Date of Award

5-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art

Department

Art

First Reader/Committee Chair

Katherine Gray

Abstract

Artist Statement:

“One of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the [viewer] in uncertainty.”

-Sigmeund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny’”

I’m interested in making people uncomfortable. Through the exploration of the uncanny, I exploit the unexpected and the psychological to embrace personal reactions. Like conversations we have with ourselves in the mirror, there’s an uncomfortable nature in looking beyond surface value. Utilizing beauty as a strategy and the laws of attraction, my work intends to entice a visual response only to be met with ambivalence. I try to establish a state of uncertain worlds, partial and personal, systematic and instinctual, residing in physical spaces and emotional responses leaving the viewer with a sense of familiar unease.

Thesis Exhibition Statement:

Philosopher Descartes believed in only two kinds of substance: material body, which is defined by extension, and mental substance, which is defined by thought. Although the title of the exhibition would lead one to believe there is a focus on the objects, it is intended to highlight absence and uneasiness through the use of clear glass, by focusing through them.

Extended Substance focuses on the inversion of matter and space and our wistful awareness of temporality through the use of clear glass. Having experienced Covid for herself this past summer, the artist was left with residual lagging memory affects and some areas of her brain that for lack of a better explanation felt lost if not gone. The work within this show is a response to tension and loss, and also to acceptance and affirmation. This exhibition is an exploration into residue, absence, uncomfortability and tension; heightening the viewers perception of impermanence through the materiality of the objects.

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