Graduates 2020
Serene Blumenthal
Is interested in the physical and social environment- where history and memory oscillate through bodies and technologies. Whether making sculptures to be filmed, conducting interviews or performing remote actions of gestural command she creates both personal and interactive documents that explore time and power. In utilizing systems of capture, documentation and collection, she critically engages with the construction, composition, and validation of reality.
Ultimately her intention is to dissect dominant discourse through personal explorations into the normalizing forces of unconscious and unseen.
Kio Griffith
Fine-tuning of the listening / reading experiences develop through exposures to auditory chaos of discordance, euphonies, and speech. My process is to reconstitute an ‘optiphonic’ paradigm that creates an immersive social communal experience by breathing new life into what may be lost in generational transference.
The works are primarily sound, print and language-based compositions. They range from projected visuals, invented languages and experiments in cross-cultural work—interpretations are built and objects are formed from the most accessible materials.
In a world of self-journalism in which documentation is a daily activity of sharing texts and images, the general idea of “reading” has changed. Reinvention and newly invented languages, truncated communication techniques, the relative associations and the reading between the lines, faces, spaces and the air surrounding us—we continue to interrogate.
Megan Koth
My work explores feminine beauty rituals and the cultural and emotional baggage that they carry. As a feminist artist, the frequent commodification of contemporary feminism and the conspicuous consumption encouraged by the beauty industry are of concern to me. Through self-portraiture, I seek to find permanence in what is ordinarily washed away, and make public what is normally a “private” beauty ritual, while highlighting the disaffection that results from constantly scrutinizing one’s own appearance.
Marshall Sharpe
Marshall Sharpe’s artwork and research focus on the life of his grandmother, Nancy Morgan, who grew up in Memphis during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Because Nancy died before he was born, his work builds a bridge to a grandmother he never met. Using primary sources such as family photos, journals and interviews, Sharpe’s work unpacks themes of memory, privilege and nostalgia in the deep South.
In 2017, Sharpe was awarded funding to take a year-long sabbatical from teaching to pursue his research and artwork full-time. During this time, he moved 5,000 miles from his home in Hawaii to his birthplace in Greensboro, North Carolina, to be closer to the friends and family that could assist in uncovering his grandmother’s story.
www.MarshallSharpe.com
Instagram: @Marshall_Sharpe
Thomas Stoeckinger
In the same way that scientists forfeit entrenched concepts when they are contradicted with empirical evidence, the structures of visual language and culture (such as figurative representation, and icons of political and religious authority) can be reconsidered in instances when outdated codes clash with evolving perspectives and cultural sentiment. Humor, and the misuse of visual conventions that connote power, undermine pretentiousness and communicate humility. I am interested in how dichotomies (such as between virtual and authentic, connection and isolation, benign and profound, progressive and conservative, digital and analogue) can be constructed into cohesive and meaningful experiences that embrace the possibilities of a liberal contemporary society while acknowledging the usefulness of some traditions that progress is built on. As a whole, my work investigates the desire to find and construct meaning, while attempting to undermine dogmatic and categorical approaches to thought and communication through the creation of objects, digital media, and performance.
https://www.thomaspstoeckinger.com
David Wesley White
I create visual meditations from the material excess of the nuclear family. Objects are used as a language; meanings manipulated through specific arrangements. My practice pulls apart the threads of armchairs and chisels up the floor. It shines light through artifacts from the attic and teases out sentiment. Death, sex, whiteness, and gayness are analyzed through sculpture, installation, photography, and performance.
Growing up in the suburbs was road kill on the highway and the safety of four-wheel drive. With adulthood, the contradictions in the rosy image of my youth became more apparent. Critical theorist Bill Brown stated “We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily.” My work accentuates the vulnerability that occurs when an object fails, and holds in suspense the queerness of a familiar yet unrecognizable thing. It grapples with the fact that the depth of human experience is contained in a mortal body.