Art Practice Commons^™

Transfor, Yumeng He

CGU MFA Theses

The dialogue is not idealistic or theoretical. It's a step-by-step modification. I think of it as a sequence or series of "small episodes." These "small episodes" are of great help to the self-growth of the work. They reveal that my idea at the beginning is different from the finished piece. And, most important, the process can neither be predicted nor copied. This makes the work unique and authentic.

Family Tree, Yumeng Zhang

CGU MFA Theses

For the past two years I have been making works that attempt to describe the world from a subjective perspective as much as possible, striving to move beyond what I see around me to what I know. I create through my body, my memory and my subconscious, which is the truest expression of my inner self.

Itafdaloo, Janan Abdelmuti

CGU MFA Theses

My works are autobiographical. In them I explore the unconscious and conscious aspects of my life as a heterosexual cis female. My works function as a form of journaling. The repetition of lines, stitches, and patterns stand in for the repetition of different tasks. I try to submerge the onlooker into my emotional experiences through the use of pop culture references and familiar materials and objects. The inadequacy of life and lack of fulfillment has led to the creation of chromatic spaces. Pieces are void and then filled with silent moments. The quiet restlessness of inner turmoils combined with the …

Chaos Coordinate System, Shuai Xu

CGU MFA Theses

我目前的作品聚焦于看不见的世界，我的很多灵感都来自于我的梦想。我对人类与宇宙的关系感兴趣，尤其是当它在地球上发生时，个人与自然之间的关系。我希望在向外扩展的同时更深入地探索我的内部世界，以参与社会和超越。

My current works focus on the invisible world, and much of my inspiration comes from my dreams. I am interested in humanity's relationship to the cosmos, particularly as it plays out here on Earth, in the relationship between individuals and nature. I hope to explore my interior world more deeply while expanding outward, to engage society and beyond.

Dreamwalk, Julie Loffer

CGU MFA Theses

The day I learned that dreams can be real had a profound effect on my life. As I began

to form my art practice, I naturally began to contemplate how we determine what is science

fiction and what is real. People seem to divide themselves by who they are or what they

believe. There are times when science fiction has become real. For example, the idea that

giants or Bigfoot could be real sounds silly to most people. Even though artifacts of unusually

large remains are a part of the fossil record, such creatures are considered science fiction.

Science asks …

Arabesque, Zafirah Ahmed

CGU MFA Theses

This paper talks about my MFA Thesis Exhibition : Arabesque. It discusses my usage of pattern and how I am exploring pattern in its historical context, against the repetition of societal patterns in various spaces. Through the use of created symbols in paintings, and installation work.

Intimate, Jason Brewer

CGU MFA Theses

I’ve used the paint as a substitute for myself to engage viewers to identify their interpretations and similar experience with emotional and mental states. Using texture and movement with the strokes of paint that mimics gestures of, and colors associate with, the mental states in order to present a visual sensory of emotions and psychological states; like the gravity of being in a depressed state, the itchiness and blood red feelings of frustration, the emptiness of being alone, the encroaching pressure of stress, and the weightless haze of confusion. The paintings become an intimate bridge between individuals and a sense …

Tenacity, Order & Disorder, Lucy Manalo

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about empowerment. The idea of using metal comes from my past experience as a welder/machinist in the Air Force. Metal is a tough medium and I believe it conveys the themes of strength and tenacity through it’s materiality.

Rhythms Of Light, Jessica R. Csanky

CGU MFA Theses

My works are visual expressions of a true love for movement, rhythm, and saturated color. In making art, I present lived experiences that are rendered abstract. These formal representations originate from an energetic space or sensory association and express a connection to places I have been, whether physically or emotionally.

Integral to my practice is the uninhibited exploration of materials and tools. I am committed to deepening my understanding of what paint can do when combined with drawing and installation techniques.

My compositions address architecture, landscape, memory, as well as psychological and physical spaces that we move through during our …

Still Spring Was Spring, Qianqian Yang

CGU MFA Theses

The works came out of an exploration of looking, time and place. A strange tension always occurred to me every time I returned home. For a month, I resumed my early morning schedule in high school on a daily basis. The route between school and home constructs most of my memories in the city. The practice of repeating the old routine is my way of trying to understand my relationship with this place, to probe into the separation and intimacy that constantly contradict within me. What has kept you away and brought you back, why, I ask myself. Relying on …

Hail Mother, Sydney Walters

CGU MFA Theses

My work disrupts two kinds of power: gender roles in religious practices, and the perceived power of a ritual object. Constructions of gender and power are thrown onto a stage and cast in a sincere parody that ultimately liberates underrepresented people to perform with agency.

My larger-than-life figures examine who holds power in religious institutions. The figures challenge the intelligibility of their identity because she/they are dressed in religious regalia. In Western Catholicism, maleness is the pre-requisite for priesthood. These church leaders are distinguished by wielding specific religious regalia: i.e. the Ring of the Fisherman, Episcopal gloves, and globus crucigur. …

What If Anything Still Meant Something, Andrea Munive

CGU MFA Theses

My drawings are active reflections of my surroundings and their intrinsic relationship to the ideal and banal. My surroundings have encompassed my memories and present, revealing a sense of slow time and peripheral consciousness.

What If Anything Still Meant Something is about this duality of care and disregard- an eternal mental state it seems.

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.

Indominable, Kathleen A. Fox

CGU MFA Theses

INDOMINABLE, Kathleen A Fox

The reformation of the feminine portrait from that of idealistic sexual beauty into a portrait of strength, community, longevity, transformation, and inane human foundational essence of societal value. This collection of portraits illustrates the uniqueness that is often overlooked for the fast, idealistic and instantly read images of women hailed as beautiful. These women contain a space they have earned with their strength of character, spirit, and unwillingness to be moved from their places of significance. Created with an expressive abstractive edge to traditional portraiture, these female portraits refuse to be easily glossed over, for their …

Hot, Water, Mud: Some Attachments, Dianne Dillingham

CGU MFA Theses

The works in my thesis show came out of an investigation into what it means to really know something. To have such intimate familiarity with a place or object that the shape, smell, and touch becomes unforgettable; the dirt under your nails, smell easily recalled, the carved outline of a bedpost after years of touch. These things are unremarkable in their everydayness; but they can also hold power over time. They can become attachments – motifs that resurface and repeat - that have agency.

Quiet Moments, Deitra Charles

CGU MFA Theses

I am a figurative artist who focuses on ordinary people and everyday objects. I paint moments. A moment of peace, a moment of tranquility, a moment of contemplation. It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of day-to-day life – that they give you the opportunity to experience life differently, stirring within you some sense of peace.

It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of …

The Standard Model, Manny Llanura

CGU MFA Theses

Photography is my medium. “The Standard Model” is a body of work created from photographs of the Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019 Collection runway.

Each final work starts with over a thousand photos that become the raw materials from which I eventually produce my final piece. Deep in the final piece are the lights, shadows, hues, tones of a themed shoot.

I believe that the ability to focus on what is in front of you is not directly proportional to how detailed the image is. My goal is to incite appreciation of what humans have done or …

Muted, Cindy Ruiz

CGU MFA Theses

Dolls inspire me because of the mysterious place they occupy in human affection, conveying playfulness but at the same time expressing the vulnerability of being alive. They don’t need a verbal language, for they have a strong gaze that looks back. I see them as a substitute for humans. As subjects for paintings, they are a cross between a figure and a still life. They don’t move when I paint them. I paint these dolls as realistically and as honestly as I can because I want to be true to the individual doll. I paint what I observe.

Unseen Forces, Rebecca Rich

CGU MFA Theses

My work belongs to a discussion of awareness and presentness. The foundation of the unconscious is the primary influence. The questions I am asking concern selfexamination and self-reflection. I am working from a place that relates to the other and identities that would intersect with something and someone else: interobjectivity. My art-making practice demands accountability with something greater than the personal. My work demonstrates that there is a shared space we intersect with. It sits between the end and the beginning, intuitively understanding that change is a constant with or without one's involvement or influence. My work is about connections …

The Threshold, Jonathan Yacoub

CGU MFA Theses

The Threshold is a place that forms a nuanced duality on what is authentic and artificial.

Carbon 碳, Mengyuan Li

CGU MFA Theses

Death is the one certainty in life. This fascinates me and I cannot stop thinking about it. When it comes to life and death, the cemetery is a more realistic place than heaven and hell, and it is also a place to feel life and death more directly. A simple gravestone separates life from death. Cemeteries let people come face to face with life, death, and even love.

In a cemetery, there is a tranquility that is different from the city or nature. In a cemetery, people take off their masks and face their emotions. I believe that when we …

Autopathography, Aurora Berger

CGU MFA Theses

For centuries the stories of disabled people were not our own to tell. We were silenced by politics and power dynamics beyond our control, and when we succeeded it was “in spite of” our disabilities. I am interested in the reframing of this narrative and discovering my place in this historic trajectory.

I am a disabled artist. I have claimed this identity. It is critical that this identity remains tied to my work as I navigate the worlds of fine art, academia, and critical theory. My art is intrinsically tied to my academic work. They are inseparably bonded through my …

Para Ti, Ashley Lothyan

CGU MFA Theses

This group of work draws from family photos that are over 15 years old, chosen from when I was born to the age of ten. Torn, wrinkled, and discolored, these photographs influence how I paint immediate family members, locations I grew up in, and myself.

Threaded, Madeline Arnault

CGU MFA Theses

This group of works is taken from my drawing practice. I have always been fascinated by the variety of line and color you can play with on fabric. For that reason each piece in this exhibition is image and line centric. I love the way a fabric can blend from color to color in the weave and yet contrast so sharply with a line placed on top. These works are a testament to that love.

Secrets, Todd Mccaffrey

CGU MFA Theses

What does it mean to be human and how does art help us in answering this question.

Kleptomaniac, Leslie Frank

CGU MFA Theses

I am a Kleptomaniac of public and private moments. Using my iPhone, I steal images of people and objects in public environments and frame these moments with the addition of my own poetic essence. I feel that Los Angeles is a unique city built on imagination, expectations and disappointments. Another aspect that is satisfying to me is the validation that I feel when I am at the right place at the right time. We don't always get to feel this in everyday life. Whether the experience is similar or foreign, the empathy is significant.

Raw, Jian Liang

CGU MFA Theses

My work is an exploration of the body in obscurity. The understanding of my own cultural identity, gender, and sexuality lead up to the work in this show. The work is a metaphor for the complex identity that I experience, and a discovery of the queer, marginal space that I am in as a person, as a painter, as an artist.

The term “raw” refers not only to the sensuous bodies depicted in my work, but also the body of the physical material. The paintings question the intimate relationship between bodies, and the bodies’ internal as well as external spaces. …

Zooairyland- Xinjie Yin Mfa Thesis Show, Xinjie Yin

CGU MFA Theses

During the process of discovering myself in my art world, I have determined to use cuteness as a way to express my worldview, values, and experiences. Cuteness is my own philosophy and language in the interpersonal communication. I intend to make cuteness meaningful to me as well as to the rest of the world. I believe cuteness contains a power to bring people back to their original simplicity regardless of their age, it is the idea of innocence. Cuteness is like a shield for me to protect myself from the tough, scary and crazy reality; and it is a positive …

In Visible Grounds, Jennifer Simms

CGU MFA Theses

Jenni Simms - In Visible Grounds - Show Description

I am interested in finding ways to make visual art that positions the viewer between advocation and negation, or possession and estrangement with the natural world and human presence. As an artist I am most satisfied when I can include all of these ideas together: a sense of time, edges of some kind, a sense of mystery alongside just enough of the known and signs of human presence and the natural world.

For In Visible Grounds I began my focus with color, or the visible light spectrum.is includes all of the …

Setting:Home, Adrienne Cole

CGU MFA Theses

I look at the world graphically, seeing people as objects, objects as shapes and shapes as lines. I develop these elements into textural abstractions and patterned representations. Sometimes my work is almost entirely abstract while at other times traces of visual references can be seen. I am interested in intersections and in-between; my works fill space with disorder allowing the audience to see through my scattered, confusing and often times mysterious lens.