The Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a community of makers, thinkers, researchers, and creative professionals working in a mentorbased, interdisciplinary environment. The work of the twelve artists and designers featured in this catalog represents the culmination of two years of rigorous studio practice, individual mentorship, research, critical thinking, and intense discourse.
I am an interdisciplinary narrative artist working at the intersections of time, craft, and storytelling. Taking the form of animated model homes and dioramas, my work functions as stages and sets, emphasizing the forced and self-imposed performativity of the autobiographical subjects within. I use my practice as a way of confronting the absurdity located within my representation of self. Narratively, I am inspired by the everyday, in both its unpalatability and in the hallucinatory power of its tedium. Through the exaggeration of the quotidian, I hope to create work that is both accessible and cathartic.
Using stenographic principles, miniature scale, and rotoscope animation, my thesis critically examines how the performance of self interacts with cultural scripts of bureaucracy. I am interested in the alienation that occurs when functioning within these systems—how does the individual come to willingly reprioritize their personal needs when participating in workplace culture?
Habitual (detail) , 2018, dual-channel projected animation, balsa wood, fabric, plywood, paper, glass jar, resistors, beads, dimensions variable
Don’t I Know About Walking on Eggshells (detail)
I am a visual artist making work that blends photography with other mediums ranging from painting to printmaking to video installation. I find it interesting to create a relationship with mediums and find a way for them to coexist with each other. My work allows me to experiment and explore different outcomes with traditional darkroom printing to digital printing on fabric. It has allowed me to explore my personal narrative of growing up in a family where my father was in the military. It has also allowed me to question my practice in terms of themes involving displacement of place, journey, and destination as well as time as a common thread within my work.
Moving around from place to place my whole life has left me feeling displaced at times. I call many places home, but not one of them carries more significant value over another. Each one of these places has expanded my knowledge of my community, absorbing its values, instead of being an outsider looking in. This at times has left me feeling displaced, yet I am always enriched by my observations.
Minneapolis, MN, 2017, Polaroids
I have worked in a variety of mediums, and no matter where I go artistically and literally, there is always one that remains: sound. During my time in the program, I’ve been experimenting with ways to use sound to express ideas that are maybe not so easily understood. Specifically, the language of a space, and through virtue of that place’s unique architecture, can express itself through sound—or the absence of it.
I like to think of myself as a translator, reaching inside a building to get it to reveal its innermost experiences. My thesis work does just that; I’m using various microphones and recording devices to capture the special characteristics of the MCAD gallery space and presenting the results of my findings.
Don Not Disturb (DND), 2018, Adafruit Feather, wire, copper tape, haptic buzzer, speaker, watercolor paper, 5 x 5 in.
The Arm’s Closet, 2018, five-channel sound installation, wood, wire, LEDs, Fresnel lenses, speakers, media players, heavy satin, 12 x 5 ft.
Welcome to My Brain (detail), 2017, eight-channel sound installation, mylar strips, lighting gels, 20 x 20 ft.
I am an interdisciplinary artist who explores personal and cultural narratives within imaginary psychological spaces. My recent body of paintings and installations depicts construction sites that exist in an abstract and temporal space in between the gap of proposal and completion. This incomplete state of being acts as a metaphor for self-reflection and the perpetual nature of change that occurs as one strives for personal improvement and achievement.
The architectural structures become symbolic characters, existing in translucent, ambiguous atmospheres, which are more psychological spaces for contemplation than specific environments. Elements of radical architecture, modernist design, and science fiction conspire to inform the visionary infrastructure of these imaginary worlds. Through the process of building these fictional worlds, I create a mythical time and space for whimsical self-reflection and speculation.
Kindled Spirit, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in.
P.S. I love you, Rietveld (detail), 2018
P.S. I love you, Rietveld, 2018, balsa wood, cast concrete, transparent tape, dimensions vary
You will wonder . . . You will ask why . . . You will question . . . There will always be one question you do not have the answer to
We all have a thirst for answers of the unknown. We all want to be heard, understood, accepted, and have a purpose in life to find the balance in this chaotic world in which we live, and to find the order in the disorder we embody. Essentially, asking questions of the unknown can drive a person mad or can drive that person to live. Everyone has a type of belief system when it comes to religion, culture, politics, and the environment. It is important for
everyone to follow their intuition and be open to all possibilities of answers to questions in life. We all eventually have to find a solution or belief system that brings peace from within.
These ideas drive my work to create and examine our existence. My work generates spaces to ponder and question theories of conscious energy, afterlife, and natural phenomenon. I use found objects, projections, moving images, photographs, and paper accordions to create physical spaces in conjunction with ephemeral phenomena resulting from light, reflection, and shadow.
I am a painter motivated by a deep impulse to create social narrative art, especially feminist portraiture. The frequently degrading and submissive ways in which women have been depicted in historical and contemporary contexts drive my work and my need to generate conversations surrounding the visual representation of women.
I create self-portraits to reflect my identity and the way cultural implications have complicated what it means to be a woman. I am intrigued by the alluring power that femininity possesses but also aware of how femininity is so often representedasthe subordinate gender. Consequently, I am compelled by and resistant toward ideas and acts of femininity.
Through my paintings, I aim to bring women’s issues to the surface of my canvas, revealing their layered and intricate complexity. My paintings are expressive of women’s struggle to navigate femininity and establish individual agency amidst the persistence of traditional gender norms.
I am a photographer whose work is guided by memory, dealing with the complexities of family and concealed narratives. I utilize archival imagery, the written word, and various methods of organization to identify facets of personal history.
Through photography, I attempt to make sense of the traces of life. My work delves into questions surrounding familial experience. I find myself intrigued by the paradoxes involved in how I might articulate these narrative mysteries without revealing them. Carrying the impulse to protect, I explore the use of photography as a tool for suggestion and garnering meaning.
My photographs highlight the intimate relationships that develop between the archival instinct and the medium of photography. I have a specific interest in writing and applying organizational structures, which can be revealing forces for memory. These actions allow me to have a feeling of control over the past, present, and future by reordering my environment.
The Boat , 2018, wood and tile, 8 x 2.5 in.
Masking, 2018, archival pigment print, 20 x 26 in.
I am a narrative figure painter who draws on lived experiences, memory, and personal family photography. In my work, I experiment with pairing surface material and painting technique to visually evoke loss, memory, altered realities, and liminal spaces. My paintings explore personal narratives of family while reflecting universal experiences.
When I paint, I am seeking a greater understanding of myself through an analysis of my memories by physically weaving them together through paint. For my thesis project, I analyze how family photography curates my memories and the resulting dissociation I feel between my childhood photographs and my narrative of self. I visualize memory by employing blank areas of negative space, thin layers of paint that blur, and moments of highly realized details. My paintings are both dream-like and otherworldly to reflect the intangibility of memory.
Sun Room, 2018, oil on canvas, 78 x 66 in.
My work deals with the complexity and multiplicity of cultural identity. My primary medium is oil painting; however, throughout the process of making, I utilize various media, including drawing, sculpture, and digital collage, to spark my inspiration. The issue of cultural identity is broad and complex—therefore, my practice focuses on the transnational experiences of a foreigner or immigrant. Nevertheless, my work embraces ambiguity and ambivalence, so that it is open for any interpretations.
My thesis work is a large-scale painting that visualizes the chaotic convergence of cultural influences. My cultural identity is always a “work-in-progress.” Thus, the painting functions as a snapshot of the process of my identity becoming something. Ambiguity and clarity reside together on the pictorial space. The layers of symbolism obscure the individual symbolism, merge, and eventually grow to have another significance. The chaotic juxtaposition expresses the energy of the transformative experience of my cultural identity.
Twin II, 2019, oil on canvas, 42 x 44 in.
I am an illustrator who draws inspiration from my memories and experiences. My memory has always been really bad; however, certain moments are just hard to forget. I cannot help myself from thinking back to those precious things that have happened in my life. In a process similar to writing, drawing allows me to capture these fragments from past memories on a tangible surface.
In the twenty-first century, we have to face increasingly more environmental issues. In my thesis project, I intend to explore the possibility of associating illustration with public service announcements in order to direct people’s attention toward pressing environmental issues. Art is powerful; I hope by showing the startling contrast between delightful past memories and depressing current environmental issues in my illustration, I will motivate the audience to help reduce our harmful human impact on our planet.
Quartet 4, 2018, digital
The Blooming Seed (excerpt), 2018 , digital
My thesis investigates narrative devices that approach “nonsense” (as the word is used in the Japanese ero guro nansensu movement) in comic storytelling. My comics create a mystical atmosphere by using nonsequitur, intertextual references, appropriation, and symbolism. Therefore, my work resembles an incomplete puzzle, coded with symbols and metaphors, which requires the audience to engage and fill in the blanks in order to make sense out of “nonsense.” Topics I explore with my comics are mundanity, identity formation, and the isolation of people.
My thesis project includes a sixteen-page comic and several single-page comics in which I demonstrate this approach to “nonsense.” The longer comic depicts a disorienting journey of self-discovery in a postapocalyptic setting. I expect the readers who are willing to go on this journey with me to experience a strong emotional disturbance at the end.
My Mom’s 51st Birthday, 2019, Risograph print
How
to Get Away from True Love and Happiness, 2018, zine
I am an artist working in illustration and comic art. With each project, I try to explore a different aspect of the mind/world hyperobject, a concept I have created after Timothy Morton’s notion of “hyperobjects”—“entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place.”
Hyperobjects are objects that have a complexity and vitality about them and cannot be apprehended, such as race, class, human life, or climate change. And they are massive and overwhelmingly difficult to map, discuss, and know. In my conception, each of us is a hyperobject.
My work attempts to explore the hyperobject that engulfs my life. My work depicts feelings, ideas, and impressions I see about the world; speculations on so-called universal truths; and how the internal mind synchronizes with external phenomena.
Resonance, 2019, zine
