otis 2011 mfa catalog
DESCRIPTION
Otis 2011 MFA CatalogTRANSCRIPT
Otis College of Art and Design 2011 BFA Fine Arts Exhibition Catalogue
Unknown Unknowns2011 Otis Fine Arts BFA Degree ExhibitionMay 8-16, 2011
CATALOGUE STAFF
Editor: Holly Tempo
Print Committee:
Rebecca J. Edwards, Chair
Saskia Leigh Darnell
Lindsey A. Schulz
Design: Carlos A. Avila
Typefaces: Rotis type family, Synchro LET (modified)
SENIOR STUDIO
Senior Exhibition Coordinators: Dana Duff, Alex Slade
Exhibition Design Committee Coordinator: Alex Slade
Senior Studio Mentors:
Carole Caroompas
Dana Berman Duff
Soo Kim
Senior Studio Visiting Mentors:
Linda Burnham
John Sonsini
Chris Wilder
FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT;
Chair: Meg Cranston
Assistant Chair: Alex Slade
Department Coordinator: Kate Harding
Office Manager: Michelle Chong
Special thanks to the Provost’s Office and Interim Provost’s Debra Ballard and Randall Lavender
©OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
Paper Stock: Recycled 70# Natural White Offset
Printer: iGen digital press by Xerox
Printed in the United States by BurdgeCooper
www.burdgecooper.com
OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
9045 LINCOLN BLVD., LA, CA 90045
WWW.OTIS.EDU
Adriana M. Collazo
Melba P. Saunders
Paul A. Jebian
Abdón Valdez Betancourt
Soo Y. Lim
Forrest M. Smith
Lindsey A. Schulz
Rebecca J. Edwards
Maricela Aviña
Vickie I. Thomas
Dereck S. Seltzer
J. Catarina Gates
Samantha Gregg
Astrelle C. Johnquest
Patricia Salcedo
Jessica M. Martinez
Saskia Leigh Darnell
Lauren N. Martinez
Winter J. Jenssen
Jaynie Lynne Sanchez
Melissa Mae Cox
Alex Becerra
Jane Kilcullen
GeoVanna J. Gonzalez
Jamie L. Kimbrough
Alexandra Rose Kornblum
CONTENTS
VENTURE
Adriana M. Collazo ¬ [email protected] ¬ 562.639.8970
First Infantry (Detail)
First Infantry, 2010
Deconstructed army apparel
96 X 144”
Melba P. Saunders ¬ [email protected] ¬ 562.308.8332
Module (#2), 2011
Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions variable
Untitled (#9), 2011
Acrylic on canvas
48 X 60”
With A Shot to the Head, 2011
Watercolor, coffee and acrylic on watercolor paper
22 X 28”
Paul A. Jebian ¬ [email protected]
Abdón Valdez Betancourt ¬ [email protected] ¬ 760.556.6812
Big Bang of Galilee
Discovers String Theory, 2010
Pencil on glued A4 printer paper
60 X 72”
Untitled, 2010
Found wood, canvas, guitar, glue, nails, screws and acrylic paint
48 X 60 X 86”
Soo Y. Lim ¬ [email protected] ¬ 714.393.3237
Real or Not, 2011
Video projection installation
Dimensions variable
2:00 minute loop with sound
Forrest M. Smith ¬ [email protected] ¬ 267.226.3443
Cheerios, 2010
Inkjet luster print
20 X 30”
Rebecca J. Edwards ¬ www.redwardsart.com ¬ [email protected] ¬ 818.517.5682
Loop de Loop, 2010
Oil on Dura-lene
72 X 36”
It’s the Edge!, 2010
Oil on Dura-lene
36 X 21”
Lindsey A. Schulz ¬ www.lindseyaschulz.com ¬ [email protected] ¬ 707.477.9620
Untitled (Childhood), 2010
Inkjet print
60 X 60”
I MEAN, DID YOU KNOW THE EXACT
MOMENT WHEN YOU WEREN’T
WANTED AND NOT LOVED AND
EVERYONE WAS AGAINST YOU
(From the Series It’s the Coffee
Grounds, Charlie Brown), 2011
Whiteout and calligraphy ink on
inkjet print
44 X 34”
Vickie I. Thomas ¬ www.vickiethomas.com ¬ [email protected]
Life on Galaladies, 2011
Oil on canvas
48 X 72”
What Seemed Like Hours, 2011
Oil on canvas
48 X 72”
Maricela Aviña ¬ [email protected]
The ultimate woe, 2011
Acrylic on canvas
14 X 34 “
Untitled, 2010
Acrylic on panel
18 X 24 “
J. Catarina Gates ¬ [email protected] ¬ 661.378.7159
Untitled (from the Strata series), 2011
Inkjet print on clear film
24 X 24”
Dereck S. Seltzer ¬ www.hauntedeuth.com
What We Do Is Secret (Detail), 2011
Lithograph and graphite on panel
40 X 80”
LA River Neapolitan, 2010
Acrylic, enamel, spray paint and
reclaimed wheat paste on panel
33 X 96”
Astrelle C. Johnquest ¬ www.astrellejohnquest.com ¬ [email protected]
now, 2010
Silk flowers on canvas
96 X 114”
Samantha Gregg ¬ [email protected] ¬ 630.254.5959
Axonometric Blueprint, 2011
LaserJet print
36 X 39”
Jessica M. Martinez ¬ [email protected]
Pocket Rushmore, 2010
Epson Inkjet matte print
30 X 30”
Patricia Salcedo ¬ [email protected] ¬ 310.675.7331
Collapse In Time, 2009
Oil on panel
16 X 20”
Lauren N. Martinez ¬ www.ospace.otis.edu/lnm ¬ [email protected]
The Party Palette: An Impermanent
Installation (Detail), 2011
Mixed media installation
Dimensions variable
Residual Series No. 3, 2011
Soap and pigment on watercolor paper
19 X 24”
Saskia Leigh Darnell ¬ [email protected]
Optical Opposites (video still), 2011
Video
45 minute loop
I Woke Up Into A Dream, 2010
Mixed media installation
120 X 96 X 72”
Jaynie Lynne Sanchez ¬ [email protected]
Stained Glass, 2011
Mixed media installation (coffee filters, markers and resin)
Dimensions variable
Winter J. Jenssen ¬ [email protected]
Sound Check, 2010
Speaker/wire/sound installation
48 X 10 X 10”
BitGlitch (video still), 2010
Video
4:00 minutes
Alex Becerra ¬ [email protected] ¬ 805.816.5712
Monument to Joe Pesci, 2010
Wax, faux wood finish and heat lamp
36 X 48”
Boom For Real, 2010
Cibachrome print
8.5 X 10”
Melissa Mae Cox ¬ [email protected]
Memories (Detail), 2011
Ektachrome Super 8 film cast in resin
Dimensions variable
GeoVanna J. Gonzalez ¬ [email protected]
Lay beyond the easy reach of existence, 2011
Ink on paper
130 X 103”
Jane Kilcullen ¬ [email protected]
Grot, 2010
Chromogenic print
12 X 9”
Alexandra Rose Kornblum ¬ www.alexandraroseart.com ¬ [email protected] ¬ 307.690.3295
All it says is “disappear here”, 2011
Acrylic, pen and cut paper on Mylar
27.5 X 23 X 1”
Wood Floor, 2011
Acrylic, enamel and cut mylar on Yupo mounted on wood panel
64.5 X 55.5 X 2.5
Over the past few years, I have developed an intense interest in art criticism. Although a visual art major, I have found that I am more interested in discussing art rather than making it. Possibly as a by-product of having been trained as an artist, I am reluctant to reduce art criticism to reviews or journalistic essays. Consequently, I have made a concerted effort to suss out different avenues that can facilitate critical reflection. These efforts have culminated in a wide variety of different media, from a collaborative video of a faux talk show to works of marginalia within contemporary art magazines. The parasitic structure of this practice examines the institutions of art and uses them as a means by which to point out their own inherent shortcomings. The work functions as a form of cultural critique that addresses a specific audience: the art world.
I am interested in the relationship between architectural space, landscape, and the psyche. My work explores ideas of conflict through the use of contradictory techniques such as the disintegration or fracturing of visual information, that in turn creates a feeling of instability. My intention is to transport the viewer into an ambiguous, sometimes associative, and disjoint-ed landscape or environment made up of interiors, exteriors, things found in nature, and abstracted forms. I create compositions that reverse and manipulate tradi-tional representations of space. I do so by playing with and distorting color, line, perspective, and scale. My intention is to warp and distort space derived from personal memories and experiences. My work gravitates towards creating unsettling and dysfunctional depic-tions of environments and architecture.
My work revolves around encroaching on the uncanny within a seemingly mundane void of everyday imagery. I deduct pre-existing material from my surroundings as opposed to creating new material and, thus, imbue my video and photographic work with a newfound significance. I look for images as opposed to staging them and, for me, this act of preservation is what instills value in the imagery. My HD video work functions as a databank that informs my photographs. Through manipulation, the footage and photographs imply a narrative that never culminates. There is a tension established by the viewer’s sense that something is constantly about to happen, or that the piece will evolve into a satisfying answer to some unseen, posed question.
My work centers on translating reality into the imaginative through means of abstraction. An inner desire for escape and discovery is the underlying theme. By morphing realistic and abstract forms together– utilizing imagery that references, deep-sea creatures, microorganisms, children’s books, and botanical sketches– I illustrate dualities of life and death, growth and decay. It also can be seen as having a faint surrealistic quality, which has a delirious innuendo and feels oneiric, through order and disruption, and hide and seek. I create something outside of everyday reality, space or an environment to invent another realm of order. I investigate notions of order by creating a parallel tension through forms that both define but eventually disrupt each other; echoing the way humans function in relationships and families. At the same time my work strongly refers back to nature and science because, however much we seek the fictional, we live in a tangible reality.
I have been working with Super 8 film for almost two years now, making autobiographical short films. The mini-documentary, titled What’s to say if all the days I cannot bear?, tracks how I go through the phases of my depression. Recently, I have been experimenting with film as a physical medium and creating objects out of it. The images imprinted on the film are just as important as the object generated, so I attempt to create a certain consistency between the two. For example in the piece Memories, cut up strips of Super 8 film are suspended and cast in resin cubes. The images on the pieces of film are of my puppies and the Palm Springs Mountains covered in snow, both of which recall my childhood home.
Game day three for $5 and chipsBud Ice wrapped brown seems betterMoney, well enoughWhy hasn’t it made that noiseCome OnIt’s like those bitchin’ cantina balladsGot one on standby on 12’’Is this a jokeFuck no, I am tryingThings are looking bright I thinkJust hang out and listenGot a smoke?
My work currently focuses on the mechanics of sound and combines this with the visual. I find this synthesis of sight and sound very provocative because sound seems to have a very different effect on perception. It can provide a particular kind of engagement that brings life to form and gives atmosphere to space. Sound, and the way we experience it, has greatly changed within the last few decades with the advent of digitalization and sound production techniques. We have a deeper understanding of how sound functions and have pushed it into further realms of abstraction that were not previously possible, realms that exploit the unconscious. Sounds without recognizable form provide openness within visual interpretation by blending the lines between the known and the unknown.
The dominant element that I base my practice upon is the notion of distortion. My inspiration comes from the materials chosen and my ability to transform them into something new. I predominantly work with materials that have a specific utilitarian purpose in everyday life (e.g. coffee filters or buttons), which I can transform and deconstruct through experimental processes that differ from traditional modes of production (making a watercolor without paint or a brush). I strive to deconstruct or abstract these materials into works that, in turn, perform visually and rise above the banality of their original function. My greatest desire is to alter the viewer’s perception of the material based on the distortion, transformation, or abstraction created by the work of my own two hands.
Process, motion, and interstitial space have been an ongoing investigation in my work. My current work focuses on the experience of kaleidoscopic imagery through mediums such as video, drawing and sculpture. I experiment with color, light, and space–using everyday found and craft materials. For my recent videos, I have been using a kaleidoscope iPod video filter and later layering the videos to make one happen-ing. Conceptually I have been intrigued by the speed at which we culturally consume information. My position is one of observation and not critique of this consumption. I am trying to humanize the virtual interstitial experience. I often change the scale relationship between the works and the viewer’s body to attempt to make the involvement visceral and tangible. Similar to the experience one has visiting a movie theater, I am creating a hypnotic space that transports the viewer and allows for suspended disbelief.
To Paula Cisneros:
My work fills me with the spirit to deal with the obstacles that I have experienced in my life. I often use religious iconography in the paintings to tell a story. I reference the Old Masters and attempt to build a new visual language that expresses intense emotions.
My mother suffers from a mental condition and lives in the streets of Mexico. Everyday she is in my mind when I make art. My goal is to build her a house like the two birds are doing in Collapse in Time.
Thanks, Mom. You are my muse for making art…
Observing the daily entropic action of squeezing toothpaste out of the tube, we neglect to acknowledge the performance of what cannot be undone. I attempt to recreate events with residual evidence; any common, personal experience that is shared collectively from person to person, separated by the thinnest membrane. My impermanent installation is based on the relation-ship of an in-group, an out-group and the separation (membrane) in between, creating a space in which life and art are blurred. I empower campy materials, transforming and redirecting their function but allowing them to exist as well. I look at Cy Twombly for his line quality, Allan Kaprow for his theologies on play, Felix Gonzalez-Torres for addressing universal issues through personal experience, and Pipolotti Rist for her perspective. As children we obtain a simple perception of the world’s complexities that is forgotten with experience. It is my job to exasperate this personal experience based on a collective nostalgia.
For me, creating art is a type of visual journal. The subjects I use are pulled from my various thoughts, encounters, and places I wish to remember. My piece, Pocket Rushmore, shows a found souvenir that illustrates both my desire and inability to visit Mount Rushmore at that moment. The montage shows a giant open coin purse above four fallen coins, the faces of which coincide with those of the presidents on the mountain. They represent a fake "souvenir", one that evokes the thought of that place and is easily created from loose change. This piece, as well as my other work, exists to give physical form to thought. Overall you could call them my own personal memory objects.
My work examines mainstream cinema to find moments that convey a distinct correlation to fine art. The content is deeply invested in the production of a specific genre within film. I see the boundaries of genre as a choice vehicle with which to consider the poetic vision of the film’s writer and director. I often look at period films, such as American Graffiti, and am greatly influenced by their ability to discuss current trends and fears through displacing an audience from the present into an unattainable and less familiar place in time.
I begin with a systematic process, choosing a film as a starting point and subsequently branching out from it until I arrive at a collection of data that draws a parallel to fine art practice. The chosen methods to execute each process are inherent to the content and have taken on various forms including architectural video installations, movie posters, and character study performance pieces.
For several years my practice has focused on exploring the relationship between fine art and design, specifi-cally through the use of traditional craft methods. However, craft has recently evolved into a means to discuss exchange and consumption. My current series titled, now Project, uses the conventional pop-up shop model as a vehicle to examine consumerist ideologies surrounding the corporate retail outlet.
Each shop is intended to be unique, flexing in response to our vacillating economic climate. The current incarnation of the project challenges ideas relating to branding, art as commodity, and methods of exchange. The shop attempts to achieve this by selling two types of products: manufactured products in exchange for a good deed and my handmade now brand products for cash. By employing these alternative methods of exchange, my intent is to distort product associations and ideologies.
My work negotiates contemporary city life, exploring a lexicon of images that are over-determined and self-impeded by cultural meaning. I use a loose combination of graffiti, illustration, and found objects to re-animate existing visual codes through installa-tion, trying to capture the sense of isolation and bombardment an individual may feel while in transit in a metropolitan city.
We are constantly over-saturated with imagery. It has become easy to feel dismissive towards the photograph. The singularity of the image seems to slowly be fading. In my practice, I create image objects that use tactics and tactility in an attempt to breathe new vitality into the life of the photograph and settle my personal frustrations with the medium’s flatness. I do this through methods of construction, such as layering transparent images in space to give the viewer a different composition from every angle. I also layer non-opaque images with tactile materials mounted behind the image, to give it a new dimensionality. Exploring this theme of layers and layering has been a recent fascination of mine.
The imagery in my constructions is relatively simple. I do not intend the image to be singular. My intent is to let the way it is displayed make what would otherwise be a democratic image, memorable.
In my recent work, I investigate the beauty of the grotesque through figuration. I am especially interested in how the disfiguration of the body caused by illness informs our cultural relationship to death. I grew up around hospitals and ill relatives, an experience that made me question how the body works and why it deteriorates. I am fascinated by the relationship between organs and the pain (physical or mental) that people suffer when the body’s functions are compro-mised. This fascination has also led me to create images of figures transformed by body modification practice. In the paintings, I focus on the part of the body that is being altered and, thus, fetishized. This work allows me to reconcile human suffering by highlighting the beautiful moments in an otherwise painful process.
My artwork alludes to the intangible elements found in nature, and reflects the mystical and fantastical worlds I have floating around in my head. I focus on opposing forces like darkness and light, the visible and unseen, encroaching danger and the sublime. Histori-cally, I am influenced by art of the Late Baroque and Romantic eras, and the American Luminist painters. Like many of the artists I have studied, using oil paints has become a valuable tool for me. The medium’s ability to transmit light helps to bring the environments I create to life. The paintings become less about being objects and more about visual experiences. I try to translate nature, spirituality, and the supernatural in playful and unusual ways. I want to inspire people like life has inspired me.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Artist Statements
DSM-VI
Diagnostic Criteria for 300.6 Lindsey Schulz
A. A process that severs a connection to a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity.
B. A particular interest in psychological fragility and behavior, along with the compulsion to expose vulnerability.
C. An emphasis on emotional entanglement.
D. Adapts a clinical approach to one’s practice manifesting through ritualistic and rigorous controlled methods,
often attempts to communicate in codes (e.g. Morse code, Braille, ambiguous text).
E. (Either of the following):
1. An exploration of the phenomenon of memory, imagination and time,
and the imprint they have on materials.
2. Preoccupation with relationships between materials, oneself, images,
strangers, memory, family, text, thought, history, and time.
F. Evolution of a fantastical inner landscape into a perceived reality. Specific examination or attention
to the limitation of materials.
In my paintings, I look at the relationship between memory and place. I use photographs of landscapes as a trigger for my recollections of specific environ-ments. Rather than simply translating the image to paper or canvas, I use it as a reference for the colors and shapes that I associate with the space portrayed. To do so, I paint with the photographs behind me while I am working to create a balance between remembering and forgetting. This allows me to abstract from both the visual reference and the memory to create a composite representation of the location.
Imagination is really important to me. When we distort our view of the present we are open to new ideas and ways to approach the world. In my work I shoot a lot of portraits. I enjoy dressing friends in elaborate costumes and creating imaginary scenes for them to act in. Sometimes this is based on an aspect of their personality or experience that they have recently encountered. Through my lens I try to push these situations to the point of fantasy. I create conditions where we might better consider the experience of the person and/or character.
My photographs often include sculptural props. These are usually fashion based and used to extend the reach and ability of the body. They are meant to support the fantasy but lose their purpose and shape once removed from the photograph. Lately my work has involved creating meaning by exploring how images reflect and connect via video and photo installation.
In my practice, I am interested in how people perceive the world around them. I start by deconstructing images of mundane things and then alter them with color, texture, pattern, light and sound to create fluid, abstract compositions in my paintings and videos. I experiment with materials within the context of the work with the hope that the viewer will gain a multi-level experience that takes them beyond the everyday. My work reflects how I receive my environment, filter it through my perception, and finally present it to the audience.
My artwork deals with identity. I do not know who I am, what I am capable of, or where I am headed. I would like to sound reassuring and comforting, but I cannot. Art is a huge thing, and I have sophomorically chosen it as a path: spiritual, philosophical, and psychological. I make what comes to mind—usually it is deep and all encompassing, but what leaves my hands is something that feels as uncertain as time. I want to be remembered, and live as though I have already died: a memory as the now continuously becomes a past occurrence. As with improvisational performance art, I cannot act without an initial percussive action. I have questions and, as a specter, I seek questions that I do not know to ask.
My practice manifests as photography and painting. The photographic work consists of abstracted images from magazine articles, which appear soft and blurry. As the viewer approaches, the images will eventually reveal themselves. They are torn, tattered, and burned; and smell of ash and corrosion.
My paintings consist of large multiple panels. I use chiaroscuro and scale to create drama. The paintings are dark, erotic, and confusing.
I am a colorist. I am interested in the process and systems that lead to an optical illusion or visual clash. Simultaneous contrast is used in my work to create a push-pull effect that generates a conversation between colors’ vibrancy, contrast, and harmony on a plane of geometric structure. An all-over composi-tion is created that in turn creates energy and move-ment. My work is about the mechanical versus the natural, color clash and harmony, and painting as object. I explore how geometry and the grid function in the form of a pattern and system, while still being synchronized with the harmony that color creates. What results is a conversation between the painting and viewer, movement and energy, and optics and cognitive psychology.
My mom was a nurse and taught me how to read despair. When looking at the exterior of an individual, I presume a narrative of identity; a narrative that often speaks of hard times. My background in theatre and fashion gives me insight into the different personas people use to function in society. Using a labor-inten-sive process, I figuratively and literally deconstruct found materials such as army jackets, Mexican textiles and industrial materials, which have powerful cultural associations. These deconstructions represent fluid narratives that shift from the individual crisis to larger conversations about politics, social norms and culture.
1. Carefully remove rubberbands and save for re-assembly.
2. Each artist is represented by several visual and
textual cues:
– an image or images of their artwork
– contact information for each artist
– a photograph of the artist concealed in a space
– an artist statement
– a tandem photograph revealing the artist
3. Upon familiarity with the original order,
re-arrange the pages of the catalogue as you like.
4. Replace rubberbands to bind.
5. Begin re-exploration.
CONSIDER
