Recent Submissions

  • Corpus Ex Machina: a biomechanically collaborative exploration of the corporeal fantasies of artificial intelligence: MFA Thesis - Painting & Drawing

    Tjernlund, Anna (2023-12)
    This collaborative project with artificial intelligence (AI) began as a playful curiosity about AI text-to-image generators, namely Midjourney. Artificial intelligence represents a broad field of computer science focused on creating intelligent machines capable of mimicking human cognitive functions. Within the field of AI, generative artificial intelligence specializes in generating content, such as images or text, often based on given prompts or patterns. Two noteworthy examples within this domain – and the resources I used for my research – are ChatGPT and MidJourney. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a powerful language model that generates contextually relevant text responses based on textual input. Its capabilities extend to engaging in conversations, answering queries, and even providing creative outputs. MidJourney, on the other hand, is a text-to-image generator that transforms textual prompts into visual representations. As part of my artistic exploration, I engaged with both ChatGPT and MidJourney, tapping into their capabilities to collaborate on the creation of thought-provoking and visually compelling works that push the boundaries of human-machine interaction and artistic expression.
  • Fractured horizon: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related Media

    Uliyanova, Viktorsha (2023-08)
    Memory is a fragile thread that holds together the tapestry of history and culture. My work explores the collapse of the Soviet experiment, political repression, and trauma that pervades families and the nation. Through textured multiples, video, and alternative processes, I build a portal to memories that have been suppressed by the Soviet regime. In engaging with archives, I investigate the blind spots in history and contextualize the way the present and the future are reflected in the past.
  • Intimate exchanges: MFA Thesis - Printmaking

    Cooper, Bear (2023-08)
    Intimate Exchanges represents the culmination of a journey from embodied material investigation to devotional artmaking as a refuge for the body. This project has its origins in my research of phenomenology, ritual theory, and queer intimacy. The action of touch is central both to acts of intimacy as well as the field of phenomenology which promotes embodied perception. Some creative mediums have a greater intimacy of touch in the process of their making and for me, printmaking is one of those mediums. After a brief introduction to natural dyes, I was pulled in by their potential for embodied investigation and created a methodology to turn my body and its movements into the printing mechanism, further enhancing the embodiment of printmaking.
  • Take a breath: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

    Fortenberry, Michael (2023-08)
    Take a Breath is a series of interactive artworks designed for the participants' slow and mindful, somatic engagement. Each sculpture is made to ground the audience in the now, to override the strain, pace, and overwhelm of 21st century life. These objects hold thoughtful consideration to the way they receive the human body, an invitation for an extended, healing embrace. Other sculptures can be carefully rolled from one point of stability to the next, every resting position activating a new sound pulled from tones and patterns of nature. These moving sonic sculptures are interlinked. When activated simultaneously each one alters a single soundscape, unifying the collective. I see these calming works as offering a space of resistance to the trauma of overstimulation and the political, environmental, and social instability of our current moment. Wood is a constant collaborator in my work, it holds the memories and teachings of its lived experience.
  • Transcendence: post-Catholic healing: MFA thesis - Photography and Related Media

    Vrachopoulos, Will (2022-12)
    **This thesis deals with the topic of sexual abuse. Please take care of yourself.** Transcendence is an exploration of faith and Catholicism, and the traumatic impact of institutional sex abuse. This body of work consists of a handmade book, thirteen Instax photos, three collages, and an ambient sound piece. It is the culmination of my time spent in the Masters program at SUNY New Paltz and was exhibited at the December 2022 MFA/BFA show at the Samuel Dorsky Museum. In Transcendence I dissect the wound the priest of my parish inflicted on me, uncovering an inextricable connection between pain and pleasure. Gifts used for grooming an altar boy turn into subversive weapons in a series of instant film photos. Images used to promote the archbishop and the church are cut and reassembled to visualize the living hell I have seen and felt. Representations of faith are cut and reassembled to visualize the living hell I have seen and felt.
  • Ethereal lines: MFA Thesis - Metal

    Rock, Sofia (2023-05)
    We are all interconnected in this universe. Whether we realize it or not, our thoughts and actions have an impact on the balance of the cosmos we inhabit. Even if the impact is minute, it still exists, and understanding how our ecosystems and social systems are interwoven is critical. The human subconscious is understood by our intuition and consciousness, which is the feeling and awareness of our external and internal existence… While creating in a state of flow, intuition is activated, making this intimate process of my work imperative. My creative work is informed by how the human intellect and body is influenced by external and internal forces, and why as living creatures we so often attempt to maintain a sense of order that is inevitably fleeting.
  • Diasporican: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

    Kattou, Joseph (2023-05)
    I make Vejigantes, a type of traditional Puerto Rican mask typically made from the outer husks of coconuts. Their devilish visages, horrific amalgams of horns and fangs covered in colors and patterns, were meant by colonists and religious fanatics to strike fear into the Puerto Rican community. Once a symbol of religious oppression and fear, Vejigantes are now a symbol of perseverance and celebration in the Puerto Rican community. Working with archival resins and plastic forming, I create contemporary Vejigantes that represent Puerto Ricans’ resilience in the face of disaster, neo-colonial forces, and corporate beasts. My sculptures personify hardships being overcome, transformed from tools of religious extremism and fear into celebratory heritage objects.
  • At the gate of dawn: MFA Thesis

    Khazzaka, Ibrahim (2023-05)
    My research in mathematics and Sufism is coupled with a studio based research, both inform my ceramic forms, choice of texture, matching of vibrant colors, and suspensive compositions, in cycles of mutual constitution.
  • How are you?: MFA Thesis - Metal

    Du, Yuting (2023-05)
    These objects serve as metaphors for social concerns and themes of identity, mental health, and human connection. In uncertain and changing times, these works provoke curiosity and express humor to find comfort and hope.
  • Personal preparedness in the nuclear age: MFA Thesis - Printmaking

    Hodson, Maxwell (2023-05)
    This body of work explores the complex American response to the threat of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Through the use of various printmaking techniques, I aim to visually communicate the sense of urgency, fear, and vulnerability that was pervasive during that time. The subject of each piece delves into the cultural and political aspects of the atomic arms race, shedding light on the human experience of living under the shadow of the mushroom cloud. Through my prints, I hope to contribute to a broader dialogue of education and disarmament of nuclear weapons.
  • Layers of self - an unfolding conversation through painting, encaustics and doll making: MFA Thesis - Painting & Drawing

    Levine, Jennifer Meg (2023-05)
    During my studio practice, I wondered how my painting and making could be free and open, maintaining a sense of play from childhood, while also being an anecdote to this plague? Since I believe play and the spirit are deeply connected, was there any sacred imagery of woman-ness from history I could look to in order to release this burden?
  • “Romantic Painter”: MFA Thesis - Painting & Drawing

    Townsend, Eileen (2022-12)
    My exhibition, "Romantic Painter", consists of several parts: First, a large painting, made to-scale with the original "Death of Sardanapalus." Second, a series of walnut ink drawings, each abstracted from an aspect of Delacroix's painting. Third, a video appropriated from a 1980 BBC documentary/drama of Delacroix's life, called "The Restless Eye." The audio is excerpted from the original educational film and the video (20 minutes of me dressed up, role playing as Delacroix) is my own. To make this body of work, I chased painting -- a specific painting, one of the biggest and grandest I could find -- to the extent of my abilities. What I want you to know is this: I am Eugene Delacroix. I am on a Romantic quest to make the last painting, the painting that will solve painting and will end history. I am Sardanapalus. I am heartbroken. I am burning down my palace. I am a 32-year old woman living in Upstate New York. A fire happened and I survived it. History isn’t over. I am failing.
  • Adorned with rattles: meditations on indigenous sonorism, communal healing, and nature : MFA Thesis - Photography and Related Media

    Miranda-Rivadeneira, Koyoltzintli (2022-05)
    Grounded in Indigenous ontologies, Latinx anthropology and nepantla, I seek to understand the sonic and oral traditions that have populated the Americas for millennia as a way to repair, reclaim and reimagine temporalities of healing and to tell stories across time and space. I gaze at the night sky the way my ancestors did, to inquire about how to make sense of the world and ultimately connect with them and their stubborn capacity to survive within us. I re-construct pre-Columbian instruments that have been locked away in museums, reclaiming their sounds and sovereignty. Through this act, my body becomes a vessel for the most primal creative force. I perform so that we may reaffirm our connection to the earth. To adorn these instruments and to turn them into ceremonial objects, I use achiote, mango leaves, shells, tobacco string, and iridescent pigment that reminds me of the skies in the coast of Ecuador, the ancestral homelands of my ancestors who played these instruments. My work is the past and future conjugated in the present. By reclaiming we remember; by remembering we heal. I imagine how sounds and rituals can restore a subjective-geographic relation to living systems and engage with intersectional technologies that can dismantle imperialism and ecological degradation in order to tend to the earth and heal mutually.
  • Dark garden: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related Media

    Hardin, Jackson (2022-05)
    Dark Garden tells a story in images taken from my own experiences, images that communicate the murky interrelations of between people and the complex systems of life we are a part of, using art as a means of relaying these ideas and feelings telepathically to the viewer, a process ecocritical theorist Timothy Morton calls "spooky action at a distance" (Morton, 81). The images depict things I'm afraid to lose: people, places, environments, experiences, possibilities. The project describes how the body carries the anxiety associated with an uncertain climate future, and how the tension of premature grieving for imagined futures, vanishing species, and dying forests surfaces between people and their environments.
  • Bloom: MFA Thesis - Ceramics

    Wells, Avery (2022-05)
    I create expressive, colorful vessels and botanical sculptures that complicate the relationship between surface and form. Beginning with historic wallpaper patterns that evoke feminine domestic spaces, I repetitively rework motifs from these sources into illustrations and ceramic objects. I imagine these patterns being squeezed out into space through my hands, peeling themselves off the walls they originated from and taking three-dimensional form. As my work confronts the viewer in the round, I imagine it taking on a life of its own, developing a personality and vibrant agency. I feel that I am able to collaborate with my sculptures, seeking an escape from the historic standards that have been applied to women and their creative work. However, I am also seeking the joy and comfort that can be found by embracing the decorative and elements of my own femininity.
  • Slippery spaceIsI: MFA Thesis - Metal

    Coker, Funlola (2022-05)
    As an immigrant from Lagos, Nigeria, I recall our family's past in place and time, and I am drawn to construct spaces that connect me to these lost memories. Through objects, we are able to transport our minds to a specific place or time. Although this body of work is born from my personal experience, the concept of displacement, loss and longing is familiar to so many. This is the basis of my research for Slippery Spacelsl - an installation of transportive objects that consider time travel, nostalgia, and what we rebuild in our minds when loss overwhelms. The viewer is invited to walk through this constructed space and engage these abstract objects.
  • Plain sight: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

    Houssart, Emilie (2022-05)
    Colonizer legacies in the contemporary Hudson Valley landscape: addressing commerce culture in food systems and the home through absurdist interventions.
  • $P4RKL3 FiLTH CLOUD NiN3 queerness of the in between: MFA Thesis - Metal  

    Bee, Sulo (2022-05)
    Remembering the smell of a particular place, the soft touch of another, the repetition of mending a broken relationship, or the painful things that have led to the present-these are the bricks I need to lay the foundation for the self-made protective place I call $P4RKLE FiLTH CLOUD NiN3. Shrouded in the protective reimagining of identity, I explore my environment searching for street treasures and imagery in plain sight. I am a hunter and gatherer of the unresolved and forgotten. Decoding my surroundings, findings and lived experiences, I reassemble them to develop a new visual language, a space for solace reflecting the queerness of the inbetween.
  • Birds, buttons, brontosauruses, and belugas: MFA Thesis - Printmaking

    Hunt, Elizabeth (2022-05)
    I collect things that drive my curiosity; a small selection of those items inspired this body of work. Handmade and repurposed materials merge with printmaking and transform into books that invite the viewer to consider the possibility that flea market finds and lost buttons can hold a bit of joy and wonder. My curios gain new life as soft floral dinosaurs dealing with bullying, an industrious bird building a fashion empire, a desire to hoard things that might be useful, and a somewhat conflicting eBay listing.
  • Mobility blues: MFA Thesis - Painting & Drawing

    Bodnar, Mick (2022-05)
    The paintings in this project share common thematic and aesthetic threads, though each work comes from a different angle. The mark making, palette, and relative scale will announce them as being of the same hand. The variety in compositions, points of view, and focal points will allow for a stimulating juxtaposition of images - inviting a close reading from the viewer to find the common threads.

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