Art and Design Commons^™

The Land Of Reverie, Sarah Moon

MFA in Visual Art

As children we are fascinated by the mythical. Imagining the attractive or even the disturbing serves as an escape from reality. By painting unicorns, vast surreal landscapes, and imaginative playscapes my work expands the white cube gallery into an immersive extension of my imagination. By viewing the canvas as a portal into a world where limitations dissolve, I paint acidic colors, fluid boundaries, and a malleable reality.

My studio practice is inspired by artists who experiment with color and scale like Kenny Scharf, Katharina Grosse, and Pipilotti Rist. In my colorful, large-scale works I explore the transformative power of play …

The Hidden Power Of Images: An Allegory Of Chaos And Performance In The Digital Age, Livia Xandersmith

MFA in Visual Art

Within this text, I explore the hidden power of images in American visual culture through painting-based installations. I investigate images of the past and present juxtaposed in a surrealist landscape. Through the use of images in the news, entertainment, advertising, and images within the home, I depict how the problems of the past bleed into our perceptions of the present. I find that this cycle of problem inheritance connects us as humans regardless of time, generation, and place. In my work, I explore the complexity of image culture and its shifting presence within the digital age. Using surrealist collage, I …

Hysteria, Fear, And/Or Delight, Alessandra Ferrari-Wong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis statement, Hysteria, Fear, and/or Delight, establishes the forms and concepts of my art practice as it stands as of May, 2020: performance-based and interdisciplinary. My practice implies narrative while acknowledging the audience. Physical language, in both dance and gesture, can be a means of communication or subversion. Pieces exist as ephemeral, often private, performances and then separately in archival forms ranging from video, to photography, to installation. The body of the statement details my thesis project, a remaking of Giselle, a 19th century Romantic-era ballet, into a performance series and video trilogy. …

One Epic Φf Stardusts, Y∞N Irene Hong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A long time ago in a far away galaxy,

there was a star shining alone in the deep darkness.

The beautiful star aged and exploded into a supernova,

where her golden light scattered into the tiniest sparkles of dust,

pouring down to Earth.

Made of Stardust,

humans naturally have responded to the divine light that they carry inside their souls,

through diverse acts of enlightenment such as art, religion, and science.

.

.

.

As a Stardust, an artist, a Korean, and a woman,

I keep walking in between opposing forces and varying perspectives

until I transcend their boundaries and …

Wax Bodies: Candles, Queerness, & Taking Up Space, Moya Shpuntoff

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My partner and collaborator Callaway Fox and I use queer surrealist installation, craft practices, and performance in order to address queer and disabled temporality, articulating our experiences as disabled queer femme artists through abstracted and literal exploration of femme bodies in space. In performance and installation works Hospital Performance: Part I and Hospital Performance: Part II, we responded to our experience of marginalization, medical malpractice, and emotional isolation, ultimately exploring queer and disabled temporality through queer surrealism. Hand-poured scented candles became metaphors for queer and disabled bodies, and along with other craft practices used in this work, are a …