[{"id":"2894","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-lily-pisano-installation.jpg?itok=EVVq7YeK","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":510},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Lily Pisano - Installation","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-lily-pisano-installation.jpg?h=da6def34&itok=JCHo2Wwi","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Lily Pisano, BFA + BA '21","art_work_name":"All works","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"

Biography <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Lily Pisano is a 5th year student in the Combined Degree program at Tufts and SMFA. At Tufts, Lily majors in International Literary and Visual Studies, where she studies Japanese and Gender and Sexuality Studies. At SMFA, Lily primarily concerns herself with sculpture. <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Currently, Lily is most interested in memes and the mind and how they relate to each other. Memes are all around us, in multiple realities--they exist in what we consider to be the physical world, the digital world, and the metaphysical world(s). By means of creation, Lily aims to take long walks in these worlds, as she so loves to do wherever she is. <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Artist Statement <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Iteration\/Imitation<\/em> is an exploration of the meme and its construction(s) and transmission(s). <\/p>\r\n\r\n

A meme is something that can be imitated--an action that requires a complex set of mental processes in order to be successfully executed. Imitation is conditional on its context; in order for there to be a successful imitation of something, particularly if that thing is to survive in the long term, there must be a shared context from which to begin the process. If that context is not shared, it may still be successfully imitated, but would be a low fidelity attempt and probably not withstand the test of time up against its competitor. <\/p>\r\n\r\n

Everything has a history, and a set of iterations that precede it; nothing is novel or new. Whether it is a thought, an object, an idea, a behavior -- we are socialized to carry with us \u201cthe past\u201d (as reinforced by a curated and limiting narrative perspective of power) while being told to look to and forge a singular and optimistically collective future. I believe this is impossible given the foundation on which we currently stand. Our passive consumption of media and obligation to a capitalist market does not encourage us to look back and dig in, it asks us to sit still and shut up. <\/p>\r\n\r\n

While viewing my work, I ask you only to think and explore. Be curious and do not settle. Zoom in and zoom out and zoom in again. Construct and deconstruct. Let your mind take a turn and then your body. Return and return again and then return once more. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2902"},{"id":"2890","media":{"bundle":"video_embed","src":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/RJ2VNIjG0Rw","filemime":"","alt":"","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/RJ2VNIjG0Rw.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"},"thumbnail_big":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/RJ2VNIjG0Rw.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Jean Chung, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Checked into Heaven","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"

Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Jean Chung was born in San Francisco, CA and raised in Seoul, South Korea. Working primarily in design and writing, Chung expands on the idea of research as an act of care, and the creative potential of research itself. Kitsch and humor acts as a point of access to their personal archive. Chung is a BFA candidate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, projected to graduate in May of 2021. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Jean Library <\/em>features publications and designed collaterals by the artist. The hyper- curated installation, guised as a library space, embraces yet ridicules the idea of brand identity and research institutions as an arbitrary means to categorize. Each publication is concerned by the act of seeing and observation as much as it is with care practices, driven by a constant process of research and revision. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Hardcover Print publication, 7\u201dx7\u201d, 2020","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2892"},{"id":"2870","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-martina-tan-treehugger-1.jpg?itok=FBqrIiQV","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":539},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Martina Tan - Treehugger","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-martina-tan-treehugger-1.jpg?h=be15af84&itok=14P5f6of","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Martina Tan, BFA + BS '21","art_work_name":"Treehugger","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Martina Tan (BS.\/BFA 2021) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and student from Mount Laurel, NJ. Her current art focus arose from a lifelong fascination with nature and her own skin, and engages with practices of mental wellness, environmentalism, and community building. Outside of school, she can usually be found taking walks, obsessing over playlists, and consuming speculative\/science fiction and fantasy stories.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement for Treehugger<\/em><\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Treehugger<\/em> is a site-specific installation on a dead but otherwise intact tree, intended as a community-generated gesture of care for one another and for the natural environment. Human intervention has reduced this lone tree on the Tufts University campus to a utilitarian structure that is nearly unidentifiable as a once-living organism. Treehugger<\/em> enables a process of recovery and reflection centered around this tree, via a crowd-sourced, human-sized \u201cskin\u201d of handmade paper made from recycled cardboard. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The responses on each page of the \u201cskin\u201d were obtained by inviting participants from the artist\u2019s personal network to take a walk wherever they lived while reflecting on the following questions: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(a) How do you feel connected to nature and to your own skin via your senses or via your life experiences?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(b) Pick a plant, animal, or area from your walk. What relationship or memories do you share with it? If you have none, why not?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(c) What in the world allows you to breathe? To feel protected?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
These pages were returned by mail, then attached to the tree in Medford, MA for a week-long outdoor installation. This allowed each walker\u2019s respective journey to converge at a single site, in spite of the geographic spread of these reflective acts. The recording of the live-streamed performance at the site underscores the variety of relationships that the participants have with nature, with themselves, and with other people. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Treehugger<\/em> has developed into a multimedia documentation of processes preceding and following the original installation, reflecting the continuous, non-linear nature of recovery in the context of both ecological and personal well-being. By suggesting commonplace encounters with one\u2019s environment as a basis for self-care, Treehugger<\/em> encourages visitors to locate renewed potential in the everyday long after leaving the gallery. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"ink on handmade paper from recycled cardboard, twine, clothespins, tree branches, single-channel video, digital inkjet print on paper, 60\u201d x 60\u201d, 2021 ","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2878"},{"id":"2868","media":{"bundle":"video_embed","src":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/DB_WayxD6u0","filemime":"","alt":"","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/DB_WayxD6u0.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"},"thumbnail_big":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/DB_WayxD6u0.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Sarah Skupien, BFA '21 ","art_work_name":"","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Sarah Skupien is an artist from Nashville, currently working and living in Boston, Massachusetts. Using neon paints and flat bold color fields, Skupien renders alienating perspectives of contemporary domestic interiors and the complex dynamics of societal interactions in intimate closed spaces. Skupien will graduate with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in spring 2021. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
The Grid<\/em> is a project that deals with themes of spatial politics and digitization by emulating an aura of artifice through flat geometric fields of saturated color and intensely vibrant patterning. The piece creates an atmosphere that is somewhat unwelcoming and uncanny, but also considers the internet and home as spaces for human connection. In present-day America, a hostile need for seclusion is a common mindset, reinforcing the idea that the home is to be an intimate space. As Zoom has become commonplace, the public and private spheres of our lives have begun to merge, making it more difficult to negotiate one\u2019s own agency in daily routines. With a mistrust of exterior space and technology being amplified by the current lockdowns, interior architecture and decoration are representative of a backlash against the loss of other liberties. I want this work to interrogate our new connection to the home as a both sanctuary and prison, as well as analyze the changing nature of our daily environment during an international health crisis. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2869"},{"id":"2830","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-bella-kiser-floor1.png?itok=m8wmCC7F","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":592},"filemime":"image\/png","alt":"Bella Kiser - Music Box (Floor #1)","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-bella-kiser-floor1.png?h=10d202d3&itok=r0zTGZtP","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/png"}},"artist_name":"Bella Kiser, BFA + BS '21","art_work_name":"Music Box (Floor #1)","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Bella Kiser is an interdisciplinary Filipino American artist from Chicago, Illinois. She uses sculpture, performance, virtual reality, and sound to build soft architecture, which she defines as, \u201ca malleable and ever-changing building technique that is in constant exchange with memory; a fabritecture of susceptible surfaces formed from intangible experiences.\u201d  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
I started thinking about soft architecture in the spring of 2018 after experiencing racism at Tufts University when a white friend displaced me within my own body, robbing me of the little sense of home and comfort I had while living in an unfamiliar college environment. I sat with this for a year, until one day I remembered my paternal grandparents with no permanent residence. They traveled from place to place in an RV, a transient space with no link to a specific location or time, yet they still called it home. My familial history paired with my broken understanding of self led me to create my MobileHome Series<\/em> through which I attempt to capture the materialization of \u201chome.\u201d One may choose to wear these garments when feeling lost, without belonging, or \u201chome\u201dless. These pieces suggest that home is something that we permanently carry with us, supporting us even in the most mundane of moments. By relating architecture to garment, I am suggesting that both mediums have the same foundational purpose: to separate and protect the user from the outside environment. This soft armor is meant to protect those who are marginalized. From my MobileHomes<\/em> came the more generalized concept of soft architecture, a world that I am continuing to create.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Music Box (Floor #1)<\/em>, while still protective, transitions my focus to the auditory aspects of soft architecture. Inspired by R. Murray Schafer and Alvin Lucier, this auditory, large-scale wearable invites users to sink into the floor and listen to the amplification of their architectural environment. Every place resonates with unceasing frequencies that compose our sonic landscape and alter our perception of space itself. Using four mattresses, a box spring, upholstery foam, blue vinyl, guitar amps and contact microphones the piece wraps itself around the user and their senses to transform them into part of their surroundings. This installation asks the user to not only become part of the background, but also to become hyper-aware of their bodies in claustrophobic space\u2014simulating both comfort and displeasure. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Upholstery foam, vinyl, box spring, mattresses, amps, contact microphones, 13.5\u2019 x 6.25\u2019 x 1.25\u2019, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2838"},{"id":"2880","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-alberto-checa-2.jpg?itok=zieca-rf","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":592},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Alberto Checa - PREPRODUCTION 7","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-alberto-checa-2.jpg?h=60f9f39d&itok=2BT32Tgi","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Alberto Checa, BFA '21","art_work_name":"PREPRODUCTION 7","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
I embrace the idea that I am dependent on my mother's labor and the sacrifices of her well-being for my survival. Being dependent on a parental figure who gives up their aspirations to bring one's desires into fruition, creates an emotional connection that leaves one with a sense of unworthiness. In my work, I reproduce what she suffers through by imitating the actions of her countless working hours and the heavy loads she must carry in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Empathizing with my mother through performance allows me to address the dismissed everyday labor endured by the Latino community within the American landscape. My practice seeks to recontextualize the futile labor of the Latino working-poor class through empathy, repetition, process, habituation, ritualization and simplicity of form embodied by objects as vessels for performances. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
I utilize world-building and its potential for unbridled creation, resulting in scenarios that reveal the exploitative workload of the Brown body through obsession and iterations, emphasizing the meaninglessness labor endured by the lower class. By incorporating utilitarian PVC structures that complicate the birthing of a final product while fulfilling a function, I begin to highlight the futile loop that exists in between the hidden process and end result. Having been born in Cuba, I draw from my people\u2019s object improvisations and create DIY systems with PVC pipes, plaster, silicone molds, water vacuums, curated sounds, and white garments as materials. My intent to engage with these materials is influenced by the book titled Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos<\/em> (With Our Own Efforts), where the Cuban government itemized the way household objects could be repurposed to meet the needs of survival of the Cuban people after the fall of the Soviet Union, during a period called El Periodo Especial en Tiempo de Paz (Special Period in Times of Peace). Recontextualization of objects allows new methods to engage with \u201cthem\u201d, initiating a set of nonsensical and unreasonable challenges that advance with each iteration of my performance. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n","caption":"Ceramic Plaster Casted Frames, Plaster, PVC, Speakers, Car Stereo, Climbing Harness, White Garments, Pulley, DJ Controller, Archival Inkjet Print, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2888"},{"id":"2891","media":{"bundle":"video_embed","src":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/w5OFFLUWx3Q","filemime":"","alt":"","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/w5OFFLUWx3Q.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"},"thumbnail_big":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/w5OFFLUWx3Q.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Jean Chung, BFA '21","art_work_name":"A Loose Story About Caring","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Jean Chung was born in San Francisco, CA and raised in Seoul, South Korea. Working primarily in design and writing, Chung expands on the idea of research as an act of care, and the creative potential of research itself. Kitsch and humor acts as a point of access to their personal archive. Chung is a BFA candidate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, projected to graduate in May of 2021. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Jean Library <\/em>features publications and designed collaterals by the artist. The hyper- curated installation, guised as a library space, embraces yet ridicules the idea of brand identity and research institutions as an arbitrary means to categorize. Each publication is concerned by the act of seeing and observation as much as it is with care practices, driven by a constant process of research and revision. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Print publication, 4.5\u201dx7\u201d, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2892"},{"id":"2853","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-lily-oliver-body-memory-installation.png?itok=RKydtjm2","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":578},"filemime":"image\/png","alt":"Lily Oliver - Body, Memory House Installation","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-lily-oliver-body-memory-installation.png?h=1a3b480c&itok=PyMsfJFy","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/png"}},"artist_name":"Lily Oliver, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Body, Memory House Installation","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Oliver, born and raised on the ocean in coastal Maine, works primarily in photography, creative writing, and bookmaking. Continually inspired by the private spaces we carve out for ourselves, intricate relationships and navigating the body as site, her work often presents severity and softness in equal measure. In her free time, Oliver likes swimming, driving with friends, and walking her dog, Maisie.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Body, Memory House<\/em> explores compromised identity, intimacy, and memory as auto-fiction through photographic prints and text, cataloging various relationships and the blurred line between public and private.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The relationship of text and image confuse each other, one might reveal more about the other, but forever present is partial concealment. The use of self portraits complicates the photographs position as \u2018the truth,\u2019 questioning the reliability of personal narrative and ownership of the self \u2014 Body, Memory House<\/em> is a series best seen from the periphery, a knot of phrases uttered in private space, a series of fleeting glances compounding into a single understood experience.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n","caption":"Photographic Prints, Digital Prints on Organza, 2020-2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2863"},{"id":"2889","media":{"bundle":"video_embed","src":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/g12rIAjhEb0","filemime":"","alt":"","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/g12rIAjhEb0.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"},"thumbnail_big":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/g12rIAjhEb0.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Martina Tan, BFA + BS '21","art_work_name":"Treehugger, installation performance","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Martina Tan (BS.\/BFA 2021) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and student from Mount Laurel, NJ. Her current art focus arose from a lifelong fascination with nature and her own skin, and engages with practices of mental wellness, environmentalism, and community building. Outside of school, she can usually be found taking walks, obsessing over playlists, and consuming speculative\/science fiction and fantasy stories.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement for Treehugger<\/em><\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Treehugger<\/em> is a site-specific installation on a dead but otherwise intact tree, intended as a community-generated gesture of care for one another and for the natural environment. Human intervention has reduced this lone tree on the Tufts University campus to a utilitarian structure that is nearly unidentifiable as a once-living organism. Treehugger<\/em> enables a process of recovery and reflection centered around this tree, via a crowd-sourced, human-sized \u201cskin\u201d of handmade paper made from recycled cardboard. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The responses on each page of the \u201cskin\u201d were obtained by inviting participants from the artist\u2019s personal network to take a walk wherever they lived while reflecting on the following questions: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(a) How do you feel connected to nature and to your own skin via your senses or via your life experiences?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(b) Pick a plant, animal, or area from your walk. What relationship or memories do you share with it? If you have none, why not?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(c) What in the world allows you to breathe? To feel protected?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
These pages were returned by mail, then attached to the tree in Medford, MA for a week-long outdoor installation. This allowed each walker\u2019s respective journey to converge at a single site, in spite of the geographic spread of these reflective acts. The recording of the live-streamed performance at the site underscores the variety of relationships that the participants have with nature, with themselves, and with other people. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Treehugger<\/em> has developed into a multimedia documentation of processes preceding and following the original installation, reflecting the continuous, non-linear nature of recovery in the context of both ecological and personal well-being. By suggesting commonplace encounters with one\u2019s environment as a basis for self-care, Treehugger<\/em> encourages visitors to locate renewed potential in the everyday long after leaving the gallery. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Single-channel video, 59:17","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2878"},{"id":"2864","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-sarah-skupien-the-grid.png?itok=oybVuBhq","dimensions":{"width":357,"height":888},"filemime":"image\/png","alt":"Sarah Skupien - The Grid","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-sarah-skupien-the-grid.png?h=aaa22de0&itok=qa3eX9WR","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/png"}},"artist_name":"Sarah Skupien, BFA '21 ","art_work_name":"The Grid","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Sarah Skupien is an artist from Nashville, currently working and living in Boston, Massachusetts. Using neon paints and flat bold color fields, Skupien renders alienating perspectives of contemporary domestic interiors and the complex dynamics of societal interactions in intimate closed spaces. Skupien will graduate with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in spring 2021. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
The Grid<\/em> is a project that deals with themes of spatial politics and digitization by emulating an aura of artifice through flat geometric fields of saturated color and intensely vibrant patterning. The piece creates an atmosphere that is somewhat unwelcoming and uncanny, but also considers the internet and home as spaces for human connection. In present-day America, a hostile need for seclusion is a common mindset, reinforcing the idea that the home is to be an intimate space. As Zoom has become commonplace, the public and private spheres of our lives have begun to merge, making it more difficult to negotiate one\u2019s own agency in daily routines. With a mistrust of exterior space and technology being amplified by the current lockdowns, interior architecture and decoration are representative of a backlash against the loss of other liberties. I want this work to interrogate our new connection to the home as a both sanctuary and prison, as well as analyze the changing nature of our daily environment during an international health crisis. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Acrylic paint, wood, steel, collage, airbrush 5\u2019 x 24\u2019 (wallpaper), 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2869"},{"id":"2816","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-wilamina-heifner-beautiful-moments-2.jpg?itok=rlKaA24b","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":592},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Wilamina Heifner - There Are So Many Beautiful Moments to Come","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-wilamina-heifner-beautiful-moments-2.jpg?h=06ac0d8c&itok=dRmO_J9w","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Wilamina Heifner, BFA '21","art_work_name":"There Are So Many Beautiful Moments to Come","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
For many, art can be the catalyst for healing, personal, and- subsequently- societal transformation. Mental health is a place of research and a source of inspiration in my art practice. The human mind is a magnificent thing, yet it is incapable of understanding the entirety of itself in any one given moment. I find that the personification of animals makes it easier to understand ourselves. I grew up with stories that seemingly tried to contextualize fragments of humanity; Jan Brett, Aesop, William Steig, and more tell tales of personified animals embodying human experiences. As I get older, the tortoises and the hares become more nuanced and layered, yet, in their complexity, they mask the truth of their identity. It is my goal to strip these characters back down to expose the truths they have to tell. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
During this pandemic, my work has shifted from shedding light on mental health crises to drawing forth hope. The pandemic has been indescribably arduous on so many of us, and I want to introduce a bit of wonder back into the extraordinary ordinary that is our new reality. I want to give generously to my community in a way that is conducive to the recovery and understanding of self and others. This shift has awoken a new passion in me for enticing others to interact with and internalize the delightful curiosity towards everyday life. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Just as in There Are So Many Beautiful Moments to Come<\/em>, outside of fiction, spotting a crow can be a good sign. Whether it\u2019s a conditioned behavior or an act of gratitude, crows are known to give gifts to humans that are kind to them. These gifts come in the form of beads, bottlecaps, paperclips, buttons, lost earrings, just about anything small, shiny, and colorful that they can find. In this piece, the crows flying toward the pile have wrapped objects in their mouths. Whereas the one flying away from the pile is empty beaked, having already deposited its gift. Inside each parcel is an object that a crow would gift and a handwritten encouraging message. The wall text invites viewers to unwrap an object and take it with them. The installation and the crow\u2019s gifts serve as a reminder to viewers that life is worth living and that they are deserving of special moments. In this time-based, interactive piece, crows, typically symbols of death, are subverted into smiling creatures bringing treasured moments of life. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Stoneware, Acrylic, Found Objects, Ink, and Paper, Sizes Variable(crows are 19\"x12\"x6\"), 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2820"},{"id":"2834","media":{"bundle":"video_embed","src":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/QeWG36rqY6Y","filemime":"","alt":"","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/QeWG36rqY6Y.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"},"thumbnail_big":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/video_thumbnails\/QeWG36rqY6Y.jpg?h=c673cd1c","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Bella Kiser, BFA + BS '21","art_work_name":"Music Box (Floor #1) Video","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Bella Kiser is an interdisciplinary Filipino American artist from Chicago, Illinois. She uses sculpture, performance, virtual reality, and sound to build soft architecture, which she defines as, \u201ca malleable and ever-changing building technique that is in constant exchange with memory; a fabritecture of susceptible surfaces formed from intangible experiences.\u201d  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
I started thinking about soft architecture in the spring of 2018 after experiencing racism at Tufts University when a white friend displaced me within my own body, robbing me of the little sense of home and comfort I had while living in an unfamiliar college environment. I sat with this for a year, until one day I remembered my paternal grandparents with no permanent residence. They traveled from place to place in an RV, a transient space with no link to a specific location or time, yet they still called it home. My familial history paired with my broken understanding of self led me to create my MobileHome Series<\/em> through which I attempt to capture the materialization of \u201chome.\u201d One may choose to wear these garments when feeling lost, without belonging, or \u201chome\u201dless. These pieces suggest that home is something that we permanently carry with us, supporting us even in the most mundane of moments. By relating architecture to garment, I am suggesting that both mediums have the same foundational purpose: to separate and protect the user from the outside environment. This soft armor is meant to protect those who are marginalized. From my MobileHomes<\/em> came the more generalized concept of soft architecture, a world that I am continuing to create.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Music Box (Floor #1)<\/em>, while still protective, transitions my focus to the auditory aspects of soft architecture. Inspired by R. Murray Schafer and Alvin Lucier, this auditory, large-scale wearable invites users to sink into the floor and listen to the amplification of their architectural environment. Every place resonates with unceasing frequencies that compose our sonic landscape and alter our perception of space itself. Using four mattresses, a box spring, upholstery foam, blue vinyl, guitar amps and contact microphones the piece wraps itself around the user and their senses to transform them into part of their surroundings. This installation asks the user to not only become part of the background, but also to become hyper-aware of their bodies in claustrophobic space\u2014simulating both comfort and displeasure. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Upholstery foam, vinyl, box spring, mattresses, amps, contact microphones, 13.5\u2019 x 6.25\u2019 x 1.25\u2019, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2838"},{"id":"2904","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-jaycie-henderson-amulet.jpg?itok=B7Pf748l","dimensions":{"width":666,"height":888},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Jaycie Henderson - Amulet (away)","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-jaycie-henderson-amulet.jpg?h=59e29f30&itok=ZPuUT0gr","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Jaycie Henderson, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Amulet (away)","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Jaycie Henderson was raised in Beaumont, Texas. They will graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Jaycie's work focuses on the metaphysical properties of objects. They like to think of their art practice as alchemy or magic. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
The Divine Objects Series <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Is a celebration of alter making and how that can have so many meanings specific to individuals. The series is placed in the objects from Jaycies' room that they feel influences the energy that they bring into making the paintings. The installation is very homey and the intention is to welcome the viewer to feel invited in while experiencing the altars or paintings. The energy placed in the paintings is meant to be interacted with and if willing, passed on to the viewer. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n","caption":"Paper mache, acrylic, found objects, 10\u2019\u2019x5\u2019\u2019, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2914"},{"id":"2844","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-indigo-naar-installation.jpg?itok=xC86pk_J","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":624},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Indigo Conat-Naar - Where we could\u2019ve been","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-indigo-naar-installation.jpg?h=73953259&itok=ZOwuwsf5","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Indigo Conat-Naar, BFA + BA '21","art_work_name":"Where we could\u2019ve been","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Indigo Regis Conat-Naar was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida. She will be graduating this spring from Tufts University with a B.A. in Philosophy, a B.F.A. in Studio Art, and a minor in Visual and Material Studies. She has been practicing Taekwondo since 2008, the same year that her childhood home was extensively remodeled and eventually sold, following the separation and divorce of her parents. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Indigo\u2019s practice is interdisciplinary, ranging across installation, sculpture, sound, performance, drawing, and photography. Throughout these mediums, she maintains a clear voice of vulnerability and presence, opening up worlds of possibility outside of time. Within these worlds, her work becomes a language that theories can\u2019t refute; a manifestation of the tender specifics of being. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Every other night, I find myself going through all of my photos. Without any particular aim, I scroll, click, and zoom in on whatever seems important. On familiar and unfamiliar oceans, on the face of a friend from that one time, on the uprooted tree in the countryside, and I remember only the parts that I want to keep with me. I think about how I used to delete photos when I did not want to remember someone or something, and how effective it was, to the point that I now only remember the sadness, but not the source. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
I\u2019ve spent so much of my time mourning my memories as distant, untouchable things. Through this body of work, I\u2019ve come to recognize the ways memory occurs in the present-tense. To miss someone is to imagine them now as they were before. They exist as you exist, and they make themselves known when you see something of them in the world. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
When I have nothing better to do, usually in the summer, I write about the things that I have no images of, the moments that come back to me on their own and ask for my attention. In the first such memories, I am 6, maybe 7, and my world begins to change in a tangible way for the first time. I remember my childhood backyard, but I can\u2019t remember what it looked like. The best image I can find is a pixelated photo from 2009 on a realtor website. I write down the pieces of memory that do return to me\u2014the banana tree that kept growing back when it was cut down, the rectangular pool that matched the sky, the sound of the Sony stereo\u2014or maybe it was my father practicing guitar. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cWhere we could\u2019ve been\u201d is a certain time and a certain place, located in the moments I\u2019ve brought with me, that I\u2019ve had to work to keep. This work began several winters ago, with a sign for a town in Western Massachusetts that told me I was \u201cEntering Florida.\u201d I laughed because we were both so far from home, and I took a photo. It ended with a reimagining of the backyard of my first home on Rafael Boulevard in the backyard of my house in Medford, Massachusetts on the first sunny day of spring. <\/em><\/p>\r\n","caption":"installation, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2852"},{"id":"2839","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-alyx-madera-texaspastoral.jpg?itok=wUbuHgBI","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":591},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Alyx Madera - Texas Pastoral","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-alyx-madera-texaspastoral.jpg?h=8903f036&itok=M9wHStQy","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Alyx Madera, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Texas Pastoral","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Alyx Madera was born and raised in Austin, Texas. She will graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She is interested in painting contemporary social realities and how best to communicate those realities refracted through one\u2019s relation to the American body politic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Texas Pastoral<\/em> addresses a desire to connect with others, yet simultaneously articulates an alienation in the relation to home through aspects of ambiguity and psychic contamination. Here, monumental scale is used to elevate banal encounters and remembered moments that have bled together over time. The subject of this painting is a tailgate; in Texas these events are vital to the local culture and social scene, but they also provide a great opportunity for passive observation. Looking back, I remember being immersed in the environment but never totally feeling present or comfortable. This is an experience which accesses the dreamy dissonance that can be produced from feeling outside yourself, not totally present. The figures inhabit a framework of mundane and outmoded architectures and hallucinatory, alien relationships to one another. Illusion in painting becomes a virtual reality unto its own as a window into a distorted environment that has the capacity to surprise a viewer with how easily they can lose sense of their body in relation to the image. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n","caption":"Oil on panel, 4.5\u2019 x 7\u2019, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2842"},{"id":"2821","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-oliviamae-junkin-yeuxsansvisage.jpg?itok=ieofK7nO","dimensions":{"width":715,"height":888},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Olivia Mae Junkin - Yeux Sans Visage","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-oliviamae-junkin-yeuxsansvisage.jpg?h=3e773a64&itok=r0MwehP5","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Olivia Mae Junkin, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Yeux Sans Visage","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Olivia Mae is a 22 year old multidisciplinary artist born in Three Forks, Montana, working in Boston, MA. Her work straddles the line between fine art, and camp. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
In writing about my work, I have decided that it would best serve the viewer if I were to split up my artist statement into two parts instead of one. This body of work has layers to it, starting with the notion of the hierarchy of aesthetics. Stemming from that comes the rejection of explicit commentary and the expectation of content over form. Lastly underneath that, is whatever meanings the viewer can excavate through context clues, personal bias, or just plain vibe. Because nothing about the third layer is explicit in the work, and any real personal or narrative meaning is merely secondary and not integral to the understanding of the work in any way, I shall only be discussing the first two parts. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Part 1: The hierarchy of aesthetics. This body of work is designed to compress the gap between what we associate with class and what we associate with camp. In the overlap of these two aesthetic worlds we find excess. Using a modern color palette over the unconventional surface structure of foam, the works are meant to entice the viewer on looks alone. Formal painting language and techniques are utilized, alongside materials traditionally associated with craft in order to create a world that is both opulent and accessible. No one would dare call a Manet painting tacky, and no one is going to call a candy wrapper fine art, but when the two are placed within the same work, where on the spectrum of cheap vs. class does it fall? <\/p>\r\n\r\n
2: Rejection of content. These works do have content, yes, but as a whole the work does not have an explicit theme to which they adhere. These works act as dreamscapes. Much in the same way that memories will blend together in order to create dreams in the subconscious, these works blend together visual influx (cartoons, landscapes, text, etc.) with thematic emotional underpinnings such as rejection of expectation or wealth status. These elements combine to create a portrait of inner state. Various female forms appropriated from historical media gaze back out from the canvas, acting as a stand in for my own self perception. Each figure represents a facet of self. Each compositional element, or found object is a reflection of my metaphysical surroundings. Ultimately the real narrative of each work is left up to the interpretation of the spectator. How much meaning is derived is up to them to decide, and if one is not in the mood to excavate content, then the work serves simply to look pretty. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Acrylic and oil on foam and canvas, 30\u201d x 40\u201d, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2829"},{"id":"2854","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-lily-oliver-laid-a-million.png?itok=8syroN9S","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":594},"filemime":"image\/png","alt":"Lily Oliver - I Laid A Million Teeth to Rest","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-lily-oliver-laid-a-million.png?h=4b45d00e&itok=wF0m2z4m","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/png"}},"artist_name":"Lily Oliver, BFA '21","art_work_name":"I Laid A Million Teeth to Rest","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Oliver, born and raised on the ocean in coastal Maine, works primarily in photography, creative writing, and bookmaking. Continually inspired by the private spaces we carve out for ourselves, intricate relationships and navigating the body as site, her work often presents severity and softness in equal measure. In her free time, Oliver likes swimming, driving with friends, and walking her dog, Maisie.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Body, Memory House<\/em> explores compromised identity, intimacy, and memory as auto-fiction through photographic prints and text, cataloging various relationships and the blurred line between public and private.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The relationship of text and image confuse each other, one might reveal more about the other, but forever present is partial concealment. The use of self portraits complicates the photographs position as \u2018the truth,\u2019 questioning the reliability of personal narrative and ownership of the self \u2014 Body, Memory House<\/em> is a series best seen from the periphery, a knot of phrases uttered in private space, a series of fleeting glances compounding into a single understood experience.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n","caption":"Digital photography, 16\u201d x 20\u201d, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2863"},{"id":"2843","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-indigo-naar-thesis-installation.jpg?itok=COKzgZ77","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":493},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Indigo Conat-Naar - Where we could\u2019ve been","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-indigo-naar-thesis-installation.jpg?h=d6c9755a&itok=bnG_M_TH","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Indigo Conat-Naar, BFA + BA '21","art_work_name":"Where we could\u2019ve been","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Indigo Regis Conat-Naar was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida. She will be graduating this spring from Tufts University with a B.A. in Philosophy, a B.F.A. in Studio Art, and a minor in Visual and Material Studies. She has been practicing Taekwondo since 2008, the same year that her childhood home was extensively remodeled and eventually sold, following the separation and divorce of her parents. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Indigo\u2019s practice is interdisciplinary, ranging across installation, sculpture, sound, performance, drawing, and photography. Throughout these mediums, she maintains a clear voice of vulnerability and presence, opening up worlds of possibility outside of time. Within these worlds, her work becomes a language that theories can\u2019t refute; a manifestation of the tender specifics of being. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Every other night, I find myself going through all of my photos. Without any particular aim, I scroll, click, and zoom in on whatever seems important. On familiar and unfamiliar oceans, on the face of a friend from that one time, on the uprooted tree in the countryside, and I remember only the parts that I want to keep with me. I think about how I used to delete photos when I did not want to remember someone or something, and how effective it was, to the point that I now only remember the sadness, but not the source. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
I\u2019ve spent so much of my time mourning my memories as distant, untouchable things. Through this body of work, I\u2019ve come to recognize the ways memory occurs in the present-tense. To miss someone is to imagine them now as they were before. They exist as you exist, and they make themselves known when you see something of them in the world. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
When I have nothing better to do, usually in the summer, I write about the things that I have no images of, the moments that come back to me on their own and ask for my attention. In the first such memories, I am 6, maybe 7, and my world begins to change in a tangible way for the first time. I remember my childhood backyard, but I can\u2019t remember what it looked like. The best image I can find is a pixelated photo from 2009 on a realtor website. I write down the pieces of memory that do return to me\u2014the banana tree that kept growing back when it was cut down, the rectangular pool that matched the sky, the sound of the Sony stereo\u2014or maybe it was my father practicing guitar. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cWhere we could\u2019ve been\u201d is a certain time and a certain place, located in the moments I\u2019ve brought with me, that I\u2019ve had to work to keep. This work began several winters ago, with a sign for a town in Western Massachusetts that told me I was \u201cEntering Florida.\u201d I laughed because we were both so far from home, and I took a photo. It ended with a reimagining of the backyard of my first home on Rafael Boulevard in the backyard of my house in Medford, Massachusetts on the first sunny day of spring. <\/em><\/p>\r\n","caption":"Thesis show installation, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2852"},{"id":"2822","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-oliviamae-junkin-lunch.jpg?itok=8NJ18S9s","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":732},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Olivia Mae Junkin - Whats For Lunch?","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-oliviamae-junkin-lunch.jpg?h=cbaa46bb&itok=8Lh_EKl4","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Olivia Mae Junkin, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Whats For Lunch?","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Olivia Mae is a 22 year old multidisciplinary artist born in Three Forks, Montana, working in Boston, MA. Her work straddles the line between fine art, and camp. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
In writing about my work, I have decided that it would best serve the viewer if I were to split up my artist statement into two parts instead of one. This body of work has layers to it, starting with the notion of the hierarchy of aesthetics. Stemming from that comes the rejection of explicit commentary and the expectation of content over form. Lastly underneath that, is whatever meanings the viewer can excavate through context clues, personal bias, or just plain vibe. Because nothing about the third layer is explicit in the work, and any real personal or narrative meaning is merely secondary and not integral to the understanding of the work in any way, I shall only be discussing the first two parts. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Part 1: The hierarchy of aesthetics. This body of work is designed to compress the gap between what we associate with class and what we associate with camp. In the overlap of these two aesthetic worlds we find excess. Using a modern color palette over the unconventional surface structure of foam, the works are meant to entice the viewer on looks alone. Formal painting language and techniques are utilized, alongside materials traditionally associated with craft in order to create a world that is both opulent and accessible. No one would dare call a Manet painting tacky, and no one is going to call a candy wrapper fine art, but when the two are placed within the same work, where on the spectrum of cheap vs. class does it fall? <\/p>\r\n\r\n
2: Rejection of content. These works do have content, yes, but as a whole the work does not have an explicit theme to which they adhere. These works act as dreamscapes. Much in the same way that memories will blend together in order to create dreams in the subconscious, these works blend together visual influx (cartoons, landscapes, text, etc.) with thematic emotional underpinnings such as rejection of expectation or wealth status. These elements combine to create a portrait of inner state. Various female forms appropriated from historical media gaze back out from the canvas, acting as a stand in for my own self perception. Each figure represents a facet of self. Each compositional element, or found object is a reflection of my metaphysical surroundings. Ultimately the real narrative of each work is left up to the interpretation of the spectator. How much meaning is derived is up to them to decide, and if one is not in the mood to excavate content, then the work serves simply to look pretty. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2829"},{"id":"2804","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-amy-chu-on-love.jpg?itok=D_fAyf44","dimensions":{"width":721,"height":888},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Amy Chu - On Love","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-amy-chu-on-love.jpg?h=933ca49c&itok=d-u5TMLl","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Amy Chu, BFA + BA \u201921","art_work_name":"On Love","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Amy Chu is an Asian American artist, primarily working in pen and ink while encroaching a more socially engaged practice. Her chief aim is to tell stories through drawing and text, which doubly make you laugh and think a little harder about the individual in context of their relationships.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
My fascination with knowing and loving the fabled stranger has driven the narrative aims of my work, which employs multilinear storytelling and sociological research practices to address shared encounters in our subjective experiences of race and gender. I explore the varying distance and intimacy to others by employing the purpose of art-making to prompt spontaneous intimacy. In creating space for vulnerability with strangers and friends, I hope to deconstruct the exercise of power found in taboos surrounding language and love through explicit naming and collaborative research. At the same time, my humorous and childish illustration-style playfully subverts the academic, didactic quality of my practice. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
On Love<\/em> is a compilation of a year\u2019s worth of notebook drawings and conversations with friends. The book discusses topics of intimacy, empathy, and the love we feel for strangers, family, and ourselves. On Love<\/em> assumes pseudo-authority on the study of people by loosely employing the research methods of a sociological qualitative study: interviews with friends, an ethnography of strangers on public transport, and content analysis of art and literature. Influenced by my other concentration in sociology, On Love<\/em> jokingly entertains an answer to the impossible question, \u201cWhat is love?\u201d In wallpaper format, the book reads like a personal essay and answers the question in meditative prose much like its form: rambling, multilinear, and simultaneously open-ended.  <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Digital print on paper, 5\u2019 x 24\u2019 (wallpaper), 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2814"},{"id":"2905","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-jaycie-henderson-talisman.jpg?itok=QjZYNSop","dimensions":{"width":705,"height":888},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Jaycie Henderson - Talisman(towards)","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-jaycie-henderson-talisman.jpg?h=22c7eb2e&itok=e8q8QELZ","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Jaycie Henderson, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Talisman(towards)","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Jaycie Henderson was raised in Beaumont, Texas. They will graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Jaycie's work focuses on the metaphysical properties of objects. They like to think of their art practice as alchemy or magic. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n
The Divine Objects Series <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Is a celebration of alter making and how that can have so many meanings specific to individuals. The series is placed in the objects from Jaycies' room that they feel influences the energy that they bring into making the paintings. The installation is very homey and the intention is to welcome the viewer to feel invited in while experiencing the altars or paintings. The energy placed in the paintings is meant to be interacted with and if willing, passed on to the viewer. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n","caption":"wood, acrylic, wax, 10\u2019\u2019x10\u2019\u2019, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2914"},{"id":"2815","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-wilamina-heifner-beautiful-moments-1.png?itok=pBl3LKyS","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":653},"filemime":"image\/png","alt":"Wilamina Heifner - There Are So Many Beautiful Moments to Come ","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-wilamina-heifner-beautiful-moments-1.png?h=417624d7&itok=arHToy2t","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/png"}},"artist_name":"Wilamina Heifner, BFA '21","art_work_name":"There Are So Many Beautiful Moments to Come","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
For many, art can be the catalyst for healing, personal, and- subsequently- societal transformation. Mental health is a place of research and a source of inspiration in my art practice. The human mind is a magnificent thing, yet it is incapable of understanding the entirety of itself in any one given moment. I find that the personification of animals makes it easier to understand ourselves. I grew up with stories that seemingly tried to contextualize fragments of humanity; Jan Brett, Aesop, William Steig, and more tell tales of personified animals embodying human experiences. As I get older, the tortoises and the hares become more nuanced and layered, yet, in their complexity, they mask the truth of their identity. It is my goal to strip these characters back down to expose the truths they have to tell. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
During this pandemic, my work has shifted from shedding light on mental health crises to drawing forth hope. The pandemic has been indescribably arduous on so many of us, and I want to introduce a bit of wonder back into the extraordinary ordinary that is our new reality. I want to give generously to my community in a way that is conducive to the recovery and understanding of self and others. This shift has awoken a new passion in me for enticing others to interact with and internalize the delightful curiosity towards everyday life. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Just as in There Are So Many Beautiful Moments to Come<\/em>, outside of fiction, spotting a crow can be a good sign. Whether it\u2019s a conditioned behavior or an act of gratitude, crows are known to give gifts to humans that are kind to them. These gifts come in the form of beads, bottlecaps, paperclips, buttons, lost earrings, just about anything small, shiny, and colorful that they can find. In this piece, the crows flying toward the pile have wrapped objects in their mouths. Whereas the one flying away from the pile is empty beaked, having already deposited its gift. Inside each parcel is an object that a crow would gift and a handwritten encouraging message. The wall text invites viewers to unwrap an object and take it with them. The installation and the crow\u2019s gifts serve as a reminder to viewers that life is worth living and that they are deserving of special moments. In this time-based, interactive piece, crows, typically symbols of death, are subverted into smiling creatures bringing treasured moments of life. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Stoneware, Acrylic, Found Objects, Ink, and Paper, Sizes Variable(crows are 19\"x12\"x6\"), 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2820"},{"id":"2797","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-alex-bauer-helena-detail.jpg?itok=c7TShcXn","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":599},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Alexander Bauer - Helena Cell (detail)","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-alex-bauer-helena-detail.jpg?h=ad09c171&itok=Tt2DC2hC","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Alexander Bauer, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Helena Cell (detail)","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Alexander Bauer is an artist from a small, rural hamlet in Upstate New York. Their work primarily takes the form of mixed media sculptures, often utilizing their ever-growing collection of found and secondhand materials, to playfully explore ideas related to gender, sexuality, and class. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Welcome to the Stage\u2026<\/em> is a series of five wall-hanging assemblages that examines socialized gender through the language of drag performance.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The work is made by \u201cpainting my face\u201d with dramatic makeup and then carefully transferring it onto fabric. The results resemble makeup wipes and serve as documentation of this performative process. Then, they are excessively adorned with jewelry, rhinestones, and other accessories that show the exaggerated materiality of drag. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Each piece is given a drag name based on its personality: Helena Cell (hell in a cell), Lucy Attitude (lose the attitude), Mel O\u2019Drama (melodrama), Minnie Van Driver (minivan driver), April Showers (bring May flowers). These titles employ the humor and wordplay that is common in the names of drag performers. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The work is installed with color-changing lights to reference nightclubs and continuously alter the viewer\u2019s perception of the work. This expresses the constant shifting of gender identity based on context and the presence\/absence of an audience. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
By exaggerating the body and traditional gender signifiers, drag performers reveal the absurdity of gender and begin deconstructing its seemingly-fixed boundaries. Drag creates a space of improvisation and play, inviting the viewer to join in imagining new ways of existing through glamour, camp, and fantasy. This shows that gender is nothing more than a performance, and we can have a choice in the characters we portray. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Makeup transfers on fabric with jewelry, rhinestones, false lashes, flood lights, 2021 ","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2803"},{"id":"2896","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-lily-pisano-selfportrait-gallery.jpeg?itok=1Zlhu7qh","dimensions":{"width":666,"height":888},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Lily Pisano - Rendered Self Portrait in Beads","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-lily-pisano-selfportrait-gallery.jpeg?h=a610a299&itok=cAMzRrsR","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Lily Pisano, BFA + BA '21","art_work_name":"Rendered Self Portrait in Beads","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Lily Pisano is a 5th year student in the Combined Degree program at Tufts and SMFA. At Tufts, Lily majors in International Literary and Visual Studies, where she studies Japanese and Gender and Sexuality Studies. At SMFA, Lily primarily concerns herself with sculpture. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Currently, Lily is most interested in memes and the mind and how they relate to each other. Memes are all around us, in multiple realities--they exist in what we consider to be the physical world, the digital world, and the metaphysical world(s). By means of creation, Lily aims to take long walks in these worlds, as she so loves to do wherever she is. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Iteration\/Imitation<\/em> is an exploration of the meme and its construction(s) and transmission(s). <\/p>\r\n\r\n
A meme is something that can be imitated--an action that requires a complex set of mental processes in order to be successfully executed. Imitation is conditional on its context; in order for there to be a successful imitation of something, particularly if that thing is to survive in the long term, there must be a shared context from which to begin the process. If that context is not shared, it may still be successfully imitated, but would be a low fidelity attempt and probably not withstand the test of time up against its competitor. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Everything has a history, and a set of iterations that precede it; nothing is novel or new. Whether it is a thought, an object, an idea, a behavior -- we are socialized to carry with us \u201cthe past\u201d (as reinforced by a curated and limiting narrative perspective of power) while being told to look to and forge a singular and optimistically collective future. I believe this is impossible given the foundation on which we currently stand. Our passive consumption of media and obligation to a capitalist market does not encourage us to look back and dig in, it asks us to sit still and shut up. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
While viewing my work, I ask you only to think and explore. Be curious and do not settle. Zoom in and zoom out and zoom in again. Construct and deconstruct. Let your mind take a turn and then your body. Return and return again and then return once more. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Seed beads on steel wire woven together with fishing line, 2020-2021 ","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2902"},{"id":"2806","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-amy-chu-full-wall-1.jpg?itok=E4I2Nsbf","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":584},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Amy Chu - Full Wall 1","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-amy-chu-full-wall-1.jpg?h=d701c515&itok=_qPo_enr","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Amy Chu, BFA + BA \u201921","art_work_name":"Full Wall 1","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Amy Chu is an Asian American artist, primarily working in pen and ink while encroaching a more socially engaged practice. Her chief aim is to tell stories through drawing and text, which doubly make you laugh and think a little harder about the individual in context of their relationships.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
My fascination with knowing and loving the fabled stranger has driven the narrative aims of my work, which employs multilinear storytelling and sociological research practices to address shared encounters in our subjective experiences of race and gender. I explore the varying distance and intimacy to others by employing the purpose of art-making to prompt spontaneous intimacy. In creating space for vulnerability with strangers and friends, I hope to deconstruct the exercise of power found in taboos surrounding language and love through explicit naming and collaborative research. At the same time, my humorous and childish illustration-style playfully subverts the academic, didactic quality of my practice. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
On Love<\/em> is a compilation of a year\u2019s worth of notebook drawings and conversations with friends. The book discusses topics of intimacy, empathy, and the love we feel for strangers, family, and ourselves. On Love<\/em> assumes pseudo-authority on the study of people by loosely employing the research methods of a sociological qualitative study: interviews with friends, an ethnography of strangers on public transport, and content analysis of art and literature. Influenced by my other concentration in sociology, On Love<\/em> jokingly entertains an answer to the impossible question, \u201cWhat is love?\u201d In wallpaper format, the book reads like a personal essay and answers the question in meditative prose much like its form: rambling, multilinear, and simultaneously open-ended.  <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Digital print on paper, 10\u2019 x 2\u2019 x 10\u2019 (wall), 5\u2019 x 24\u2019 (wallpaper), 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2814"},{"id":"2879","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-alberto-checa-1.jpg?itok=70rDm3aW","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":666},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Alberto Checa - PREPRODUCTION 7","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-alberto-checa-1.jpg?h=08b866d1&itok=mCtHXpWz","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Alberto Checa, BFA '21","art_work_name":"PREPRODUCTION 7","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
I embrace the idea that I am dependent on my mother's labor and the sacrifices of her well-being for my survival. Being dependent on a parental figure who gives up their aspirations to bring one's desires into fruition, creates an emotional connection that leaves one with a sense of unworthiness. In my work, I reproduce what she suffers through by imitating the actions of her countless working hours and the heavy loads she must carry in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Empathizing with my mother through performance allows me to address the dismissed everyday labor endured by the Latino community within the American landscape. My practice seeks to recontextualize the futile labor of the Latino working-poor class through empathy, repetition, process, habituation, ritualization and simplicity of form embodied by objects as vessels for performances. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
I utilize world-building and its potential for unbridled creation, resulting in scenarios that reveal the exploitative workload of the Brown body through obsession and iterations, emphasizing the meaninglessness labor endured by the lower class. By incorporating utilitarian PVC structures that complicate the birthing of a final product while fulfilling a function, I begin to highlight the futile loop that exists in between the hidden process and end result. Having been born in Cuba, I draw from my people\u2019s object improvisations and create DIY systems with PVC pipes, plaster, silicone molds, water vacuums, curated sounds, and white garments as materials. My intent to engage with these materials is influenced by the book titled Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos<\/em> (With Our Own Efforts), where the Cuban government itemized the way household objects could be repurposed to meet the needs of survival of the Cuban people after the fall of the Soviet Union, during a period called El Periodo Especial en Tiempo de Paz (Special Period in Times of Peace). Recontextualization of objects allows new methods to engage with \u201cthem\u201d, initiating a set of nonsensical and unreasonable challenges that advance with each iteration of my performance. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n","caption":"Ceramic Plaster Casted Frames, Plaster, PVC, Speakers, Car Stereo, Climbing Harness, White Garments, Pulley, DJ Controller, Archival Inkjet Print, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2888"},{"id":"2840","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-alyx-madera-texaspastoral-left.jpg?itok=0gV70OxU","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":666},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Alyx Madera - Texas Pastoral (left detail)","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-alyx-madera-texaspastoral-left.jpg?h=08b866d1&itok=Ge9Z3biL","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Alyx Madera, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Texas Pastoral (left detail)","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Alyx Madera was born and raised in Austin, Texas. She will graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She is interested in painting contemporary social realities and how best to communicate those realities refracted through one\u2019s relation to the American body politic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Texas Pastoral<\/em> addresses a desire to connect with others, yet simultaneously articulates an alienation in the relation to home through aspects of ambiguity and psychic contamination. Here, monumental scale is used to elevate banal encounters and remembered moments that have bled together over time. The subject of this painting is a tailgate; in Texas these events are vital to the local culture and social scene, but they also provide a great opportunity for passive observation. Looking back, I remember being immersed in the environment but never totally feeling present or comfortable. This is an experience which accesses the dreamy dissonance that can be produced from feeling outside yourself, not totally present. The figures inhabit a framework of mundane and outmoded architectures and hallucinatory, alien relationships to one another. Illusion in painting becomes a virtual reality unto its own as a window into a distorted environment that has the capacity to surprise a viewer with how easily they can lose sense of their body in relation to the image. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
<\/p>\r\n","caption":"Oil on panel, 4.5\u2019 x 7\u2019, 2021","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2842"},{"id":"2802","media":{"bundle":"image","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/st21-alex-bauer-welcome.jpg?itok=lMJ9N_1a","dimensions":{"width":888,"height":556},"filemime":"image\/jpeg","alt":"Alexander Bauer - Welcome to the Stage...","thumbnail":{"alt":"","src":"https:\/\/smfa.tufts.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/carousel_thumbnail\/public\/st21-alex-bauer-welcome.jpg?h=f35bb6ae&itok=sPUsxeyK","dimensions":{"width":390,"height":320},"filemime":"image\/jpeg"}},"artist_name":"Alexander Bauer, BFA '21","art_work_name":"Welcome to the Stage...","art_work_description":"","artist_statement":"
Biography<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Alexander Bauer is an artist from a small, rural hamlet in Upstate New York. Their work primarily takes the form of mixed media sculptures, often utilizing their ever-growing collection of found and secondhand materials, to playfully explore ideas related to gender, sexuality, and class. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Artist Statement<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Welcome to the Stage\u2026<\/em> is a series of five wall-hanging assemblages that examines socialized gender through the language of drag performance.  <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The work is made by \u201cpainting my face\u201d with dramatic makeup and then carefully transferring it onto fabric. The results resemble makeup wipes and serve as documentation of this performative process. Then, they are excessively adorned with jewelry, rhinestones, and other accessories that show the exaggerated materiality of drag. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Each piece is given a drag name based on its personality: Helena Cell (hell in a cell), Lucy Attitude (lose the attitude), Mel O\u2019Drama (melodrama), Minnie Van Driver (minivan driver), April Showers (bring May flowers). These titles employ the humor and wordplay that is common in the names of drag performers. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
The work is installed with color-changing lights to reference nightclubs and continuously alter the viewer\u2019s perception of the work. This expresses the constant shifting of gender identity based on context and the presence\/absence of an audience. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
By exaggerating the body and traditional gender signifiers, drag performers reveal the absurdity of gender and begin deconstructing its seemingly-fixed boundaries. Drag creates a space of improvisation and play, inviting the viewer to join in imagining new ways of existing through glamour, camp, and fantasy. This shows that gender is nothing more than a performance, and we can have a choice in the characters we portray. <\/p>\r\n","caption":"Makeup transfers on fabric with jewelry, rhinestones, false lashes, flood lights, 2021 ","program":[],"area_of_study":[],"profile_link":"\/node\/2803"}]

Senior Thesis Virtual Exhibition 2021

Artists