Scrolling Navigation
Art
Letter from Chair, David Ulrich
A Cornish fine arts education is unique. Cornish graduates understand the vital role that art plays in our society and take pride in offering the results of their inspiration and well-practiced skills to their communities. We are pleased to present to you the 2010 BFA Art Exhibition, highlighting the exciting
and diverse work of this year’s graduating seniors.
The BFA Exhibition is the outcome of a four-year intensive exploration of the visual arts, in a curriculum that emphasizes personal discovery, skill development and critical thinking. The exhibition is conceived and executed as a self-directed project during their senior year. Students explore and deepen their understanding of one or more of the disciplines offered at Cornish: painting, photography, print arts, sculpture and video/media arts. What is paramount in the program is assisting these emerging artists in finding and developing their own personal, artistic voice.
We applaud their success and invite you to join us in welcoming them into their professional lives as contributing artists, innovators and citizens.
David Ulrich
Chair, Art Department
Cherylin André
"two"
Two is duality. It is romantic.
it can be positive and negative,
mental a physical.
Two is a communication,
and a form of balance.
Erinn Appleby
Painting, Printmaking
The inner battle of one's personalities and desires is much like an awkward elevator ride with a stranger. The uncomfortable silence seems to ring at a deafening volume; however, the anxiety releases as soon as the individual steps out of the elevator. It is this resistance and tension that fascinates me. I use my art as a medium to explore the psychological architecture of the human psyche in attempt to further my understanding of the schism between one's physical body and emotional mind. I'm interested in discovering what sets us apart, what can bring us together, and why so many of us lack authentic connections with one another. We often struggle through hardships of life alone, forgetting that we're part of something much larger — each other.
John Backstrom
johnbackstrom@gmail.com
sites.google.com/site/johnbackstrom
From the moment of birth in the United States, one is constantly fed, through movies and television, the idea that they can and will grow up to become (and eventually die) an eternal image, a rock star, a sports champion, someone's great love, a Real American Hero. Of course this is a lie. It is a shameful reality that so many people live their entire lives regretfully, hopelessly feeling like they will never be able to measure up to this ingrained image of impossible success. With the proliferation of the Internet and reality T.V., it is much easier to become documented. People are unknowingly obsessed with the idea of being immortalized, digitally preserved for all eternity, rather than doing something that actually matters.
Maggie Bailey
My first four years in Seattle, my only choice at all for transportation was the bus. At first it was a huge hassle for me, but then I realized how valuable the time I spent in that transitional period was. The time allowed me to go from bitter and angry due to work,to calm, inquisitive, and happy by the time I reached my destination. This is what draws me to make art depicting people in transit. The bus holds a very wide range of emotions, depending on a rider's beginning. Also, the transit system takes people from every walk of life and puts them into a forced and sometimes awkward social situation. If you've never ridden a bus before, do it sometime.
Tamalin Soleil Baumgarten
Painting
My curiosity about light motivates my study of representational oil painting. Light can tell a story-like the way a setting sun glides across the tired lines on an old man's face, or how a streetlight exposes the confidence with which a young woman places her hand on her hip. To tell a story in a painting, however, takes more than just light. The expressions and body language of the characters in the painting and the viewer's interpretation of the scene contribute to the meaning of the story. I ask my viewers to reflect on what they have learned from their culture and past experiences that influence their assumptions. They may learn about themselves by comparing the evidence in the painting to the conclusions they find.
Dorielle Caimi
Painting, Drawing, Photography, Printmaking
doriellecaimi@gmail.com
dorielle.com
If I restrain myself from the joy and dismay of trying to create, my life starts turning an unattractive shade of gray, so I paint.
I've been winning and losing creative battles my whole life. My biggest fear is that I will stop fighting, so I've been creating ways to continue doing this work that I love.
I am learning that when I put the brush to the canvas with patience, confidence, and love for my work, it starts to glow. It comes alive. The spirit of my work moves me, speaks to me, and teaches me. It tells me thank you. Thank you for the patience to work this through.
Estee Clifford
Sculpture, Video
The idea of infinity fascinates me. My work explores this idea through illusion, multiplicity, and imagery. Everything is both finite and infinite. A glass of water has a finite amount of liquid, but an infinite number of drops. A piano has a limited number of keys but unlimited variations and combinations of notes. We are all made of the same matter, yet we all look, think, and act very differently. Many little pieces come together to create a whole, and whole can be broken down into an infinite number of units. Suddenly there are infinite possibilities.
Kris Dales
Sculpture, Painting
When I reflect upon what I have designed and created for this show, I feel the very same things that I have felt my entire life. The motivation that moved me to pursue an art degree is a curiosity to explore materials, and a need to produce something either aesthetically pleasing or functionally useful with them. The repetitiveness in my work stems from the visual inspiration I get from natural elements, and the feeling of instant gratification when each process is repeated. Like nature, what appears simple at first, is revealed to be more detailed as the process of fabrication is more closely explored.
Annamarie De Guzman
Painting, Photography, Sculpture
My work encompasses how I perceive myself as a Filipina-American. I am deeply interested in the assumptions that arise from an individual's mere appearance. Sometimes viewers place the individual they see into a category that does not necessarily coincide with the individual's self-identity. I have learned that the persona we choose to assume can be our worst enemy. We can either shy away from it or embrace it. My work involves images on objects that appear as if they are remnants from a different time. These images address the contemporary Filipina-American experience.
E. Dughi
Sculpture, Video
www.edughi.com
edughi@gmail.com
{i} am addicted to the internet because of the kinds of connections it
enables — deep, intense friendships and romances, where words communicate what physical contact cannot. {i} believe that identity is flexible and that emotional experience is real, even if the experience is virtual. {i} am a product of the tension between these two forces, of intimate honesty and shifting identity.
[my partner] and {i} understand each other through text-based role-play, where {we} write stories about fictional characters, often taken from pop culture. {i} want to uncover the pieces of {ourselves} that {we} reveal even while writing fiction as we demonstrate new ways for {us} to experience the oldest emotions.
Sandra Elizabeth
Printmaking, Drawing
info@sandraelizabethart.com
www.sandraelizabethart.com
Any creative process I engage in, whether printmaking, playing piano or writing, I find to be a method of gaining insight into myself and the world around me. The act of creating is accepting the recurring challenge of overcoming expectations and fear. When I am successful, the creative process becomes meditative and another way of learning, reflecting and growing as a human being, even if it's usually more questions that I develop rather than answers.
Nisse Ferguson
Painting, Photography
Art-making is a process of translation. The artist transforms the spiritual into the material and then, hopefully, back again through the eyes of the viewer. In my own capacity as an intermediary, I translate my vision of reality with equal parts beauty, chaos, death and transcendence.
Derek K.W. Ghormley
Body movin'. Body movin'. Body movin'.
Taryn Graham
These days my work is all about exploring the relationship between a made up world and real life. My videos incorporate puppetry, live action and animation with no acknowledgment to the impossibility of the situation. I like it simplified and I like it silly.
Ashley Hempelmann
Photography, Video
Growing up on an island in the Pacific Northwest, I spent much of my youth exploring the forests, fields, beaches and abandoned buildings near my home. I would come across relics left behind by former inhabitants, and imagine what sort of people they must have been. I continue to return to my childhood haunts again and again with cameras, friends, costumes and props to create, through ritual, experiment and play, a make-believe world. Using photography, hand processed Super-8 film and video I extract visual impressions from an imagined, magical existence. These processes give my images power and a connection to the spiritual and fantastical.
Cameron Hoyer
Pictures are mechanical and magical
inside and out
continuation of change disguised as artifice
apparent stillness that allows one's mind to move
potential within limitation
representation and abstraction
shared reality
beginning and end
Sabrina L. Kellams
Painting, Photography
Relationships are the core of humanity and as humans we have a common language through facial expressions. My paintings express the uncertainty of a 20 something minimum wage worker, specifically the employee's of a Seattle movie theater, where I am also employed. My relationship with my co-workers allows me to capture their emotions that emerge in the work place. In photography, I explore facial expressions of my friends and family. Being close to my subjects enables me to bring out personalities that they might be less inclined to show in a public setting. The purpose is to see the subjects through my eyes. These are my relationships.
Alex Khunprachansri
contact@perfectimbalance.com
www.perfectimbalance.com
How do you remember an instance? As soon as life occurs it is flashed and saved, intangibly written on faulty unreliable human brains. Time progresses and memories evolve as we do, suiting our environment and our condition. Recall is adapted and twisted to suit perceptions of the present. Memory justifies placement and position, memory holds reason. These concepts are what fuel my work and give steam to my imagination. Is the written word truly enough to satisfy history? There are countless perspectives that go into the documentation of a moment, each with it's own unique story to tell. How does memory shape us on an individual level and on a cultural level? These are questions I aim to discuss as we all dig deep inside ourselves to find the substance that helps us define who we are.
Anne Kimble
My art comes from observing patterns and interactions between people and within the environment. I'm interested in the forms of growth and energy that exist on all scales in the natural world, resonating across cultures and religions as a universal language of symbols. I want to create a sense of movement and connection to a larger whole.
Cameron Larson
We live in a fast paced technologically advanced world of mass media and consumption. We are bombarded with the next new gadget and the new seasons' fashion. Advertisements and Media are invading our lives ad nauseam while the psychological conditioning of our culture regards this as progress.
My work begins with advertisements (specifically fashion) to examine the physical presence and psychological realm of the advertisements themselves and their influence on our conscious and subconscious minds. Therefore exploring identity in relation to technology, consumerism and social roles.
Hannah Ludlow
Painting, Photography
Who we are, and how we choose to show our selves in the world, has been a fascination for centuries. What really is, and what's shown, are not always in a visual correspondence with each other. Why does the gentle tinker of a chandelier still my mind in a moment of physical tension? My work is about beauty interrupted. My paintings, are an evolution of this thought through gestural female form. My photographs, examine the question, "has the quest for beauty, idealism and attraction become ugly?" Showing the viewer seemingly normal situations of idealized women, but with an element of beauty that is somehow interrupted by tension, oddity, or disturbance, causing them to question the photograph.
Mandilla
Painting, Drawing, Photography, Printmaking
i document the times, to press for the future.
Leah Messersmith
Photography, Sculpture
My artwork is a series of allegorical still lives shot with a 4x5 camera. The still lives are composed of objects alongside Xeroxes of photographs (both mine and others). It is my intent that every image should have its own narrative character that is both self contained yet fits into the broader themes of my work. I am influenced by literature and think of every photograph as a chapter of a larger novel. The works of Dostoevsky, John Fante, and Italo Calvino's Difficult Loves have had particular influences on this series, in which I explore ideas of love, war, solidarity, and the complicated ways in which these three at times entwine.
Cameron Nagashima
Photography, Interdisciplinary Collaboration
"Compositions in Captured Choreography"
Centering intent around understanding human interaction, this work begins in collaboration with models finding a child like curiosity toward the natural communication as expressed by our vulnerable bodies; the photographs are selected based on quality and emotional resonance. Connecting the chosen synchronic events, compositions are consciously constructed utilizing technology and the repetition of bodies, becoming an abstract and geometric foundation for the interaction of individual figures with the whole.
Calla Nyenhuis
Photography
nyenhuis.calla@gmail.com agentnein.com
Inspired by architecture and kinetic energy, I create a twisting, turning world of vague shapes and sharp, small details within spirals of color; using layered digital photographs with blending modes and overlays, pushing and pulling the different individual images to cause areas of concentrated color and emphasized line. Color, form, shape and value inform the overall composition — segmenting and connecting, breaking down these forms to architectural shapes and captured movement. Using digital technology, I establish a sense of "still
movement" — the feeling of moving while still — throughout the work, surrounding an abstract study of formal elements.
Aimee Oberstein
Photography, Printmaking
Through photography I am exploring the rituals women choose to perform in the act of getting ready for the day and night. All of these routines have a beautiful, strange, and humorous quality. As humans, we make use of these rituals to help express individuality, or to cover up what we don't want seen. In our society, augmenting our natural beauty has become an everyday and normal practice. I want to express the individuality of each person, and capture them in a state of absorption, being completely immersed with the task at hand.
Nichole Rathburn
Printmaking, Video, Sculpture
Standing in the Atlanta airport, my sister tries to gently brush a piece of hair away from my face. Without thinking, I violently shove her hand away. Shocked by my knee-jerk reaction to her affection, I have started to wonder if we are to be judged by our distance from other people, instead of our proximity.
Sommer-Rae Simonson
shapes are what I see and / my body releases vitamin C / for the fishes / in the sea and / to come back inevitably / for me to drink. / Elvis comes to mind, / when my grandpa sings / the sound of what he wants / played at his funeral. / grandma has plugged her ears / with hearing aids / aiding in her years / she listens with / her ear up against his lips, / feeling his annunciations / which there are none of / anyways / "mmayou daon't lauik mmmuassaic." / she doesn't flush. / she doesn't wash, / she's too busy cooking. / for him, / for me, / when I was little / looking at myself, / the shapes of flowers.
Charles Spitzack
thenewnumber2@comcast.net
www.cspitzack.com
spring is here
and summer is on the way
Courtney Sundberg
Photography, Sculpture
cou.sundberg@arts.cornish.edu
www.courtneysundberg.com
Exploring empathy through photography and sculpture, I document the moment when people shift towards or away from each other physically and emotionally. Whether the emotional information is passed between mother and daughter, two lovers or old friends, I document them with soft and timeless imagery using a pinhole camera, capturing it as a photographic memento. I have always been interested in keepsakes and precious objects that are connected to memories of loved ones, and eternal unspoken connections we make with those who impact our lives. The materials from nature remind us that our emotions are at times uncontrolled and wild like plants. Looking closer at emotional transfer draws attention to experiences with people close to our hearts and helps us realize what we hold dear.
Edwin Taj Williams
Photography, Video
I started out as a graffiti writer, putting my alias on anything I could reach with my paint-covered hands. Since then, my painting style has evolved from the wall to the canvas and from the streets to the gallery, leading me to other arts such as video, photography, collage, book arts, and glass. Now I enjoy exploring ways of combining audio and visuals, as well as finding new topics and subjects to document.
My primary interests are to seek out new art forms to practice, to learn about the greater Earth while examining myself, to open the eyes and minds of my peers, critics, and future generations.
Allyce Wood
allycewood@gmail.com
allyceallyce.blogspot.com
Human nature contains as many contradictions as animal kind. For all our compassion, we are prone to destroying and trapping what we hold dear. We can admire, befriend, and make sacrifices for other beings all the while pulling them apart. The complex relationship between humanity and its environment reverberates through ourselves, the land, and populations past and present. Grass, fur, and other organic coverings are icons to which our race has long lost its physical and biological connection. Through our synthetic production of such natural materials we can understand both the variation and the similarities of all species.