Date of Award

8-16-2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Intermedia

Advisor

Susan L. Smith

Second Committee Member

Bethany Engstrom

Third Committee Member

Sheridan Kelley Adams

Abstract

When one senses a need that feels so beyond their ability to remedy, what steps can be taken? How does one best use art to connect with the community? This is where I found myself in the spring of 2023 as I started on a path to not only engage with the people who live around me, but to put effort toward alleviating what felt like some very palpable needs in my community. Supported by my desire to move into a more socially engaged art practice and grounded in the history of that movement, along with my history of making altar-based artwork, I set out to see whether the quality of engagement with art would be deeper and richer outside the gallery or within.

The work that I did took the form of “waystations,” small to medium-sized constructions made from found or secondhand materials that included a self-reflective prompt for travelers to respond to, usually through writing, but sometimes through knot-tying. These constructions were placed in public spaces without permission and as such spent varying amounts of time where they were left. The participant responses from the six waystations I built and placed over the course of a year varied from no interaction to very poignant sharing about lives lived on the street. The project culminated in an art exhibit in which I shared documentation from the waystation project and provided materials for visitors to create their own waystations to bring back to their community, but what ended up happening was somewhat different.

What I found was that there was quite a bit of variance in the quality of interactions between waystations out in the wild and what turned into a meta waystation in the gallery. There was a richness available out in community that simply didn’t come through in my experience within the gallery setting. However, there was one important similarity - both audiences sought out connection with each other within the given framework. I believe that therein lies possibilities for creating future community engagement pieces.

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