SUNY New Paltz Masters in Fine Art (MFA) Thesis Collection: Recent submissions
Now showing items 1-20 of 187
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Garage sale: a carefully constructed collection of functionally useless objects: MFA Thesis - MetalGarage Sale is a query into our understanding and expectations of the material world. I create curious objects which simultaneously imply utility through their features and form and disrupt assumptions surrounding their use by being functionally useless. By combining familiar materials, forms, and mechanisms, the outcomes appear both functional and confounding. Initial predictions are perverted or left unfulfilled as levers fail to initiate a reaction or containers spill out their contents. The objects solicit viewers to consider their material world and reconsider their expectations.
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A home within: MFA Thesis - CeramicsA Home Within delves into the complexity of being bicultural as a Korean American, focusing on the influence of the maternal bond and cooking on self-acceptance of identity. By sculpting ceramic kitchen appliances that act as vessels for personal narratives and miniature worlds, creating molds to slip-cast dishware and food containers that contain illustrations and emptiness, I explore the physical spaces from my life to discuss the emotional weight of my mother’s love, shared through cooking in our kitchen. By working at both actual scale and in miniature, layering underglazes, incorporating kitchen materials, and painting and decorating with food within each sculpture, I explore what it means to be wonderfully intricate as someone who navigates two different cultures, often finding myself in between. A Home Within is a space where personal history thrives, celebrating the richness of cooking, remembering, and sharing what it means to be at home as a Korean American.
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Let’s keep this between you, me, and the tiles: MFA Thesis - SculptureThe transient nature of conversations within family and community contexts belies their profound influence on individual and collective identities. This thesis investigates how art can capture and memorialize the fleeting, everyday conversations shared with loved ones. Family table talks, in particular, shape our lives, influencing our values and relationships. Yet, these pivotal moments often vanish without a trace, leaving only vague impressions. A worn table might evoke memories of past meals and discussions, but it lacks a direct link to any specific, meaningful exchange. My artistic intervention aims to embed subtle reminders of these important talks within key social spaces, transforming them into tangible memorials. This project seeks to contribute to the broader conversation about art's role in preserving cultural memory and fostering community. By transforming daily chats into enduring artifacts, I hope to highlight the significance of these often-overlooked moments.
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Tolerating ambiguity for alternative awareness: MFA Thesis - Painting & DrawingIn this heuristic investigation of a phenomenological study of Moustakas’s (1990) Creative Synthesis. the research question was, “What is my experience of painting?” Maintaining a steady practice in my art studio for two years as an MFA student, I kept observation notes on my process. Journals were coded for themes, and I summarized findings. Themes included sustained engagement for the expansion of awareness beyond thresholds of familiar experiencing, increased ability to dwell in disequilibrium and resist premature closure, and the experience of a shift in awareness at which point an observing-self witnessed my actions as I painted. My painting process was found to be a practice of tolerating ambiguity for altered awareness to create paintings, not from a premediated concept, but from attunement to intuition.
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Elsewhere: MFA Thesis - CeramicsThis thesis explores the phenomena of solitude and self-reflection, particularly focusing on women. Through ceramic sculptures, I capture the essence of quiet, introspective moments, where the figures exist free from the constraints of objectification and external gaze. These sculptures embody a sense of weightlessness, suspended in time, plucked from intimate moments of reflection and thought. The figures are presented as though floating between reality and dream, with a surface that evokes a sense of ambiguity—a dreamlike quality—achieved through the use of milk paint and translucent skin tones that blur the boundary between the tangible and the imagined daydream world.
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Succession: objects that hold queer culture: MFA Thesis - PrintmakingThrough these diverse objects and artworks, the body of work displayed in my thesis not only highlights the rich tapestry of queer culture but also invites viewers to reflect deeply on their own experiences and perceptions. By intertwining historical relevance, considered printmaking techniques, and creative craftsmanship, my work champions the resilience and creativity inherent in queer communities. The thoughtful presentation of each piece fosters a dialogue that transcends mere visual appreciation, encouraging introspection and a greater understanding of the complex, yet beautiful, journey of queer identity. This exhibition ultimately serves as a celebration of the spirit and tenacity of LGBTQ+ individuals, marking their indelible and inextricable impact on art, history, and society.
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Printmaking and the performing object: MFA Thesis - PrintmakingThere were three objects on display in my thesis exhibit at the Dorsky Museum: A Theater A Book A Cross between a Book and a Theater After three years working the presses in the print studio at SUNY new Paltz, I have become attuned to printmaking as a mediated process. The rollers, the press beds, the silkscreen frames, the light tables have all been reminders that many phases separate the artist’s intention from the finished product. Printmaking is a medium in the truest sense, I have found – something that lies between the hand and the artwork – and the more time I have spent in the studio, the more my focus has shifted away from the fine art image as an outcome and towards printmaking itself as a technology. With this appreciation of printmaking not as an autonomous art form but as a medium, I have chosen to direct its myriad capacities towards developing a project in a domain not usually associated with fine art – puppet theater.
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Landscape: MFA Thesis - PrintmakingThroughout my MFA at SUNY New Paltz, each project reflects my growing understanding of community, nature, collaboration, and craftsmanship. Deeply rooted in personal experiences, these projects explore ecological consciousness, cultural identity, and collective labor. This thesis discusses the origin and development of my projects—Water Talks, Picking Up Sticks, 6×6 Garden, Woodworking, and Hay Paper—highlighting the role of community and materials in my artistic practice.
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Honey: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related MediaHoney is a photographic exploration of the intertwinings of multifaceted relationships through community, acts of care, and unrequited love. This project is about the craving within those relationships and the resentment that can lie underneath; it’s about the push and pull of yearning for place. Honey is a nonlinear narrative that is driven by emotion.
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The living: MFA Thesis - SculptureIf my installation The Living vibrates within the unified field with its own energy, the main question it poses is "What is consciousness?". The phrase resonates at the beginning of the soundscape of AstroFeminist Manifesto informed by ecofeminist theory, and my life long study of various esoteric practices.
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Entropy, accretion, and l’informe: MFA Thesis - Painting & DrawingIn my paper, I will explore how entropy and accretion serve as catalysts in contemporary painting through Georges Bataille’s concept of l’informe (the formless), first published in 1929 in the Surrealist journal Documents, and further developed by Rosalind E. Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois in the 1990s. While entropy—the inevitable dissolution of matter into disorder—and accretion—the gradual accumulation of matter into sedimentary layers—seem antithetical, I will argue that their tension, in relation to l’informe, has played a generative role in art since the birth of Modernism and continues to reverberate in artmaking today. How can painting function both as an indexical mark and as an expressive collaboration with the forces that shape our world and beyond? What slippages, or gaps, remain to be explored by engaging with these phenomena in painting today? Over the course of a month-long residency in Northern Italy, I discovered an unexpected link: dust, as a pervasive, unifying accumulation, and its specific effects on the paintings I made there.
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At arm’s length: MFA Thesis - SculptureAt arm’s length speaks to societal and bodily responses to unwanted but essential elements of our environment. Specifically, my research links societal attitudes toward poison ivy to those toward migrants and marginalized groups.
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You & I are earth: a celebration of parties, affection, and the darkroom: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related MediaYou & I Are Earth is photographic autofiction: a combination of self portraiture and portraiture, real and ephemeral places, actual and imagined events. It is a project about the friendships that mean the world to me, the ways we nourish and adorn our lives, and the spaces we love and lose and recreate together over and over again.
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Tehzeeb: what we bring to the table: MFA Thesis - MetalGreat things happen when human beings come together for a shared purpose. As language equips us to make meaning of our world, the tools we use in our daily lives help to nurture ourselves and serve others. They connect us to one another, holding within them community, culture and Craft. Through forging spoons, I explore the various manifestations of the tool both literal and metaphorical. As I engage in a dance with my material, the form reveals itself to be a symbol of growth, connection and nourishment.
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Beyond shattered honor: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related Media"Beyond Shattered Honor" serves as a tribute to the silenced voices of Iranian women, victims of the brutal practice of "honor" killings. In shadows where men decree death over perceived dishonor, this multidisciplinary installation revives the forgotten, those obscured by family and faith. Combining sculpture, photographs, video, and audio, it brings their stories back to light. It transforms symbols of mourning into a critique of violence, seeking justice through memory and artistic expression. This project creates a sanctuary that merges remembrance with resistance, honoring those who were silenced.
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This party is for you: explorations in celebration and healing: MFA Thesis - PrintmakingOn December 1st, 2018, I shattered a bone in my left ring finger. Exactly six months later, when the last of three surgical pins were removed from my hand, I celebrated with a tiny party hat for my finger. That insistence on finding hope and joy in brokenness is the essence of this work. Items destined for the trash- furniture, magazines, junk mail, scrap fabric- are given care and attention that celebrates their pasts and gives them a new life in the present. Instead of merely repairing or restoring, I am reimagining these objects. They don’t look like they did before because my care and attention have fundamentally changed them, like love always does. This is a party about joy, and the things that have changed us and hurt us and made that joy mean something. This party is for all of us, the ones who made it this far. This party is for you.
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Mi querencia: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related MediaMi Querencia is a project about my maternal home country of Venezuela. In the summer of 2023, I was able to go to Venezuela for about a month, for the first time since 2016. The reason for the trip was familial: to reunite my scattered, refugee family from Chile and the U.S.A. However, having never been there as an adult, I also sought out what might be a ‘Venezuelan identity’, and was excited to see what new blood — what kinds of culture and activism and liveliness — might still exist under 25 years of oppressive regime.