/graduate/master-fine-arts