GRADUATE CRITIQUE

Jennifer Peel

2008-04-26T17:56:00.005-04:00

Wall Explorations
Jennifer Peel
2008
top image - latex paint on wall
lower image - graphite on wall

Valleys

2008-04-23T17:52:00.004-04:00

Valleys

Lauren Vanni
2008

Porcelain

28" x 27" x 21"

My work is a continuous process that involves tactile, meditative, and repetitive motions. Whether an entire environment made up parts or intimate objects to hold in your hand, most of my work possesses a sense of place, of landscape, and of belonging in their stillness. Forms are reduced to their essential shape, free of decoration and with limited surface treatment. Simplicity of form allows for subtleties to be explored. The work often involves visual contrasts. It is soft and hard, solid and hollow, identical and different, heavy and delicate, accidental and deliberate, playful and serious, representational and abstract. It cannot be easily categorized or named. Some work looks as if it emerged independent of human touch while other work reveal traces of human mark making and process. The clean interior of these organic forms contrast with the marked exterior from objects that created the form. For me, these forms can become containers of landscape: valleys, ledges, cliffs, rolling hills and plains. They are at once organic and geometric, places of security and spaces of freedom. In their material, scale, and repetition, they create a peaceful environment. “ . . . [W]hen my art is moving it is out of order. Stillness, silence, and peace are treasures which our mass culture is endlessly trying steal from us…If my work offers a sense of order, peace, and stillness to anyone, then it has succeeded.” -Carl Andre

A Collection of Dreams and Objects

2008-04-06T22:46:00.012-04:00

Right now I am searching for an edge between what is real and what is unreal. I am challenging the spectator to work a little bit, to reap the reward of using his or her imagination. My intention is to capture the experiences that move me in and out of reality as I work, and to share these experiences with my audience. The plaster towers can be all at once rigid, structural, and familiar. At the same time they are strange, precarious, and potentially fragile, having no armature and balancing on top of one another. Their active qualities lie not only in the tension created by fragility and balance, but also in an activated surface texture adorning live sculptural lines that trace space without the restriction of an armature.

Mark Donohue

2008

Michael Kalmbach

2008-03-16T14:21:00.004-04:00

Night Fever Diptych

Michael Kalmbach

2008

Acrylic on Plastic Wrapped Over Felt and Poster Cut-outs

Two 36" x 18" panels

The Rockies

Michael Kalmbach

2008

Acrylic on Plastic Wrapped Over Felt

20" x 20"

Sensual Seduction + detail shot

Michael Kalmbach

2008

Acrylic on Plastic Wrapped Over Tie-dyed Faux Fur

50" x 50"

Built from the debased materials of plastic and craft felt, I see my paintings as quixotic meditations on the transformative power of material. I utilize repetition, variation, ritual performance, and improvisation as working devices that generate product and ideas.

The work Night Fever Diptych attempts to recontextualize Saturday Night Fever as a lesson in class division in the arts. How de-intellectualizing the body leads to false hierarchies and theories of exclusion. Born from a Coors Light commercial, The Rockies locates the contemporary sublime in plastic, it is simultaneously surface and abyss. Its purples pulled from the uniform of the thin-air-home-run hitting Colorado Rockies.

Sensual Seduction gets its title from a recent Snoop Dogg track-- in this work the dot strands direct the poured acrylic. The trails that are created begin to form a type of drawing, with this knowledge in my back pocket, I press on in the production of awesome.

The Urban Condition

2008-03-13T22:06:00.003-04:00

The Urban Condition
Lauren Scott
44"x 48"
oil on canvas

Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner
Lauren Scott
48"x 60"
oil on canvas

The imagery behind my paintings is a conglomeration of personal ideals, values, experiences and icons that hold certain meanings to me and on a variety of levels within societal contexts. The freedom of iconic combinations within the picture plane is arranged to confront the viewer in such a way that conjures more questions than answers. What exactly is going on here and where does this begin to fit together? These references take cues from color, mood, paint application and figural relations which enable me to push the envelope of narrative. There are many occurrences that society takes behavioral indications or perceptions from and through my mind's filter I am constantly transforming these avenues into complex imagery.

Although my paintings carry heavy forms, there remains a painterliness that allows the raw marks to show themselves to the viewer. These marks are proof of decisions in my development and carry a history while confirming the attentiveness to the process in the painting. I have a desire when I work to hold onto my experience through imagery and evident process- to divorce these would divert the dialogue.
There is validity in bringing out specific iconography or happenings that stimulate me to be shared. All this information fuels the world as I know it, the way I developed, and the way I continue to see things.

Diaries

2008-03-09T18:24:00.004-04:00

Diaries

Teresa Mikulan

2008

pencil, marker, watercolor, paper, thread

9 books, approximately 5" x 6" each

Currently I find myself interested in making small books that catalog my daily life. I enjoy this method of making work because it provides the viewer with an intimate experience of another person's daily episodes. The book is a pleasurable form for me to work in that it is a handmade object that can be held and explored by others. I like the idea that when you are looking through an artist's book, you are holding a piece of art in your hands- something that we do not often get to do. I hope by genuinely revealing my experiences and emotions that others may relate and identify with the travails presented.

Glimmer

2008-03-08T22:24:00.006-05:00

Glimmer

Francine Fox

2008

Ink & watercolor on paper

11.5" x 14"

I am interested in the connection between controlling one’s physical appearance and perception of identity. My work specifically examines the relationship between philosophies that place emphasis on individualism, and those that emphasize society as a whole in which the individual plays a small part. Within my imagery I strive to convey states of unrest in which the depicted figures struggle to obtain an ever elusive clarity of identity. Through intricate rendering of the conjoined figures, their garments, and tattoos, I hope to mirror both the complexity of societies in which one establishes personal identity, and the complexity of identity itself.

Eiffel Tower, Brandt's Cormorant, Mt. McKinley

2008-03-06T12:02:00.013-05:00

Eiffel Tower, Brandt's Cormorant, Mt. McKinley
Anthony Vega
2008
Acrylic on Canvas
50" by 50"

My primary interest in this work is visual experience. The intention is that painting can offer a unique insight into the experience of our visual culture and current relationship between objects, their meanings and our ability to see. This work explores these relationships through media connections of objects and the seemingly disparate, and unclear qualities these connections create. Our visual experience is cluttered and flattened by these connections. Where one object or meaning begins is unclear, our relationship to visual experience has an impact that at once loses the object and creates a new one. The simulation of images camouflages visual understanding.

Tommy's Gas and Grocery

2008-03-03T12:01:00.008-05:00

Tommy's Gas and Grocery
James Zeske
2008
gauche, acrylic, gesso, ink on canvas
52"x 26"

My new work is an exploration of materials and techniques ranging from painting on canvas to wood burning on cheap wood. I'm interested in the overlapping of social status and find my work to be a reflection of American contemporary culture. The "store" paintings create a sense of space with the white terrain in which the viewer might reflect back on their lives or create some kind of story. These paintings are also a symbol for consuming things that we want/need and the possible self destruction of possessing things as status symbol. We seem to find a sense of security and/or acceptance in material possessions. Mothers plaque on the kitchen door reads, "we too often love things and use people when we should be loving people and using things". Maybe it all depends on who you know and what you own.

Jacket

2008-02-25T10:57:00.021-05:00

Jacket
Jennifer M. Dillner
2007 Vinyl, Foam, Elastic, Snaps

2' x 3' x 2'

This piece is the beginning of an exploration in which I deal more with the essential qualities of clothing. I am thinking about how far away from clothing could I make an object and have it still read clothing to a viewer. What about clothing tells a person that it is clothing? Is it an armhole? Is it a buckle or a zipper? These are the questions that I am driving at. This has to do more expressly with the language of clothing. I am working to pare down what clothing actually speaks of and address this in my work. The idea of a society in which we cover ourselves based more on current fashion trends than necessity also has issue in my work.

I am creating objects that blur the lines between clothing, fashion and functional tools or gear – asking the questions of why do we need what we need and to what purpose are we seeking our coverings.

POSTING INSTRUCTIONS

2008-02-04T12:20:00.003-05:00

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