Date of Award

8-2016

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Campus-Only Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Intermedia

Advisor

Susan Smith

Second Committee Member

Wayne Hall

Third Committee Member

Owen Smith

Abstract

I make work in a variety of scales that spans both the conceptual and the functional - from installation art to small craft objects. I am interested in built environments, tools, queer feminism, and absurdity. I often work with collaboration and participation as a means of resistance and reprieve; looking to relationships and social spaces as source material, a means of analysis, and a survival strategy. In response to the conditions of capitalism - scarcity and fear - my making and art revolves around connecting with others, playing around, and getting by. This collaborative and participatory approach to making also includes mixing, ripping, inverting, and blaspheming materials, techniques, and practices. I look to traditional and new practices and their material and cultural relationships as material to re-appropriate and transform via experimentation.

Working from the perspective that there is no stable relationship between a work and its meaning, the audience completes my work by bringing their experiences and perspectives to any interpretation of meaning. Overall, I am interested in work that links ideas to materials, creates spaces in which I and others can be challenged, and is integrated with life and living. I want to explore, learn, and challenge myself and others. My art practice seeks to bridge my various interests and find new ways of understanding and relating to myself, others, and the world.

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