Art Practice Commons^™

Isolated Infinite, Kelsey M. Kimmel

CGU MFA Theses

I explore the relationship between human borders and digital space. The porous borders between these entities shape contemporary culture and identity. Amid the digital current, I find myself over-stimulated, fighting to stay afloat through multitasking, immediacy and cramming. My sculptural installations investigate how I see, experience, interact with and react to digital space.

Lumen Essence, Brian Thomas Jones

CGU MFA Theses

I am intrigued by power relationships among the physical, psychological and political realms of experience. The various ways we respond to both the voluntary and involuntary restrictions of power ignite the ideas behind my investigations. The examination of power dynamics utilizing scale, spectacle and theatricality is what excites my process.

By providing an environment for immersive visceral participation, I invite the visitor to collaborate in the process of art-making through their human interaction with the formal constructions of the exhibition. Engaging the visitor in an activated, sensate experience is the artistic objective. The visitor's willingness to slow down the art …

Front, Jennifer Mitchell

CGU MFA Theses

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Bleach, Kim E. Alexander Jr.

CGU MFA Theses

The work in this exhibition investigates the unique potential for drawing to articulate the ideas and attitudes of architecture and objects. Accepting drawing as operating in conceptual space, I explore experimental loops within the visual logic of that territory. The work asserts the material fact of drawing and its connection to forms of fabrication in other materials like wood, paint, metal, and plastic. Like painting and sculpting, the drawings occupy an intangible state between objects and ideas. I embrace this irresolution. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Here's Looking When, Erica Ryan Stallones

CGU MFA Theses

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Back From Port-Au-Prince, Kerry L. Rodgers

CGU MFA Theses

In this body of work I aim to bring the possibility of intimacy and empathy to a city reeling from recent devastation. Before last year’s earthquake, Port-Au-Prince had been famous for its bright splashy colors; vibrant shades coated the homes, shacks, buildings and buses. But everything lost its color when it crumbled. The ubiquitous gray rubble is a constant reminder of the immense human suffering that the quake set into motion: death, displacement, and disease. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Climate Change, Mfa On Ice, Christy Roberts

CGU MFA Theses

Within the confines of the body there is a longing to connect. I believe that this is a longing to connect to place and often to the others who occupy it. When this longing is not satisfied, either by place or people, tension arises. I create experiences, images, and objects that explore the tension between the body and its social, physical, and natural environment.Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Andre Goeritz Mfa Thesis Statement, Andre M. Goeritz

CGU MFA Theses

I strive to make objects of no complicity--arranging smaller parts to create larger forms, or allowing the combination of parts to allude to narratives without linearity, foreshadowing, point of entry, point of attack, conflict, context, or catharsis; a state of sustained stillness until equilibrium is no longer a desired result, at which point the parts of the whole can be dismantled, reconfigured, made anew. I think about words, rhythm, inflection, resonance or timbre, vocal dissonance, dismembered disjointed utterances, and repetition--somatic impulses guided by intent. Intention translates into action--an act of will, a willful act, an act of willful intent--a marker …

Stories Of Loss And Gain, Amy L. Huynh

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about the inevitability of change and the concomitant longing for stability. It explores various manifestations of loss – death, physical distance, erasure – and the desire to hold tight to something that is already passing. The videos in this body of work convey intensely personal narratives about cultural assimilation, sexual orientation, and departure, in hopes that my own vulnerability can reveal something that is not identity-specific but human. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Nano Rubio Mfa Thesis, Armando Rubio Jr.

CGU MFA Theses

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Echoes, Justin Huffman

CGU MFA Theses

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Push The Button//Start The Show, Davin K. Knight

CGU MFA Theses

My work is based in mediation and simulation via machines. The pieces in this exhibition are hybrids of object and image, dealing directly with the process of rearranging information. They are frenetic optical renderings of time, space, light, and motion. They are signs without clear indication, formal without express composition and flat without abandoning illusionistic space. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Domestic, Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski

CGU MFA Theses

Los Angeles based painter Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski works in oil on linen. Using saturated colors and lush textures, she processes daily life, exploring emotional undercurrents, inevitable loss, and the instinct to protect what is loved.Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Jane Gillespie Pryor Mfa Thesis Statement, Jane Gillespie Pryor

CGU MFA Theses

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Claudia Carballada Mfa Thesis Statement, Claudia Carballada

CGU MFA Theses

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Thinh Nguyen Mfa Thesis Statement, Thinh Nguyen

CGU MFA Theses

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Jacob Fowler Mfa Thesis Statement, Jacob Fowler

CGU MFA Theses

I am invested in mindless activity, repetitive actions, and hasty production. Performance and completion are at the forefront of my hurried work habits. Practicality has directed my selection of materials and decision-making process toward meaningful and intentional outcomes. However the outcome is reminiscent of goal-oriented activities that are misplaced, in essence, a pragmatic process of customization gone astray. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Since 1980, Sookyung Bae

CGU MFA Theses

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Delicacies, Michelle Carla Handel

CGU MFA Theses

My work initiates a conversation about corporeal strangeness by creating ambiguity or mystery where simultaneous qualities of sensuality, vulnerability, and disgust exist. I create contradictions, subverting pleasing or friendly forms with uncomfortable qualities to elicit a sort of visceral consternation. Cues pointing in different directions can remain simply experiential or they can refer to the complexity of the body and raise questions about human attitudes towards it. Abstraction is used as a visual shorthand or entry point to the body in an effort to describe commonality among humans rather than emphasizing their differences. In this way, there is more freedom …

Selecting In - Selecting Out, Melanie S. Moore Bermudez

CGU MFA Theses

The scientific process was developed as a means to understanding the world around us. It is a systematic approach to reaching the unknown, and consists of fixed and unknown variables. At the beginning of an inquiry the known variables are identified and utilized within the experiment. But working with what is known and predictable can only go so far. It is with the introduction of the unpredictable that gaps are bridged and a new lens to see is created. It is this methodology that is at the foundation of my art practice. Please see Download button in top right corner …

Erin Payne Mfa Thesis Statement, Erin B. Payne

CGU MFA Theses

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Bestiary, Rebecca N. Tice

CGU MFA Theses

My work focuses on the fantastic and the peculiar. It grows out of an interest in animals, myth, and the human tendency to anthropomorphize.

Wunderkammer, Dai Toyofuku

CGU MFA Theses

I manufacture objects that confuse classification and cross boundaries. Part unicorn horn and part Narwhal tusk, these objects straddle categorical containers. My sculptures attempt to break free from inherited structures of knowledge and modes of seeing. The boxes and pedestals are akin to these imposed structures, though these traditional structures always fall just short of fulfilling their supposed function; these categorical containers slowly leak.

Doubting Thomas, Michael K. Carter

CGU MFA Theses

My work is a deliberate attempt at a personal sense of wrongness. I believe that encountering this wrongness is more sincere and revealing of myself and my audience then any attempt at correctness could be. I feel there is a vulnerability and exposure in being the first to speak up, to leap before looking, to react without thinking, analyze or process experience.

Which Is Not One, Alex C. Moore

CGU MFA Theses

Specific yet anonymous, my paintings allow the viewer to sit within what would normally be a fleeting moment of intimacy.

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 …

The Observer Effect, Azadeh Tajpour

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the gray area and the shifting border between "us" and "other." It investigates the helplessness and the submissiveness on both sides of this spectrum and one's passivity that makes the "pain of others" inevitable. Moreover, it examines the individual and collective experiences of guilt and complicity in relation to world events. I am interested in the selective and repressed memories of individuals and nations, the reluctance to look and the ability to forget.

Gamespace, Kevin M. Scianni

CGU MFA Theses

My work uses gameplay, the experience of interacting with a gaming system, as a strategy to generate paintings. I interact with a set of rules, challenges and goals loosely derived from the structure of early videogames as a method to compose a painting. I am interested in how game strategies can address formal aspects of painting. I am also interested in how gameplay as an indicator of game quality or the desire to continually be challenged will continually advance the paintings.

Shhh... Say Nothing, Luis Rendon

CGU MFA Theses

My art is the foundation I use to commune with myself and bridge the gap to the rest of the world. A gap created by everyday being surrounded by information, so much so that it is easy to become numb. I do not want, because of my inability to filter the relentless onslaught of information, to walk through life tuned off. All that undigested knowledge leaves me feeling distant from myself and unable to connect with others. This leaves me with the sensation of not knowing myself.

Deep End, Emily Smith

CGU MFA Theses

In my work I examine how and where nature and culture collide, merge, overlap or become one. Ultimately my goal is to draw attention to the ways we perceive and remember nature as well as ho w we experience the natural landscape in opposition to built environments. I am also interested in how our relation to these spaces changes over time and how we might envision these environments in the not-s o-distant future.