Date/Time
Date(s) - April 26, 2019 - May 18, 2019
10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, University Center for the Arts
The annual Master of Fine Arts Exhibition marks the culmination of a three-year degree program in the visual arts that fosters individual research and creative studio practice. Students in the program focus on a particular area of study and complete a mature body of work in their chosen field – artwork is situated within the discourse of contemporary art practice.
This year’s exhibition features work of Alexandra Forsythe (metals), Christy Nelson (painting), and Emily Sullivan (painting). Come to MFA Speaks on Thursday, May 2 at 5p.m. for their talk.
Alexandra Forsythe – metals
Time is an ongoing focus in my artistic practice. I engage with my own perception of spatiotemporal experience through the use of replication and multiples, linear arrangements and process based approaches to art making. Through daily effort, my work takes shape. I utilize repetitive, labor intensive methods to create singular visual arrangements that both embody and represent time.
Christy Nelson – painting
Christy Nelson lives in Laporte, CO. She received her BFA in Painting from Mississippi State University in 2007. She finds used, soiled, discarded, often familial objects and using art agents like encaustic, stretcher frames, and pigment, changes them into new things. The process of tangibly redeeming salvaged forms and freezing them in a moment of restoration is empowering. As the artworks exist in this new state they push into a shared space with the viewer. Some of the works expose holes or scars that can be closed and re-opened, others explore the difference between the outer appearances and inner realities. The soft color palettes carry whispers of prior experiences. Specific materials such as a rat-chewed blanket or a decrepit sleeping bag zipper, provide each work with its personal narrative of former despair and hopeful re-creation.
Emily Sullivan – painting
Emily Sullivan is from Cincinnati, OH and has a BFA in Painting, Drawing, and Art Education from Xavier University. She is currently in her final year of the MFA Painting program at CSU. Her work explores liminal space, transience, and movement. She draws upon her own movement through space, navigating a years long, long-distance relationship with her husband — including frequent cross-country flights, long highway commutes, and relocating around the country. The paintings are in a state of flux – longing for, or awaiting, a stability that may never come. The work is both referential and ambiguous, existing in a transitional, in-between space where viewers cannot fully place the scene. Fleeting time and a lack of grounding is suggested through the marks on paper, as well as an adherence to “no place” and a familiarity with elsewhere. It is through these paintings and drawings that Sullivan begins to feel at ease with this movement, seeing what can be gained instead of what is lost.