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“Most truly original new art is the result of group activity. It appears that the conjunctionof several exceptional talents results in something that is greater than the parts.”

— Alan Bowness

PAINTING 2015

Publication of this catalog was made possible with the generous support of Kevin Kearney ’74

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When we gathered in Falvey Hall on the first Monday of our weekly Senior Thesis meetings in late August of 2014, graduation seemed really far away.

Subsequently, after being assigned a studio in the newly named Fred Lazarus IV Graduate Studio Center and meeting your core peer group, you ventured on a creative journey that led up to your fantastic Commence-ment Exhibition.

“Visiting Artists at Noon” – our Monday Lecture Series – included: Leonardo Benzant, Beverly Fishman, Barbara Friedman, Judy Glantzman, Sharon Horvath, Alex Kanevsky, Fabienne Lasserre, Eddie Martinez, Nick Pappas, René Treviño, Alexis Rockman and Beverly Semmes.

Judy Glantzman was in residence for the year, serving as the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Endowed Chair (see opposite page).

Your final Thesis Defense and first semester Review Board provided in-tense, focused discussions of your artwork by a three-person faculty jury.

You created professional quality artist statements, resumes, narrative biographies, and business cards, and you attended numerous professional workshops. Some of you applied to graduate schools, internships, resi-dencies, grants, galleries, and prepared for life beyond MICA. Many of you participated in exhibitions on campus and in the greater community.

Mainly you spent many hours in your studio developing your art.

This year’s Senior Thesis Core Faculty included Ellen Burchenal, David Cloutier, Marian Glebes, Fabienne Lasserre, Barry Nemett, Phyllis Plat-tner, Renée Rendine, Robert Salazar, Rex Stevens, and myself. Seon Park, a Mount Royal School of art graduate student, was our Program Teaching Assistant.

Various artists also visited your core groups at the invitation of your facul-ty, enabling you to meet and discuss your artwork with professionals in the field.

What a year!

I wish all seniors the best of luck for a rich and fulfilling artistic life.

from Howie Lee WeissHead of Senior Thesis GFA PTG DRW

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from Judy GlantzmanThe 2015 Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Endowed Chair

As this year’s Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Endowed Chair, I would like to thank you all for the remarkable year I have spent in the Maryland Institute College of Art Painting Department. Entering each MICA student’s studio, a unique world reflects the quality, range, and variety that are MICA Painting. The work is always thoughtful and beautifully crafted, resonating with depth and complexity. The studios are charged and creative, guided with the loving and supportive artistic mentorship of the faculty. Now you transition from art student to artist. I have been inspired by the author Willliam Zinsser, who, when asked how to have a successful career, answered, “live an interesting life.” After my graduation in 1978, I painted, worked as a waitress, and attended a now defunct artist retreat for seven months. In 1983, I met David Wo-jnarowicz, Luis Frangella, and Greer Langton; I was invited to paint in an abandoned pier in lower Manhattan. Word of mouth brought hundreds of artists into this gritty, ghost-pier. The decaying roof exposed the sky. Aban-doned old ledgers filled with cursive recordkeeping were scattered about. It was scary and exciting. David planted grass seed, baby grass was sprouting, artist-strangers became a community, and we felt powerful. In the early ’80’s East Village, we played and took risks. Look around – your community of artists is your classmates! They will continue to challenge, inspire, and support you. You are creative and inno-vative, and these skills will serve you in every part of your life ahead. The world is dynamic: the technology that my husband now uses in his anima-tions was not invented when we were in college. You have inspired me with your artwork, passion, and dedication.

Go live an interesting life.

Matthew Adelberg

I am highly in tune with the historical process in which I create my paintings and artwork. I begin by painting the canvas black and slowly pulling out the light. This process is extremely important to the meaning of the work. Dark can represent many things, for me they are evil and moral bankruptcy. So by painting the surface totally dark, I am acknowledging this evil and immorality that surrounds me. However, as we all do, in each painting, and in each experience, I begin to find my own sense of light, my own sense of G-d as I push through the darkness of the paint-ing. In these paintings light is representative of the good, G-d, love, and my mother. And so, in each painting, I have to re-discover and evaluate the light and all of its implica-tions. Even in all of the darkness, the light always prevails.

In my work, I tend to focus on faith, mortality, moral-ity, and lineage. All of these things stem out of my experi-ences as a child and as an adult and so my work begins to higher understanding of myself and my relationship with G-d, as well as a sort of catharsis. Creating these works has, and continues to be, an act of meditation, reflection, and piety.

www.matthewadelberg.comThe Execution, 2014, oil on canvas, 54 x 72-inches

Sounding the Shofar, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 36-inches

7Floral Vanitas, 2014, oil on nickel, 16 x 20-inches

This computer is a metaphor for my life.Because I hate my computer.I’m experiencing anger in a very mellow way.

www.thefieldofwheat.com

Max Anderson

I Heel Twist, digital

No title, digital

9Machine assisted drawing 002, dimensions variable

PaintingThe basics of Albers color theory lays as an initial

reference for my work that has evolved into a personal color aesthetic of my own. I categorize and log colors in color charts to dissect the hue, value, color intensity, color mixing make up of colors to discover and better under-stand what color combinations attribute to the creating an ideal color aesthetic.

In conjunction with searching for color combina-tions, I search for ways to implement textures and zoning strategies to study how color can best occupy irregular and organic textures and spaces.

In some instances I utilize pouring paint on surfaces to create a random set of conditions to spontaneously re-act to and work with and against to create an unanticipat-ed aesthetic I would have not have discovered otherwise.

The materials used to construct the work include: acrylic, oil, raw pigment, pumice, and sand on canvas and paper.

DrawingIn my pointillist work I use ambiguous forms to

convey an incorporeal environment. I try to resemble a traditional Chinese landscape painting where the viewer is meant to ignore any formal or metaphorical references and simply experiences the piece.

The materials used to construct the work include: micron pens (ranging from .005–.08), Artist Pigmented markers, and acrylic, on Arches hot press 150 and 147 lb paper.

Mick Barkanic

cargocollective.com/mbarkanicmbarkanic@mica.edu

Bloom, 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72-inches

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Alpha, 2014, ink on paper, 96 x 42-inches

Beta, 2014, ink on paper, 96 x 42-inches

Unconditional Love, 2015, mixed media, 63.6 x 68.4-inches

Hiding Reality, Seeking Illusion

The line between reality and illusion is not fixed. The sun goes down and for a few brief moments the magic hour blurs the edges, turning landscape into dreamscape. Real-ity represented by sunlight and illusion by shadows is no longer true once the sun sets. The shadows stand as good a chance of being reality as the lights. In my work, I use any medium (video, collage, bricolage, painting, installa-tion, light, etc.) to explore people and objects that contain a confusion of light and dark. Texture and layering, which go hand in hand, are ways of building light and dark. Whether it is texture from dust, debris, or pigment, the important outcome is building a surface that catches light in a variety of ways. Layering is a game of hide and seek.

Madeline Becker

Unconditional Love (detail)http://madelinemariebecker.com

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Untitled, 2015, mixed media, 72 x 192-inches

As an individual driven by organization and precision, my most recent body of work has allowed me to find com-plete freedom and inadvertent expression. Through acts of painting and printmaking I strive to create moments full of investigation and experimentation, allowing fear of imperfection to simply fall away.

Using abstract forms, both organic and geometric, I create singular layers of shapes or patterns. Each form, whether it’s a trapezoidal shape or a polka dot pattern, is hand drawn and carefully painted in with sensitively sweet colors. Often embodying a graphic nature, these elements are juxtaposed one on top of the other, creating energetic and illusionistic environments that trick the eye, yet please the mind. Through this comparison of trickery and pleasure, I am lead to contemplate my constant inner battle between thought and freedom. With this body of work I am continuing to explore those contemplations and resisting the need for perfection.

Sarah Brousseau

www.sarahbrousseau.weebly.com

Pink Lines, acrylic paint and collaged paperson wood panel, 16.5 x 22 x 1-inches

Purple Circles, acrylic paint and collaged paperson wood panel, 16.5 x 22 x 1-inches

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The Journey, acrylic paint and collaged papers on 100% rag painting board, approximately 25.5 x 25.5 x 5-inches

My paintings reveal the expressive qualities of skin and flesh, with the concept of skin being intimately related to the sensuality of touch. Flesh is luminous and transpar-ent, its outer layer giving clues to the mass beneath. The perception of flesh has a tremendous influence on us; the concept of it is integral to understanding the physical substance of our body.

This work arose from the idea of the flesh of fruit as metaphor for human flesh. The many vesicles of the fruits’ pulp reflect the nature of relations between our own flesh and organs. I take on this association with a morbid sense of humor; dense torn flesh is terrifying and sweet, repulsive and seductive. Their fields of flesh are dramatic, teeming with movement, while the sweet reality of the subject matter allows, in the end, for emotional safety and solace.

www.loganbruceart.com

Logan Bruce

Blood Orange, 2014, oil on canvas, 48 x 32-inches

17Pomegranate, 2014, oil on canvas, 48 x 32-inches

www.elissabuchalterpaint.com

A person has two dwellings, the conscious and the unconscious state. The conscious world in which we conduct our daily lives is created of realistic illusion as compared to the blank void of the unconscious. Where these two worlds seemingly meet exists a third, intermedi-ary space that is entered through meditation and medita-tive acts. My paintings are explorations of this meditative landscape, an examination of the gap.

Contained within each of us exists an expansive intermediary world containing dynamic energy in con-stant flux. Our bodies are comprised of this energy, tightly coiled in the conscious world. Through meditation these bundles of energy begin to slowly unfurl, where they are able to diffuse outward in a realm between our worlds. My paintings focus on what these bundles do once they begin to unfold; how they interact and behave in this kinetic environment.

The space within us is subject to constant change; each moment-to-moment sequence grows out of that which precedes it. In the studio actions from previous days inform present decisions. Yesterday’s marks and col-ors determine today’s, and the process continues.

Elissa Buchalter

Untitled, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 36-inches

Untitled, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 36-inches

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Work installed in Fred Lazarus IV Center Leidy Gallery

Discard After Use, oil on canvas, 48 x 60-inches

Look Don’t Touch, 2014, oil on panel, 18 x 12-inches

When there isn’t really a difference between seeing and feeling, when objects are presented without (or used against) their own history, when dreams are less interest-ing than real life, when all I can do is hesitate

I isolate or re-contextualize subjects to find out how they behave differently when removed from their usual space. I use color to activate tactility (the pressure bub-bling beneath, or bursting forward from a surface). I wait a while.

mauracallahanstudio.com

Maura Callahan

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Strange Dog, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 52-inches

Spook, 2014, oil on linen over panel, 12 x 15-inches

Dig, 2014, oil on linen over panel, 11 x 14-inches

I visually explore concepts of memory, time, and place, creating abstract paintings and drawings that evoke rec-ollection through mark, surface, and color. Each piece is a marker, a condensed biographical detail of my home, its walls, and the neighborhood outside of them. I translate the palpable psychological charge of these intimate spaces into smooth laborious surfaces that conjure corporeal sensations of touch and matter. The nuanced surface of the paintings are greatly influenced by their environment, taking on conditions, they begin to participate, slowly releasing their secrets.

Ryan Doyle

ryan-doyle.com

23Stance, 2014, oil on linen over panel, 11 x 17-inches

I have begun painting medium to large abstract expres-sionist paintings. My initial idea for my thesis project was planned around neo-baroque and realism, a project that was a product of my obsession with what I believed to be perfection. My new paintings are a process of direct-ly wrestling with this fear of falling short of perfection. Rather than depicting or representing objects, my paint-ings result in a record of my aggressive, linear brush-strokes. This approach enables me to perform seamlessly and without hesitation, making it much more conducive to paint instinctively. This directly relates to my non-lin-ear way of thinking. What remains persistent since my prior work is my fascination for the colour black. My use of black as an agent of primordial abyss prompts a dialogue with the bright, visceral colour fields that make up the rest of these paintings. This is my re-approach as a painter to rekindle an intuitive understanding of what it is to express and create.

Kaan R Ediz

kaanedizart@tumblr.com

Untitled 1, 2014, acrylic and oil on canvas, 154 x 132-cm

Untitled 3, 2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 121 x 122-cm

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Untitled 2, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 121 x 102-cm

Tiffany Els

For my senior thesis, I wanted to incorporate my knowl-edge of many different facets of art into one grand project. Going off of the theme of a bar, I integrated my passion for woodworking, carving, painting, mosaics, and glass blowing. As I work in my studio, I switch back and forth between mediums, allowing them to integrate, and build on my initial plans. My goal is to create a functional piece of art that is interactive and embodies all of my interests in one cohesive body of work.

Bar, 2015, mixed media, 84 x 44 x 30-inches

Bar Front, 2015, wood and corks, 68 x 36-inches

www.tiffanyels.tumblr.com

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Table, 2014, wood and bottle caps, 36 x 84-inches

www.sarahfavreau.com

Sarah Favreau

Ottoman, 2014, stained linen, 15.5 x 16-inches

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Untitled, 2015, oil on linen, 11.5 x 15.5-inches

sometimes I feel like a falling manor the camera above a dancertranslating what’s good from belowinto something twisty from aboveor maybe just the top half – arms moving without legslike flags on a boat

Louis Fratino

Feeding Gulls, 2014, oil on canvas, 72 x 63-inches

For Everything, 2014, oil on canvas, 58 x 58-inchescargocollective.com/louisfratino

31Judith, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 32-inches

My current body of work is concerned with a documen-tation of psychological sensations, utilizing the forms of monsters to exteriorize these sensations. These ex-tensions and distortions of the human form will stir up conflicting appeals to empathy and apathy; monsters are threatening and meant to be fought, yet their humanness can connect us to them.

The formal decisions I make are tied to my desire to convey interior psychological space.Within the monster forms, I like to cut away small pockets or orifices, offering a glimpse into the mind of the object. Layering soft- and hard-edged marks, I work with highly saturated analo-gous color as a way of clarifying the separation of these forms from physical reality.

Rowan Fulton

On the Rocks, oil on canvas, 36 x 30-inches

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Eye Guy, oil on canvas, 36 x 30-inches

www.audreygair.com

Audrey Gair

A painting can propose an idea that is irrational and absurd. With my paintings, I aim to create parallel worlds. More importantly, I am creating the languages within those worlds. Though what is going on may seem obscure or nonsensical, each painting operates within a specific and unique set of rationalities. I want the logic to be per-ceived, but not necessarily comprehended. They are single thoughts, self-contained investigations of things and their qualities. These paintings stem from reality – landscape, household objects and surfaces, lowbrow materiality – but are not based in reality.

Driving, Crying, 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 36-inches

Yellow Eye, 2015, oil on canvas, 84 x 120-inches

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Window Vision, Version 1, 2015, oil on canvas, metal, produce bags, snowballs, 84 x 60-inches

My work combines wood and paint in a symbiotic relationship where ultimately real and perceived forms contradict each other. These paintings live as objects and illusionistic pictorial spaces at the same time. They succeed where illusion is simultaneously present and broken.

Shapes from sketches are individually cut, painted, and assembled into layered compositions. My working process aims to discover the nature of each shape first as an individual and then as a piece of a larger relational system.

Jake Gordon

37Beachfoot, 2015, acrylic on wood, 48 x 84-inches

Paint allows me to create my own landscapes, characters, and objects that exist in imaginary spaces of brilliant color. I also get to invite the world into my own hand-cre-ated realms.

All of my life, I have been drawn to the beautiful and the colorful. I am most captivated by the natural world: the way sunlight fractures, the way things grow and change, the way flesh shields bone and muscle. Through my work I am able to explore imaginative worlds of color and light, filled with my own interpretations of botanicals and the human form, rendered through layering, drip-ping, glazing, and the fragmentation of stroke and color rhythms.

Samantha Hauser

samhauser.com

Minerva In Between, oil on canvas, 24 x 30-inches

Somewhere In Between, oil on wood, 12 x 12-inches

39The Wholly Grail, oil on canvas, 48 x 60-inches

Nature – and my travels within it – inspire me as an artist. Through my work I endeavor to bring that heightened sensation of awe that only nature can evoke; that aware-ness of belonging to it and no longer being a mere ob-server of it. Using surreal and exaggerated environments that call up familiar landscapes, I channel my experience into something that is tangible for the viewer. Through painting, photography, and sculpture I recreate specific elements that have captivated me, and create a personal language to establish a communication of my state of being in and out of our natural world.

Nathaniel Holland

Rock II, digital photo, 3300 x 2201-pixels

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Rock I, digital photo, 3013 x 3013-pixels

I believe painting is a sacred practice, something to live. I want to create for the viewer, the miracle of unraveling time through a lived and mastered rhythm of repetitive brushstrokes where one brushstroke is, at once, one and many. I seek to capture the breath in a single mark.

Using lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, I recreate Cen-nino Cennini’s and Dr. Kremer’s processes of making ultramarine. I then mix the ultramarine pigment into a binder and make paint.

Painting does not begin with the initial brushstroke. Instead, it begins the moment the lapis lazuli stones are taken from the Badakhshan mines in Afghanistan.

Mindi Ingals

9b Graphite, 2014, graphite on archival paper, 30 x 44-inches

9b Graphite (detail)www.mindimindimindi.com

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Natural Ultramarine, Titanium Dioxide, and Zinc Oxide, 2014, natural ultramarine,titanium dioxide, and zinc oxide on archival paper, 30 x 44-inches

Capitán Pollero y Tesoro, oil on canvas, 40 x 28-inches

Sacked, charcoal, 48 x 60-inches

There is no plan, just doing. My inspiration revolves around the notions that make up my day-to-day incon-sistencies, my curiosity. There are biological interests in the figure and the nature of my surroundings. The capitalist swamp is one filled with treasures of all veins and eras, particularly in a realm of technological advanc-es, which endow users the ability to practically forge their own destiny. Once married to a situation, a color, a mo-ment in time, like a writer, or a scientist, I gather samples.

Daniel Iturralde

www.danieliturralde.com

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Implosión, oil on canvas, 47 x 49-inches

Growing up, flowers bloomed wild and untamed in the pastures at my family’s farm and in my mother’s gar-den. Eighteen years later, at my father’s funeral, flowers became a symbol of love and memorial. Flowers represent nature’s beauty, memory, and love.

Nature is a source of solace and a reminder of indi-vidual strength. My drawings present nature in the form of abundant flower blooms, rendered exclusively in Pris-macolor colored pencils and spread across large sheets of paper. The flowers are repeated in varying sizes and from differing vantage points until the myriad flowers begin to exist together.

The drawings are built-up and discovered over time, somewhat unpredictably. Small crosshatched areas begin in a localized region on the paper and are replicated, expanding in all directions from the point of origin. These drawings motivate the creation of themselves. My draw-ings embody how family and nature have impacted my life.

Zoe Jarvis

Hibiscus Syriacus I, 2014 colored pencil, 72 x 72-incheswww.zjarvis.portfoliobox.mewww.zoelinnjarvis.com

47Hibiscus Syriacus II, 2015, colored pencil, 72 x 72-inches

My work examines in religion, antiquity, and myth through a blend of historical and contemporary figurative painting approaches. The work presents a contempo-rary feminine reimagining of many of the most popular depicted subjects in art history. Subjects range from biblical stories such as the Annunciation and Samson and Delilah, to the ancient Roman Vestal Virgins, to more recent explorations of the myth of the American cowboy. The paintings question the role of art, beauty, and humor in the perception and perpetuation of stories of history and myth.

Emma Kennedy

www.emmarosekennedy.com

49Samson and Delilah, 2015, oil on canvas, 56 x 48-inches

When I first started to paint, a professor said to me, “paint is paint, first and foremost – do not forget that. It can become anything, but it is, first, paint.” Combining im-agery and mythologies from different cultures that have worshiped the vulture, as well as the dramatization of the baroque period, I’ve created a world where the vulture is a tangible god, where myth and fiction merge into reality. I use these stories as a way to celebrate paint. My paintings are figurative, but there are moments where paint is just paint, where a drip becomes part of the image and not a mistake. With color, light and mark making, the vulture god lives!

The Vulture God Devouring a Soul, 2014, oil on canvas, 65 x 84-inches

Summoning the Vulture God, 2014, oil on canvas, 60 x 84-inches

cargocollective.com/staverk

Staver Klitgard

51The Birth of the Sea, 2014, oil on canvas, 70 x 60-inches

In my portraits of Internet celebrities, underground mu-sicians, alternative artists, characters of notable acclaim, and everyday individuals, I create a conversation between the subject, artist, and viewer. This dialogue addresses human identity and also questions what it means to paint portraits in oil in the 21st century. Working within the lineage of historical portraiture, my work personifies the individual subject, while attempting to represent human essence on a two dimensional referent. My work draws from the direct compositions, distorted perspectives, and stark flatness of itinerant American portraits as well as the intense chromatic spaces and hard edges of Japanese woodblock prints. Each image expresses an urgency of self, while at the same time representing the subject through invented environments and background imagery. My process begins from a meticulously arranged digital collage, followed by an intense focus on surface quality, pattern, and imagined moments that enhance the identity of the subject. Ultimately, I approach my subjects as both a journalist and as a wild-eyed proprietor of the ethereal, creating an opportunity for the viewer to intimately relate to and even see themselves and in the eyes of my subjects.

Brooks Kossover

brookskossover.com/www.terraultcontemporary.com/

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Why I make art:• To better understand myself as a specific individ-

ual in society• To better articulate myself in a society that disre-

gard or devalues honest and sensitive people• To convince the world of a monism – everything

is interconnected• To reenergize the value of honest enthusiasm for

learning and academic enrichment

Means of achieving my artistic goals:• Through the return to nature (of environment,

humans, etc.) as the ultimate truth• Through the transcendence of labor, amassing

and accumulating and the resulting power and rewards these processes reap

• Through engaging my body in disciplined and ritualistic actions

• Through engaging my mind in observing valuable relationships between multiple disciplines and areas of study

Joanne Lee

Harvest, 2015, polymer claywww.joannelee.org

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Emblem (sunset), 2014, oil on paper, 22 x 30-inches

The Primary focus of my artwork is the motion of vision. When engaging with a piece of artwork, one’s first expe-rience is with the visual linguistics used to portray form and content. The eye is guided through the composition by visual cues just as one is let through a story by strings of sentences that intertwine to form a whole. The act of reading this visual story is what I consider the most important aspect of painting. It is a replication of the ways in which we interact with the visual worlds – of thought, memory, and the natural world; and is the mirror through which we engage with the artist’s inner conscious.

I strive to create a relationship with the viewer to al-low them to question and examine the reality that is most personal and meaningful to themselves.

www.alexleggin.portfoliobox.me

Carnivale, 2014, mixed media on wood panel, 43 x 56-inches

Thought, 2015, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 30-inches

Alex Leggin

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Ego, 2014, mixed media on canvas, 36 x 30-inches

Erin Lehrmann

Everything I have seen, breeds stories in me, yet when it comes time to gather them up and spit them back out, all I’m left with are the words of others, ground up fine. So fine that they become pigment and the best I can do is make poems without words.

www.erinlehrmann.com

It’s Just a Construct, oil on canvas, 36 x 48-inches

Poking Around, oil on canvas, 30 x 40-inches

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Cactus Snare, oil on canvas, 62 x 54-inches

In my current work, I paint to paint. What would a paint-ing look like if I simply began to work? I approach my work with the mindset of serious investigation and play. How do I get in touch with my inner kindergarten-self who would fill up dozens of notebooks just by drawing compulsively? Expressing myself visually is my gratify-ing – and perhaps selfish – obsession. I seek the purity of simply picking up a brush and applying paint. It is up to the viewer to interpret my paintings using his or her own unique and individual subjectivity. In this series of work the act of painting takes over. I embrace my past experiences and surroundings, allowing them to resurface in paint. In the act of painting I am able to embrace the uncertainty and joy of being alive in our fragile world.

Hannah Leighton

Echo, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48-inches

Untitled, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48-incheswww.hannahknightleighton.com

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Kidnapped, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24-inches

When I was young, adults would tell me to cover my eyes at death and sex, but I would peek through my fingers in curiosity. I have always been drawn to narrative, especially the violent type. I explore themes of vulnerability, brutality and anxiety.

My paintings are centered around surreal narratives that create an active environment. The environment vibrates with color in a grotesque and aggressive manner. Giant and fleshy figures are essential to the habitat. They are vulnerable and deformed. They are a resource to the hostile creatures. The negative-like entities consume, destroy, and fight each other.

Mark-making is an important part of my process. The psychological atmosphere is created through scratchy textures formed with the palette knife. I mostly use oil on paper because I am fond of the fluidity of paint on the surface.

Kaitlyn Malloy

kmalloy.carbonmade.com I’m not home anymore, oil on paper, 18 x 19-inches

Embrace, oil on paper, 30 x 24.5-inches

63He was at the meadow, I was at the meadow, oil on paper, 42 x 45-inches

OFF/GRID began a year ago in Hawaii. On a whim, a friend and I traveled to the big island with a few bags and even fewer plans. We hitchhiked everywhere we went, lost our shoes, and traveled the entire length of the island equipped with a broken tent. This was the first time I was able to experience being truly lost. Afterwards, I wondered about the opportunities to be naive, and the value in loss. From there, I began to tear apart the discourse of struc-ture, grids, and plans.

OFF/GRID details moments in which processes are broken, or handled with error. The work within is system-atic, but clumsily formed. Do grids limit more than they foster? Or do they aid? More importantly, OFF/GRID seeks to find a way to be lost in a world of inherent struc-ture and pressure.

Kara Mask

blueisthecolorofdistance, 2014, oil, 48 x 48-inches, 2014

Goblins & Ghosts, 2014, acrylic, 24 x 24-inches, 2014

karamask.com

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whereweshouldbewhereweare, 2014, acrylic, 24 x 24-inches, 2014

I’m looking at the way vessels, as well as any pictographic information on them, relate to the body. A major theme might be different modes of de-territorialization of “glyph” or “vessel.” Also physical modes of behavior, the play of light and gravity, carry a special importance. All works are on canvas stretched over irregular heptagons or nonagons. These shapes are far enough removed from the rectangle, and the shape itself is easy to vary Some of the smaller works incorporate a hanging system consisting of ropes run through the frame and cast ceramic hardware. The falseness of certain painted textures – e.g., water droplets, cracks, masonry, &c. – pull works into a dimen-sion of humor or strangeness which the color and glyphs similarly inform. The language of discernible, nameable forms runs parallel to that of the drawn glyphs.

Christopher McCarthy

Leather Jacket, 2014, oil on canvas, 62 x 42-inches

Searchlights, 2014, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 55 x 52-incheswww.cargocollective.com/christophermccarthy

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Moon Pool Urn, 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas 61 x 51-inches

Alex Merritt is a painter, whose aim is to create a broken sense of reality, built out of multiple fragmented layers of paint.

Alex Merritt

Gods of Our Demolishing, oil on linen, 60 x 64-inches

Beneath the Imperial Sun, oil on linen, 72 x 84-inches

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Study for The Rage of Caliban, oil on panel, 12 x 16-inches

Lauren is an artist and educator who aims to explore the nuances between those two disciplines. How can art inter-act with the viewer? How are we able to educate through such a medium? By homing in on different processes and techniques such as natural dyes and interactive touch materials, she aims to create a body of work that results in a learning process between the art and the viewer. The natural indigo dying process acts as a sustainable substitute for paint. The dyed fabric is formed into shapes reminiscent of a quilt. Like the pieces of a quilt sewn together, each shape is stretched onto a handcrafted framework, and then the individual shapes are assembled together.

Lauren Meyer

cargocollective.com/LaurenMeyer

Studio view of indigo dyed objects, 48 x 36-inches

Sustainable Sound Mat, screen print on fabric with Arduino, 8 x 12-inches

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Lonestar, indigo dyed fabric and wood, 36 x 36-inches

Modern society exists inside. “Inside” meaning a literal lo-cation as well as a metaphor for the current state of mind. Ever since the concept was invented, humans have em-barked on a long, unending effort to divorce themselves from nature. As a result, the natural world is most often experienced through diluted reproductions and screens – the feel, taste, and smell hacked away. While my works are impersonations themselves, I am stripping down the romanticism that clouds existing simulacra. I intend my paintings to provoke an awareness of the growing chasm between nature and man in an effort to redefine society’s relationship with nature.

Sarah Miller

After Mignot’s Autumn Lake George, 2014, oil on paper, 34.5 x 54-inches

Neature Painting 3, 2014, oil on paper, 42 x 53-inches

http://sarahmillerart.tumblr.com

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Neature Painting 7, 2014, oil on paper, 42 x 54-inches

I got like 3 shades darker waiting for junior to get out for tagging “LAZR” even though someone took it but he got busted for all of them and it’s like I don’t even exist now ever since he got an upgrade for the new iphone and now always con el clicky clicky del text being all sketch mak-ing me think its steff calling again even though i already send her a message the other day saying “bak da **** off” but she swears i won’t do anything but whatever he didn’t even like the last pic i posted on insta and it was the freaking tat that he drew me but whatever like i didnt even get to 11 likes so im not getting it anymore but the “Papi te quiero” shout out on Jamz that i requested was like nothing too cos i know he was getting a fade at blades at 5 and they’re always blasting it there and like still noth-ing its always an excuse either el gym or trying to sell that fake chanel shit

but now im stuck in hialeah seeing la sucia esa every-where and I can’t even get a ride to valsan but whatever im done crying i dont care im just gonna go to church with tia so i can go to my cousins pool later.

www.marinesmontalvo.com

Marines Montalvo

Bandana, 2015, oil paint, spray paint, and bandana on canvas, 22 x 22-inches

Cuentale, 2015, oil and spray paint on canvas, 48 x 48-inches

75Blades, 2015, oil and spray paint on canvas, 30 x 24-inches

Hard work, craft, labor, ritual, death, lust, blood and sweat (no tears), humor, loose morals, angst, and punk DIY aes-thetics are central to my studio practice, probably stem-ming from my working-class background. Together these virtues align to create work that combines an adolescent fantasy of building cool shit with the brooding introspec-tion of abstract painting. Using common industrial ma-terials such as plywood and steel, my work utilizes labor, in skilled craft and time spent, to elevate these plebian materials and objects to a level where they become lust-fully desirable. This tension between the binary high and low is crucial, and is often informed by – although not always inherent to – the work; binaries such as: life/death, master/slave, shiny/dull, refined/shoddy, authority/subor-dination, good/evil, and black/white to name a few. The need to create work comes from dissatisfaction with these dualities, as Kurt Cobain put it, “The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.”

Ian Murphy

Klondike Gold Dust, 2014, acrylic, plywood, screws, 36 x40-inches

American Rad-ass, 2014, acrylic, plywood, screws, 22 x 26-inches

ianmurphystudio.com

77Broken Hearts Want Broken Necks, 2015, acrylic, plywood, screws, 15 x12-inches

Using animal imagery, I set out to create a narrative and conversation of action and reaction beyond the surface I draw on.

Using carefully picked and developed animals, they become personable. Very much like an identifiable animal, but very much their own entity; personified objects of the 2D that demand their own surface, space, and existence as 3D.

They are meant to spur a connection between them-selves and the viewer; whether it is a question of narrative, a connection of empathy, a participation in the situation, or a focus on development and creation of information by the viewer.

The interest is in how these and other experiences shape our continuation of interactions with the world around us.

Jasper Waters/Novosel

jasper-novosel.com

Untitled (cow1), 2014, pencil, gesso, pastel on paper, 51 x 64-inches

Untitled (cow2), 2014, pencil, gesso, pastel on paper, 51 x 64-inches

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Work installed in Fred Lazarus IV Center Leidy Gallery

Temporal and Tender

With sensitivity in observing close encounters between people, my recent work has become a survey of human interactions and subtleties within intimate moments. I’m interested in depicting the unspoken exchanges between beings, and prolonging such invisible instances. Without giving the viewer much introduction into the monolithic sculptures and paintings I make, I intent to build up a sense of simultaneity – allowing the pieces to hang in an air of duality where they become both the object and the artifact, tentatively determinate of an emergence.

While painting, my goal is to translate my materials into a language of quietness without being silent. De-fining my pieces by tone rather than dense information, I’m interested in bringing my paintings and sculptures to a plateau where they hum in a tension, caught between moments of complete abstraction and jarring clarity – producing work that is at once tender and unexpectedly abrasive.

Ellen Phillips

Tepid, concrete, acrylic, silkscreen, 22 x 15-inches

Flat Footfalls, concrete, 8 x 12-inches

www.cargocollective.com/ellendrewphillips

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Temporal and Tender, concrete, acrylic, plaster, wood, silkscreen, dimensions variable

bodies undiscovered

These works are reflections of myself and my experiences as a gay male. They have multiple voices, but combine to create a larger, more cohesive whole. Most of my cre-ative process is executed through im-pulse. I deconstruct the Physique Pictorial ideal through the act of weaving, recontextualizing the subjective character analysis codes utilized by the beefcake magazine mogul, Bob Mizer.

Further exploration lead to the creation of large scale sensory prints through unorthodox means, the marks created are reimagining a sensual stimulation. My thesis references popular culture within the gay male commu-nity, and reflects a metamorphosis regarding my ideas, character and inspirations.

Sexuality, community, the body, identity, slurs, and language are attributes interwoven into my art practice. My thesis showcases my distinctive personal voice and is a cohesive portrait of my complex identity.

Danny Poltrictzky

For Him, 2015, sumi ink on muslin, 66 x 50-inches

It’s not your body, it’s your body hair, 2015, acrylic ink, 41 x 29-incheshttp://dannypoltrictzky.tumblr.com/

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Affected Bodies, 2014, screenprint, paint, marker on rag paper, 22 x 22-inches

God may not have made the world with straight lines.She may not have made us automata.

Mary Reisenwitz

Untitled, 2015, pen and ink, 20 inches square

www.maryreisenwitz.com

85Untitled, 2015, pen and ink, 20 inches square

Alexander’s most recent works investigate the narratives and ranges of emotions that can potentially be experi-enced during the confines of a romantic affair. These issues are expressed through (but not limited to) large oil paintings and drawings. These medium allows him to have complete control of how the image is constructed and how the content is perceived, which leaves a lot of room for ambiguity and androgyny. The landscape is used a metaphor to set the stage for these emotionally charged situations while the figures are enveloped within it.These paintings are created so personal nostalgic events can be re-experienced in a more beautiful way regardless of how untruthful or exaggerated the image ultimately is.

Alexander Reynolds

http://alexanderreynolds.tumblr.com

Untitled 01

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Us but Not Really

I am concerned with the shiftless overflowing vessel of memory. A thin, emotively designated top layer of our recollections remains distinct, while incidental details are soon forgotten and inferred if called upon. Even at our best we stumble inattentively along, memories consign-ing themselves to the ethereal as we grow, our priorities changing. We cobble together our sense of self from these ramshackle memories, unaware, largely, of the extent of their fickleness; moored to furtively shifting sands.

Ian Reynolds

ian-reynolds.com

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My work draws from my environment, often urban or suburban lived-in places. I am attracted to that which is not pristine: the grungy and dilapidated, the weathered and the worn, often overlooked and impermanent mo-ments within my everyday surroundings such as the build up of rust on a dumpster, chipping paint on the side of a house, covered up marks of graffiti on a wall, layers of dirt and dust accumulating on a surface washed off and built up again and again in a cycle of destruction and cre-ation that is not unlike my process of making a painting. These kinds of phenomena happen over time alluding to a certain history: the life of an object or place. My work uses this kind of imagery to create a vocabulary of marks; abstractions using colors, textures and forms derived from natural processes and my observations of the marks they leave behind. The paintings are not an imitation of, but a reaction to, my personal experience of coming upon ac-cidental compositions with no purpose and no conscious creator allowing them permanence outside of nature’s constant flux.

Julia Ribeiro

Degausser, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 65-inches

Sanddollars, 2013, acrylic and collage on paper, 36 x 40-incheshttp://juliaribeiroart.tumblr.com

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Untitled, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 18-inches

Pattern has become considerably implemented in my current work. I have found that the use of pattern in painting creates a visual language that allows the mate-rial to operate beyond the flat surface. Through the use of repetition as a compositional element I can enhance the optical illusion of space in painting. I use paint as a material device to create illusory spaces that visually engage viewers and activate levels of false depth. I utilize color relationships to create optical glitch and allow the vibrations of color to activate a space beyond what material can achieve. I use this product as illusion to defy the plane of paint application and how these relation-ships can direct a viewer to explore the physical surface of a painting. I am interested in the topical application of paint and the history that can be created through layering material and exposing underlying color.

Kevin Michael Runyon

Straight A’s, 2014, acrylic, enamel, and spray painton canvas, 52 x 46-inches

Best Day Ever but Not (Queasy Ken Kesey), 2014, acrylicand spray paint on canvas, 52 x 46-inches

http://www.kevinmichaelrunyon.com

93SPF-U, 2014, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 30 x 40-inches

Dean Scott

I am interested in bringing together a set of images and colors to elicit personal remembered spaces. I frequent-ly use subjects such as hand tools, leaves, table tennis equipment, and flower planters. Using these subjects, I am attempting to reclaim language by changing what the images signify either individually or collectively. The context I give them, through color, arrangement, and distortion, contributes to the experience of the place and redefinition of these objects that I am referencing.

www.deanswscott.com

Assembly, 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 45-inches

Christmas, 2015, oil on canvas, 40 x 54-inches

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Slow Roller, 2014, oil on canvas, 32 x 40-inches

My paintings are the results of new discoveries with ma-terials and require expanded ideas of religion, as found in our theologies of celebrity body parts, (e)utopian land-scapes, and fetish objects. These topics carry with them a flavor of nostalgia and in all instances ring with the pos-sibility of triumphant attainment, a logic stemming from consumerism as a way of life. The works are testimonies, persuasions, celebrations, and warnings. I cycle through the genres of figure, object, and ground without concern for Western partitions. As a result, individual pieces are not always easily categorized, often existing in the territo-ry of more than one genre. In addition, I am intent on ex-perimenting with edges and borders to contextualize the surface of a painting, while simultaneously undermining the painting’s authority as an invention. I find greater val-ue in material investigation than in stylistic development. Recent explorations have involved: holograms, sand, and garland.

Painting II

www.luisseda.com

Luis Seda

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Painting

My visual impulse exists on the brink between the fetishi-zation of two very personal national spaces: Thailand and the United States.

My youth in Bangkok has been characterized by the city’s affection for American mainstream culture and a longing for what the city believes to be an American life-style. But by falling short of imitation, modernity in Bang-kok formed into a strange simulation of American-ness. The Thai-American division and the failure to imitate either of these worlds has brought me to a third subject where divisions between national and locational impulses begin to blur. It is within this blur that I look for myself.

Win Shanokprasith

Still, 2015, oil on canvas, 24 x 20-inches

Move, 2015, oil on canvas, 24 x 20-inches

www.kawinshanokprasith.com

99Secret, 2015, oil on canvas, 30 x 26-inches

My interest in the sports court stems from an affinity for found composition as a formula for abstraction. In appro-priating photo documentation of real spaces, I am manip-ulating perspective and form to give specific depth to the paintings. The sport-court functioning as instructive lines that convey rules and guidelines in which people perform is comparable to the rules we set for ourselves as makers. I want to utilize the existing formula filled with intention and by taking it out of context add my own set of rules and new sense of function. The focus then shifts to our brains natural inclination to read line and form to make sense of it. In this work I am also drawing comparisons between the painter and the athlete in terms of competi-tiveness in the field and the elitism of success.

Taylor Shuck

Multicourt, acrylic, 60 x 60-inches

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Tennis, acrylic, 48 x 72-inches

Athina Skevi

athinaskevi.com

LemonBod, 2014, acrylic on print, 8 x 11-inches

TwoDots, 2014, acrylic on print, 8 x 11-inches

It excites me to take an image that is meant to illustrate an idea, to teach, or to sell something, and to strip down the information. I’m not just simplifying what used to be there, I’m reacting to it, playing with it, veiling it with successive layers of paint, until ultimately, its message dissipates and the experience becomes purely visual.

103Θ-IV, 2014, acrylic on print, 11 x 14-inches

Eli SobelI create in order to connect. With the intention of pre-serving the interactions of people and place in time, I develop sculpture and installations of appropriated materials. Assembled from paper, fabric and wood, they often resemble stone or metal or a barrier. In actuality, they demonstrate that barriers are mutable and change frequently. Open and closed, private and public, theyare a convergence of personal spaces.

elisobel.com

Blackout, 2015, wood, brackets, fabric, 55-feet

105Blackout, 2015, wood, brackets, fabric, 55-feet

Art is Life

I believe that art should reflect one’s life. Thus, art is life, and life is art. Art could be a very precious object that is created to appreciate only, but on the other hand, it could be a functional object that can be disposed. I am interest-ed in art that could live with people and affect their lives. To achieve this, I have painted on silk and cotton so the paintings could be sewn together to make the work wear-able or useable. Hopefully, these wearable paintings could make someone’s life into a form of art just by wearing and living in it.

Abby Song

abigalesong.weebly.com

Herb Garden, colors on cotton fabric, 40 x 60-inches

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Lotus Pond, colors on silk, 60 x 50 inches

Drawings, graphite on tracing paper, 4 x6-inches

E.WHANG, colors, oil on canvas, 36 x 24-inches

Relationships

Through the use of my interpretive vocabulary of shapes and gestures, my work explores the mental and actual spaces between individuals. Reflective drawings become my initial inspiration. The colors are primarily based on my memory of the person’s belongings and other elements are coming from my imagination. Using these shapes and colors, I create systems such as layering, arranging, and ordering. It is important for me to have a defined system that contains unexpected interruptions.

Although I use different mediums, I consider each work to describe the relationships, in-between spaces. The layered shapes represent a different stage of the ongoing relationship and repetitions. Each work has the potential to be changed as the relationship evolves. Through these works, I am not only interested in un-derstanding the person, but also visualizing the invisible space between the person and me.

www.jiwon-song.com

Song Jiwon

109E.WHANG, oil on canvas, 16 x 16-inches

My work is born from an innate love of that which is intimately found.

My abstractions are composed of a formal language of color, composition, and texture; but also one of empa-thy, emotion, and perception. I am exploring the con-nections between the external and internal, the seen and unseen; between the physical nature of the object and the raw, intangible matter that makes us human.

My process is shaped by inquisitive action, reaction, manipulation, and selection. It is at once impulsive and mindful. I push and pull, both obscuring and exposing the layers within the image. This additive and subtractive process allows me to unearth subtleties, patterns, and luminous moments in the surface of my work.

I am making and being made simultaneously.

C. Mai Stoebe

cargocollective.com/courtneymaistoebe

Sun-Drenched, Exhausted, Exhilarated, 2014, acrylic andcollage on canvas, 32 x 42-inches

They Fell Inward, 2014, woven cotton thread,Mx Reactive Dye, 63 x 57-inches

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Somewhere I too can Rest, 2014, acrylic and collage on canvas, 48 x 52-inches

Elizabeth Sullivan

Humans are walking vessels for memory: the good, the bad and the ugly. We have grown to become who we are based on our experiences and the memories with which our experiences are attached. My work is a continuous exploration of memory and its affects concerningtrauma and the therapeutic process of healing.

www.elizabethsullivan.net

Electric Chair, 2014, collage, 4.5 x 6-inches

Deserted, 2014, collage, 5 x 3.5-inches

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Roses are Red, 2014, collage, 3 x 4.75-inches

www.joelturnerart.com

My paintings present the condition of a threshold. A threshold can either be defined as a strip of wood, metal, or stone forming the bottom of a doorway and crossed in entering a house or room, or defined as the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be man-ifested. Both definitions describe these abstractions as being in a transitory existence. Moving from one state to another, and sometimes being stuck in between states. The texture and color of the work is reminiscent of the wood, metal, and stone that form thresholds; a worn down material characterized by peeling or smudged paint and the passage of time. The work reflects my experience of changing the condition of my own existence as time passes, and how extraordinary the experience of some-thing ordinary such as walking through a door can be.

Joel Turner

Felt, acrylic on panel, 6 x 8-inches

Another, acrylic on panel, 6 x 8-inches

115Threshold, acrylic on panel, 6 x 8-inches

Work produces work

Portrait Interrupted (detail), 2015, paint-marker, collagedpaper, and oil paint on canvas, 48 x 58-inches

Hourglass, 2014, oil paint on canvas; 48 x 58-inches

Michael Uckotter

cargocollective.com/uckotter

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Sketchbook Page, 2014, pen, crayon, and marker on paper, 16 x 11-inches

The pursuit of my work constantly aims to find compro-mising grounds where abstract and figurative elements meet in order to explore the complexities of our human experience and its perpetual existential predicament. I’m deeply interested in the perception of situations that ap-pear to be one way on the surface, but another in essence. This observation, together with the fluidity of life the work strives to capture, serve as a catalyst, which contrib-utes to the conversation of these multifaceted ideas. Like-wise, I feel the exploration of merging abstract and figu-rative elements offers a significant means of expression because the content, just as life itself, speaks of a scenario that is not limited to just one system of interpretation, but to different layers of meaning through their combination. Consequently, the dialogue constructed through this mixed imagery aims to transcend their aesthetic forms into evocations of experiences and emotions we once felt.

Jorge Vascano

jorgevascano.com

1915, oil on canvas, 40 x 50-inches

Mask Collection, oil on canvas, 28 x 44-inches

119Defying Gravity, oil on canvas, 24 x 18-inches

We can never truly define ourselves, but we try to make peace with that knowledge by using our face to project a temporary character. It is in our nature to identify oth-ers for self-assessment. While looking at each nameless individual, I ask myself, “Do I relate to what I am seeing, or do I feel excluded?”

Unfortunately, our primal need to identify has been corrupted by prejudices. Is there value beyond the signi-fiers? Has being judged by others made us violent and vulnerable creatures?

Inheritance led us to obscurity, pessimistic recesses of the Earth with deafening winds, putrid soil, and blistering fire.

My mission, as an archeologist, is to uncover the damaged pieces of us that remain and address humanity’s aggression and our most forgotten virtue, innocence.

McKinley Wallace III

www.mckinleywallaceiii.com Neanderthal Portrait #1, mixed media, 20 x 16-inches

Blind Stare, mixed media, 24 x 20-inches

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Hominin Portrait #3, mixed media, 18 x 14-inches

cargocollective.com/joelwebb

These felt-tip pen drawings are a quest into the honing of precision in the hand, to the end of creating geometrically perfect forms. The grueling pursuit of this goal and the infinitely distanced mirage of its possibility create the ten-sion in the drawings, which defy their human origins both in content and material. The stretched paper is prepared with an equal degree of care as the drawings themselves, presenting the familiar form of a Painting with the crisp, seamless exterior of paper.

Subjectivity and system are married in the process by which the drawings are designed. A simple series of deci-sions create infinite variations on the theme of a few sim-ple forms. Built from skeleton up, the compositions have only the most limited capacity for alteration after drawing has begun, and the work of actually completing the draw-ings is conducted in a trance of systematic repetition.

Joel Webb

Form 2 No. 2, 2015, ink on stretched paper, 46 x 32-inches

123Form 1 Open No. 2, 2014, ink on stretched paper, 56 x 46-inches

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