2022 Nomad MFA Thesis Exhibition
HASE, Inc. Board members, HAS alumni, friends, and community members are invited to join the Hartford Art School throughout this summer for thesis exhibitions from all three of the low-residency Master of Fine Art (MFA) programs offered at the University of Hartford.
For gallery hours and additional exhibition information, please visit www.hartford.edu/galleries
Ephemeral Streams: The Only Way is Through
June 16 to 25, 2022 in the Joseloff Gallery
Presented by the Nomad Masters of Interdisciplinary Fine Arts (Cohort 5)
Feature Image by Katie Grove, "Hold Space", 14 x 12 x 10 in. Grapevine, Tulip Tree Inner Bark, Acorn Ink, Basswood Cordage, Japanese Paper
The University of Hartford’s Nomad Masters of Interdisciplinary Fine Arts is excited to present Ephemeral Streams: The Only Way is Through. The graduating cohort of international artists, weave their professions, passions, and beliefs into their final artwork presented at the Joseloff Gallery this June. This work contributes to the wave of cultural expressions erupting from two years of social disruption at the hands of the invisible global ephemeral streams called Covid 19. These artists demonstrated tenacity to persevere knowing the only way is through. Each artist offers their own story of what creative ideas and processes pulled them, pushed them, and sustained them to generate thoughtful, meaningful, and important work that is presented at this year’s Nomad C5 graduating show.
On June 16 from 6-10 p.m., there will be a one-night companion mini-exhibition at Real Art Ways during Creative Cocktail Hour. Click here for additional event information.
An opening reception will be held on June 17, 5–7p.m. in the Joseloff Gallery. Please join us to experience and celebrate the meaningful work of the 5th graduating class of the Hartford Art School’s Interdisciplinary MFA program.
About the artists
Julie Chen of Rochester, New York, processes grief and loss at intersections of memory, mortality, and place. Using what’s left of her mother and places she called home, Julie’s thesis projects hold deeply personal memories at the core with cinematographic, architectural, and naturalist aesthetics. These projects take shape in a combination of image, sculpture, installation, motion, performance, and assemblage; from large atrium-sized spectacles to small objects of wonder.
Canadian artist, Kathryn Cooke presents ecolinguistics and ecosophy as a linguistic and ethical framework for her art and writing in, Stories of the Wetlands and Beyond. Kathryn explores language and storytelling by observing and sensing the wetlands and the living beings she calls the more-than-human. Stories are told through sound, colour, texture, and smell which are the qualities and gestures and thus the language of nature. Kathryn’s work poses the question, “What then is nature saying to us?”
Arnethia Douglass of Bristol, Connecticut presents new sculptures and paintings, which represent a number of personally significant Orishas, part of the Yoruba culture. Douglass has crafted the Orishas, by incorporate wood, metals, plaster, resins, sand, shells, leather and flower which represent aspects of the environment. Douglas uses Addiri African printed materials to dress her sculptures as the Yoruba culture had its genesis on the African continent.
Aiyesha Ghani, is an Arawak-Boricua-Indian artist and researcher who, presents work which invokes the very real imaginaries of island geographies and contemporary indigeneity. Her research-based practice includes painting, ceramic, beadwork, and geospatial imaging.
Stone Ridge, New York artist, Katie Grove, uses plant materials she forages to examine human relationships
with nature in her meticulous woven sculptures, installations, and interactive workshop experiences. Wood, bark, and grasses morph from raw material into carefully considered sculptural weavings. Grove draws on the traditional basketry techniques and plant materials of her European ancestry, reinventing them in works that reference her own genealogical story while addressing the evolutionary relationship between plants and people.
Brooklyn, New York artist, Monica Kapoor, has been building a video archive of imagery from her everyday encounters with the natural world. With In Plain Sight, she asks viewers to mimic her process, to slow down, and consider the art of nature through lenses of scale, time, color, shape and texture.
Italian artist, Roberta Trentin of Albenga, Italy, considers mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungi, as her collaborator in her artwork. She feels fungi have embraced the opportunity to join in the life-making process and act as a template for what the network of humanity can be. Trentin highlights the ancient relationship between fungi and humans; that all life is interrelated and interdependent.
Mauricio Vargas is an artist and editor based out of Richmond, Virginia. He uses speculative fiction as a means to explore a range of topics including cultural and biological evolution, biotech, the epistemology of nature, eco- politics, neo-animism and Colombian-American identity.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS – MFA EXHIBITIONS 2022
July 11 to 22- MFA Illustration Thesis Exhibition (Joseloff Gallery)
Friday, July 22- Closing Reception for MFA Illustration Thesis Exhibition
August 8 to 13- MFA Photography Thesis Exhibition (Joseloff Gallery)
Friday, August 12- Closing Reception for MFA Photography Thesis Exhibition
