2005 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition

Saturday, April 23, 2005 to Thursday, May 19, 2005

Artists

  • Jennifer Brazelton
  • Ulla de Larios
  • Karrie Hovey
  • Mark Leavitt
  • Larysa Rybchynska
  • Eric Sanchez
  • Karen Schwartz
  • Casondra Sobieralski
  • Lucrecia Troncoso

Nine MFA Candidates Recast Media in Thesis Exhibition April 23 through May 19, at San Francisco State University

Defiance of traditional, media-specific approaches and a penchant for moody immersion pepper an annual exhibition of thesis work by San Francisco State University MFA candidates. The 2005 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition is more than a show-the works of nine emerging artists, on view at SFSU's Fine Arts Gallery, Saturday, April 23 through Thursday, May 19, appeal to the senses as portals to inner dialogue, addressing salient topics with wit and sensitivity. Sponsored by the Art Department, the exhibition includes ceramics, conceptual and information arts, video, painting, sculpture, textiles, installation and new practices.

Karrie Hovey's politically charged work has already surfaced in San Francisco-and on the Great Wall of China. Hovey's new installation-on view at the MFA Show-again addresses the conflict in Iraq, but this time focuses on the portrayal of the war by American news media, as well as the projected end of the conflict. Incorporating an uncommon mix of elements, such as fiber optics, maps, and expanses of hand-stitched quilting, Unstable Terrain creates an associative puzzle for viewers to assemble. Here too, her aim is to evoke a personal consideration of war.

Hovey's installation is one of five marking the exhibition. Casondra Sobieralski's series of 3-minute short films creates another puzzle, presenting images from Egypt as archaeological shards of information and casting viewers as archeologists susceptible to subjective interpretation. Eric Sanchez's dynamic work ingeniously projects a roomful of glowing chain reactions triggered by the efforts of bioluminescent bacteria, Karen Schwartz's interactive Victorian parlor is complete with adorned curio cabinets made available to the intrepid viewer, and Lucrecia Troncoso's disembodied, dissociate hair styling flirts with two and three dimensions.

Also addressing environment are Ulla de Larios' Crossings, a series of suspended weavings, airy and intricate in their exploration of the space of and between borders, surpassing boundaries themselves as they divide space and transcend the province of the woven wall piece. Mark J. Leavitt's sculptural work, with textile, explores the junction of what "remains, and that which is obviously, sometimes painfully missing." One of Leavitt's works is called April's Boys I and II and it is about the US soldiers killed in Iraq that month, and Jennifer Brazelton's ceramic cartography offer a broader interpretation of their respective media. Larysa Rybchynska's painted triptych depicts women as diffracted through a prism into a spectrum of role models, sex symbols, and individuals.