Ice Cream Social - EWU Art BFA Exhibition

AIMEE CROTEAU BENJAMIN GIACHETTI CRYSTAL

HARTYILENE HAYATSU TRAVIS KNICKERBOCKER

ELYSE SAWYER AIMEE CROTEAU BENJAMIN

HALEY MAGGIE HARTYILENE HAYATSU TRAVIS

YSSA PRESTON ELYSE SAWYER AIMEE CROTEAU

HAGAR JAIDEN HALEY MAGGIE HARTYILENE

OH JUN SOO ALYSSA PRESTON ELYSE SAWYER

ACHETTI CRYSTAL HAGAR JAIDEN HALEY

KNICKERBOCKER OH JUN SOO ALYSSA PRESTON

BENJAMIN GIACHETTI CRYSTAL HAGAR JAIDEN

YATSU TRAVIS KNICKERBOCKER OH JUN

AIMEE CROTEAU BENJAMIN GIACHETTI CRYSTAL

HARTYILENE HAYATSU TRAVIS KNICKERBOCKER

ELYSE SAWYER AIMEE CROTEAU BENJAMIN

HALEY MAGGIE HARTYILENE HAYATSU TRAVIS

YSSA PRESTON ELYSE SAWYER AIMEE CROTEAU

HAGAR JAIDEN HALEY MAGGIE HARTYILENE

OH JUN SOO ALYSSA PRESTON ELYSE SAWYER

ACHETTI CRYSTAL HAGAR JAIDEN HALEY

KNICKERBOCKER OH JUN SOO ALYSSA PRESTON

BENJAMIN GIACHETTI CRYSTAL HAGAR JAIDEN

BFA Senior Exhibition

Ice Cream Social 2021

Eastern Washington University Art Gallery

May 20th - June 4th

Participating Artists:

Aimee Croteau • Benjamin Giachetti

Crystal Hagar

• Jaiden Haley

Ilene Hayatsu

Oh Jun Soo

• Maggie Harty

• Travis Knickerbocker

• Alyssa Preston

• Elyse Sawyer

Special Thanks to the 2020/2021 Art Department Faculty:

Tom Askman

Nancy Hathaway

• Margot Casstevens

• Josh Hobson

Roger Ralston

• Greg duMonthier

• Jenny Hyde

• Roy Sonnema

• Catherine Girard

• Elisa Nappa

• Chris Tyllia

• Jodi Patterson

Aimee Croteau

A key influence that has shaped my thesis and artwork is my love of the local landscape. The Pacific Northwest is where I grew up, and it pains me to see such a beautiful geographical area littered with plastic containers and greasy food wrappers. After witnessing countless blemishes like these on the landscape, I felt inspired to create a body of work that would bring attention to our own carelessness. I chose to combine found garbage and repurposed objects with representations of endangered plant life to physically remove some of these blemishes from the landscape while also creating a connection between overconsumption and detriment to the land. My combined use of both industrial and natural materials further informs the connection between humans and our impact on the landscape. I am motivated by art’s ability to inspire change in those who view it as well as its ability to bring attention to specific and important issues within society. By creating this series, I hope to instill a pause in the gaze of the viewer so that they might consider their own consumption and disposal habits, how these habits harm the landscape, and what they can do as an individual to help mitigate the litter problem.

(L) Plight of Industry I Duct tape, garbage, spray paint, and dirt

(R) Christ’s Indian Paintbrush Charcoal, pastel pencil, and colored pencil

(L)

Frigid Shooting Star Charcoal, pastel pencil, and colored pencil

2021

2021

Water Howellia Charcoal, pastel pencil, and colored pencil

2021

(R) Plight of Industry II Duct tape, garbage, spray paint, and dirt

“My combined use of both industrial and natural materials further informs the connection between humans and our impact on the landscape.”

Benjamin Giachetti

Artmaking is like a journey towards a different world at this point in my life while keeping the childhood dream of finding another reality. Like art, music puts me in a settled state, but it’s also a way to move towards a world that I can see marks for itself and to share with others. I’ve been intrigued with visuals that depict what can be natural but would be beyond our perception of reality - meaning that there has to be something that can open towards other possibilities of looking at my surroundings or an object. Abstract art can be a way to discover a part of yourself that cannot be easily found, but it can manifest itself through the work. The process of creating the abstract can feel like child’s play: the idea of having something that can’t grow old, or can never change.

The experience of just working with art or just watching the work manifest its surprises was enthralling and engaging to see all the materials come together. Using acrylics tends to stand out with their bold colors that I have learned to not blend when they’re on the canvas, and it opened to more possibilities to apply other substances to the paint. Recently I’ve been engaged with the study of fluid paint introducing an element of randomness and chaos to my approach. Aside from just painting, I’ve been engaged with how the use of digital resources like Adobe photoshop benefits my practice even further - bends more of what was seen by transforming the images taken into what can’t be seen in our world; the Waterworks series are montaged-photographs that are reminiscent to the fluid poor techniques I used in some of my paintings, constructing them using Adobe Photoshop for cutting and blending the images into which way I see fit.

“Abstract art can be a way to discover a part of yourself that cannot be easily found, but it can manifest itself through the work.”

Untitled Acrylic, gesso, dish soap, rubbing alcohol

2021

An Amorphous View Acrylic and dish soap on canvas

2021

Crystal Hagar

Fear and Faith

My work revolves around image making as well as the manipulation and obstruction of images through various methods. It is an ongoing exploration and play that involves pushing past the traditional definition of what a photograph is, and what it means to take part in such an action. I bring in elements outside of the traditional photographic practice and combine them with photographic prints as a way to create imagery that is iconoclastic on a technical, historical, and personal level.

In Fear and Faith I’ve used my own images as well as appropriated images of Modernist style photographers such as Edward Weston, Walker Evans, and Alfred Stieglitz, combined with various painting techniques eventually developing into an Abstract Expressionist approach, to convey an iconoclastic breaking away of beliefs. This refers to both traditional photographic and artistic beliefs as well as an internal conflict with myself and my ability to stray from my perfectionist state of mind. After feeling I had confined myself to a set of technical and aesthetic rules that I had adopted almost exclusively from Modernist photographers’ photographs, I became inspired by the idea of obstructing these images and began combining these two opposite ways of creation by painting over them. After my initial experimentation with works involving my own photographs such as those seen in the Genesis and Evolution prints, I became highly inspired by the Abstract Expressionist movement because it jumped out as the exact opposite of this highly mechanical way of creating, I was still subconsciously clinging to. Then came the Rebirth prints where I began to use the appropriated images and move away from the more mechanical brush strokes. An additional aspect incorporated into this work is the process of scanning, reprinting, and repainting the images. This process brings them further away from the original source, symbolizing moving further away from the technical aspects of the original photographs. Meanwhile, the “real” paint strokes remain nearly indistinguishable from the printed ones. These works are not made as a defacement of the original images or an attack on their creators, but rather as a way to symbolize an evolution of the photographic medium, art in general, and freeing myself of my creative constraints. (L) Evolution (3)

Acrylic on archival pigment print 2021 (R) Rebirth (Stieglitz) Acrylic on archival pigment print

“These works are not made as a defacement of the original images or an attack on their creators, but rather as a way to symbolize an evolution of the photographic medium, art in general, and freeing myself of my creative constraints.“

Jaiden Haley

Reality Feels the Same No Matter Where You Live

My initial spark of inspiration for this series of multimedia paintings came from a collection of a few thousand photos I found on an old memory card that dated from about 2000-2005, when I was a very small child. Some of these photographs were scanned from film and others were early digital images. Many of the places and people in these photographs were very familiar to me and gave me quite a sense of nostalgia and allowed me to reminisce quite happily on the past. I decided I wanted to immortalize these memories and feelings in paintings that focused on small events I remembered from my childhood that have stuck with me as fairly vivid memories as I’ve gotten older. Each of these paintings also contains a clown character who acts as a placeholder to embody actions or events of the memories. When I first created this character, I was incredibly reluctant to assign a name or a gender because I want the clown to be as open as possible to outside interpretation. I want the character to be a blank slate for people to input their own personalization and meaning. I landed on the clown’s design after watching a short, animated clip from an old Betty Boop cartoon where the animators had rotoscoped a ghostly clown to Cab Calloway’s own dance moves while performing his song “St. James Infirmary Blues.”

A key feature of this series of works is my combination of two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. My sculptural elements give these paintings an extra layer for both confusion and depth of meaning. I started small, with a bit of embroidery (the ladybugs in Sticky Ladybug Analysis) and worked my way up the ladder of assemblage complexity through wire structures and picture frames until my latest piece where I’ve made a completely three-dimensional replica of my clown figure that sits on a shelf

Seating Arrangement

Acrylic paint, wire, and tracing paper 2020

A House Remembered, More or Less, Correctly

Acrylic paint, paper mache, cardboard, wire, polymer clay, and fabric

2021

A House Remembered, More or Less, Correctly(Detail)

Acrylic paint, paper mache, cardboard, wire, polymer clay, and fabric

2021

attached to the canvas. I believe that the three-dimensional replication of physical objects as well as the addition of more subtle sculptural forms enhances the tactile representation of these memories. A few of the artworks in this series utilize battery powered string lights that have been woven through the canvas. I used these lights to create an intimate and cozy sensation that presents the canvases to the viewer as small windows into a separate reality - small windows into the idea of memory. Many of the works in this series represent very specific memories I’ve held for quite a while and considering the intense unreliability of most childhood memories, creating these works has given me a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the accuracy with which I remember my own childhood.

(L)

Jump!

Acrylic paint, picture frame, and LED lights

2020

(R)

Sticky Ladybug Analysis

Acrylic paint and embroidery

2020

“...the three-dimensional replication of physical objects as well as the addition of more subtle sculptural forms enhances the tactile representation of these memories.”

Maggie Harty

As an artist my intersecting identities play a huge role in the work I create. So often people who are categorized as ‘other’ are made to feel that they don’t deserve to be represented, whether that be in art, television, advertisement, etc. My work explores the overlooked beauty of the fat, queer experience and what it means to exist in a body that society tells you is not worthy. In being so systematically excluded, you begin to crave that representation. My work is providing that, it functions as a mirror for others that have shared experiences to see themselves in the forms I depict. Each piece of art I create becomes an act of radical self-love. The abstracted lines of my prints morph into classical landscapes, the body becomes something sublime, worthy of being depicted in art. Fat bodies are beautiful, they are sexy and not in spite of being fat. MY work challenges this idea that a person can only be ‘pretty hot for a fat person,’ and not just attractive in their own right, because of their body. My art encourages the viewer to look from multiple perspectives to gain a larger understanding of the work. In my printmaking this often manifests in small, delicate details that can only be seen up close, paired with a larger motif only seen from a distance. I work primarily with ceramic and printmaking processes. My ceramic work is often wheel thrown, functional ware. The process of centering, pulling walls, trimming, and glazing is a meditation. I love the process of making, of covering my hands in clay and putting my entire body into making a piece of art that someone else can then use in their everyday life. This connection is what draws me to ceramics, I love knowing that people are using the objects I make, that in some way I have become a permanent fixture in someone’s life. Process is what also draws me to printmaking, the act of carving an image into a printing plate is cathartic, as if I am literally carving a place for myself in art and history.

Place Settings:

Place Settings is an installation of dishware representative of important people in life. Each person has been set a place at the table, they are given a plate, bowl, and cup. As a ceramic artist I see a deep connection between the work that my hands do to make pieces and the hands that hold them as they are used. There is a warmth knowing that I have held and molded a mug that someone will then mold their hands around every morning as they drink their coffee. It becomes a form of intimacy, that is what Place Settings is exploring, the relationships formed through functional art. Along with the intimacy formed with the user of the object, the pieces themselves are set in an intimate space. A family dinner, something so intrinsic to the connections we form with the people we love. The piece becomes a redefining of what family means, that it doesn’t have to be blood, but the people you meet along the way.

Body Study

Body Study, a print installation made up of over 300 drypoint prints (measuring 4” x 5” each), explores the form of the fat body through small, abstracted views. The miniature size of the individual prints encourages the viewer to engage in moments of intimate looking as well as to step back and gain an understanding of a larger perspective, to experience the body in multiple ways. When seen as a whole, Body Study presents a fragmented view of a form, each print a small nook or cranny of a body. The prints, when seen separately, lose their connection to the body as a whole and stand on their own as landscapes. The installation as a whole overwhelms the viewers, 12’x 6’ it towers over the viewer and fills their entire field of vision.

(L)

Body Study

intaglio ink, archival paper

2021 (R)

A Seat at the Table (Installation View found furniture, stoneware, glaze

2021

“The miniature size of the individual prints encourages the viewer to engage in moments of intimate looking as well as to step back and gain an understanding of a larger perspective, to experience the body in multiple ways.”

Ilene Hayatsu

shifting tides

This series of ink drawings depict my abstracted memories and views of the changing Seattle landscape. Structures of my childhood that I thought I would always remember become hard to recall as they are destroyed. I passively watch the scenery change forms and go with the flow of waves to prevent myself from becoming seasick, but in doing so I become homesick in my own birthplace.

Water is pliable and willing to accept change; however, time manipulates the water and forces it to change. As I draw the city the way I remember it, flowing strokes of ink become dried out over time. One day in a distant future, time and light will erase every trace of ink until the paper becomes white again.

“One day in a distant future, time and light will erase every trace of ink until the paper becomes white again.”

Travis Knickerbocker

My work is the culmination of experiments and processes that result in metaphors about the brain and the different diseases that have taken my loved ones. I use aluminum specifically to reference the buildup of amyloid plaques on neurons that results in Alzheimer’s disease and the carcinogen, BPA in the receipt paper to reference leukemia. I like to think of my work as a memorial for them, and a healthy way to process loss for me.

(L)

Tangle Formation 22

Thread and Aluminum Intaglio on Stonehenge

2021

(R)

Untitled (view 1)

Aluminum blinds

2021

Stage 4

Thread and heat-exposed receipt paper

2021

“My work is the culmination of experiments and processes that result in metaphors about the brain and the different diseases that have taken my loved ones.”

(L)

Untitled (view 2) Aluminum blinds 2021

(R) Remission Thread and heat-exposed receipt paper 2021

Chemo Thread and heat-exposed receipt paper 2021

Oh Jun Soo

I create three dimensional work. My current artistic practice is rooted in ready-made and deeply inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s approaches to the world. I find real life objects and rebuild and give them different functionality but not functional for its own purposes. I manipulate ideas of handmade and craftsmanship from Tom Sachs’s process. I use materials around my studio and create the work. My work doesn’t heavily rely on the meaning of the materials that I choose as long as it delivers the general concepts of mine.

The series “Thrills” delivers a message that I experience from the artistic practice that I am currently practicing. The series contains four pieces, a parachute, a diving board, a life-vest, and a harness. These objects contain different types of pre/post falling actions. I focus on the meaning of actions and manipulate the idea and have them represent the concepts of mine.

The independent work, Real Fresh, is my exploration of a question, “what is fine art?” This work represents a wet paint sign made of styrofoam and duct tapes. In my art practice, fine art doesn’t provide functionalities. This work is questioning myself how I can manipulate functionalities and purposes. It gives the original functionality by its existence. In my previous series, Thrills, I rebuilt ready-made products, removed their original functionalities and gave them different purposes of their existence.

(L) Float drop cloth, duct tape, rope, plastic 2021 (R) Dangle drop cloth, duct tape, metal, cardboard

“I find real life objects and rebuild and give them different functionality but not functional for its own purposes.”

Alyssa Preston

Through my work I focus on expressing moments and relationships that have shaped my life dramatically as well as the unexpectedness that comes with it. Specifically, at the moment my biggest influence in my life has been my two-year-old son. I strive to show our relationship and how it has impacted me becoming a young mom who got pregnant on an IUD, which has been one main event that has taught me that life is unexpected. Through my work I focus on allowing my son to become an influence by either having him be a part of the process or by using his drawings. In my latest body of work, I do this by having him step on the paper creating wrinkles. This allows me to take control of my situation better and show our relationship in a non-representational way, with my own perspective and take on it. I do this by using different materials and representations that are typically more intricate in their application than that of my sons. Overall, I hope to accomplish showing the relationship of mother and son while still keeping a sense of my own identity, as can be challenging when life and inspiration are based around the same thing.

“Through my work I focus on allowing my son to become an influence by either having him be a part of the process or by using his drawings. In my latest body of work, I do this by having him step on the paper creating wrinkles. This allows me to take control of my situation better and show our relationship in a non-representational way...”

Elyse Sawyer

I make art to expand my reality. It allows me to walk outside of myself and see things from a different perspective. The moment a pencil is in my hands I start to dig into the different parts of my brain, parts I normally would not explore if it weren’t for the discovery of art in my life. Most of my work has to do with the many things that we as humans have to endure, such as loss. The reason why I am so attached to this style of work is because I have always been the type of person to feel so greatly. I cannot remember a single day that I was not writing or thinking about what made me upset or how I perceived someone’s opinion about something I did. I have since applied this to my work as I believe it allows me to better express myself and grow as a person and artist.

I remember one of the first paintings I saw as a young child was The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso. It was a painting of a depressed looking man; the artist chose to work with a dark monochromatic blue that filled every corner of the work. The man appeared to be alone, possibly sitting in a room, there was nothing but darkness that overwhelmed him. This painting left an emotional impact on me. It allowed me to see a side of art that I had only yet been exposed to. From this point on I really dove into what that meant for my artwork. I wanted to be able to show the parts of me that I would not normally be able to because I believed that our society frowned upon it. I learned overtime that being vulnerable really allowed me to be comfortable in my relationship with art, not only that but having other artists and viewers relate to what it is I create and go through as a human.

(L)

Cigarette Bra

Acrylic paint, cardstock, cardboard 2021

(R)

Art Bra

Cardboard, dried acrylic paint, stained glass 2021

My preferred medium to work with is cardboard. I like its undemanding behavior and never-ending possibilities. The fact that I can create possibly anything with a piece of cardboard is what I enjoy most about it. It cuts easily with a boxcutter and works great as a base or starting point for any project. My projects nearly always start the same. As stated before, I am a human being that overthinks. I feel everything very strongly, I cannot let things go. Therefore, memories play such a big part in my work. I usually start a project off by picking out different parts of my life that have made an impact on me and start thinking up of stories that someone might have, and I let my imagination run wild. This allows me to feel like a kid again and I enjoy that most of all.

I personally believe that life comes with all kinds of different obstacles, some that we do not feel strong enough for, and that is okay. I think it is important to take time to find closure with those parts of our life, and in this case is why I make art, as a means of expanding my reality.

2021

“

I wanted to be able to show the parts of me that I would not normally be able to because I believed that our society frowned upon it. I learned overtime that being vulnerable really allowed me to be comfortable in my relationship with art, not only that but having other artists and viewers relate to what it is I create and go through as a human.”

L) Mushroom Bra Acrylic paint, cardboard, fabric, polymer clay

2021

Breast (1) Ink on watercolor paper

2021

Egg Bra Acrylic paint, cardboard, fabric

2021

(R) Pink Bra Acrylic paint, cardboard, wooden circles, resin stars