2023 -2024
AUNSPAUGH FELLOWSHIP
Maddie Butkovich
Adrian Moore
Claire Szeptycki
KJ Vaughan
Vic White
i
Contents
Maddie Butkovich pages 2–5
Adrian Moore pages 6–9
Claire Szeptycki pages 10–13
KJ Vaughan pages 14–17
Vic White pages 18–21
The Aunspaugh Fifth Year Fellowship
Many of UVA’s most dedicated art students have professional aspirations. The Aunspaugh Fifth Year Fellowship assists these students in fulfilling that goal. The primary purpose of the program is to help students develop their portfolios for admission to graduate school. The fellowship enables selected UVA students, who have completed an undergraduate degree in Studio Art, to spend an additional year of intensive effort in a studio area within Ruffin Hall.
Aunspaugh Fellows receive a stipend, research funds, and private studio space for the year. They participate in an advanced seminar, interact with visiting artists and have a culminating exhibition of their work in Ruffin Gallery at year’s end. Past Fellows have gone on to the very best graduate programs in studio art including Yale, U.C.L.A., Boston University, the University of Iowa, the San Francisco Art Institute, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tyler School of Art.
1
2
Maddie Butkovich, Wilhemina, monotype on mulberry paper, 33.5"x26"
Maddie Butkovich
My recent work is a culmination of prints and paintings that harness the emotive capacity of line and color to express tone. The absurd forms trend from playful to deranged, provoking the emergence of narratives dependent on interactions between the prints themselves and the viewer’s engagement with each. Images are deconstructed through monotype printmaking in an immediate and heavy-handed way to achieve warmth, agitation, and noise in the composition. The results disclose moments of tension and collaboration in chaos, signifying the physical process of distortion. Animals and forms are depicted in an anthropomorphic way, adhering to our tendency to ascribe human traits to nonhuman species. The body of work then becomes a relational system of interactions, conversation, relationships, and movement between the animals, highlighting the hilarity of personhood.
Maddie Butkovich is a printmaker and painter from Virginia Beach, VA. She received her BSED in Kinesiology and High Distinction in Studio Art from the University of Virginia in 2023 and is currently an Aunspaugh Fellow at the University. Her prints result from process-driven play with the emotive quality of line and color. The work contemplates anthropomorphism, relational systems, and personification through crude and clunky drawing.
3
4
Maddie Butkovich, Edith, monotype on mulberry paper, 33.5"x26"
5
Maddie Butkovich, Kate, monotype on mulberry paper, 33.5"x26"
6
Adrian Moore
In Muses of Gaia, fabrics, sculpture and film are used to have a conversation with one another about a larger concept. Obsidian Offerings and Refracted Romance are both constructed through sewing but are then deconstructed by opening seam lines and repositioning panels. Such tensions fragment the body and question the power/strength of the subject, relying on the fishing wire that anchors it from above. Refracted Romance is heavily deconstructed from its original form, meant to convey a disconnect between the body and soul. The nine-and-a-half foot train remains intact while parts of what would cover the upper body are separated and missing. This leaves a mountainous-like form of light-refracting glitter that intensifies as viewers move closer to the piece. The sculpture piece Sprouting of a Nón Lá references my Vietnamese heritage. Its shape is altered from a traditional Nón Lá (hat typically worn during acts of labor in Vietnam), conveying the confusion I possess with my cultural pride. The sculpture contains a strong foundation made of bamboo sticks with woven bamboo leaves in between. Sprouting of a Nón Lá, as with the previous two works, is incomplete, implying that a body is needed to provide it support.
7
left: Adrian Moore, Obsidian Offering, gallery view, fabric
8
Adrian Moore, Spouting of Nón Lá, documentation from UVA Runway show, fabric
Adrian Moore is a graduate from the UVA class of 2023. During their time at UVA, Adrian majored in studio art, concentrating in both Cinematography and New Media. As an undergraduate, Adrian enjoyed producing experimental films that often contained a combination of other mediums. Some of these other forms included spoken word, animation and fabric manipulation. As an Aunspaugh Fellow, Adrian wanted to strengthen their craft in fabric manipulation and delve into the practice of making sculptures. In their most recent exhibition at Ruffin Gallery, Muses of Gaia, Adrian produced wearable clothing pieces, a bamboo sculpture and a triptych film showcasing elements of performance. With their education also including the studies of psychology/philosophy, Adrian enjoys tackling multi-layered concepts of internal conflict. Adrian hopes to produce art that portrays indescribable, yet universal, points of tension.
9
left: Adrian Moore, Obsidian Offering, documentation from UVA Runway show, fabric
Claire Szeptycki
The works shown here express the tension between the real and the remembered through reconstructions of various places I have called home. They are combinations of drawing, painting, printmaking, and embroidery, each piece combining the photographic with the hand-drawn to depict a particular object or place. Photography is an indexical act, one that creates a (somewhat) direct impression of the world. Drawing, on the other hand, is an imaginative act generated in the spaces between one’s hand, and the paper. Through a combination of these observational and imaginative practices, I recreate particularly sentimental furniture or architecture as I imagine them now, after some time separated from their original forms. These
10
Claire Szeptycki, Above the Patio, colored pencil and acrylic, 24"x32"
images, sourced from memory, are irreparably changed by time and distance: flattened, warped, shrunken, inflated, or faded into monochrome. My drawings are often inaccurate, and my photographs are cut out, carved into, or partially grained away. Through these modifications, they are separated from the real and integrated into an unreliable world of memory.
11
Claire Szeptycki, Above the Living Room, colored pencil and acrylic, 24"x32"
Claire Szeptycki, left to right:
From the yard, lithograph and embroidery thread, 13"x17"
712B, lithograph, 14"x18"
Another one just like it, lithograph, 14"x18"
Good hands, lithograph and embroidery thread, 14"x18"
12
Claire Szeptycki (she/her) was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she has lived for the past five years. She received her B.A. in Studio Art and English from the University of Virginia in the Spring of 2023 and went on to participate in the university’s Aunspaugh Fellowship. She works in a variety of mediums on paper including printmaking, drawing, painting, sewing, collage, and photography, and draws inspiration from the varied processes in which she works. Most recently, her work pulls from early childhood memories, domestic objects, and images of Virginia’s ecological landscape to construct layered, abstracted, or partially incomplete compositions.
13
14
KJ Vaughan, I Know Them, acrylic, 18"x14"
KJ Vaughan
KJ Vaughan disrupts binary thinking by repeating and at times shifting the orientations of familiar patterns. The recognizable forms create the space for viewers to bring their own narratives and interpretations. Their recent exhibition titled You Had to Be There reflects on feelings of freedom and peace discovered during moments of belonging. Through skewing legibility and creating unusual yet enticing atmospheres, KJ reflects on their experiences as a queer person accepting their transness and embracing transition. The process of painting allows them to explore moments of peace their younger self would not have believed possible. These are the moments you had to be there to fully understand.
15
16
KJ Vaughan, Kage Joy, acrylic, 16"x20" each
KJ Vaughan is a trans nonbinary painter originally from Lynchburg, Virginia. They graduated from the University of Virginia as a studio art major with concentrations in painting and cinematography. They spent the last year completing the Aunspaugh fellowship at UVA.
17
KJ Vaughan, What if it works, acrylic, 40"x40"
18
Vic White
My work is a testament to my specific tastes and lifestyle. I like chilling. I like smoking weed. I like chilling and smoking weed with cool people. I love being an unapologetic fag and I love doing this in spite of those who can’t bear to see a dyke smoke on something different. And since these are the things that bring me joy, these are the things I made work about. My best work is produced when I’m stoned out of my mind. I get high, I start to notice intricacies I didn’t see before, I get inspired, and I take pictures without thinking too hard. My work aims to demonstrate ideas relating to estrangement, delinquency, and challenging the straight desire to have total access to queer experiences. I use photographic figuration and abstraction in tandem to prompt an acceptance of the unknown. This aims to visually reference the right of queer individuals to protect their peace and to force those outside the community to be satisfied not knowing everything
about queer life. Central to my artistic exploration are motifs of delinquent culture, an inherent facet of the queer experience. I employ punk imagery—including mosh pits, graffiti, and references to smoking weed— for deconstruction and empowerment, aiming to challenge conventional notions of femininity and piety. The punk ethos, with its contempt for conformity, provides a powerful contrast to formulaic constrains of gender expression, and my recent body of work aims to demonstrate exactly that.
left: Vic White, two (REDACTED) holding a bong, digital photo, bath tub, chicken wire, spray paint, 5'x3'x4'
19
20
Vic White, genderfuckyou, digital photo, 20"x20"
Vic White (THEY/THEM) is native to Roanoke, VA and has lived in Charlottesville for the past five years. They are a multi-media artist graduating from the University of Virginia in 2023 as a first-generation college student, receiving a BA in Studio Art and a BSED in Kinesiology. Their recent body of work focuses on pushing the photographic medium in both figurative and abstract directions. Vic’s conceptual and aesthetic interests lie in the relationship between estrangement, rebellion, and the continued need for queer individuals to live proudly in spite of hetero/ cis-normative structures. In the next month, they will be moving to Philadelphia where they will continue getting into some proper unapologetic faggotry.
21
Vic White, see me in spite of, digital photo, 16"x20"