2017 MFA Thesis Exhibition

UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts

MFA Thesis 2017Exhibition April 1 – May 13, 2017

UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts

MFA Thesis 2017Exhibition April 1 – May 13, 2017

Lisa A. Bryson April Claggett

University Art Gallery College of Visual and Performing Arts UMass Dartmouth 715 Purchase Street, New Bedford, MA 02740

Heather Davis Kate Dickinson Yunjie Gao (高云洁) Natasha Jabre Andrew Laverty Monica Lopes Andrew Leo Stansbury Marita Torbick Hanna Vogel Amanda C. Watkins

May 31 - July 2, 2017 Bromfield Gallery 450 Harrison Ave., Boston, MA 02118

Greetings from the Office of the Dean The College of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is pleased to introduce the 2017 MFA Thesis Exhibition. This public presentation is the culmination of personal artistic development over two to three years of intensive creative research. Following individual oral defenses and the successful completion of an MFA Thesis Report, these students will celebrate the obtainment of a Masters of Fine Arts degree, the advanced professional degree in the studio arts.

In June, selections from this exhibition will be on display at Bromfield Gallery in the urban arts district, South of Washington St. (SoWa), in Boston. This exhibition introduces the work of graduating MFA students to an extended audience and offers an opportunity to view their work within a wider context of professional artists.

This exhibition will also serve to reconnect us with the UMass Dartmouth community of alumni and friends living and working in the Greater Boston Region.

Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of this remarkable group of artists. We wish them continued success in their future creative endeavors.

 David Klamen, Dean Megan Abajian, Assistant Dean

Notes from the Gallery Director The 2017 MFA Thesis Exhibition represents the creative work of twelve graduating students from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass Dartmouth. The work ranges from traditional media such as printmaking and painting to video, photography, book arts, mixed media work, sculptural objects and site-specific installation.

The exhibition uses the entire first floor of our downtown New Bedford campus, named ‘Star Store’ after the building’s previous life as a department store. While we are not showcasing dry goods anymore, we are now presenting artistic excellence and an insight into the many hours of ideas, attempts, failures, and reworking that it takes to produces intellectually and viscerally satisfying art. For me, as a curator, it has been amazing to follow how the student’s initial ideas materialized into works of art and how the artwork makes its way into professional installation and presentation. The paint dries, installations find their ‘specific site’, the unfinished is finished and lastly, the work is left alone, to the eyes, minds and hearts of the audience for their appreciation and interpretation.

As it has been the case for the previous three years, the MFA Thesis Exhibition’s opening reception occurs on the same day as the BFA Senior’s Exhibition, taking place up the street in the New Bedford Art Museum / ArtWorks.

Having both shows within walking distance of each other amplifies the celebratory energy generated through artistic expression for the students, visitors, UMass Dartmouth as well as for our entire New Bedford community.

I am happy to share this exhibition catalogue with you.

Viera Levitt, Gallery Director

Lisa A. Bryson BIOGRAPHY Lisa Bryson was born in San Diego, California. Her undergraduate degrees include an AS degree in Graphic Design from Coleman University and a BFA from Arizona State University. In January 2014, she was awarded a MAE in Art Education from Boston University, graduating summa cum laude. Lisa has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her focus remains set on developing narrative within the confines of portraiture while exploring a diverse range of media.

STATEMENT The narrative of my work extends beyond the personal to include a broader conceptual framework: woman and the feminine resolve. The guiding question: How does one define woman in all her forms and functions? Varied and complex is her nature and this further exemplifies my work. Every mark and line serves a purpose, to both elevate and tear apart the female psyche. My personal story remains the very nature of self-portraiture; however, there is a broader context in the manner in which I portray female anatomy and the exaggerated–beauty and the grotesque, delving below the superficial and into the psychological.

Woman II (Diptych) Oil on panel 12” x 24” each

Duality

Mixed media on paper 48” x 104”

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April Claggett

BIOGRAPHY April Claggett is a native of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She received a BA from Swarthmore College and an MA from Syracuse University in Art History. She lives in New Hampshire, working as an educator, grant writer, community organizer, yoga instructor and volunteer. Her passions include ice hockey, growing food and playing music.

STATEMENT In these paintings, light subordinates and sometimes amputates important elements of the presumed protagonist and the presumed setting. The viewer is aware that light orchestrates what is seen and felt. Basic planes and relationships are established only as much as the light reveals. However, the strong light also acts to wash out, rake over and otherwise obliterate details and forms. It is a balancing act orchestrated by shape and color. I am interested in setting up a tennis match such that the viewer may wonder: what is the subject matter… the figure or the light?

In this body of work, I am painting images of basic conscious experience - what it feels like to be a body in space - without overlays of ephemera such as identity or emotions.

Light Matter 1 Oil on canvas 48” x 48”

Light Matter 2 Oil on canvas 63” x 41”

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Heather Davis

BIOGRAPHY Heather Davis’ immersive installations revere those increasingly rare areas where nature is left to its own to become whatever it will. Wandering in the swampy, sandy, untamed Southeastern Georgia pine woods, Heather developed an intimate connection with the land in childhood that remains with her as a source of comfort and strength. Since leaving Georgia, she has lived in Iowa, Nebraska, Maine and Massachusetts. In each new home, she finds joy in discovering new wild places. With her work, she challenges how little they are valued.

STATEMENT For my thesis body of work, I developed several video and mixed media installations that advocate an appreciation of what lies beyond ourselves; an occasional shift of attention from the world and our place in it, to the planet and its wonders. I emphasize the wild and the uncultivated in order to inspire reverence for wildness, and to preserve the places where transcendent experiences occur. Ceramic objects exist in the installations to receive the video image. They capture and hold the light; they situate the phenomena in relationship to the body that is unexpected, creating the same tension and perplexity that I feel when I look into a reflection of the sky in water, finding myself gazing both up and down at the same time.

Moon Shadows

Video projection, ceramic, shadow 16’ diameter

Rubra

Video projection, clay, cloth 96” x 100”

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Kate Dickinson

BIOGRAPHY Kate Dickinson was born in the mountains of northern Utah, where she learned to downhill ski before she could walk.

She attained a B.S. in Graphic Design from Walla Walla University in Washington and subsequently worked in marketing, publishing, and the art galleries of Laguna Beach, California. An ardent reader and lover of paper, she naturally became intoxicated by the lure of the book and is currently completing an MFA in Visual Design with a focus on book arts and publishing design.

STATEMENT At heart, books are portable entry points into an unseen world. Their haptic three-dimensional character requires active engagement of the senses and provides a playground for the imagination. The architecture of the book has the potential to further amplify this inherently tactile experience via its physical presence and formal qualities. My body of work aims to build bridges between our immediate reality and the hidden world of the book through the use of experimental materials and processes—all replicable in commercial settings for large scale application. In challenging the conventional book form, I test the limits of the printed book, always with the question: what can a book be?

Call Me Ishmael (Title Page, detail) Large format digital print on paper 20” x 30”

4’33”

Laser cut felt, nylon thread, silk velvet, velvet paper 51” x 10.75”

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Yunjie Gao (高云洁)

BIOGRAPHY Yunjie Gao was born in Shanghai, China. She attended Shanghai Normal University and graduated with a BA in Digital Media Design in 2007. After her undergraduate studies, Yunjie worked for an educational center as a design assistant in Shanghai before enrolling in the graduate program at UMass Dartmouth. She is currently completing her MFA in Graphic Design.

Statement The application of Chinese cultural symbols is often the key to determining my own artistic identity in cross-cultural context. Dialogue at the cultural and spiritual level is central to my work such as using the eastern paper-cutting tradition — the positive and negative spaces’ unity of opposites — every little part is being cut off to support and form a new whole picture. They are Yin (dark) and Yang (bright) but also complementary, interconnected and interdependent with each other.

Effusion (化) #2

Tissue paper, plexiglass, wood 24” x 24”

Effusion (化) #3 (detail)

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Natasha Jabre

BIOGRAPHY Natasha Jabre is a first-generation Lebanese-American, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and raised in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Having originally studied fashion design, she changed majors, receiving her BFA in painting and drawing from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. Represented by galleries in Virginia, New York, and Lebanon, she has exhibited her portraits and abstract paintings across the United States and internationally. She seeks to become an educator and career portraitist upon graduation.

STATEMENT For ten years, I have attempted in my portrait practice to insert a realistic resemblance of people into unnatural, sometimes psychedelic spaces. In my most recent work, I employ studio photography to situate my models in color-filtered environments. Using these photographs as keys, I render my models softly in acrylic paint, layering in glazes so that each painting appears spacious and atmospheric. My thesis work suggests a state of sensuality and calm within my models.

Suzy and August Acrylic on Canvas 48” x 48”

Ellen

Acrylic on Canvas 36” x 48”

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Andrew Laverty

BIOGRAPHY Andrew Laverty is a visual artist from Massachusetts. His work is largely inspired by mass media, popular culture, and poster art. He received his BFA in graphic design. Andrew combines traditional relief printmaking with contemporary materials and technology. He has shown nationally and internationally. Recently his work was selected to be published in a large scale print collaborative which was held at XOS Studios in Pawtucket, RI and included on the “Big Ink” online gallery.

STATEMENT My work is about mass media and the dualistic nature of life. Media is represented through appropriated imagery, as well as central figures being characters from popular culture or social media. Dualism is illustrated through juxtapositions of conceptual and/or compositional dichotomies. For example, gothic architectural elements frame popular culture icons. In this way I suggest the dialogue between sacred versus profane, new versus old, order versus chaos and sincerity versus mockery.

Waru Selfie

Plexiglass, mdf, silkscreen, mixed media, hardware 12” x 24”

Rapt

Plexiglass, mdf, silkscreen, mixed media, hardware 18” x 36”

Metropolis

Woodcut on masa paper 34” x 60”

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Monica Lopes

BIOGRAPHY Monica Lopes is an animator and digital media artist from Southeastern Massachusetts. In 2015, she received her BFA in Digital Media and a minor in Art History from UMass Dartmouth. Since childhood, she has been fascinated with the worlds of anything animated—be it films, cartoons or anime. Enthralled by their characters, stories, and art, they inspire her to discover her own artistic talent. In her free time, she enjoys playing the piano, reading, and breaking into the occasional Disney song.

STATEMENT My work is about movement. It is the capture of gestures of the kinesthetic that are not seen. It strives to consider and explore the phantasmagoric qualities of animation—the ability to bring life to the abstract. Norman McLaren stated, “What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame.” It is those moments in between images when juxtaposed together that create the illusion of movement. And in that space it is possible to immerse oneself in the gesture and movement. It is in that dance of line, it is that internal energy captured in the metamorphic quality of line and forms on screen that can allow us to transform with it. It is outside the body, freeing us from gravitational weight, taking us into a space to embody; where we can be free from the strings of the world and in tune with the inner self.

An Embodied Dance

Digital hand-drawn animation, sound 17 seconds loop

Dance (Movement Study) Pencil on paper 9” x 12”

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Andrew Leo Stansbury

BIOGRAPHY Andrew Leo Stansbury is a ceramic-based performance artist from San Antonio, Texas. He has been working with clay since 2005 and has over five years of experience as a ceramic technician. Andrew is a member of the artist collective The Lullwood Group in San Antonio. He received both his Associate of Arts and Associate of Science degrees at the Victoria College in 2009, and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics from UTSA in 2011. His work has been shown in galleries throughout Texas as well as across New Bedford, MA at Gallery X, Gallery 244, and Gallery 65 on William.

STATEMENT As an artist, I seek not to appease, but rather confront. In order to do so, my work and my practice bluntly question popularized ideals of beauty and desire; I seek my own alternative version of beauty that accepts and is influenced by the unexpected or the traumatic. Through an open-narrative in material, I am not bound to a singular medium or easily coherent expression, but instead I consume and integrate performance, photography and process-oriented craft to create a unique moment.

Anoche

Archival pigment print 36” x 24”

You’ll Never Know My Love Archival pigment print 24” x 36”

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Marita Torbick

BIOGRAPHY Marita Torbick was born in Syracuse, New York and raised in Northern California. Her undergraduate degree in management and earlier graduate studies in counseling took place at Sonoma State University. After retiring from a successful career in counseling, she moved to New Bedford and entered the Fine Arts program at UMass Dartmouth to pursue a lifelong interest in studio arts. She combines art expression with a passionate interest in environmental preservation.

STATEMENT Investigating the complex constellation of issues surrounding climate change, I became aware of how the goods we buy challenge our hopes for environmental sustainability. Expanding global population and urbanization (along with our human ambitions for wealth, creativity and achievement) further magnify the difficulty of reaching sustainability. By volume, the most dangerous materials are steel, aluminum, paper, plastic and concrete. Can we demand manufacturers factor in the true human and environmental cost into the price we pay for the products and accept that higher cost? How can the average person avoid the allure of consumerism and resulting waste? These questions drive my work. I desire to elicit much needed conversation on this ever pressing and very real topic.

Kinesis

Aluminum 12” x 12” x 80”

Asperitas

Plastic, Ink 12” x 12” x 83”

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Hanna Vogel

BIOGRAPHY Hanna Vogel grew up in rural northern California in the fog and redwood forests. Her work is inspired by the structures of this natural space and of human-made architecture. She received her BFA with high distinction from the California College of the Arts in ceramics in 2010. She has shown her work nationally and has co-authored academic papers for publication and presentation at conferences internationally.

STATEMENT I create large sculptures and immersive installations that enhance sensory awareness and embodiment. I use small multiples whose rhythmic repetition and spatial arrangement set the emotional tone of the environment. The physical and connotative properties of the materials also describe the conceptual content. My hope is that the character of these materials and their haptic arrangements can create spatial metaphors for emotional states.

Was, Might Be

Iron wire, paper pulp, pigment, rust 9’6” x 5’3” x 4’1”

In The Beginning (detail)

Wire, abaca, cotton and bamboo paper, pigment 15’3” x 14’9” x 10’

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Amanda C. Watkins

BIOGRAPHY Amanda was found (not the spiritual kind) and raised just south of Chicago. She spent part of her childhood in foster care and eventually into a loving home where she spent most of her time being mischievous. She is inspired by her grandmother’s career in art and followed her path of perseverance during hard times. In 2013 she (finally) graduated from Ball State University in Indiana with a BFA in ceramics after which she taught and worked at a local art museum on the north side of Chicago. She uses functionality in her work as a placeholder for reliability, while placing restrictions on the user.

STATEMENT By integrating furniture with functional ceramics to further explore belonging, I create a place where I fit into a world where I have no connections tied by blood. My use of domestic objects and their patterns are in reference to a displaced environment that I find reliable and not foreign.

The Buffet

Mid-range stoneware, walnut table 7’ x 22” x 32”

The Buffet (detail)

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Index Lisa A. Bryson

Kate Dickinson

April Claggett

Yunjie Gao (高云洁)

Heather Davis

Natasha Jabre

Fine Arts - Painting LBryson.com lisa@lbryson.com

Fine Arts - Drawing aprilclaggett.com apclaggett@gmail.com

Artisanry - Ceramics heatherjodavis.com heatherjodavis@gmail.com

Visual Design - Graphic Design info@katherinedickinson.com www.katherinedickinson.com

Visual Design - Graphic Design yunj.gao@gmail.com www.yunjiedesign.com

Fine Arts - Painting natashajabre@gmail.com www.natashajabre.com

Andrew Laverty

Marita Torbick

Monica Lopes

Hanna Vogel

Andrew Leo Stansbury

Amanda C. Watkins

Fine Arts - Printmaking alaverty77@gmail.com www.andrewlaverty.com

Visual Design - Digital Media monica.lopes1127@gmail.com

Artisanry - Ceramics visiblyfree@gmail.com andrewleo.carbonmade.com

Fine Arts - Sculpture MaritaTorbickArt@gmail.com MaritaTorbickArt.com

Artisanry - Ceramics www.hannavogel.com hanna@hannavogel.com

Artisanry - Ceramics amandawatkins000@gmail.com

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UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts

MFA Thesis 2017Exhibition Design Coordination and Editing: Viera Levitt Editors: Viera Levitt, Marc St. Pierre Photographs: Archives of the students, Eden Reiner Design Layout and Printing: Mallard Printing ISBN: 978-0-9666437-8-7

ISBN 9780966643787

9 780966 643787

UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY UMass Dartmouth CVPA 715 Purchase Street, New Bedford, MA 02740 508.999.8555 • gallery@umassd.edu umassd.edu/cvpa/galleries facebook.com/UMassDartmouthGalleries