2022 MFA Thesis Catalogue | Boston University School of Visual Arts

Boston University

Graphic Design Painting Sculpture

School of Visual Arts MFA 2022

Contents

BU MFA 2022 Director’s Statement PP. 4–5 Graphic Design PP. 6–79 Painting PP. 81–145 Sculpture PP. 147–155

Director’s Statement It is my pleasure and honor to introduce the Boston University School of Visual Arts 2022 Master of Fine Arts thesis catalog, featuring work by students in the MFA Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Design programs.

This year, for the first time since Spring 2019, we invited an outside audience to campus to see thesis work in person. The Stone Gallery, having been renovated in 2020, came alive as a new site for conversation and for gathering for the school. Work from private studios became public, and we welcomed an audience of SVA alumni, leaders and members of the BU community, students from other graduate programs, gallerists, art enthusiasts, and many professionals in the field. We joyfully celebrated with students’ family members, friends, past classmates, and the SVA community.

Work in this catalog and on view in the Stone Gallery is made to be engaged with by viewers. It asks us to linger, look, read, and become aware of how things can and do change. Work in the MFA Painting and Sculpture exhibition seemed to toggle between or exist in two states at once, with forms slipping between wall and floor, or between paper and persona. Paintings suggested presence and absence: still life objects blurred into fields that shifted color as one looked, and text on the surface became gradually legible; fading snapshots were memorialized through painting; clouds and clocks pointed to sorrow and loss. Shapes transformed between reading as bodies or abstract forms, and the shift between abstraction and embodiment was echoed in welded sculpture that seemed to become sentient, emitting sounds from within, or by wooden forms read initially as formalist sculptures that turned out to be containers of hidden portraits.

The MFA Graphic Design exhibition centered on the gallery as worksite and pointed to the role of the gallery as a space of activity, change, and inquiry. The exhibition text notes, “This space becomes a location to invoke questions—about design's relationship with reimagined book forms and distribution channels, social media, the metaverse, cultural identity, aesthetic style, memory, talismans, abstraction, material culture, experimental typography and form-making, tools, pedagogy, limitations,

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failure, wellness, mental health, and much more.” The Graphic Design students built scaffolding for the display of their work, creating a second site for exhibition within the formal framework of the gallery. These constructions made the whole space feel as if it was in shift from one space or use to another—calling our attention to the constancy of change and the role of iteration in design. The engagement of audience through a range of formats also echoed key themes of Graphic Design’s Multiple Formats Art Book Symposium hosted in 2022, which, like this exhibition, focused on the role of creative networks and community.

Across both thesis shows, the viewer was made aware of invisible forces—of time, politics, and social or cultural structures, themes expanded upon through the statements in this book. The labor to create this catalog and the thesis website, posters, and signage was enormous. Thank you to Christopher Sleboda and MFA Graphic Design students Chen Luo, Chuck Gonzales, Reshma Vijayan, and Jaylen Wang for your wonderful work. The work in this catalog represents two years of studio work and intensive artistic mentorship by members of the SVA faculty. On behalf of SVA, I sincerely thank MFA program Chairs and ad interim Chairs— professors Halvorson, Kim, Snyder, Coogan, and Sleboda along with Director of Graduate Studies Nick Rock for their graduate leadership roles.

I am grateful to professors Field, Grady, Ort-Dinoor, Yang, Lim, Howey, James, O’Donnell, Ryan, and Schepens for their mentorship. Thank you to Dean Harvey Young for his steady leadership and vision, and Boston University Art Galleries Managing Director Lissa Cramer for her collaboration and commitment to preparing our students professionally. I am grateful to the SVA staff who helped make the thesis process run smoothly, particularly Technical Associates Gus Wheeler, Josh Brennan, and Brandon Cohen working with Operations Manager Logen Zimmerman and the SVA office staff, Julianna Augustine, Jessica Caccamo, and Beth Zerega. Together we sincerely congratulate the MFA Class of 2022!

Dana Clancy Director, School of Visual Arts

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Frame/Work/Site

April 13–29, 2022

Graphic Design Graphic design is a frame for content and ideas. It is a focused lens with a clearly articulated point of view; as a device and approach to content, graphic design determines what is made visible, shared, presented, and communicated. The design methodologies developed in the MFA Graphic Design program at Boston University shape meaning, produce knowledge, and consider the act of framing as a critical tool.

Graphic design is a framework. As an essential supporting apparatus that makes communication accessible and engaging, graphic design occurs across a myriad of everchanging platforms and mediums. From print to screen to immersive physical installations and augmented reality, from the time-tested formats of the past to the innovative technological platforms of tomorrow, evidence of graphic design’s presence is pervasive.

Graphic design is work. The practice of design is a synthesis of conceptual thinking and invention combined with physical labor and craft to achieve a specific desired outcome. Designers labor, spending countless hours on iterations, revisions, consultations, and refinements, sometimes taking a project completely apart and starting over. The work is not solitary but is a response to—and collaboration with—a range of stakeholders, always with an audience in mind. This exhibition is work: a collaboration and collective effort of a remarkable group of designers from China, the Dominican Republic, India, Palestine, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. It presents original work by eighteen individuals, brought together through a unified expression and concept.

This talented cohort reframed each piece of work in this exhibition for this site, this precise space and time.

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This exhibition is a worksite. The gallery becomes a place of activity, where work is produced and presented. Graphic design in this context is both made visible and displayed, providing a glimpse into the larger bodies of work each designer generated over the last two years. Each designer embarked on a course of shared and individual study: identifying and refining visual and critical approaches to graphic design production, research, and inquiry. They’ve shared knowledge, theorized, prototyped, and supported each other, providing advice, insight, and inspiration.

And it is here on this site, in a gallery inflected by nods to the conventions of construction worksites, that the public can engage with new directions in contemporary graphic design. This space becomes a location to invoke questions—about design’s relationship with reimagined book forms and distribution channels, social media, the metaverse, cultural identity, aesthetic style, memory, talismans, abstraction, material culture, experimental typography and form-making, tools, pedagogy, limitations, failure, wellness, mental health, and much more. The collection of thesis work shared in this exhibition demonstrates engagement across disciplines and diverse areas of practice and promises to be a foundation for sustained professional practice.

Kristen Coogan Associate Professor of Art, Graphic Design Christopher Sleboda Associate Professor of Art, Graphic Design

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reginaacra.com

@regisletters

Regina Acra My thesis defines design as both a systematic and emotional process.

Through my interest in both the analytical and the intuitive, I came up with a multimodal methodology where both are given space to interact holistically. As a result, my methodology gives importance to both the input and the output of the design process, where sensory perception and visceral ideas meet analytical processes. I’ve defined a series of interchangeable building blocks that work together synergistically to produce work that promotes connection through storytelling.

I seek to re-contextualize the role of emotion as it pertains to design. Instead of limiting its role as a purely visual component, I’ve broken down its multiple facets and infused it into all steps of my process. By giving importance to perception in the beginning stages, whether sensory, intuitively, or through introspection, invisible aspects of emotion and the essence of wonder remain as impressions throughout my body of work.

Graphic Design

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Abstract Bouquet, 2021. Vellum booklet, 5 ½ × 8 ½ in.

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BU MFA 2022

Image Essay, 2021. Mixed prints, dimensions variable.

Emotions + Semiotics, 2021. Saddle stitch book, 5 ½ × 8 ½ in.

Graphic Design

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Vision, 2021. Posters, 11 x 17 in.

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BU MFA 2022

bellabennett.design

@bellabennett.design

Bella Bennett Hybrid Library emerges from an interest in materiality and making in multiples. Digitizing design work with a flatbed scanner integrated the conversion between physical and digital forms into my working process.

It was a necessary outcome of a year of hybrid schooling where documentation and online presentation of work took precedence over an original copy. As the practical function of digitization became less urgent, I carried on scanning self-generated work page-by-page. The process relates to a translatory mode of activity; in literary criticism, translation can be understood as the creation of a different text. My acts of formal translation from print to digital have varying degrees of authorship in the visible and invisible choices made during production. By publishing hybrid documents to a virtual archive where the public can access analog and digital artifacts across many formats, my body of work seeks to establish materiality as a shifting variable.

Graphic Design

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BU MFA 2022

Scary Island, 2021. Perfect bound book, cover detail, 32 pg., 5 x 6 ¼ in.

Drumlin, 2022. Laser-etched acrylic book, page detail, 8 pg., 5 x 6 ¾ in.

Graphic Design

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Extreme Scale, 2021. Saddle stitch book, interior spread, 36 pg., 3 ¾ × 5 ½ in.

Extreme Scale, 2021. Saddle stitch book, cover detail, 36 pg., 3 ¾ × 5 ½ in.

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BU MFA 2022

treasa-benny.com

@treee_beee

Treasa Benny The Complexities of a Multicultural Chameleon I’ve always dreaded answering the question “Where are you from?”

Does it imply where I was born? Or where I grew up? Because the answer to the aforementioned, are two different places.

I’m what’s labeled as an N.R.I, a Non-Resident Indian. I was born in Kerala, India, but I spent my formative years in Dubai, UAE. I hold an Indian passport which makes me an Indian citizen, but I also hold a Residence Visa which makes me a resident of the UAE. “Home” is neither a specific location on a map nor is it tied to any location-based identity. I identify with a combination of both cultures that helped shape my current worldview.

To me, “home” is a multitude of things. By encapsulating pivotal memories and micro experiences through visual forms, my thesis plans to create a microcosm that speaks to an audience of various backgrounds.

My thesis outlines my story from the outside looking in—about the complexities and nuances of identity through labels and subcategories.

Having been defined by a “label,” my work aims at narrating personal experiences in theory and practice exploring visual forms using design as both a tool and a guide.

Graphic Design

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Receptive Bilingualism, 2021. Vellum print, 23 ½ × 36 in.

Colloquialisms (Indian English), 2021.

Print publication, 3 x 4 ¼ in.

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BU MFA 2022

The Failed Project, 2022. Vellum print publication, 7 ¾ × 12 in.

Graphic Design

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Traditional Cats, 2021. Illustration print, 5 x 7 in.

The N.R.I Microcosm, 2021. Print publication, cover, 8 ½ × 11 in.

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BU MFA 2022

dcolaceportfolio.cargo.site

@domenico_colace_1

Domenico Colace Most design work nowadays follows cookie-cutter design trends that make almost all new work look very similar. This resulted from a shift away from one’s individual inspiration towards the Western school of thought.

Initially my thesis exploration began with looking inwards and toward our past for inspiration by looking at each of our individual cultures for its rich design history. From there I further developed my thoughts into a local setting, or one’s hometown. I then developed that idea further to the dialectic level. Dialect in language is easy to understand in the respect that it reflects the certain way people say things or the specific words they use that are exclusive to their regions or areas. I define dialect in design to be the little details and nuances found within work whether it be the way someone uses the same colors in all their pieces, or the fact that one letterform has a weird serif, or when a shape is used or manipulated in a way that is unique to the piece.

Now understanding what I was looking for, I decided that my thesis would focus on these dialectic designs. To better bring attention to them and to pull them out into the focal point of viewers, I will examine different graphics or works and pick out interesting dialects in them. The idea is to take something that everyone is familiar with and to turn it into something abstract and unrecognizable, but to still have that feeling of familiarity to them. I want the viewer to experience this feeling of knowing, but not knowing what they’re looking at and for them to take with them the thought of “why do I know what that is?” or “where have I seen that before?”

Graphic Design

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A Life’s Journey, 2022. Layer print on Angelica, 17 x 17 in.

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BU MFA 2022

Beantown, 2022. Risograph print, 11 x 17 in.

Extreme Scale, 2021. Perfect bound printed books, 17 x 11 in.

Graphic Design

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Tickets to the Six States, 2022. Monoprint on muslin, 16 x 9 in.

Following Process, 2020. Poster, 24 x 36 in.

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BU MFA 2022

crystalcleardesign.art

@crystalcleardesign_

Crystal Du De-camp, Re-camp, De-lamp, Re-lamp From my deep desire for beauty and curiosity for idiosyncrasy, I discovered my thesis out of the mundane in life. I started questioning the definition of beauty because of an object: my lamp, which represents the uncommon, kitsch, camp, and low culture. Being educated under western design pedagogy, I forgot how to design for sensibilities outside of the mainstream.

My thesis allows me to deconstruct the notion of camp analytically and gives me the opportunity to express and exhibit camp through my own visual language. My lamp serves as a vessel to help me and an audience understand the larger sensibility of the camp aesthetic. From a micro level, I deconstructed both the form of the lamp and the connotations behind it. As a result, I came to understand the essence of camp: being proud of being something that it is not, celebrating theatricality and artifice. From a macro level, I looked into the low culture scene, the socioeconomic differences between camp audiences, and the time and place for camp—all aspects that frame the aesthetic’s qualities. Hence, the lamp is the signifier of my thesis, and camp is the signified. My thesis embodies the methodology of deconstruction and reconstruction and stream of consciousness making. Intuitive making allows me to discover my natural aesthetic sense and embrace the strangeness and loudness of my subconscious.

Graphic Design

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Kitsch Lover, 2021. Mixed media, Risograph print and laser-cut plexiglass, 12 x 12 in. each.

Cheesy “Book”, 2021. Printed on paper, 11 x 120 in.

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BU MFA 2022

Decamp, Delamp, 2022. Mixed media, Risograph prints and video projection installation.

Drop the Ball, 2021. Mixed media, laser-cut plexiglass and print.

Graphic Design

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A Type Specimen Book: Lamp Display, 2022. Printed on paper, saddle stitch binding, 4 ¼ × 11 in.

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BU MFA 2022

chuckgon.com

@chuck.gon

Chuck Gonzales Pro Forma Pro Forma is counter-reactive to the colonial mindset that I harbored while living in Manila for thirty years. As a thesis, it investigates the intersection of my design education and my background. It seeks to challenge the rigidity of Eurocentric design systems by importing and exporting my Filipino upbringing and experience into my practice. Pro Forma is the genesis of an ongoing process to unlearn my proclivity for Western design models by reconnecting with personal histories and Philippine culture. In doing so, the nuances of my identity—my Filipino upbringing and my Western design education—co-exist in a singular visual space.

This body of work aims to share a specific viewpoint by examining Filipino visual tendencies, vernacular, and even the humor evident in written and verbal communication. It utilizes a methodology steered by a self-expressive and intuitive approach to form-making, subsequently generating distinct, reflective, and personal outcomes. Pro Forma is an initial invoice—a summary of imported resources and exported deliverables that I have thus far collected, assembled, and authorized to this end.

Graphic Design

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Great Start, Fantastic Finish, 2022. Spiral-bound, 54pp., 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.

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BU MFA 2022

SIGMA, 2022. Scanned poster, 11 x 17 in.

Chicken Relleno, 2022. Scanned poster, 11 x 17 in.

Graphic Design

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Ten Seconds, 2022. Scanned poster, 11 x 17 in.

Hoops!, 2022. Scanned poster, 11 x 17 in.

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BU MFA 2022

oliverhua.com

@oliverhua_madeit

Oliver Hua How Much Is It? How much is it? This is one of the most common words in people’s lives.

Every person or every item seems to be labeled. From bartering in ancient times to using money to make transactions nowadays. My thesis will explore some future possibilities in an abstract way.

Value is a relative word. Value is different for every person and every item. Value will be different in the future as well. Value will be what people think it is worth, or what people are willing to pay for it. It will be determined by the market, supply and demand, and other factors like how much you need that thing or service. The word “value” is used in many different contexts. It can be the worth of a person, an object, or something that has been created. People often say that they don’t know what the future will bring. However, if we can enjoy the process of exploring our value, then we will be able to enjoy the process of going to the future. The future is filled with possibilities and opportunities.

Graphic Design

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Welcome Back to the Future, 2022. Digital, 3480 x 2160 px.

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BU MFA 2022

Unlimited Shapes, 2022. Digital, 3480 x 2160 px.

Graphic Design

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The Process, 2022. Digital, 3480 x 2160 px.

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BU MFA 2022

rhealitydesigns.com

@rhealitydesigns_

Rhea Jauhar Hang On, Let Me Overthink This: Anxiety. Design. IDK. I have always thought my anxiety was just a hindrance to my life and work; recently, it was pointed out to me by my dear professor, Kristen Coogan, that some of my greatest work has been produced because my anxiety translated itself into a source of creativity. As designers, we strive to look at problems from many different perspectives in order to take all possible outcomes into account—in a way, we are constantly facing uncertainty; all that matters then, is how we can use our creative skills to help people navigate, cope with, and talk openly about anxiety.

My thesis explores the relationship between visual communication design and anxiety. Can we use design to reframe anxiety and give it a visual form and identity? While design is the craft of creating visual content that is meant to be seen, anxiety is a condition that is essentially invisible.

As a designer who struggles with anxiety, I plan to examine this relationship through a body of work formed by the practices of self-reflection, research, and experimentation. Hang On, Let Me Overthink This tells the story of my personal journey as a designer, and just a human being, with anxiety through a body of work developed over two years.

This body of work aims to raise awareness about anxiety and remove the associated stigma by telling my story using projects that strive to give anxiety an identity, create accessible educational resources and provide support for addressing anxiety with creative, design-based, solutions. My projects span various physical and digital mediums and explore situational anxiety with elements of play, nostalgia, and physical movement, all anchored by personal stories and experiences.

Graphic Design

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Anx Kit, 2022. Printed, fortune teller: 8 x 8 in., playlist roulette: 2 x 2 x 2 in., stickers: 3 x 3 in.

Anxietea Packaging, 2021. Printed sachets, 2 ½ × 3 in.

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BU MFA 2022

You Are The Filter, 2021. Printed, vinyl: 12 ½ × 12 ½ in., compact disc: 7 ½ × 7 ½ in., cassette: 2 ½ × 4 in.

Graphic Design

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Beyond Surface: Graphic Design Narratives, 2021. Printed book, 5 x 7 ½ in.

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BU MFA 2022

arjunkumar.design

@arjunkumar1108

Arjun Kumar Hello World

​​ "Hello World!" is usually the first program a programming student writes. It is a simple program: all it does is display the iconic line, “Hello World!” But writing a “Hello World!” program represents two very important things: a beginner-level fluency with the language, and a foot in the door to a world full of possibilities. “Hello World” has been a defining and regular milestone of my journey: I started off writing “Hello C” as an engineering undergraduate, and most recently wrote “Hello VR” as an MFA student.

“Hello World” represents my pursuit of fluency in the varying technologies and languages of visual communication. As a generalist, I shift fluidly between the fields of type, motion, mixed reality, print, and product design—the form I choose is in response to the design challenge at hand.

Throughout my design journey, I have embraced novel methods to create contemporary forms that are a response to our constantly changing landscape. I continue to remain attuned to the new fields to come in the future.

My background as an engineer has strongly informed my practice, in the way I structure my projects, organize my thoughts, and learn new tools and media. Hence, my thesis book is also structured in the way I used to code in C, one of the first programming languages I learned, while drawing a parallel to my design methodology. My “Hello World” thesis presents a framework for understanding and interpreting my journey towards learning many visual languages.

Graphic Design

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Anti-CAA Protest Tote Bags, 2020. Silk screen and cloth, 13 x 15 in.

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BU MFA 2022

The Pandemic, 2021. Digital, 1400 x 1190 px.

Adolph Gottlieb Publication, 2020. Newspaper print publication, 8 ¼ × 11 ¾ in.

Graphic Design

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The Forest of Enchantments Zine, 2020.

Print, 36 x 24 in.

Extreme Scale Motion Posters, 2021. Digital, 1650 x 2250 px.

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BU MFA 2022

amykunberger.cargo.site

Amy Kunberger opt/out As a culture, we have fallen into a series of traps laid by social media platforms designed to keep us engaged, mostly to sell advertising. We are addicted. People wishing to spread disinformation have taken advantage of these platforms, taken advantage of vulnerable scrollers, the under-educated, the unaware. It is our responsibility to use social media wisely. What that means for each person is different.

Through recontextualizing social media content, I explore social media addiction, how we use our phones to dissociate, and aim to regain wasted time. My work breaks down the effects social media use has on our brains and bodies into purer, more obvious forms; I use humor to uncover negative aspects of phone use, and I use craft to replace the dissociative behavior with making. I also explore ways to combat disinformation in my own life.

Many of my projects are printed in their final form, as a protest against the screens that have brought us to this place of dissociation, distraction, disinformation, and dysphoria. I hope my work can inspire others to focus more on what matters to them, choose truth over echoing outrage, and learn to use the internet in a healthy way. I also hope it will bring focus back to being present, making things, using our hands, and having real experiences with people we love; just for the sake of doing it and enjoying it.

Graphic Design

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50 Questions, 2021. Interior pages, 5 ½ × 7 in.

50 Questions, 2021. Book of digital collage on newsprint, 5 ½ × 7 in.

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BU MFA 2022

Inquiry Book, 2021. Hand bound book, 4 ½ × 5 ½ in.

Graphic Design

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In Praise of Slowness, 2021. 5 ½ × 9 in.

Analog, 2019. Charcoal, acrylic paint, colored pencil, pyrography, yarn, and embroidery, 4 x 6 in.

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BU MFA 2022

chenluodesign.net

@chenluo_101

Chen Luo ON/OFF/IN/BETWEEN: The Body in Graphic Design defamiliarizes normative body gestures with tangible graphic design. To facilitate unlearning habitual patterns, I utilize experimental tools—such as typography, materiality, and pedagogical workshops—to examine the boundaries between bodies and prints, activate text and space, and connect the individual to the communal.

In Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton writes: “Words originated as gestures of the body.” I think of typography as a site for exchange—from movements of the body, thought, and experience to type that is then distributed back to the body and mind. This multidirectional relationship has shifted to a singular norm. The ancient Greek sculptor Polykleitos and Le Corbusier’s Modulor schematic sought to standardize ideal average proportions for a human. The canon that emerged from their work institutionalizes the gestures that connect us with tangible objects. Anni Albers described a tactile sensibility: “It is so rare for us now ‘to handle materials, to test their consistency, their density, their lightness, their smoothness’ or ‘to make our implements.’ ” My thesis aims to evoke a defamiliarizing tactile experience with raw material. The study leads me to question: what if the body as a tool adds a Z-axis on the X and Y of graphic design? How do movement, language, and space as conditions shape performative text?

How can we further conversation from a ready-made design? How can we prolong the interconnection between the body and graphic design into an eco-cycle? What informs human bodies to move collectively and in an orderly fashion? Can I challenge the accumulative graphic design canon?

How can I form a community through graphic design?

My methodology starts with constraints and allows possibilities to happen in the process. My practice involves a reciprocal engagement with participants, collaborators, and me. This thesis challenges and questions the normative body gestures in graphic design.

Graphic Design

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/pasij/ from Liminality, 2021. Arduino interactive installation with cloth.

Booklifting, 2022. 15 lbs. dumbbell, accordion book, 3 1/2 x 64 in.

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BU MFA 2022

Graphic Design

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De/Familiarize Workshop I & II, 2022. Performance, book, poster, and video.

Light the Lantern, 2021. Installation, programmed projection.

Typography Collection, 2021.

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BU MFA 2022

ymathur.com

@yvm_design

Yash Mathur The design world is full of conventional fonts and methods of creating them. Whenever a graphic designer is expected to design a font, they must start from a software that is meant to do so. I believe it effects creativity and creates a barrier in the thought process and quirkiness of the letters.

Inspiration for graphic design is everywhere, we just need a creative lens to find it—be it in nature, music, dance, etc. In this thesis, my aim is to find such inspiration and use them as a tool to design fonts for typography artworks. For example, can we merge music and letters? Is there a font inspired by dance moves?

Typography and lettering have intrigued me since the beginning of my design journey. I wanted my thesis to revolve around finding new ways of creating typography, and I felt technology might play a key role in it.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. There is a plethora of software available that may not be from the design world, but still serve as a tool from which I can create typography. It is like using Lego blocks to visualize a building. I always wanted to merge sound and design, so I worked in GarageBand to create letters where each letter has its own unique sound, which creates both an audio and visual output. I am excited to be on this journey where I am trusting the process and creating something that is authentic and unique. I feel this exploration can open doors to new realms of typography and completely change the way we see fonts and typography today.

Graphic Design

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Good/Bad—Dual Word Antonym Typography, 2020. Vector art, 10 x 10 in.

36 Days of Type—Letter M, 2020. Photo manipulation, 10 x 10 in.

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BU MFA 2022

Adidas Lettering Artwork, 2019. Digital art, 10 x 10 in.

Atypical Type—GarageBand Lettering, 2022. GarageBand, 1920 x 1080 px.

Graphic Design

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What The Font Letters, 2021. Poster, 11 x 17 in.

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BU MFA 2022

noornasser.design

@desig_noor

Noor Nasser Mindcraft Growing up I found my place in life through art. My love for art became a tree bark that grew a whole lot of vines. It bore fruits of every kind akin to art and expression. And my mind was bursting with the latter.

Inside my mind, there is a macrocosm. I think, I speak, I hear in color. My mind is constantly roaming, my eye is forever critical. There is a permanent magnifying glass embracing my corneas. And for as long as I can remember, my mind has never known silence. Some of my earliest memories are of myself, fighting with myself, inside my mind, to just shut up. Intertwined with these voices is a truckload of anxiety and a fistful of depression. And much of my anxiety takes shape as these limitless voices and conversations inside my mind.

While people often feel trapped inside their minds that can’t be further from my truth. My mind is where I escape to. After all, the mind is home for imagination, and imagination is fuel for an artist. And here’s the thing … I can’t silence the voices in my mind, but I can give them release.

I can learn to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

This body of work aims to materialize a mind that has never experienced silence. Much of my design sets out to express the emotional experience inside my mind, to shape and embody the anxiety and limitless voices, which have easily become my most valuable tools, my assets, my sustenance. I would never trade what I have for a spotless mind.

Understanding my subconscious and tapping into it, soaring inside my mind, and conversing with myself is how I feel connected to the world.

In return, I want to extend this out to the world.

Graphic Design

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Order X Chaos, 2020. Poster diptych, 24 x 36 in.

REMIX: Subconscious X Interrupted Pattern, 2021.

Plexiglass, thread, and wire structure.

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BU MFA 2022

Stanley Donwood\Transcendental Lucidity, 2021. Perfect bound monograph, spread detail, exterior, multiple interior, 9 x 11 in.

Photo Book Deconstructions, 2021. Saddle stitch book: 8 ½ x 11 in., deck of cards: 5 x 5 in.

Graphic Design

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Write Down: I Am An Arab, 2020. Risograph print triptych, 11 x 17 in.

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BU MFA 2022

jordanphillipsdesigns.com

Jordan Phillips We navigate a world of constraints, both internally constructed and perceived as elements of our personal practice, or externally implemented as requirements of our professions. They can be tangible or conceptual while occasionally blurring the lines between the two. They can be helpful or harmful.

I work within a series of designed constraints that allow me to maintain authorship over my work and process. By defining my personal relationship to these constraints—both positive and negative—I establish the basis of my creative ethos as it relates to my creative practice.

Collaboration and research establish the potential to move beyond the limitations of compartmentalized, stagnant thinking. Segmentation between my personal and professional work allows me to navigate divergent methodologies in a manner that encourages exploration within a variety of design spaces while discouraging stagnation. Finally, recontextualizing fear and failure as valuable steps to iterative thinking suppresses the overwhelming nature of fear, ultimately building the structure of a successful design practice.

Graphic Design

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Whoopsies, 2022. Risograph print, 11 × 17 in.

Stills from Interview #1, 2021. Video, 1920 x 1080 px.

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BU MFA 2022

Improbable Grid System [Do Not Execute], 2022. Poster, 16 x 33 ½ in.

Graphic Design

62

Detail spreads from Fuck Process, 2022. Laser printed booklet, Risograph overprint detail, 8 ½ × 11 in.

Book Cover Series, 2021.

Book covers, 6 x 9 in.

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BU MFA 2022

danpinnolis.com

@danpinnolis

Dan Pinnolis My relationship with control and freedom is complicated, both in my design practice and in my personal life. I feel caught in a tension by these opposing forces that result in discomfort and immobility. Even though I have a strong desire for freedom, too much of it leaves me feeling lost and paralyzed. Likewise, too much control or too many constraints has a similar suffocating effect. My thesis seeks to better understand the delicate and shifting balance of control and freedom. My design methodology explores the dynamic interplay between these two forces and outlines a framework that leaves space for both ends of the spectrum.This methodology acts as an applicable strategy for future projects and enables me to flow more easily through the design process. Other people can also use this methodology to facilitate their own work.

Graphic Design

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BU MFA 2022

Creating Graphic Freedom, 2021. Poster, 33 x 46 in.

It’ll Get Better, 2021. Video, 1080 x 1080 px.

Phenomenal Movement, 2021. Video, 1080 x 1080 px.

Graphic Design

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Zen15, 2022. Craft paper, 2 ½ × 2 ½ in.

Surfaces Come and Go, 2020. Poster, 11 x 17 in.

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BU MFA 2022

tveshah.com

@un_structureddesign

Tvesha Shah Iterative Meta Memories When I walk into a museum, I observe the paintings and objects from the past; questioning what they represent and constantly decoding what they mean. The first meaning I derive is by simply looking at it and the second is by reading about it. I tend to look at everyday occurrences through a lens of the past, the present, and the future. My thinking process involves going back in time, breaking down my experiences, recollecting different parts of the same memory, looking at it from another perspective, and using that as an inspiration for my work. I often wonder how memories play a role in our everyday lives and why we want to preserve them? Memories are the storage of things learned and retained from an individual's activity or experiences as evidenced by modification of structure or behavior or by recall and recognition. They are stored in the form of writing, images, or objects. Each of these forms holds a different meaning to the collector than the observer. I want to critically analyze these forms and express what they truly represent through a personal emotional lens. I am curious about how technology has changed the way we store memories. How does our brain associate one experience with another? How can a personal memory become relatable to someone else?

Graphic Design

68

Deconstructing Cities, 2021. Monotype and digital print, 10 x 10 in.

Peaks and Valleys, 2021. Accordion book, 3 x 4 in.

69

BU MFA 2022

An Evening Stroll, 2021. Etching, 9 x 12 ½ in.

Graphic Design

70

Abstracting Social Images, 2021. Print, 16 x 20 in.

71

BU MFA 2022

imwangye.xyz

Ye Wang Whether taking photos in a museum, collecting shells on the beach, or writing journals—we try to keep as many references as possible for the future and provide ourselves with emotional anchor points. I often look back at my photoblog, which I’ve maintained since [date or time “I was in high school”] and realize it helps me recall pleasant memories. My thesis has been a way to explore why I like to record my life, even though not all memories are positive. I realized that I neglected sorrowful moments, and I began to examine the generation of distorted and false memories. I can sort out the events that stand out in my mind or start with a small object; memories serve as souvenirs of my life. By recording all kinds of meaningful and meaningless moments, I studied ways to evoke forgotten emotions and give them formal expression through design. Since humans cannot accurately recall memory, subjective thinking and personal experience can significantly shape memory’s perspective. Why then, do we diligently try to remember everything? This question has motivated my desire to share my research, even though memory is often private. My thesis builds a bridge between the real and the imaginary, inviting others to explain the souvenir memories of their lives.

Graphic Design

72

50 Questions, 2021. Poster, 40 x 206 ¾ in.

73

BU MFA 2022

Lossy, 2022. Acrylic, 16 x 20 in.

Graphic Design

74

Souvenir, 2022. Photo album, 8 ¼ x 12 in.

75

BU MFA 2022

spenceryan.com

@yj.yan

Spencer Yan 煲 bao Generally, we associate speed with positive outcomes. Being ‘fast’ is perceived as good while being ‘slow’ is perceived as bad. Quiz shows demonstrate the benefits of fast thinking—speedy responses win prizes, while hesitation costs points. In most careers, including academia, speed is valued. But speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial to us in many circumstances.

I have always been interested in craft and a very hands-on approach to design and art. I started my journey drawing on huge size papers every day to practice for art exams to get into art school in China. I’ve never hated such a slow process while others might find it dull. I am now exploring the necessity and underlying possibilities of slowness, using research on psychology articles and self-inspection to discover the impact of slowness on the human body, mind, and performance at work—what we can actively use slowness to achieve, and what changes in our lives and mindsets will take place when we slow down? However, there are still two sides to slowness, and my study will be conducted from both the good side and the bad side.

“In our age of snap judgments and instant opinions, slowness and deliberative contemplation may be more important than we realize,” this quote from the article “Is Slowness the Essence of Knowledge?” explains the importance of slowing down from the overly fast lifestyle of modern people. Likewise, there is a famous story in Aesop’s Fables called “The Tortoise and the Hare,” in which we learned that the tortoise, often considered as a very slow-moving species, does not necessarily reach the finish line later than the vigorous rabbit, as everyone would expect. And here I would like to quote a proverb, “slow fire makes sweet malt.”

Graphic Design

76

(In)visible Cities, 2021. Video with voiceover, 51 sec., 5 x 6 ¾ in.

Slowness, 2021. Coptic stitch bound book, front and back cover scan, 70 pg., 2 x 2 ¾ in.

Despite the great physical and mental benefits of slowing down, we could still feel agitated or dissatisfied in our daily lives when we see someone, or something is slow. The duality of slowness is so interesting to me, and it is urging me to explore more about it using myself as the subject— using my skill in art and design to express my findings.

77

BU MFA 2022

Dancing in Chains, 2021.

Screen print, 5 ¾ × 9 ½ in.

Graphic Design

78

Book of Book, 2021. Loose bound book, print with tracing paper, cover, and interior spreads, 90 pg., dimensions variable.

Beasts in Shapes, 2020. Glyph design, 30 pcs.

79

BU MFA 2022

MFA 2022 Exhibition

March 18–April 2, 2022

Painting We live in an era of images, as clichéd as that sounds. Images (flat, rectangular, depictive, often photographic) increasingly affirm existence—of people, places, events, experiences and things. Their proliferation follows algorithmic waves, which register and adopt human biases: color preferences, beauty standards, vision-centricity, with all of it leaning towards the figurative and narrative. We are being revealed for who we are, at our best and worst. The concern is that this will uniformly shape us for the future.

Not surprisingly, this adamance of the image is reflected in dominant trends in painting over the last five decades. I could take the Modernist high ground and lament a loss here, but the fact is that more space has opened up for the richness of voices, narratives, modes of thinking, and aesthetics that were excluded in the past. As a medium that straddles being a picture and a material object, painting maintains equal distance from the image and the lived world—an abstracted position that makes it fertile for critical contemplation of both. Painting continues to be a poignantly specific way of making and thinking, a state of constant duality.

Given where the world is and where it is going, humanity needs people who have a deep understanding of reading and making images, those who are both inventive and technically nuanced in the construction and breakdown of images through matter, those who doggedly engage with the boundaries of vision through all of our senses. This class of MFA painters are doing exactly that, in ways that embody their unique experiences, sensibilities, and beliefs.

Lucy Kim Associate Professor of Art, Painting

81

moxinchen.art

@notsunnychen

Moxin (Sunny) Chen My art maps blend and augment physical and imaginative spaces with my expressions of multi-cultural histories, diasporic identity, interpersonal dissociation and reconciliation. I search for the ideas of being and belonging by painting, collaging, and sculpting. Colors, forms, and materials symbolize personal histories and cultural nomadism. I spontaneously combine them to express and explore my multi-faceted identity through the multi-layering process. Chinese ink is embedded almost invisibly within the works with wood and other home-building materials, often covered and furnished with layers of colorful paints. Specific geographies and histories are put together like pieces of jigsaw puzzles, and delineated with my own exploration and experiences to create the “map,” which can be looked at on both the macro and micro levels.

As a Moscow-born-Chinese who migrated to the US in high school, I consciously and unconsciously use my art as a medium to link the complex multi-cultural awarenesses that I bring together to form my "selves."

My works investigate and recontextualize my visions in both traditional and atypical material that are linked to the concept of physical and spiritual space, the self, and how one breaks from past selves—rebuilds new conceptions of self through the environments and experiences that surround them—and rebridges the boundaries between themselves through a process that is as much blending as it is destroying. While this exploration is a personal journey, during the pandemic, I've found that my explorations resonate across demographic or socioeconomic boundaries.

My art forms biomorphic shapes that represent bodies/beings that could be read as self-portraits or simply as forms for the viewer to reflect and define themselves. I portray disturbing senses of inconsistency and difference and collaborate with diverse materials rather than using one dominant media to illustrate the process of searching for the senses of being and belonging.

Painting

82

Yesterday is Passed, Tomorrow has Yet to Come, 2022. Acrylic, spray paint, wall paint, 墨 (mò/Chinese ink), шпаклевать (spackle), joint compound, gap-filler, PVC, wood, concrete, used chopstick, pearl, paper, glue, water, and air, 14 x 10 x 3 ft., max.

83

BU MFA 2022

Painting

84

Yesterday is Passed, Tomorrow has Yet to Come (details), 2022. Acrylic, spray paint, wall paint, 墨 (mò/Chinese ink), шпаклевать (spackle), joint compound, gap-filler, PVC, wood, concrete, used chopstick, pearl, paper, glue, water, and air, 14 x 10 x 3 ft., max.

85

BU MFA 2022

veronica-dannis-dobroczynski.com

@veronicandd

Veronica Dannis-Dobroczynski Focusing on concepts of obsession, self-fixation, queerness, awkwardness and intimacy, my paintings are a vehicle for me to explore my relationship with my body. I skew and magnify areas of the body through cropping to create a tension between comfort and discomfort. I am interested in depicting a sensation of embodiment through the entanglement of limbs.

Figures are often curled up or wrapped in another body—suggesting a desire for touch and safety.

My process begins by making ink drawings based on photos I have taken or while looking down at myself. Skewing of the body is also created with color. I choose non-observed colors such as hot pinks and teals intuitively, creating transparent pools, bleeds, and stains of paint. My paintings do not need to feel resolved, instead figures reside in a space of ambiguity and require a slow read to reveal themselves as bodily.

Painting

86

In the mirror, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 24 x 34 in.

87

BU MFA 2022

Painting

88

Interstice, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 45 x 59 in.

Nobody yet everything, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 in.

Beach 2, 2021. Oil on canvas, 46 x 50 in.

Sleeping again, 2022. Oil on canvas, 36 x 44 in.

89

BU MFA 2022

gavinfahey.com

@gavin_fahey

Gavin Fahey The structures of power do not live in one centralized establishment, they are dispersed into an unseen miasma. These structures indoctrinate us, paradoxically blinding us to their existence and coercing us into defending them. These structures are so abstruse and incoherent that I can neither untangle them into a tidy narrative nor unmake them through political action.

Rather than become paralyzed by a sense of my own futility, I have chosen to own it. I have thus created devotional sculptures which celebrate individuals who have attempted extreme, yet ultimately futile, actions to either unmake or perpetuate the structures which dictate our lives. These individuals are Ted Kaczynski, Kenneth Lay, Chris Dorner, Francis Hughes, Abu Zubaydah, Scooter Libby, Andreas Baader, and Ulrike Meinhof.

I have painted an oil portrait of each of these individuals. Each portrait is then sealed within a wooden sculpture. The simple marquetry and faux-weathered finish I apply to these sculptures point to American vernacular architecture and furniture traditions, and in turn suggest my sculptures have a tradition of their own: an alternative cultural canon which revels in the absurdity of martyrdom and the malevolent vacancy of deep-state bureaucrats. My work venerates the bad actors toeing the line of criminality and good faith and places them atop a sacrosanct point in the American mythos previously reserved for cowboys, white picket fences, and the American Interstate Highway System.

Painting

90

Ark for Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, 2021. Oil on board, latex paint, and wood, 96 x 22 x 32 in.

91

BU MFA 2022

Painting

92

Reliquary for Francis Hughes, 2021. Oil on board, latex paint, and wood. 52 x 28 ½ × 16 in.

Kenneth Lay's Final Resting Place, 2022. Oil on board, latex paint, and wood.

64 x 32 x 8 in.

93

BU MFA 2022

sgoodale.com

@samgoodale

Samantha Goodale My work and my practice are a metaphor for thought. I am interested in the connections and associations that we are able to make as humans. By detaching the mundane from its everyday context, I am able to illustrate an internal fantasy world of the everyday. I reshape and collage experiences and memories, like drying my laundry then remembering the time I put all my sister’s underwear on top of her fan so that when she turned it on they would go flying. I reimagine reading underneath a lamp and pondering what it would be like to crawl inside the fixture and live inside its warmth.

I aim to offer clues to riddles within my paintings, such as repeated and recognizable symbols, barriers to entry, and contrasting depth of space to unground the viewer. None of my paintings get close to having answers, but through development, they ask better questions.

Using thin washes, I document every pathway that the painting has taken, leaving evidence of drawings, previous paintings, and the original surface. The resulting artworks are a literal collage of materials as well as a collage of narratives. My practice is a journey of trial and error, burying and unearthing, a search to find meaning through hoarding material, memories, and information.

Painting

94

I want to go on a train someday, 2022. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 39 in.

Reading Lamp, 2021. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in.

95

BU MFA 2022

Riddle, 2022. Acrylic and collage on mesh screen, 15 x 13 in.

FOMO, 2021. Acrylic and collage on mesh screen, 26 x 21 in.

Painting

96

Transition, 2021. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in.

97

BU MFA 2022

benjaminhawleyart.com

@bjhawley

Benjamin Hawley The space inside my paintings is a place to interrogate my observations of atmospheric phenomena, the man-made, and soft light. These subjects come from my daily life: a blanket of fog, a column I pass on the street, or the red glow of a caution light on the train. I become fixated on a particular subject, such as a column, scrutinize and abstract it, and then use it as an armature upon which I begin to fuse other observations and ideas.

For example, I am intrigued by how an object can hold color the same way as the sky. I explore this notion through paintings of a small plastic bowl from my grandmother’s kitchen. The milky mauve plastic mirrors the heavy light-polluted Northeastern skies after a snowfall.

I work serially, repeating the same motif, constantly in pursuit of generating the excitement of seeing something for the first time. My studio is my quiet place. My paintings evoke a sense of quietness and stillness to mirror the cerebral and self-reflective environment I work in. Using subtle color shifts and muted tones creates an overall monochromatic or limited color palette resulting in a hushed mood. I aim to make work that creates a slow looking experience and creates a place of discovery and reflection for the viewer.

Painting

98

Into Thin Air, 2022. Oil on canvas, 84 x 42 in.

Full, 2021. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.

99

BU MFA 2022

Failed Memory, 2021. Oil on canvas, 84 x 42 in.

Collected Firmament, 2022.

Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in.

Painting

100

Heat Rising, 2021. Oil and cold wax on paper, 30 x 22 ½ in.

101

BU MFA 2022

baoyingstudio.com

@baobaostudio

Baoying Huang Art is a portal to tell my story of living between two cultures: being a citizen of China and a resident of the US. Living in the ongoing pandemic and the antagonism between the two nations, my paintings depict the compartmentalized environments that I live in, and my emotional connection with domestic themes as I raise questions about the meaning of home.

These paintings are moments I encounter in my current Boston apartment and my studio at school. To describe reality on canvas is to live with the melancholy that comes from disconnection and the inability to effect real change in either place I live. The aspiration of wanting to express myself through language and conversation was compromised and compressed into painting materials and visual forms. Colors in these paintings are filtered and dimmed, which points to a sense of coldness I observe in my repetitive living patterns during the pandemic—being trapped in a humanless land and only able to see the traces I left in a space. The distinction between the air-tight surface and scratchy brush marks represents the paradox between hyperrealism and a gauzy, blurred romanticism. By strategically arranging my immediate environment through painting, I find a way to process my physical and cultural isolation.

Painting

102

Breathe in, 2022. Oil on canvas, 32 x 42 in.

My fake English name, 2021. Oil on canvas, 46 x 46 in.

103

BU MFA 2022

6 P.M., 2021. Oil on canvas, 34 x 34 in.

Painting

104

10 A.M., 2021. Oil on canvas, 34 x 34 in.

Uneventful nights, 2021. Oil on canvas, 40 x 52 in.

105

BU MFA 2022

evalewis.org

@evalewisart

Eva Lewis I create paintings that use figure, color, light, and composition to explore stories of feminine identifying people. Within invented chromatic worlds, I am referencing stories of mythological goddesses and playful experiences with my friends. I often use beautiful, bright colors I identify as feminine, such as hot pinks, teals, and yellows, that unapologetically ask for the viewer's attention through saturation. I am also interested in the way light can play a character, along with the forms, by bringing nuanced shadows and illuminating the atmosphere.

The compositions I use to hold these ideas are derived from my Midwest upbringing and art historical narratives, specifically from the Renaissance and Baroque era. I find myself simultaneously inspired by the ethereal worlds these historical master artists have created and driven to protest their use of the female figure as an object to please the male gaze.

My work utilizes the circular composition, commonly used in Renaissance painting, ensuring the audience's engagement with the surface. The circle functions as a structure in painting as well as a representation of the menstrual cycle. My paintings resist the way the circle allows the viewer to examine a nude body for personal pleasure and instead is inviting the eye to move through stories of womxn who hold their own autonomy.

Painting

106

Summer Solstice, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 90 in.

107

BU MFA 2022

Somewhere, 2021. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 in.

Thalia Wants To Go Out, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 53 in.

Painting

108

In Between, 2021. Oil on wood, 18 x 16 in.

Faux Warmth, 2021. Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in.

109

BU MFA 2022

jasonlipow.com

@jasonlipow

Jason Lipow When I wait for the train, I examine all of the wires, electrical boxes, and metal implements attached to the telephone poles. I don’t know what they all do, but I believe that they should be there. They cling to a known form as if to say, “Yes, yes, I’m in the right place.” If someone were to add an extra rusty nail to one of the poles, I don’t think that I would notice. I’d believe that it, too, should be there.

I don’t like the idea of creating an image or a representation of a thing. I want my work to exist as the thing itself. I want to fool myself with its confident singularity. With my work shelter for example, I want to viscerally understand and perceive the object as a house. Not a symbol of a house, not a dollhouse, but the actual thing. Just smaller, and very much my own.

I understand my studio practice as an activity of nest-making. My paintings and sculptures are various attempts to contain or satiate immaterial impulses in material form. They grow out of feelings of longing and desire—a need for shelter, safety, control, and vulnerability.

I use the memories of nameable forms as roadmaps through the open-ended potential of abstraction. Tree, harness, Bambi, house: these are armatures around which I build a painting or sculpture—ways of defining the edges and contours of my activity, and containing the nameable and enigmatic within single, often chimeric forms.

Painting

110

BAMBI BOY (we live in a time of fire a time of greed), 2022. Oil, egg tempera, wood stain, livestock marking crayon, graphite, and pastel on panel, 44 x 58 ¾ × 1 ¾ in.

111

BU MFA 2022

harness, 2022. Ceramic, welded steel, and silver-plated copper, 23 ¾ × 27 ¾ × 6 ½ in.

shelter, 2022. Wood, welded steel, housepainter’s step ladder, epoxy, wood glue, pigment, wood stain, nails, typewriter and sewing machine components, total dimensions variable, house: 17 ¼ × 13 5/8 × 19 ¾ in., telephone pole: 18 ¾ × 7 x 7 ⅞ in.

Painting

112

discum furt(ive) open ng, 2022. Opposite side.

discum furt(ive) open ng, 2022.

Oil, acrylic, blood, wood, charcoal, masonite, drywall screws, nail polish, wood stain, wire, aluminum, Bondo, carpet, paraffin, volcanic ash, polyurethane spray foam, wood filler, holographic sticker, typewriter components, polyester fabric, string, and brass-plated chain lock, 21 x 15 ⅜ × 13 ¾ in.

113

BU MFA 2022

manningmingle.weebly.com

@manningmingle

Emily Manning-Mingle My artistic practice is a mirror. It reflects my lived experience and expands time and space. An invitation, it beckons the viewer closer, to see something familiar as if for the first time. I observe my surroundings from different vantage points and challenge myself to describe fleeting moments and geological time using ethereal materials and labor-intensive processes. Working in series, I ask questions from multiple angles.

Stretching the meaning of objects and ideas, I find the subtle variation that results from repetition both intriguing and optimistic.

My paintings, prints, and projections of fire are both/and: comforting/fearful, weightless/heavy, beautiful/destructive, sharp/soft, contained/unbound. You look at the images, through them, and then, like reflective glass, they begin to look back at you. Light vibrates, flutters, and shimmers through transparent fibers and thin layers of ink, oil paint, and fabric dye. The rocks, bones, flowers, feathers, and other natural artifacts that I depict reflect my impulse to collect and order the objects around me in an attempt to better understand them.

I make marks with paint brushes, q-tips, spray bottles, palette knives, sponges, and calligraphy pens. The resulting images exist in a perpetual cycle of coming together < > falling apart. They coalesce into a recognizable whole and fracture into abstract shards. Bumps, cracks, seams, sags, and ripples disrupt, creating nuance and movement. A soft breeze causes the organza fabric to sway, eliciting the desire to reach out and touch the elusive flame.

Painting

114

115

BU MFA 2022

Top left: Flame (Burnt Orange), 2022. Reductive silkscreen on Masa paper, 21 ½ × 15 ½ in. Bottom left: Flame (Lavender), 2022. Reductive silkscreen on Masa paper, 21 ½ × 15 ½ in. Right: in every breath there’s life, 2022. Fabric dye and ink on cotton and organza, 62 x 38 in.

My heart moves from cold to fire, 2021. Fabric dye, avocado dye, ink, acrylic, and oil on sewn canvas and drop cloth, 30 x 39 in.

My heart moves from cold to fire, 2021. Reductive silkscreen on Thai Kozo paper, 18 x 25 in.

Painting

116

117

BU MFA 2022

Eternal Flame, 2022. Organza, tulle, yarn, found rocks, and video projection, dimensions variable, 2:04 min.

@the_oscarmorel

Oscar Morel My body of works is a collection of collages built with second-hand canvases, dried paints, and found materials mended through painting, drawing, and sculptural techniques. These works showcase narratives on urban life, history, and the body. These stories raise more significant questions on race, social inequality, the immigrant experience, and AfroCaribbean culture.

I believe that my attraction to collage derives from my feelings that identity is built through the consolidation of foreign materials. The mixed-media building into a physical narrative is a direct reflection of me—a byproduct of displaced homes, overlooked spaces, and blended cultures amalgamated into a story.

I sample the work of past masters to create a visual language interconnecting the pieces like physical ancestry. I make parallels between traditional forms of Western art and contemporary life experiences in the Bronx. I borrow identifiable aesthetics and tropes common during this art era and place them in my personal stories. This practice encourages conversation about ownership, an agency in Black history, and the Eurocentric fallacies in art.

My main goal is to have practice in worldbuilding. I catalog personal experiences and navigate emotions and space through materials.

Doing so lets me reflect on my own life, sharing and reimagining my self-exploration.

Painting

118

Knocks on The Door, 2022. Mixed media on canvas, 58 x 78 in.

119

BU MFA 2022

Painting

120

121

BU MFA 2022

The Tenancy of the Lobby Furnace, 2022. Mixed media on canvas, 90 x 90 in.

meghancmurray.com

@meghancmurrayart

Meghan Murray In times of crisis, we turn to the familiar for comfort. My paintings examine this preoccupation with nostalgia. In my investigation, I tread a thin line between saccharine sentimentality and cynicism. In found midcentury photographs, clichés like suburban cowboys appear as American kitsch; almost soothing in their repetition. And yet, through a contemporary lens, I consider the headlines stamped on a newspaper that shared a print date with this photo. What took place beyond the frame of this Kodak moment?

Did this child of the 1960s practice duck-and-cover drills at school that day? What kind of person did they grow up to be?

I paint from candid snapshots that subtly reference the tradition of painting in their composition. Take for example the playtime western outlaw who alludes to neoclassical equestrian portraiture. I enlarge and idealize this carefully selected photo to imitate monumental heroic painting. I mix color to match the degraded film, parsing out cast shadows and flooded flash. The paintings are shaped with rounded corners to mimic 35 mm slides and further their own objecthood.

Decades collapse between the moment the photo was taken and the moment I discover it, shuffled among discarded keepsakes. In the act of painting, the image of a child playing dress-up becomes both familiar and alien. I obsess over the three-square inches that contain someone else’s memory, but the truth of the image eludes me. They remain strangers. Painting grants me an intimate knowledge of the object, but denies me sincere understanding, much like nostalgia and memory. Memory flickers, even with many recollections, like a slide photo when held to the projector light.

Painting

122

U.S. TO PULL 40,000 OUT OF VIETNAM BY CHRISTMAS (Oct. 13, 1970), 2022.

Oil on linen-mounted panel, 48 x 48 in.

ATOM ROCKETS DECLARED READY FOR COMBAT USE (Dec. 21, 1952), 2022. Oil on linen-mounted panel, 48 x 28 in.

123

BU MFA 2022

PRESIDENT NIXON’S OPPORTUNITY TO BRIDGE THE ‘LUNAR GAP’ (Dec. 1, 1969), 2022.

Oil on linen-mounted panel, 48 x 48 in.

Painting

124

JERSEY SPURS HUNT FOR BLADED APPLES (Nov. 5, 1968), 2022.

Oil on linen-mounted panel, 18 x 18 in.

Beauty Queens, 2021. Oil on linen-mounted panel, approx. 64 x 32 in.

125

BU MFA 2022

madelinenortonpainting.com

@madelinenrtn

Madeline Norton With these paintings, I invite viewers to join in on my recollection of intimate and re-imagined memories. My paintings are a physical manifestation of lust and loneliness. I am speaking to my transition from youth to adult, and the internal voyeurism that comes with the territory of being a young woman.

I fight with my paintings as though I am dating them. One minute I bicker with the paint, and with the next pass of my brush I remember why I like it so much. Formal exploration of materiality is a major component in the making of these works. The consideration of purely formal moves, like the application of grit, color, and collage, often dictate my paintings’ narrative directions. In this way, these works are often slow to reveal themselves. The figures that I illustrate begin as people I’ve known, partners, friends, and ex-lovers. However, I shift their gestures and likeness, disrupting our memories and rewriting new ones. I layer, carve, and distort these scenes, leading the paintings to narrative conclusions I could not have predetermined. The act of making these works can be described as sensuous, abrupt, manic, and winding. These sensations translate directly to the characters in my compositions.

I am interested in the fickle complexity of love and relationships.

Through the deconstruction of my memory, I examine the space between the highs and lows of desire.

Painting

126

Bonfire Bore, 2021. Oil and mixed media on panel, 48 x 36 in.

127

BU MFA 2022

Talking Shit About Our Friends Talking Shit About Us, 2022. Oil and mixed media on panel, 47 x 37 in.

Painting

128

Patron Saints of Rittner Drive, 2021. Oil and mixed media on panel, 48 x 36 in.

Banana Bug Boob Grab, 2021. Oil and mixed media on panel, 12 x 12 in.

Isabel’s Wedding, 2022. Oil on panel, 48 x 36 in.

129

BU MFA 2022

chenpengstudio.com

@chenpenguinn

Chen Peng I use images of my dog and objects I treasure to create fantastical paintings that explore loss, longing, and the wish to feel grounded as an expatriate. I paint what I’m deeply connected to, both practically and sentimentally, ranging from my trustworthy drill, a kitschy thrift-store sweater, to a doodle of my dog that I framed and hung in my apartment. I take every object to my studio and paint from life, trying to capture the warmth within it. Sometimes, the object itself occupies the entire painting and becomes the painting. Other times, I erase its original surroundings and create an imagined space for the object to live in.

I often use the sky as a backdrop to create a space that is dreamlike and uncomplicated. I render the clouds and stars in a cartoonish style as I try to remember and reconnect with the mindset of painting the sky as a child. I always think of the sky as a refuge for the mind. It contains hopes, dreams, and memories. Floating in the middle of the sky, the images and objects in my paintings turn into a portal to a sense of tenderness and timelessness.

Painting

130

A Little Too Early, 2022. Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in.

131

BU MFA 2022

Sasa Dog, 2021. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

Summer Breeze, 2021. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

Painting

132

My DeWalt Was My Universe Until I Used Dad’s Makita, 2021. Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 in.

Okay, I’m Going Home, 2021. Oil on canvas, 26 x 34 in.

133

BU MFA 2022

@davidpetrak

David Petrak My paintings begin with enacting a surge of energetic motion onto the surface, frantically rubbing or circling the paint until it takes form. A figure-like shape coalesces onto the surface by accumulating marks, imprints, and gestures made with different body parts. I take inspiration from the sense of embodiment and psychological presence that abstract action painting achieves, and by using my anatomy as a painting instrument, I can limit the physical and emotional distance between myself and the surface.

Color is especially important to me because of its potential for symbolic meaning; for example, I see yellow as the feeling of light on the skin and purple as emotional bruising. Working with one color allows me to manifest these feelings and create an entity that represents them. The large vertical orientation and placement of the paintings on floor-level mimics the human form of the viewer and acts as an amplified reflection of ourselves. In doing this, the work evokes a sense of monumentalism while also feeling approachable and accessible.

Notions of spirituality and mysticism deeply inspire my paintings.

While I do not hold any fixed religious beliefs, my paintings seek to ponder existential questions of humanity: what happens after we die? Is there a heaven or hell? These questions open me up to new ways of transformative thinking, where the body itself can be an abstract vessel of human feeling and spirit. Like both abstraction and mysticism, my paintings make room for the imaginative possibilities of how we envision the contour and color of our spirit.

Painting

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BU MFA 2022

Emerging from the Shroud, 2022. Oil, mica, acrylic on plywood, 94 x 48 in.

Excavating the Tomb, 2022. Oil, mica, linen on plywood, 94 x 48 in.

Spirit of Movement, 2020. Oil, colored pencil, canvas on board, 59 x 42 in.

Painting

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Clown Mask, 2020. Oil on paper, 16 x 21 in.

Swan Dress, 2020. Oil, canvas on board, 56 x 46 in.

137

BU MFA 2022

ajrombach.com

@ajrombie

AJ Rombach My painting practice challenges contemporary culture’s proliferation of fast, fleeting, scrollable information through a process of careful observation and slow transcription. For this series, I’ve chosen to mirror the images rendered in my oil paintings as glossy ceramic tiles to contemplate the Hermetic phrase “As Above, So Below.” Sourced from photographs of my quotidian experience, my work focuses on the landscape where I live in Massachusetts. I am sensitive to color and seek to describe every shift I perceive in the photographic source. I invite my depicted subjects to express their sentience. Taking that further, I believe that the marks of pigment, the paint itself, and the substrates can exhibit qualities of self and awareness. Oscar Wilde wrote that “the mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” I agree, and yet wonder if the act of transcribing observable phenomena can open access to the unobservable. My ontological queries stem from the perspective of a queer trans person, a marginalized position which further impassions my efforts and my conviction to record and share events.

Painting

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Place of Significance (Disco), 2022. Oil paint, canvas, ceramic, underglaze, and glaze, dimensions variable.

Twin Ponds (As Above So Below), 2022. Oil paint, yarn, panel, wood, ceramic, underglaze, glaze, and oil pastel, dimensions variable.

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BU MFA 2022

Installation images

Painting

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BU MFA 2022

Full Orchestra (The Feeling is the Prayer), 2021. Oil paint on canvas, 36 x 48 in.

mhwheelerart.com

@mariegecko88

Marie Wheeler I use everyday musings and questions in my life as source material to create something new and enchanting. I search for true connection and life answers, alternately through the light-hearted or mystical. One way is through fantastical scenes. In my paintings and ceramics, there are populations of swarming mermaids with wild, manic, female energy. I believe that the ultimate enchantment is through something mysterious, unexplainable, and a bit horrifying. Through these otherworldly creatures, I admit fears, desires, and hesitations without explicitly depicting them.

I find these dramatic scenes through observing the marks and smears of my paintings’ initial layers.

I also make paintings with text covering topics of likes versus dislikes, idle questions, made up stories, and poetic insults. I start by making confessional lists that ground themselves in the everyday, but verge on the peculiar and off-kilter. Do you ever wish you were completely covered in fur? I scramble words to collage, revealing new insights. Collage and mixed media are important metaphors for a fragmented and wandering mind. Collage is also essential to achieve surprise. The inquisitive theatricality of the words mirrors the release that enchanting scenes provide.

In these insular worlds of mermaids and musings, I reveal my essence while testing and gauging the essence of the viewer. Unknown worlds like mermaid abysses and the self are hard to pin down. My paintings show that feeling is up to the individual—either joyful, amused, or awed. Some rely on truth, and others you have to make up.

Painting

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They're All Me, 2020. Acrylic, plastic gems, yarn, paper doily, fabric, glitter, and oil pastel on paper, 36 x 25 in.

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BU MFA 2022

When I was 20, 2021. Acrylic, ink, glitter, glitter tulle, and acrylic collage on canvas and paper, 34 x 16 in.

Swarming, 2021. Acrylic, ink, pom-poms, and plastic jewels on paper, 51 x 30 in.

Painting

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While Steaming Broccoli, 2021.

Acrylic, acrylic medium, ink, and glitter on canvas, 24 x 18 in.

You Iguana, 2022. Acrylic, collage, oil pastel, and glitter on canvas, 14 x 11 in.

145

BU MFA 2022

MFA 2022 Exhibition

March 18–April 2, 2022

Sculpture Sculpture is a genre with limitations. Whether it involves carving a figure from a block of marble or squishing a blob of clay into a particular form, there is always a tense balance between boundless visionary potential and the stubborn physical properties of whatever materials are used. To put it another way, there is always a negotiation between how things look and what they actually are. This describes one of the primary limitations of sculpture, namely that form and material are inseparable concerns.

A giant clay figure will slump and sag without a sufficient armature—its visible, external form (how it looks) depends entirely on its structural, material composition (what it is). Paradoxically, this limitation offers one of sculpture’s primary strengths, in that a sculpture can offer both a formal experience and can exist as a sort of time capsule, a material record of what happened to create what is.

In this vein, this year’s MFA candidates consider sculpture as a repository for memory in different forms: personal, cultural, muscle, material. Objects have been constructed in order to be dented, bent, buckled, melted, pushed and pulled. They appear and disappear in various forms and across different media, allowing for a simultaneity of material phases and echoes (sometimes literal) of their “becoming.” And though these works may seem to behave as sculptures should (by speaking formal languages, establishing fixed relationships within physical space, and by standing still), they benefit from a closer look. The materials used provide both a testament to physical change and a catalogue of choices taken.

These artists’ works reside between material inevitabilities and personal agency, and offer a space to reflect on both.

David Snyder Assistant Professor of Art, Sculpture 147

jadahaynesstudio.com

@jada_haynes_art

Jada Haynes ​​​​ onstruction and Destruction— C My process explores the distance between the two.

Between my body and materials Tethered by the fragility of a stitch, The disruptive yawn of the bend and the sacred silence of the mend cradle the breath of our human emotional landscapes.

I make to the standardized measurements of: my hands, my neck, my feet, my torso, my dreams, my memories, my memories’ memories, and so on …

To the architecture that we bend around, by, and through, Day after day. It is a bend as natural as the turn of the head or the curve of a back.

A bend we’ve known for years and years.

A nameless bend.

Sculpture

My body, my body— Collapsed by closeness.

Directness and reciprocity in my approach to materials combined are the compass That reveals where to go In the moment And how to go Through the fluid forest of physical and digital entanglement.

I look to these materials to look to my own consumed body, Swallowing the hierarchy of power placed between human and object.

Hardness into softness, I sink my fingernails deeply into the fleshy contours of Strength and vulnerability, Organic and industrial, Heard and unheard, Articulated by the traces of impact that can only be exposed partially Never concrete.

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THUNDERBOX I, 2021. Welded steel.

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BU MFA 2022

THUNDERBOX II, 2021. Welded steel.

THUNDERBOX III, 2021. Welded steel.

Sculpture

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Cocoon Piece, 2022. Single-channel video, performance, and crocheted acrylic yarn.

@xsj_scarlettt

Scarlett Xie What is the motivation? This is the question I ask myself the most when I look at my work. Most of the time I make work because of a sudden thought—a memory, a found object, even just a word—and then the reason became my practice and engagement with the ‘sudden thought.’ I wish my work could present a process of transformation from substance to imagery. I don’t want to force any fixed meaning or story onto either the images or the resulting sculptures, I want them to be flexible, adaptive, and driven by the process of their making. I am interested in Miro's expression of ways to express objects in the form of symbols, as well as Dali’s sense of dramatic composition and bizarreness. However, for both, their purpose is never to accurately represent or reproduce the external world but rather to express emotion and construct a subjective world. Within my works, I would like to attempt to do something similar—to render an improbable or even impossible internal state through material means.

Sculpture

152

Losten, 2022. Wax, dimensions variable.

Losten, 2022. Photographs, 4 x 4 in.

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BU MFA 2022

Losten, 2022. Single-channel video.

Sculpture

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Yellow, 2021. Mixed-media installation.

How to Kill a Balloon, 2021. Plaster.

155

BU MFA 2022

BU SVA MFA Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of leading research universities in the United States and Canada. Established in 1954 as part of the larger University, the College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a top-tier fine arts institution. Comprising the School of Music, School of Theatre, and School of Visual Arts, CFA offers professional training in the arts in conservatory-style environments for undergraduate and graduate students.

The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Painting at Boston University promotes the discipline in its varied manifestations as a fundamental form of artistic expression. At its core, the program is studio-driven, with rigorous expectations about each student’s focused commitment to their individual artistic practice.

The MFA program in Graphic Design provides a sequenced studio approach to advanced design thinking and problem solving for visual communication, preparing students to thrive in a dynamic professional environment. A solution-based practice framed by key principles defines the core graphic design studios. Students are challenged to articulate a design perspective and method through studio projects emphasizing form, communication, authorship, audience, and medium.

In the MFA program in Sculpture, students are encouraged to explore personal expression through a variety of media and diverse stylistic forms.

Work ranges from intense observation to imagination and invention, and reflects various philosophical and artistic points of view.

In all programs, a rigorous studio practice is supplemented with critical dialogue in the form of weekly seminars, lectures, discussions, critiques, and visiting artist programs.

Students form a close working relationship with faculty and peers forging networks that will serve them professionally and socially for a lifetime.

Students benefit from expansive facilities, including welding and wood shops, state of the art printmaking studios, a 10,000 square-foot graduate graphic design studio, and individual studios for painters and sculptors. Students also have access to the Engineering Product Innovation Center, which features the newest and most exciting technologies available to makers.

Our award-winning faculty have work in the collections of major art museums across the globe including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Our alumni have careers in exciting creative fields, develop innovative businesses, and exhibit their work widely in galleries and museums across the US and beyond.

We invite you to discover more about Boston University School of Visual Arts and the many accomplishments of our faculty, students, and alumni by visiting bu.edu/cfa/ visual-arts.

Published in conjunction with the Boston University 2022 School of Visual Arts MFA Exhibition, at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery.

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE: March 18–April 2, 2022 GRAPHIC DESIGN: April 13–29, 2022 Dana Clancy, Director School of Visual Arts Kristen Coogan, Associate Professor of Art Graphic Design Lissa Cramer, Managing Director Boston University Art Galleries Lucy Kim, Associate Professor of Art Painting Christopher Sleboda, Associate Professor of Art Graphic Design David Snyder, Assistant Professor of Art Sculpture Gus Wheeler, Technical Associate Sculpture & Painting DESIGN: Chuck Gonzales Chen Luo Reshma Vijayan Jaylen Wang EDITOR: Bryne Rasmussen TYPESET: ABC Whyte Inktrap ABC Diatype Regular and Mono Times New Roman PRINTER: Fenway Group PUBLISHER: Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts 855 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02215 www.bu.edu/cfa/visual-arts

Director’s Statement PP. 4–5 Graphic Design PP. 6–79 Painting PP. 81–145 Sculpture PP. 147–155

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