Art Practice Commons^™

As I Wander, Michelle Lum

CGU MFA Theses

My work highlights moments of wonder from my everyday life to give a more holistic view of reality. To me, experiences of wonder are spaces where a person feels God’s presence, where the spiritual reality of our world becomes visible. Sacraments in the Christian tradition are visible signs of a divine reality. I think of my work as sacramental: heightening moments where the visible gives way to the invisible—not by denying their physical characteristics but through them. The heart of my work is in the intersection between that which is deeply ordinary and that which is deeply extraordinary.

Capacity, Rachel Baydian

CGU MFA Theses

This Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition by Rachel Baydian is an installation of ceramic sculptures that function as a stand-in for the human body, touching on relationship, interconnectivity, and imperfection. Using abstracted forms that derive from the earth, these art objects are sculpted to mimic nature and its processes. The work highlights our human connection to nature as integrative and vital. Through experience and tactility, there is more of an awareness of space and heightened senses. The work taps into the awe and seduction of the mystery of nature through seemingly ordinary elements of the physical world.

Water Riot Territory, Dominique Ovalle

CGU MFA Theses

The old world has fallen away; we look for the New World now. I entreat you with symbols, signs and code-talking—a new language I’ve learned while prowling the jungles of angst in this “Romantic Life,” which is utterly unromantic. Sometimes I run away, and enter into emptiness. Inside darkness cannot comprehend the light that searches for us. On the bottom of the ocean, light must be generated from within. But something does not come from nothing. What was something born of?

My paintings operate as a map to strange destinations—charting weird trips through swampy, melancholic emptiness, as well as encounters …

Dislocation, Kevin E. Moore

CGU MFA Theses

No abstract provided.

The Nature Of Making Sense, Allison Alford

CGU MFA Theses

My interest is to breed the mystical with the mundane, producing informational systems that coalesce knowledge, ambiguity, logic and fantasy. The species that populate my imagery are totems that could function as heroines, monsters or shapes that elude and inform us. The work functions as a stage upon which, pixels, paint and mystical figures coexist. Each panel acts as a composite of multiple frames of a video: figures combine with paintings, drawings, symbols, and landscape. Though ultimately singular in image, the pictures imply multiplicity. The lineage of the work can be traced to influences such as François Dufrêne, Max Ernst’s …