2020 MFA catalog, Tyler School of Art and Architecture

INTERSECTIONS

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

TEMPLE INTERSECTIONS 2020 UNIVERSITY TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

FOREWORD BY SUSAN E. CAHAN, DEAN

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

DILMAR M. GAMERO SANTOS

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

INTERSECTIONS IS AN INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION, PRODUCED BY THE 2020 MASTER OF FINE ARTS CANDIDATES IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE GRADUATE STUDENTS AND FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AT THE TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Administrative Support Chad D. Curtis Associate Dean and Graduate Director

Kati Gegenheimer Associate Director of Academic Enrichment Programs

Zachary Vickers Content Manager

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Graduate Faculty Mariola Alvarez

Abby Ryan Guido

Martha Madigan

Fauzia Sadiq Garcia

Stephen Anderson

Marcia B. Hall

Lynn A. Mandarano

Lauren Sandler

Kate Benisek

Sally W. Harrison

Christopher McAdams

Bryan Martin Satalino

Steven Berkowitz

Jesse Harrod

Pablo Meninato

Matthew Sepielli

Gerard F. Brown

David Herman, Jr.

Rebecca Michaels

Paul E. Sheriff

Douglas Bucci

Kelly A. Holohan

Leah Modigliani

Mark Shetabi

Susan Cahan

Richard D. Hricko

Susan M. Moore

Robert Z. Shuman Jr.

William J. Cohen

Pauline Hurley-Kurtz

Dona R. Nelson

Gerald D. Silk

Tracy E. Cooper

Renee E. Jackson

Rachel Grace Newman

Samantha Simpson

Chad D. Curtis

C.T. Jasper

Rashida Ng

Hester Stinnett

Delaney DeMott

Jessica Julius

Emily Neumeier

Kim D. Strommen

Jeffrey Doshna

Gabriel Kaprielian

Odili Odita

Lolly Tai

Linda Earle

Lisa Kay

Karyn Olivier

James Merle Thomas

Sasha Eisenman

Nichola Kinch

Michael Olszewski

Ulysses Vance III

Amze J. Emmons

Stephanie Knopp

Sharyn A. O’Mara

Ashley West

Seher Erdogan Ford

Robert T. Kuper

Eric Oskey

Mallory Weston

Clifton R. Fordham

Baldev S. Lamba

PepĂłn Osorio

Jane DeRose Evans

Scott R. Laserow

Erin Pauwels

M. Katherine Wingert-Playdon

Mark Thomas Gibson

Roberto Lugo

Vojislav Ristic

Philip Glahn

Dermot Mac Cormack

Timothy Rusterholz

Andrew Wit Byron Wolfe William Yalowitz

DILMAR M. GAMERO SANTOS

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ARTISTS WRITERS

Jennifer Bedford

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Kristina Centore

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66

Mark Claes

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Zixiao Huang Kedra Kearis

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Michael Lally

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Liam Machado

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Sam Malandra-Myers

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Lucy Mason Sara Potts

78 12

Noah Randolph Erin Riley-Lopez

58 16

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Tyler Rockey Emily Schollenberger

CONTENTS

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70 32

FOREWORD

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ARTISTS AND ESSAYS

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

12 -16 9

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

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90 104 130 148

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108

86 126

SCULPTURE

CERAMICS

PAINTING

METALS / JEWELRY / CAD-CAM

FIBERS & MATERIAL STUDIES

PHOTOGRAPHY

PRINTMAKING

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152 162

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82 94 118 166

140 144

114

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GLASS

GRAPHIC & INTERACTIVE DESIGN

CONTENTS

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Qu int on Ma La ldo yla na Ma do rce Ka l l e thr yn Me An cc aM a os qu Ale era xa nz dri aN Ch ris az ar Rid dle Br idg et K. Ro Ol ge ivi aS rs he r m Mi an ng fei Sh i Pe i-Ju Sh ih Ril ey Str om Wa rith Ta ha Ke lsi eT ys on Au ste nC am Jul ille ian We aW ym i s ue Viv do lle m ien r Wi se Sh ua ng Wu Jia yi Xia o Jun gm ok Yi Yig eZ ha ng

FOREWO FOREWORD The Tyler School of Art and Architecture proudly presents the work of its 2020 MFA class in this publication, a collaboration between our graduate students in studio art and the continuing students in our Art History graduate programs.

This collaboration has been a Tyler tradition since 2012.

The number “2020” lends itself to obvious wordplay and puns about vision. Ironically, the year 2020 has been anything but clear-sighted. Instead, it has been a time of chaos sown by the global spread of the coronavirus, a lurching economy, ongoing political turmoil, social injustice and the increasingly alarming effects of climate change. To their credit, Tyler’s MFA graduates have found their voices amidst this havoc, perspectives from which to regard, respond and positively impact our world in the way that only art can: by inspiring ideas and touching hearts.

This book presents work from across Tyler’s many studio art programs: Ceramics; Fibers & Material Studies; Glass; Graphic & Interactive Design; Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM; Painting; Photography; Printmaking; and Sculpture. The artists have used diverse materials and methods as resources to harness for expressive aims, not just ends in themselves, crossing media in the service of their creative visions.

I thank our faculty advisors for providing spirited guidance and support for this project: Mariola Alvarez, assistant professor of art history; Chad D. Curtis, associate professor of ceramics, associate dean and graduate director; and Philip Glahn, associate professor of critical studies and aesthetics. Kati Gegenheimer, director of academic enrichment programs and a faculty member in painting, has guided the development and production of this publication with skill, diligence and good humor. I would also like to express my gratitude to our faculty editors, Mariola Alvarez, Philip Glahn, Leah Modigliani, Emily Neumeier and James Merle Thomas, and to Zachary Vickers for his editorial contributions. Thank you to the artist and art historian, respectively, who led this project: Juliana Wisdom and Noah Randolph. To the artists and writers whose work is presented here: May this be one of many fruitful collaborations that you’ll have the pleasure to experience throughout your lives and careers.

Like many schools around the country and the world, Tyler’s students dispersed in March 2020 as a result of the pandemic. This book serves as a permanent record of their community and solidarity.

Susan E. Cahan Dean, Tyler School of Art and Architecture

FOREWORD

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HAZZIZA ABDULLAH WRITTEN BY

SARA POTTS

The connection between a mother and her daughter is a powerful force; it is one of love, lessons and fierce protection.

As Hazziza Abdullah describes it, her mother and many other mothers in her community “take no shit” from forces that affect their families. This ferocity and desire to strengthen others comes from a long history of discrimination and oppression against Black women. From early exoticization of Black female bodies such as the Hottentot Venus to the current appropriation of fuller lips, cornrows and dark complexions by the likes of Kim Kardashian, everywhere women want to look like Black women but no one actually wants to be Black.

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The photographs and video installations created by Abdullah confront these histories through intimate photographs. In each photo, a single maternal unit is represented and their feminine power pushes into the viewer’s space through an emphasis on physical touch and kinship. Abdullah allows her subjects to reflect their own personal legacies and includes herself in a critical video on her relationship with her mother, one that has been forged through fire, unique only to them. In a world that criticizes every woman’s appearance for being either too skinny or not skinny enough, or having to wrangle their “unruly” natural hair, the videos and photos retaliate against cultural discrimination and encourage others to break away from convention. It is through these stories that a bond between viewer and subject is forged, relating themes of beauty, identity, femininity and maternity to all women, regardless of race, creed or nationality

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

HAZZIZA ABDULLAH

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Ayanna & Anne (PREVIOUS PAGE) Archival pigment print. 30” x 40”.

Speaking Truth to Sour (ABOVE) Moving images.

Charmaine, Zanola & Carla (FOLLOWING PAGE) Archival pigment print. 30” x 40”.

FROM EARLY EXOTICIZATION OF BLACK FEMALE BODIES SUCH AS THE HOTTENTOT VENUS TO THE CURRENT APPROPRIATION OF FULLER LIPS, CORNROWS AND DARK COMPLEXIONS BY THE LIKES OF KIM KARDASHIAN, EVERYWHERE WOMEN WANT TO LOOK LIKE BLACK WOMEN BUT NO ONE ACTUALLY WANTS TO BE BLACK.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

HAZZIZA ABDULLAH

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MNEERA ALAWADHI WRITTEN BY

ERIN RILEY-LOPEZ

Although Mneera Alawadhi is located within Tyler’s Sculpture Program, her artwork might better be described as social practice—taking the forms of architecture, actions, events, performances and installations. Dialogues with the community are key to her work as she addresses the collective, as well as her own personal identity of the postcolonial landscape of Bahrain. An island nation in the Persian Gulf, Bahrain is currently jockeying for position within the globalized 21st century. Much of her work is an investigation into the pearling industry of the island’s history —which has long since been replaced by the oil and natural gas industries—and seeks to reconnect the residents of Bahrain with their precolonial past. Since 2012, the Bahrain Pearling Trail, or Bahrain Pearling Pathway, has been listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site as “an outstanding example of traditional utilization of the sea’s resources and human interaction with the environment, which shaped both the economy and the cultural identity of the island’s society.”[1] Taking the Bahrain Pearling Trail as a point of departure, Alawadhi has turned to performance through her collaboration with Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance. In her recent work, Alawadhi has choreographed movement inspired by the women of Bahrain, both past and present. In a video that captures her silhouette as she

moves through a gallery space, overlapping images project onto the wall and perhaps represent the multilayered gender dynamics of the island as they shift from female-dominated during the precolonial pearling industry to male-dominated in the postcolonial oil and natural gas industries. In addition to her performance, Alawadhi intervened in sites located in Bahrain that unfolded in three phases and sought to connect a younger generation with an older one by renovating abandoned spaces for use as public space, creating installations and walking tours for residents to engage with, and revitalizing public spaces using art as the vehicle for transformation. In documentary images of Alawadhi’s work, we see Bahrain’s citizens interacting with the altered landscapes in both serious and playful ways, clearly indicating that their engagement with it can be both fun and thought-provoking at the same time

[1] World Heritage List - UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1364, accessed January 17, 2020.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Speculation b (ABOVE) Performance Still.

Speculation a (RIGHT) Performance Still.

MNEERA ALAWADHI

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Bodily reflective modes (ABOVE) Performance Still.

Space for speculation (FOLLOWING PAGE) Fabric, projection mapping.

Size variable.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

ALTHOUGH MNEERA ALAWADHI IS LOCATED WITHIN TYLER’S SCULPTURE PROGRAM, HER ARTWORK MIGHT BETTER BE DESCRIBED AS SOCIAL PRACTICE—TAKING THE FORMS OF ARCHITECTURE, ACTIONS, EVENTS, PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS.

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MOLLIE CAFFEY WRITTEN BY

SAM MALANDRA-MYERS

Mollie Caffey’s work focuses on the human experience: those moments where we are all the same, although our story may not mirror anyone else’s tale. Caffey has adopted the word “poetics” to describe their work visually, conceptually and textually, which is an apt way to explain the confounding experiences they communicate via their art. With a deep consideration of space and time, the artist hopes to elicit a response of understanding from each viewer of the universality of their experienced emotions like grief and love. Bubbling under the surface of Caffey’s work is a sense of multiplicity and repetition, which fosters a connection between time, space and learning, as they understand that there is an infinite amount of learning to be done internally, which takes repeated exposure to the space outside of our comfort zones to grow. This is visually represented in their video work by including a doubling, and sometimes tripling, of their figure doing the same action at different times, which ultimately ends when the doubled movement matches perfectly. Caffey’s work examines this temporal layering by extrapolating the lessons learned through universal emotional experiences and giving them a visual vocabulary.

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Working through combinations of performance, video projection, sculpture and text, Caffey attempts to understand the importance of the movement, internally and externally, of our bodies within a global, capitalist and patriarchal society.

They work to subvert both the intentional and unintentional spaces that illustrate the “life as it has always been,” a rut that has consumed creative endeavors like architecture and city planning. For their thesis exhibition, Caffey is constructing a human-sized dome with two entry points and a clay fountain inside, with video projections of the artist practicing a psychic exercise while standing on a dock, calling the viewer to share the exercise. Caffey’s goal in their art is to continually construct and reconstruct a worldview that is consciously moving forward towards a future, rather than blindly following time. In order to do that, they posit that there must be a definitive learning of history, which is wholly lacking in our current state, with an understanding of the layering effect of time

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

MOLLIE CAFFEY

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pyramid (detail) (PREVIOUS PAGE) Wax, metal, dirt, cotton mop, cinder block.

Detail of a full scale installation.

Image credit: Chase Barnes.

you go up the ladder, you go down (ABOVE) Silk, mirrors, salt, sand, video projection.

Full scale installation.

Image credit: Chase Barnes.

CAFFEY’S GOAL IN THEIR ART IS TO CONTINUALLY CONSTRUCT AND RECONSTRUCT A WORLDVIEW THAT IS CONSCIOUSLY MOVING FORWARD TOWARDS A FUTURE, RATHER THAN BLINDLY FOLLOWING TIME.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Joans Garden, the Angel (ABOVE) Mesh, wires, cotton string. Detail of a full room installation. Image credit: Alec Logan Smith.

Joans Garden, the Swords (LEFT) Wire, cotton string. Detail of a full room installation. Image credit: Alec Logan Smith.

MOLLIE CAFFEY

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XI CHENG WRITTEN BY

JENNIFER BEDFORD

Xi Cheng is an innovative and creative UI/UX designer who has been working with a range of materials, technological platforms and objectives throughout her career. She has utilized digital platforms to create works that are both physically and digitally interactive. They communicate her interest in children’s education, behavioral training, statistical data and cultural traditions.

Don’t let the adorable illustrations of cuddly animals fool you. Cheng’s two bachelor’s degrees and two master’s degrees (which range in subject from a BA in accounting to an MFA in graphic and interactive design) are evidenced in her sharp and impeccable work. Her practice is motivated by environmental urgencies like climate change as well as the importance of education, as in her app Vegetopia and her website Blue Home! Vegetopia is a daily-use app that assists users who are trying to eat less meat. Once the user inputs their diet data, the app tracks their personal environmental impact by avoiding meat and rewards streaks of vegetarianism by facilitating the adoption and rescue of farm animals by placing them in animal sanctuaries. Blue Home is an educational website for children, illustrated with numerous interactive animals shown in one of four natural habitats and paired with informational text about the water sources specific to each environment. Cheng has also used arcade-like graphics to express how data from traditional media companies can align with E-sports in a short video in 2018. This infographic animation submission won her first place in the Temple University Data Analytics Challenge.

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In an effort to bridge the ostensible ephemerality of the digital and the materiality of experience, Cheng has created Chinese Ghost Festival: a large-scale, 2D work with digital interactive features. She expresses a theme of inclusion and connection across the ghost/human barrier, which is physically represented by the wall the work is mounted on.

The touch-sensitive black-and-white surface communicates with a projector and uses bright colors, lively animations and traditional Chinese symbolism to bring to life whichever one of the six illustrated scenarios is activated. Chinese Ghost Festival makes the invisible interaction between the living and the dead visible by blurring the lines between physical, spiritual and digital

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Chinese Ghost Festival (ABOVE) Raspberry pi, conductive paint, copper tape, copper wire, copper nail, epson paper.

200” x 50”.

VEGETOPIA (RIGHT) App design.

1,334 x 750 pixels.

XI CHENG

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VEGETOPIA (ABOVE) App design.

1,334 x 750 pixels.

Blue Home!

(RIGHT) Interactive educational website.

E-sport Infographic Animation (FOLLOWING PAGE) Video.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

CHINESE GHOST FESTIVAL MAKES THE INVISIBLE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD VISIBLE

BY BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN PHYSICAL, SPIRITUAL AND DIGITAL.

XI CHENG

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JULIA CLIFT WRITTEN BY

ERIN RILEY-LOPEZ

Looking at Julia Clift’s paintings, I am reminded of Denise Scott Brown’s and Robert Venturi’s theory that there is something we can learn—in their case about postmodern architecture—from the over-commercialized Vegas strip.

Vegas is but one locale that appears in Clift’s paintings, asking the viewer to learn something from our contemporary surroundings, perhaps by finding beauty in the chaos.

A mishmash of urban and suburban elements meld together in her paintings to reveal the quintessential American landscape. In this work, we can detect the shift from the mid-19th-century utopian vision of the Hudson River School in all of its pastorally- and idyllically-rendered exquisiteness to our arguably unsightly dystopic Anthropocene age. Just as the elements in Clift’s paintings mingle, so too do the techniques. In one work, a gesturally-painted palm tree sprouts from the side of what appears to be some kind of pool deck, which visually thrusts a geometric abstract blue void into the viewer’s space. In another painting, a gray clapboard house appears on its side enveloped by hard-edged rhomboid-esque shapes in Day-Glo purple, pink and blue that overlap with more gestural foliage along its perimeter. A third painting, bifurcated in the center, showcases parking lots, roadways, airport landing strips, blue skylines and the orange netting meant to protect a construction site with a few flourishes of greenery peeking out from behind these metropolitan markers.

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Clift’s color palette, which echoes the artificiality of our commercialized lives, simultaneously repels as it also draws one in and creates a sense of nostalgia. While the paintings are oriented on the wall in a specific way, it is difficult to tell up from down and right from left within the imagery, further adding to the chaotic nature of our own current backdrop. There is a vague sense of anxiety that cloaks these paintings. An anxiety of living amidst the hyperreal, consumerist environments of, say, the strip mall. Sourced from Clift’s own photographs, all of these elements make up the fabric of the American landscape from the dreamy “tropical” locations of Florida with their palms and pools to the more mundane urban concrete jungles of Detroit or Philadelphia

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

American Space (RIGHT) Oil on canvas. 72” x 84”.

American Space (BELOW) Oil on canvas. 72” x 96”.

JULIA CLIFT

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

American Space Oil on canvas. 72” x 96”.

JULIA CLIFT

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THEO CICCARELLI CORNETTA WRITTEN BY

EMILY SCHOLLENBERGER

A circle of chairs greets visitors to Theo Ciccarelli Cornetta’s exhibition. Each piece of ordinary household furniture has been transformed into an evocative presence. A gash sutured together with thread creates a wound in the seat of an otherwise cozy chair, while bulging orange fabric spills out of the side of an armchair. These objects are visceral, resonating with viewers’ own bodies. Other objects speak of intimacy and grief. One simple wooden chair has no textile component, only a double seat with two curved backs that overlap each other, the seam between the two chair backs left visible. The interconnected backrests evoke intimate companionship, drawing attention to the achingly empty seats. The absence evoked by this chair and the overflowing, wounded textiles unraveling throughout the exhibition pricks viewers with the possibility of loss: perhaps of control or confidence in their own bodies or the absence of a loved one. This loss of bodily control haunts the works pictured here as well, with the unraveling edges and spidery, hair-like black threads of Untitled Body and the soft but constraining folds of A Soft Hug, A Physical Restraint.

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Each object in the show was born out of the individual experiences of Ciccarelli Cornetta’s own friends and family, testifying to an individual story of trauma and grief. However, instead of illustrating these stories, Ciccarelli Cornetta has altered familiar furniture, complicating comfortable associations with the domestic and creating unsettling objects that linger with viewers long after they leave the exhibition space.

Even as Ciccarelli Cornetta’s work witnesses mourning and trauma, the exhibition encourages viewers to join the circle of chairs, bringing their own stories to the space. Each chair’s worn, domestic form and quiet presence appeals to viewers, speaking to the possibility of comfort and healing through community. Ciccarelli Cornetta’s show opens space for viewers to empathize with others’ experiences while also seeing echoes of their own traumas in the circle of chairs, becoming a collective space in which individual stories are held and honored

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

THEO CICCARELLI CORNETTA

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To Be Titled

TC2 woven portrait of my love, cotton on cotton, a feminist interpretation of the Virgin Mary, adoration.

20” x 30”. Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

(PREVIOUS PAGE)

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Untitled Body (ABOVE) Wool, cotton, acrylic fibers handwoven and manipulated while considering the weight of emotion on the body. 60” x 36”. Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

A Soft Hug, A Physical Restraint Handwoven acrylic and cotton fabric, an obsession with the life and story of Carrie Buck.

Size: My body. Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

THEO CICCARELLI CORNETTA

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JAZMYN CROSBY WRITTEN BY

KRISTINA CENTORE

Sometimes, a pirate radio signal is broadcast through the halls of the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. The signal, emanating from Jazmyn Crosby’s studio, carries the sound that a charcoal pencil makes when someone draws with it on a wall, or YouTube recordings of an advancing locomotive, or the sound of the bottom of the ocean, and is transmitted, unsuspected, over the airwaves that surround us. Crosby extends her pirate radio signals beyond the walls of Tyler, too.

She often walks along the paths created by her broadcasts; an analog form of contemplation that charts the real-world implications of the invisible signal.

At a time in which our memories, stored on hard drives and servers, are reassuringly given a new aura of false permanence, Crosby’s work acts as interference that emphasizes the material qualities of seemingly ephemeral technologies.

Such an approach points towards the political and social effects of these technologies that are obscured beneath their veneer of ease. Beyond the cloud and acting on the level of the body, Crosby interrogates the humanization of technology and the technologization of the intangible: particularly, the concept of the disembodied female voice carries throughout her work. After all, Crosby notes, someone out there is the original voice of Siri.

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But while the human trappings of our newest technologies smooth them over, Crosby’s work, instead, presents the irrational, the accidental and the hodgepodge brokenness of the obsolete. In the work Remembering/Forgetting Machine, we observe Crosby’s hands assembling the component parts of a “machine” (used matchbooks, a piece of plastic, a chewed piece of gum, the foam ear of a headphone) that will either help the viewer to remember, or to forget, “something that has happened” in their life. Like telephones that fail to connect, Crosby’s machines ask the viewer to reconsider technology’s myth that the physical has dissolved

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Transmission Dances (ABOVE) Video/prompt. There are two dancers: one holds a radio, the other a cell phone attached to a radio. In the room with them another, more powerful radio connected to a different cell phone. Both cell phones are connected to people outside of the room.

As the dancers move closer together and further away from each other, they stitch together a fragmented conversation.

Corded Phones Several conversations have been created with restricted and specific access: a robocall, a live transmission of the ocean, an amplified voice transmitted to a specific location and a call waiting line. Photo credit: Quinton Maldonado.

JAZMYN CROSBY

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Amulets

House paint, gouache. 96” x 60”.

(PREVIOUS PAGE)

Remembering/ Forgetting Machine (ABOVE) Clay. Dimensions variable. Video. 1:50 minutes.

WHILE THE HUMAN TRAPPINGS OF OUR NEWEST TECHNOLOGIES SMOOTH THEM OVER, CROSBY’S WORK, INSTEAD, PRESENTS THE IRRATIONAL, THE ACCIDENTAL AND THE HODGEPODGE BROKENNESS OF THE OBSOLETE.

JAZMYN CROSBY

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MIA CULBERTSON WRITTEN BY

KEDRA KEARIS

Mia Culbertson is a politically motivated designer whose work wields a subtle unity of text, image and color.

Evidenced by Enough, a newspaper zine-based guerrilla campaign targeting voters age 16–18, her fluency in the psychology of human emotion stands out. Here, Culbertson succeeds in both challenging and inspiring, sourcing images of activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to Greta Thunberg over lively reds, purples and pinks. With the simple act of stacking the first three letters of ENOUGH over the last three, she draws out the relatable word UGH. Selective about the types of projects she undertakes, Culbertson infuses the core values of respect and integrity into her multimedia array of design work.

Her interests in social justice and, ultimately, education are never so evident as in The Welcome Table, a collaborative social-design project between the Graphic & Interactive Design MFA Program at Tyler and St. James School, an underresourced, Episcopalian middle school in Philadelphia.

When speaking about the branding of the on-campus pastoral center, which Culbertson led as acting project manager, a tangible sense of pride lights her face. And the tagline for The Welcome Table, visible on the center’s exterior wooden sign designed by the group, strikes me as a phrase that can be easily applied to the social-design work of Culbertson: “Caring for our Community”

When asked about the moment color enters into the equation, she unflinchingly explains that it is possible to become “trapped by color,” emphasizing that, for her, content comes first. It is this candid, eyes-wide-open approach that results in her Zora Neale Hurston Book Cover Series, where Culbertson masterfully evokes Hurston’s lyrical world of the past. Using classic, monochromatic black-on-white, pen-and-ink-style covers, she juxtaposes colorful book spines with modern acrylic slipcovers of purple, gold and green.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

KRISTIN HINKLEY

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Enough: Vote To Be Heard (PREVIOUS PAGE) Campaign Editorial - Branding.

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Inward: A Mindfulness Retreat For Creatives (ABOVE) UX/UI - Branding App Prototyping - Packaging.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Nostalgia: The Pain Of Returning Home (ABOVE) UX/UI - Interactive Installation - Editorial.

Zora Neale Hurston Book Cover Series Illustration - Print.

MIA CULBERTSON

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MICHELE FITZGERALD WRITTEN BY

MICHAEL LALLY

Michele Fitzgerald blends concepts, mythology, history and experience into an illustrated form that asks the viewer to imagine themselves in the realm of the character. Her focus on the fictional plane and fantastical creations contrasts with the concrete forms in which her works emerge. Fitzgerald’s strong background in illustration drives her artistic interests, ranging from vivid character studies to elongated designed books.

Though she began in the world of hand-drawn illustration and maintains strong connections with her past in textile work, Fitzgerald now embraces the digital contemporary.

Varying from figures of legends with a strong prevailing trend toward their costumes to logos and graphic design, her work resides on a thread that is always tied to interests in space and fantasy. Figures gracing her books and studies display a mythological element grounded in a connection to cultures in which they emerged. The personalities of the characters reside beyond their two-dimensionality, emerging through the conversations between the imagined and the observer thanks to Fitzgerald’s interventions in the designs.

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Many of her figures contain ethereal elements and are larger than life, despite their location on a page. Indeed, scale figures heavily in Fitzgerald’s oeuvre. Three of her books, when combined, measure to be in proportion to the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, allowing for both a thematic and physical connection. One appreciates Fitzgerald’s emphasis on space throughout her body of work. This “space” varies from outer space to the earthly in which we reside.

As an avid traveler and sushi enthusiast, Fitzgerald is culturally influenced by the “bits and bobs” of design—incorporating encountered fashion into her characters. Though a Philadelphia native, she gathers inspiration from around the world for her characters by combining elements of historical costume with those of her own design. Legends, movies, advertising and history create the intersection of transverses that bloom in her work

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

The Book of Beasts “Vampire” Illustration Digital print. 8” x 10”.

MICHELE FITZGERALD

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2001 : A Space Odyssey Book Set and Case Printed book. 3” x 6” x 9”.

Philadelphia Spectural Society Map (BELOW) 22” x 15”.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

The Book of Beasts, “Kistune” Digital and print. 8” x 10”.

THE PERSONALITIES OF THE CHARACTERS RESIDE BEYOND THEIR TWO-DIMENSIONALITY, EMERGING THROUGH THE CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN THE IMAGINED AND THE OBSERVER THANKS TO FITZGERALD’S INTERVENTIONS IN THE DESIGNS.

MICHELE FITZGERALD

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KATIE GARTH WRITTEN BY

EMILY SCHOLLENBERGER

Often the art world has prioritized the heroic, the gestural and the monumental over the mundane, the meticulous and the intimate. With Best Laid Plans, Katie Garth looks steadily at the world around her—a world that is too often chaotic, loud and driven by shock value and cynicism—and offers an alternative way of looking and being.

Garth uses mundane images and a quiet narrative to offer viewers an escape from the brash, insistent outside world even as she questions the wisdom and effectiveness of escapism.

Best Laid Plans takes two forms: the first are small, spiralbound books printed with a risograph that pair drawings—a pillowcase, a bobby pin, neatly arranged clothing—with an introspective narrative text. Together, the narrative and drawings recount a childhood episode in which Garth imagined escaping her body, leaving behind the need for careful planning; in the end, she finds grounding and solace in the familiarity of her room and in her pockets, possessions that provide connection to people and pets and her own body. Best Laid Plans also exists as an installation featuring prints of everyday objects like those in the book, including deep blue cyanotypes of domestic objects and fabric printed with the folds and creases of drawn pillowcases and curtains, hinting that perhaps our senses are illusory. Both the installation and the small, analog book stabilize the variables of digital content, ensuring that Garth’s viewers receive her work in her intended scale and sequence.

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The work’s small scale and domestic subject matter bring attention to qualities often associated with femininity and overlooked as a result. Garth uses these qualities to welcome others into her personal experience. The precision and light hand evident in both her evocative prose and quiet drawings invite viewers to take their time and permit her work to envelop them. In doing so, they will find that the quietness and apparent pleasantness of Best Laid Plans offers a meditation on the possibility of escape from anxiety, from the need for control, and, in the process, questions if this escape is actually desirable

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Poppy (detail from Best Laid Plans) Wire-bound risograph book.

5” x 7” x 1”.

Zzzzz

Digital print on cotton.

32” x 20”.

(BELOW)

KATIE GARTH

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART GRADUATE CATALOG 2019

KATIE GARTH

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Excerpt from Best Laid Plans (PREVIOUS PAGE) Wire-bound risograph book. 5” x 7” x 1”.

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Treading Lightly (ABOVE) Cyanotype on mulberry.

21” x 28”.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Nowhere and Nothing (ABOVE) Cyanotype on mulberry.

21” x 28”.

KATIE GARTH

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LUCY GILLIS WRITTEN BY

ERIN RILEY-LOPEZ

How does your garden grow? If it is Lucy Gillis’s, there is something slightly unsettling about what is taking shape inside her garden-like installation. One will not find the silver bells, cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row that inhabit the nursery rhyme. Instead, a sense of melancholia pervades the elements that make up Gillis’s gothic landscape. Her garden is haunted by the loss and subsequent grief from the death of a childhood friend. Tending to this garden is what keeps Gillis from being consumed by these feelings.

Scraps, bits of tools, toys and other castaway items dot this terrain. Only the outline of stairs made from electric tubing lead up to an archway etched on the wall—which one cannot enter. A dizzying maze of wooden beams resemble a fence, which if trapped inside one could not escape from. Dried, upside-down flowers hang alone on a wall as if memorializing something or someone. Two small toy horses

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stand apart on tiny pedestals but are connected by a mesh tube, their faces stuffed into either end as if communicating across the miles. Gardening gloves are rendered useless from having shapes cut through them. They now hang limp on a wall but are not lifeless. Dried flowers dipped in rubber and sprayed a chrome color reflect the light around them. If the “flowers” in Gillis’s garden could talk—like the ones Alice encounters in Wonderland—what would they say? They might express the fragility of life and the struggle to survive once someone has vanished. But they might just as easily convey a sense of hopefulness and resilience in the face of an unimaginable loss. Despite the eeriness surrounding Gillis’s garden, there is something oddly comforting about it as well. It acts as a buoy, keeping her afloat, and reflects the light of her future to come

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Love Like a Sunset (detail) Glass tube, neon gas, electricity, fake flowers, found materials, hardware. 4” x 11” x 30”.

LUCY GILLIS

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Mirror Lattice (detail) Glass tube, argon/mercury gas, electricity, hardware.

Dimensions variable, approximately .75” x 36” x 65”.

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Buoy (detail) (BELOW) Found buoy, slumped glass, fake flowers, found materials. 4” x 7” x 40”.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Never Enough Glass tube, argon/mercury gas, electricity, hardware.

28” x 36” x 44”.

DESPITE THE EERINESS SURROUNDING GILLIS’S GARDEN, THERE IS SOMETHING ODDLY COMFORTING ABOUT IT AS WELL. IT ACTS AS A BUOY, KEEPING HER AFLOAT, AND REFLECTS THE LIGHT OF HER FUTURE TO COME.

LUCY GILLIS

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JAY HARTMANN WRITTEN BY

NOAH RANDOLPH

Approach—a word, simple yet multivalent, consistently used to describe the act of viewing a painting. The most common approach is often head on: stepping forward, attempting to understand the painting through closer looking. As far back as Apelles, painters have been forcing their viewers to look closer. A more difficult task, though, is to force an approach that makes the viewer look differently.

Utilizing philosophy, theory and his own personal history, the paintings of Jay Hartmann explore these questions of approach and looking. As he explains, “I love paintings that are slow to reveal themselves…the combination of their material and the light around them, but I also hope the very way one looks at them is revealed.” An artist who has been routinely guided by a series of self-professed “constructive misunderstandings”—erroneous readings of works that in turn inform and motivate his own practice—Hartmann knows the value in understanding one’s own approach.

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In their obsessive engagement with material, color and light, Hartmann’s paintings have a complexity found through a relentless investigation of the limits of the medium that impel the viewer to look differently—from ceramic grounds that subtly complicate the finish of oil paint to lighting that casts a shadow of his thick impasto, implicating the wall behind as a part of the painting. The resulting abstractions are as much about nature and spirituality in their tone and light as they are about painting itself in their exploration.

However, the works are not the common trope of “paintings-about-painting” but about approaching painting, welcoming similar misunderstandings as he himself has experienced. “I would like the viewer to be aware of themselves in dialogue with the painted object,” Hartmann says, “negotiating understanding in a kind exchange of near miscommunications or implications.” In granting this agency, his paintings encourage a step closer, a step away, a step to the side and back to the center

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Untitled (Pink Ceramic Piece) Oil paint on glazed ceramic.

7.5” x 7”.

JAY HARTMANN

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Untitled (White Ceramic) (LEFT) Oil paint on glazed ceramic. 15.5” x 8.5”.

Untitled (White 5” x 7”) (ABOVE) Acrylic paint on panel.

5” x 7”.

JAY HARTMANN

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JACKSON HAWKINS WRITTEN BY

MARK CLAES

When we perceive the world around us, we rely on our senses to identify patterns, accumulate data and trigger memories. The sum total of these minutiae, differing to varying degrees in each individual, ultimately forms our realities.

Jackson Hawkins seeks to question the understanding of our world through his subtle suggestions that the materials around us are not what they seem. It is quite apropos, then, for Hawkins to utilize the medium of glass to induce these shifts in our perceptions.

The images of Hawkins’s work seen here focus on boundaries: where one object ends and the surrounding environment begins. We tend to think of these boundaries as solid and authoritative. Hawkins, however, asks us to look again and see how those boundaries are indeed far more undefined—stretched, as he puts it—and that within these in-between spaces we might find new, transformed perspectives to our reality.

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These traces that Hawkins reveals are continuous and simultaneously ephemeral. They are reminiscent of the perpetual state of falling as we walk between footsteps, the carrying of voices distorted into the intangible from across the room or the objects our eyes see but the brain discounts as we absently look for our keys. Hawkins presents his viewers with the opportunity, then, to see into other dimensions and experience the familiar as entirely unfamiliar.

Hawkins’s work successfully creates an environment in which it becomes more natural, then, to open up, to think differently and to loosen the fierceness of the grip onto which we hold our perceptions

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

untitled Glass. Dimensions variable.

untitled (BELOW) Glass. Installation documentation.

untitled

(FOLLOWING PAGE) Glass.

Dimensions variable.

JACKSON HAWKINS

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

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SERENA HOCHAROEN WRITTEN BY

KRISTINA CENTORE

A utopia, a “no-place,” an in-between: The fault lines generated by global migration (by choice or because of the absence of choice) result in sites of cultural hybridity that can be both melancholic and optimistic, full of loss and full of new possibilities. For Serena Hocharoen, the creation of a safe, comforting space at these crossroads of identity, culture and physical location is a generative act of place-making. At the same time, the artist’s investigations into the material attributes of spaces associated with AsianAmerican diasporas both evoke and question what it means for an environment of comfort to exist within contested terrain.

to “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. The selection suggests that Hocharoen’s environments are not wholly of a singular place—they are part of the building of a new world that poses a challenge to an essentialist understanding of culture.

Music, food that almost looks real, a zine to read and Thai massage cushions to lean back on: Hocharoen crafts a space with a vibe that, initially, appears to soothe. But at the same time as Hocharoen generates an environment of belonging, the visitor is invited to think critically about what it means: how belonging comes to be; what the politics surrounding it are; how it is fragile, tenuous and beautiful

Constructing locations such as the interiors of Thai restaurants, Hocharoen hand-crafts replicas of objects including rugs, laundry baskets, soy milk containers and bananas, allowing the fact that her objects have been “made” to remain visible.

In Hocharoen’s studio, comfy couches invite guests to relax and peruse a rack of zines. Pick up an empty can of coconut milk (with a wire connecting it to a source hidden within a ceramic pomegranate), put it to your ear and you’ll discover Arthur Russell playing back. A nearby “menu” lists all of the available songs in “Sereno’s Authentic Dream Cuisine” restaurant, ranging from “Day Dreaming” by Aretha Franklin

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

WE NEED MORE BANANAS Stuffed fabric bananas screenprinted and dyed with weld and Persian berries, acrylic paint, metallic charger plate.

Bananas: 7.5’’ x 2’’ x 2’’ each.

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

AT THE SAME TIME AS HOCHAROEN GENERATES AN ENVIRONMENT OF BELONGING, THE VISITOR IS INVITED TO THINK CRITICALLY ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS: HOW BELONGING COMES TO BE; WHAT THE POLITICS SURROUNDING IT ARE; HOW IT IS FRAGILE, TENUOUS AND BEAUTIFUL.

SERENA HOCHAROEN

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Tin-can Radio Ceramic pomegranate, coconut milk can, yarn, mp3 player.

Dimensions variable. Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

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PORTAL

Rug sewn from reclaimed black and white fabric mounted on batting, handmade cushions.

72” x 72”. Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

(OPPOSITE)

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

SERENA HOCHAROEN

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LISA JUNGMIN LEE WRITTEN BY

TYLER ROCKEY

Lisa Jungmin Lee’s work visualizes space, nothingness and time in an architectonic language. Informed by her youth in Seoul, and by a year in Rome, her prints give form to moments of time in urban environments and the memory of habitation: layered, built, random and seemingly infinite.

Many of Lee’s monoprints feature geometric repetitions in play, calling to mind the form of maps or aerial views of urban spaces but with a quality of indeterminacy. They can feel like a memory that is in some places sure of its own form and color. While in other places this clarity is lesser.

These forms appear fainter, older. They are like traces or ghosts of the past: overlapping, connecting, existing through time—traces of places, movements, encounters. These forms resemble the shifting built environment, which both blocks and guides our paths.

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A contrasting but equally common feature in Lee’s works is the exploration and navigation of negative space. To place this within the architectural metaphor, these empty voids take on the shape and lines of the European piazza.

Inspired by time spent at the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, she conceives of these spaces as a nexus of random and fleeting meetings and a place where human life comes together in the space between solid forms, and she paradoxically visualizes this potentially chaotic space of life and of chance and ephemeral encounters as nothing. A punctuation within the urban fabric. A space that is utilized for both everything and nothing.

The questions Lee poses are simple yet profound, but this is a challenge to which her work rises. Her images engage in a discussion with these most difficult concepts to visualize, yet she succeeds in giving shape to nothingness, giving form to time

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Eternal Coincidence 1 Monotype. 18” x 22”.

LISA JUNGMIN LEE

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THEY CAN FEEL LIKE A MEMORY THAT IS IN SOME PLACES SURE OF ITS OWN FORM AND COLOR. WHILE IN OTHER PLACES THIS CLARITY IS LESSER. THESE FORMS APPEAR FAINTER, OLDER.

Eternal Coincidence 2 Monotype. 18” x 22”.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Anything but nothing.

Monotype. 21” x 23”.

LISA JUNGMIN LEE

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MINGZHEN LI WRITTEN BY

LIAM MACHADO

Taking cues from mathematics, computer-generated designs and fashion, Mingzhen “Leah” Li’s wire and nylon forms consistently propose a playful relationship with the viewer. Two series of wire sculptures articulate the more iterative, ephemeral aspects of Li’s process. The hand-painted Basic Forms with Colors, fashioned from thin circular and triangular shapes, are rendered in striking blue, yellow and red primary tones, then displayed under strong directional lights on a blank surface. Li traces the resulting shadows and then creates further wire sculptures to match, spray-painting these secondary objects, Form of Shadows, matte black. Rigid and minimal, they could perhaps allude to a long history of geometric abstraction but their light appearance and lack of decorative trappings belie one of Li’s primary concerns: interactivity.

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The artist’s most recent output consists of curvilinear, floral, nylon, 3D-printed “bracelets,” first designed via mathematical model. In real space, they manifest as flexible, semi-translucent forms rendered in gold, blue and green. Wearable on an arm, these bracelets suggest a fluid relationship between art and fashion. Yet they also give pause, requiring gentle handling despite their whimsical and future-forward designs; Li prefers to work small and increasingly strives toward more complex, airy designs that retain their ability to be held and manipulated.

“I’m never satisfied when I’m making them,” jokes Li, always in pursuit of creating objects that blur the line between jewelry and sculpture, always concerned with maximizing the light

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Form of Shadow from Basic Shapes (LEFT) Copper wire, acrylic paints. 3.8” x 3.6” x 4”.

Gradient color on Basic Form Nylon, liquid dye.

3.5” x 3.5” x 3”.

MINGZHEN LI

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Helix Form with Colors I (OPPOSITE) Nylon, liquid dye.

5” x 3” x 3”.

Form of Shadow from Basic Shapes I (ABOVE) Copper wire, acrylic paints. 3.8” x 3.6” x 4”.

“I’M NEVER SATISFIED WHEN I’M MAKING THEM,” JOKES LI, ALWAYS IN PURSUIT OF CREATING OBJECTS THAT BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN JEWELRY AND SCULPTURE, ALWAYS CONCERNED WITH MAXIMIZING THE LIGHT.

MINGZHEN LI

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WONBIN LIM WRITTEN BY

LUCY MASON

The work of Wonbin Lim treads a line of social critique and functional fashion, and does so elegantly and with great intention. The pieces—mostly to be worn on the arm—are at once massive and delicate; cumbersome bangles are imbued with delicate, colorful swirls and mother-of-pearl.

Their rounded, organic forms are interwoven with metallic hardware: clasps, buckles and repeating patterns of bars and grids. Technically wearable, the pieces weigh heavily on the arm, pulling one’s attention in their direction and dominating the visual and physical attention of the wearer.

This, of course, is part of the calculation. Calibrated to match near-perfectly the weight of an iPhone, the bracelets, bangles or shackles dominate the experience of the wearer in a manner mirroring our collective shift out of the present moment and into an increasingly electronic world. Lim’s artistic intention is as much social commentary as it is aesthetic creation: to bring attention to the way our handheld devices now dominate our lives in ways we no longer question.

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Organic forms and materials are incorporated into the resin Lim uses as his primary medium, and the structures therein mirror motherboards, signal-bars and touchpads. There is a delicacy to these deliveries though, enhanced by the great beauty and impeccable craftsmanship of each individual piece. Conceived by the artist as "generations"—as with phones—the series of works reference one another in color scheme and symbolism.

Originally from Korea, Lim’s bangles, as he calls them, are not without cultural significance in a historical rather than critical way—materials in each series have been incorporated in reference to his Asian heritage: hand-carving for China, use of the Maki-e style of dusting with metallics from Japan and mother-of-pearl for Korea. While a casual viewer may well miss the layers of meaning that lie contained, literally, within each piece, to wear one is to experience exactly what Lim intends: to feel the weight and the distraction but also, hopefully, to be pulled away from your phone and into something much grander right before your eyes

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Shackle(CM) (ABOVE) Resin, mother-of-pearl.

6” x 5” x 1.5”.

Manacle(CG) (RIGHT) Resin, dye, metallic dust.

5” x 5” x 1”.

Shackle(WG)

Resin, metallic dust. 6” x 5” x 1.5”.

(FOLLOWING PAGE)

WONBIN LIM

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

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QUINTON MALDONADO WRITTEN BY

MICHAEL LALLY

Quinton Maldonado defines and encompasses the connected space of light, subject and object in his installations. The duality of the peaceful ambivalence between man and nature and a Hegelian reconciliation of the divine emerges in the spaces he constructs. From studies on the Gothic lightness to the ultra-minimal, he utilizes the material and non-material to emphatically incorporate the changing relationship between ourselves and the space around us.

Maldonado brings the feeling of a sense of conflict through observation of the surroundings and a recognition of the body in his work, creating a visual language that borders on the spiritual. His work provides both a theatrical presence and an allusion to a heightened sense of one’s own presence, not unlike an altarpiece. The titles of his installations mimic the alchemical process, while his focus further results in specific empirical study rather than a sense of becoming.

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The interplay of light creates a barrier, which the observer dares not to cross. The separation of space and light, whether stationary or moving, keeps the viewer away from the source while simultaneously interrupting the space where one would naturally move. Maldonado positions the recess of light in such a way to establish the “you” as the observation rather than the holistic observer. He combines these elements with a pure ephemeral soundtrack that conducts the arena. The intervention of this music is crucial in his work, completing the encounter with the “real” while tangibly removing mystic doubt.

The movement of the viewer through the work is vital. The journey through the space should be natural on behalf of the beholder. The artist does not wish to trick the spectator’s movement but rather encourages the ritualistic phenomenon.

Those who do attempt to cross the threshold in his work, those who approach and “see” the light and violate this natural instinct to stay back, find an unsatisfying result, as the threshold and light now have no power, as they have become real. For Maldonado, a successful piece is one in which the fluid interconnection of dialogue between elements emerges naturally, thus the viewer can anticipate the agency of the work

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Dissolve LED light, holographic film, fabric, 2-channel sound.

Size variable.

QUINTON MALDONADO

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Screen Test (Ronnie) Digital video. 12:30 minutes.

Size variable.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Screen Test (Alezandria) Digital video. 10:52 minutes.

Size variable.

QUINTON MALDONADO

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LAYLA MARCELLE WRITTEN BY

NOAH RANDOLPH

Exposing the realities of the ceramic process is the center of Layla Marcelle’s interdisciplinary practice. In the film A Wet Bio Coder by Better Lovers (a collective made up of Marcelle and Jacob Raeder) and Hsin-Yu Chen, the nuances of the discipline that are unapparent, if not unacknowledged, are put on full display, simultaneously disrupting the “traditional” assumptions about ceramics and that oft-diminuitive relegation of “craft.” Craft and art, though, have never been mutually exclusive. Take, for example, the extensive tradition of “how to” painting books that provide step-by-step instructions on the completion of a painting—“blue in lieu of red, blue over and above red.”

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While all the spectator may see in presentation is an object of use, what is lost is the intensely personal process inherent to ceramics. As stated in Better Lovers' artist statement, “We seek pleasure in our fingertips, in our mouths, in our cloudy interiors. The pleasure that goes into the making of a thing is reflected in its use.” With precise cinematography from Xia Zhong, A Wet Bio Coder shows that ceramics are as much about the body-in-making as the objects-being-made, showing the journey that is creation—transferring that pleasure of making to the viewer in the process.

Indeed, each aspect of that pleasure—from fingertip to mouth—is made available in the sensual imagery of A Wet Bio Coder, showing the trance-inducing choreographic grace of ceramist at work—chewing, spinning, molding, dripping and slicing. Here, ceramics are not craft in solitude but a reciprocal collaboration between material, maker and viewer

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

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Better Lovers (Layla Marcelle and Jacob Raeder) On Warm Adobe (PREVIOUS PAGE) Video, lightbulb, paint, wood, internet, human(s).

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

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The Party A message from Beta Pink (ABOVE) Video stills.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

HERE, CERAMICS ARE NOT CRAFT IN SOLITUDE BUT A RECIPROCAL COLLABORATION BETWEEN MATERIAL, MAKER AND VIEWER.

LAYLA MARCELLE

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KATHRYN MECCA WRITTEN BY

JENNIFER BEDFORD

The electric touch of a massage chair, a double, the stiffness of a doll—as Freud said, the uncanny is at once frightening and familiar. Kathryn Mecca blurs the line between imagination and reality in her dystopian scenes about technology, the connectivity between and among bodies, and things and the world around them.

Though the artist’s hand is present in Mecca’s work, its warmth of touch is intentionally absent. Any attempt at connecting emotionally with the subject matter is thwarted by the barely perceptible yet genuinely disquieting disruptions in physics and conventional scientific rational ordering. This effect challenges the connection you may feel to otherwise comfortable ideas about relations and relationships; hence, a coldness is created by Mecca’s work that is not dissimilar to the austerity of the illusion of intimacy found in technology-aided social practices. These culturally relevant and socially critical works speak to the artist’s keen sensibility of intimacy and other types of interpersonal relationships. While technology has aided our ability to communicate with each other it has also impeded our ability to connect.

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There is a parallel between texting or posting emotional content online and the stiffness of the fabrics or the joints of the figures depicted. Your mind interprets the clothes as empty and the joints as hollow despite the perceived warmth of the textile or flesh, in the same way that it is difficult to recognize the depth behind the sentiment of a text or post. While folds generally echo the volume of the figure beneath, Mecca asks the viewer to reevaluate the physical and psychological assumptions and boundaries of where bodies begin and end, how skin differs from fabric and the ways bodies fail to match our expectations of truth and of self. How much can we trust what we see? Or is distrust in seeing an instructive exercise?

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Madrid in Philadelphia Acrylic on foam. 46” x 46”.

KATHRYN MECCA

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

London in Rome (OPPOSITE) Acrylic, oil on canvas.

22” x 24”.

Amalfi in Philadelphia (RIGHT) Oil on polyester.

27” x 54”.

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ANA MOSQUERA WRITTEN BY

LIAM MACHADO

Speaking to the permeability of borders and the development of new communities in cyberspace, Ana Mosquera’s cartographic archive-of-sorts, Rhumb Lines, charts a topography in flux, partly in response to moments of social upheaval, such as the ongoing political and economic crisis in Venezuela.

One component of the archive, Proyecto migración por números (Migration by Numbers), aptly showcases the artist’s commitment to exploring how “cyber-territories” are elaborated and populated, and how they subsequently construct relations with one another through public platforms, such as Facebook. In a process that Mosquera describes as “data mining,” conducted manually rather than by the opaque algorithms of tech and social media megacorporations, she joined Facebook groups catered toward displaced Venezuelan nationals abroad, particularly those based in Cúcuta, Colombia. Mosquera then methodically registered the names of every member in said groups, along with their possible destinations into Microsoft Excel, based upon their characteristics, public posts and “other things we had in common.”

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Major cities in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, where group members were likely to pass through or end their migration, were marked with an “X.” Cúcuta, Barranquilla, Lima, Quito, Guayaquil and others are represented not as points on a map but as rows in a spreadsheet—seemingly decontextualized networks of information (networks of people) that appear to diffuse outward onto uncertain trajectories. Collating these names and destinations, Mosquera used a Jacquard loom to render her research into a series of Ikat-patterned textiles, small white clusters of digital data manifesting uneasily onto rusty red fields.

They do not resemble maps, in a traditional sense, yet these data clusters encapsulate the stories of hundreds of Venezuelans—stories that Mosquera deliberately left unverified by the end of the project.

Imagined geographies, fraught journeys and the transformative capacity of borders and border relations are the affective pillars of Rhumb Lines and Mosquera’s practice at large, which she describes as both personal and political.

Through a combination of innovative textile work and sculptural materials, including Jacquard weaving, digitally collected data and text—often taken from the online posts of migrants—her most recent work continues to explore the relationship between territories on the Internet and in physical space

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Traces of Venezuelan migrants in Facebook (LEFT) Dyed mercerized cotton.

8” x 11”.

Traces of Venezuelan migrants in Facebook (BOTTOM) Ikat, mercerized cotton. 60” x 72”.

ANA MOSQUERA

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Shifting Lands Burned plaster. 11” x 11”.

ANA MOSQUERA

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Trochas: 20 mil pesos (OPPOSITE PAGE) Jacquard, mercerized cotton. 36” x 28”.

Photo credit: Sisi Narvaez.

Money

Mercerized cotton, money. 24” x 28”.

(ABOVE)

ANA MOSQUERA

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ALEXANDRIA NAZAR WRITTEN BY

EMILY SCHOLLENBERGER

A series of brightly-colored drawings shows various items of food from overhead. Hands prepare a whole raw chicken for roasting or split open green chili peppers. A chicken’s broken skin puckers around bulbous citrus fruit in the bird’s cavity, while long fingers probe the interior of a chili pepper.

Instead of celebrating comforting domestic rituals, Nazar’s drawings center the presence of pain in domestic spaces.

The bodily forms of vegetables and the literal bodies of poultry provoke a visceral, squirming reaction in viewers, prompting identification with the inanimate food rather than the human actors involved. The slender hands that insert themselves into the peppers or thrust skewers into the chickens imply that the human agent is inflicting the pain, potentially implicating viewers.

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The effect of Nazar’s drawings is further complicated by her use of color and pattern. A bright, cheerful color palette predominates throughout the images. The backgrounds consist of bright colors—turquoise, lime green—and patterns of brightly colored stripes. The eye-catching colors and blocks of stripes remove the drawings from the realm of the purely naturalistic: these culinary preparations are not happening on a kitchen counter or cutting board but in an ambiguous, abstracted space. The appealing colors and nearly palpable textures of the food work in concert to draw in viewers and hold their attention long enough for them to engage with the unsettling subject matter. The juxtaposition also means that no tidy meaning coalesces out of the images, instead leaving viewers sitting the presence of discomfort in domestic spaces, feeling as if a tapered finger is probing beneath their own skin

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

ALEXANDRIA NAZAR

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Injection Contrast (PREVIOUS PAGE) Colored pencil on paper. 19” x 24”.

Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

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Psychosocial Value (ABOVE) Colored pencil on paper. 14” x 17”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Egg White Mucus (FOLLOWING PAGE) Colored pencil on paper. 14” x 17”.

Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

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CHRIS RIDDLE WRITTEN BY

JENNIFER BEDFORD

Like seeing your breath in the cold night air, Chris Riddle’s work prompts a contemplation of physicality and perception.

Serial works engage processes of seeing, reflection and looking that lead a viewer toward a deeper understanding of self. His most recent work explores issues of value, intention and the materiality of mimicry that simultaneously disrupt and bolster the distinction between what is seen and what is hidden. Riddle presents these thoughts with his unique approach to painting, searching for what is hiding in plain sight despite concealment or camouflage, encouraging a different way of looking.

The light and fragile nature of the materials Riddle works with in his four-part groupings of drop-ceiling tiles directly contrasts with the gravitas of the tombstone-like presence they bear when encountered at eye-level. Each tile is about the width of a person and feels like a mysterious, unchanging mirror. Although the carefully curated groups are closely nestled on their low shelf, the individual tiles have moods all their own. For example, Untitled (Intro to Camouflage) consists of panels that are blank enough to absorb your presence, bright enough to impress theirs upon you, and bare enough to pull you in. Together, they disrupt traditional

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understandings of imagery based on prima facie notions of a work’s meaning: the works challenge the audience to look deeper and think through their first impressions or initial discoveries they regard as truth. They interact and react with one another while also confronting the viewer in a mirror-like way.

Riddle’s body of work is a critical investigation of material/ method and a lesson in looking both outward and inward. This reflection of seeing and the seeing body, the simultaneous awareness and integration of the observer in space in the mimicry of Riddle’s photorealistic method and the use of the black-and-white patterns used in World War I warship camouflage. The more you look, the more you wonder: What is assigned, what is original, what is contrived and what is truth?

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Untitled (Proposal for Hedge) (TOP) Oil on mineral board mounted on poplar shelf (in four parts). 48” x 96”.

Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

Untitled (Conversation) (BOTTOM) Soft pastel, chalkboard paint, acrylic, oil on mineral board mounted on poplar shelf (in four parts). 48” x 96”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

Untitled (Intro to Camouflage) (FOLLOWING PAGE) Graphite, oil, inkjet print and masking tape on mineral board mounted on poplar shelf (in four parts). 48” x 96”.

Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

CHRIS RIDDLE

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BRIDGET K. ROGERS WRITTEN BY

KEDRA KEARIS

The domestic spaces that photographer and installation artist Bridget K. Rogers creates blur the line between the familiar and the otherworldly. In Dollhouse, a hearth, holiday wreath and artificial Christmas tree present as recognizable signs of a derivative world, a time before women were admitted to Harvard Law, before Gloria Steinem, all the while confused by objects that date well into the 1970s and beyond. Upon close analysis, the oversized stitches in the chair upholstering, the off-scale books on the fireplace and the dried glue remnants rimming the window pane betray that this recently constructed room is a charade, an artifice. The shadow on intricate wallpaper cast by the chair extends like a chill from the spectral presence of Rogers.

Ensconced there in self-portrait fashion, legs crossed at the ankles, she inserts herself into this world almost reluctantly and yet seemingly out of necessity, projecting the loving but firm gaze of a matriarch.

not free from the desire for and consequences of material trappings. With a background in architecture and design, Rogers is the mastermind behind every design detail: miniature jello molds, wallpaper prints, furniture and dollhouse construction. Indeed, Rogers lends a magical realism to the wallpaper of her constructed domestic spheres, and if these walls could talk, they would rather sound the siren call of the traditions that bind and the patterns that keep drawing us back home

With the sharp satirical bite of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and the urgency of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Rogers's work evokes discomfort, envy and fear, where patterning, lighting and scale perform the task of examining the performative nature of familial and gender roles. She builds on miniature scale and large scale, as with The Den and Beach Self, which includes an oriental rug over sand, reminding us that even at the shore we are

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

BRIDGET K. ROGERS

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Royal Blue

Archival inkjet print. 30” x 45”.

(PREVIOUS PAGE)

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American Girls (ABOVE) Archival inkjet print.

32” x 40”.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

One Woman Party Archival inkjet print. 30” x 46”.

BRIDGET K. ROGERS

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Becoming Wallpaper Archival inkjet print. 32” x 40”.

BRIDGET K. ROGERS

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OLIVIA SHERMAN WRITTEN BY

TYLER ROCKEY

Olivia Sherman sees the typical and commonplace happenings, feelings and relationships of contemporary life as tools to be used in the examination of the history and tradition of monumental figure paintings.

Her glowing and iridescent visages display a figural abstraction capable of calling to mind the structure, command and power of a Byzantine icon, while the suggestion of metallic materiality, the tense figural moments of interaction and the bold arrangements of forms are at home in the tradition of the Baroque. However, they undercut these connotations of their visual language with corporeal forms that are more fluid and more lyrical in style, and with subject matter that is far from the narratives of history painting or biblical traditions. We are instead presented with quotidian and relatable scenes that the artist herself describes as characterized by the “clumsiness and confusion of growing up; the slipperiness of memory, time and relationships; and the nervous, unfulfilled energy that saturates American youth culture, particularly in an age where reality often seems less consequential than the fictional.�

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These large canvases, painted with common house paint, ask us to engage in reflecting upon the existential value of our contemporary and ordinary interactions with each other; physical interactions that become more strained in the age of the digital. They draw attention to the universal and the human and employ a sort of nihilism that at once reduces the place of the traditional or classical hero and levels it with the ordinary. A brilliant maneuvering of contemporary mundanity spoken with the language of the grand

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Boozy Brunch Painting House paint, oil on canvas.

68” x 72”.

OLIVIA SHERMAN

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THEY DRAW ATTENTION TO THE UNIVERSAL AND THE HUMAN AND EMPLOY A SORT OF NIHILISM THAT AT ONCE REDUCES THE PLACE OF THE TRADITIONAL OR CLASSICAL HERO AND LEVELS IT WITH THE ORDINARY.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

After Hours Painting (OPPOSITE PAGE) House paint, oil on canvas. 72” x 78”.

Heard a Lil Sound (Exchange By Candlelight) (ABOVE) House paint, flashe, acrylic, crayon on canvas.

36” x 42”.

OLIVIA SHERMAN

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MINGFEI SHI WRITTEN BY

SAM MALANDRA-MYERS

Mingfei Shi is a visually impactful designer, motivated by challenges. After completing her undergraduate degree in China, she decided to continue her education abroad in order to move out of her comfort zone and change her environment, which greatly influences her. Shi’s design work reflects this cultural exchange by updating time-honored Chinese tradition with new technologies, processes and pop-culture references.

Shi’s work Windows in Chinese Garden uses intricate design work to construct a Chinese garden inside of a box that is in the form of a window onto the garden. The piece is made up of four small shadow boxes that are lit from just under the first layer, which resemble typical windows seen in Chinese gardens. To create a garden, Shi uses delicately layered, laser-cut paper. Each box is small, providing the viewer with an intimate experience that asks each person to take their time in analyzing the pieces, paralleling the time one might spend in the gardens’ real-world equivalent.

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2,000 Years Gathered in One Moment contains two parts: a scroll adorned with masterfully hand-painted mural motifs from historical sites throughout China and an augmented reality created by the artist that accompanies the scroll.

Through an app, the viewer hovers over one of the design elements on the scroll with their camera on and the design becomes animated with music and movement, including Chinese text that tells the story of each element, resulting in an aesthetically updated education.

Research is an important aspect in Shi’s work, which is highlighted in her recent collage work. After researching the cultural divide between the way American and Chinese people view the musical genre of hip-hop, including K-Pop, she wanted to give Chinese people more points of access within the genre. To achieve this, Shi integrated aspects of Chinese traditions into stylized depictions of the faces of the performers; some of the themes visually represented in these collages include the Beijing Opera, elements of jianghu, masks, dragons and the story of Mulan. The effect is a distinct layering of new and traditional cultural aspects of life in China

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Windows in Chinese Garden (ABOVE) Wood, paper.

7.8” x 7.8”.

Chinese Hip Hop Paper. 8” x 11”.

MINGFEI SHI

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Sealife Aquarium Branding (OPPOSITE PAGE) Paper. 5” x 9”.

Little Surprise (BELOW) Paper. 8” x 11”.

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THE EFFECT IS A DISTINCT LAYERING OF NEW AND TRADITIONAL CULTURAL ASPECTS OF LIFE IN CHINA.

MINGFEI SHI

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PEI-JU SHIH WRITTEN BY

ZIXIAO HUANG

Pei-Ju Shih is a graphic designer from Taiwan. After receiving her bachelor's degree in information communication, she discovered her passion for combining creative ideas into communication tools like website and user interfaces (UI).

In 2018, she came to the United States to seek her master's degree in graphic design. In Shih’s work, we often find marks left by her Taiwanese heritage and she continuously blends her understanding of how to be an active member of a community in her designs.

When Asian artists make work outside of Asia, the audience often feels compelled to look for the origin of their ideas, asking: How does their background affect their work? As an art historian, I often find that I run away from questions like this. I do not want to be defined as a person who can only be active in a limited field—that is, until I was inspired by Pei-Ju Shih to embrace my background.

In Shih’s portfolio, we find examples of how she strives to connect with her community back home in her field of UI design. Project “Cultivate” is an online platform that helps Taiwanese youth activists to organize their events better and to connect with one another through the website and their mobile phones. By doing a project like this, Shih’s design can better serve the experience of herself and many other Taiwanese youths.

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In the project Four Life Experience, she designed four UI animations to reveal her understanding of traditional Chinese-Taiwanese values. Each panel describes a word that Chinese-Taiwanese people use to describe the four kinds of human experience and each word is combined with other natural and human elements. In the panel entitled “Parting," for example, a small sailboat is placed at the lower right corner, instantly reminding the viewer of Li Bai’s poem, translated by Dr. Xu Yuanchong, “With monkeys’ sad adieux the riverbanks are loud, My skiff has left ten thousand mountains far away.”

As an extension of Shih’s cultural background, we can also see the well-known creativity of Taiwanese designers reflected in her work. In Grasp It, she designed a mobile app that teaches people about hand gestures from all over the globe. With over 6,500 languages spoken around the world, she aims to break the barriers of communication through the power of design

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

#Pleasesit (LEFT) Full body size mirror, posters. 69” x 483”.

Grasp it Application. iPhone screen size.

PEI-JU SHIH

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Cultivate (ABOVE) Responsive website.

1920 x 1080 pixels.

Grasp it (promotional poster) (FOLLOWING PAGE) Poster.

18” x 24”.

WITH OVER 6,500 LANGUAGES SPOKEN AROUND THE WORLD, SHE AIMS TO BREAK THE BARRIERS OF COMMUNICATION THROUGH THE POWER OF DESIGN.

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PEI-JU SHIH

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RILEY STROM WRITTEN BY

NOAH RANDOLPH

While many themes can be observed in the sweeping strokes of Riley Strom—memory, performance, identity, repetition—the idea of relationships is the common thread.

Initially, the primary relationship Strom was interested in was that between the public and private, investigating how the act of painting can complicate or reify the narrative presented in an image through reproductions of found photographs.

Beyond this, there also exists a multitude of latent relationships: between the paint and the canvas; the canvas and the painter; and the painter and the composition.

The latter is made difficult by the questions of verisimilitude and authorship that attend many paintings derived from photographic sources.

Consequently, during a recent residency in Spain, Strom stopped working from photographs, freeing her work from strict representation. Now, she approaches the canvas with no set plans or conceptions, allowing herself to respond to the painting as it is painted in a navigation of the interdependencies between material and artist. By way of source material, Strom accesses only the dreams, memories,

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motifs and images from life that she drafts in ink drawings.

Poetically, the ultimate product of this relationship is that the paintings—outcomes of performances for no one in the privacy of Strom’s studio—are ultimately made public in the spectacle of the gallery space.

There is a strong variable of movement in Strom’s work, a quality that cannot be obtained in the replication of image.

Rather, it comes from Strom’s body itself in movement, transferring its own claustrophobia to the stark restrictions of the canvas’ frame, with the paintings occasionally attempting to separate from the stretcher bars. The resulting paintings are a documentation of Strom’s bodily reaction to space, surface, color, form and the frustrations of the confines of the rectangle, rendering even the most abstract of compositions figurative

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

RILEY STROM

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Lake (PREVIOUS PAGE)

72” x 60.5”.

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Oil on canvas.

Rumspringa (ABOVE) Oil on canvas.

60” x 48”.

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Snap Dragon (RIGHT) Oil on canvas. 48” x 30”.

WARITH TAHA WRITTEN BY

KRISTINA CENTORE

Like the button of a shirt finding or leaving its place, the work of Warith Taha speaks to the intimacy of home. Softly bending grids cover the surface of canvases and assemblages; the patterns, with some spaces of vacancy and some spaces filled, suggest a safety net that protects from the loss and seeming inevitability of displacement. Located in the liminal space at the intersection of painting and sculpture, the presence of Taha’s particular constructions connotes the feeling evoked by the undefinable characteristics of black queer domestic interiors. Meditations on identity and of coming to understand oneself are also explored through abstraction and photographic self-portraiture. The varied elements of Taha’s practice coalesce into a sense of building an intimate, protective space in the face of external pressures of gentrification, discrimination and loss that resonates on both structural and personal levels.

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The artist’s nets of protective and connective lines—bringing disparate parts of assemblages together—imply a response to his personal experiences. In his youth, Taha’s family was compelled to put all of their furnishings and keepsakes into storage due to frequent moves made necessary by gentrification in Oakland, CA. Because family photo albums were one casualty of these compulsory relocations, Taha interweaves found photos of black families within the patterns that cover his surfaces. Some of the photos are recovered from his own family archives, too. Anything less than complete immersion and you will miss them: Unless you approach the work and place yourself within it so that it fills your field of vision past its edges, you will not be able to see the individuals contained within the pattern

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

WARITH TAHA

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Chair with Black Legs Sitting on a Black and White Floor Sitting on Chairs (PREVIOUS PAGE) Acrylic, graphite on canvas. 72”x 68”.

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

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Jamal, Jimar, Jovan and 13 Other ‘J’ Names Microsoft Word Does Not Recognize (ABOVE) Enamel on canvas with found photos. 72” x 72”.

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

Rest Acrylic on shaped canvas with found legs. 32.7” x 46.2”.

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

THE VARIED ELEMENTS OF TAHA’S PRACTICE COALESCE INTO A SENSE OF BUILDING AN INTIMATE, PROTECTIVE SPACE IN THE FACE OF EXTERNAL PRESSURES OF GENTRIFICATION, DISCRIMINATION AND LOSS THAT RESONATES ON BOTH STRUCTURAL AND PERSONAL LEVELS. WARITH TAHA

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KELSIE TYSON WRITTEN BY

KEDRA KEARIS

In SELF PORTRAIT, Kelsie Tyson binds her arms above her body, tightly laced fingers forming a loop that rhymes with her exposed belly and circular tattoo adorning her leg.

This act of raising her sweater and revealing her “fatness,” the descriptor Tyson uses, is an act of defiance towards traditional beauty as well as an open invitation to view and expose our own bodies in vulnerability. Ranging from raw to self-loving, Tyson’s oeuvre sources her own unfiltered body, fully nude, as in the self-portrait FOR MYSELF, or abstracted, as in the video QUEEN SIZED. She works effortlessly in multiple media that explode into a wave of sensory experiences aimed at a re-education on body beauty. How does a fat girl feel to touch, what does she sing about and how does she appear dressing in her bedroom?

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Trained as a ceramicist, Tyson brings an ingenuity and media fluidity that may have something to do with growing up in poor, rural Appalachia. She explains that she would go to the thrift store for her materials, as expensive materials were out of reach. The consumption of rural Appalachia, first by colonizers and then by coal companies, has more to do with Tyson’s art than immediately apparent. Flipping the script and reclaiming her own body image has everything to do with challenging the false promises of the reigning powers of the mainstream fashion and beauty industry—a form of body colonization, a currency that she rejects wholly. Tyson prints her own inviting, colorful fabrics; designs her own fashions as in DECADENCE and FAT GIRLS ONLY; and writes her own body narrative. If Tyson’s work can be at times confrontational, it is equally about celebrating and creating spaces for fearlessly asserting fatness and positive self-worth, where others can see, touch, feel, hear, accept and love

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

DECADENCE Silkscreen on satin. 64” x 48”.

KELSIE TYSON

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FAT GIRLS ONLY Silkscreen on recycled fabric. 50” x 29”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

IF TYSON’S WORK CAN BE AT TIMES CONFRONTATIONAL, IT IS EQUALLY ABOUT CELEBRATING AND CREATING SPACES FOR FEARLESSLY ASSERTING FATNESS AND POSITIVE SELF-WORTH, WHERE OTHERS CAN SEE, TOUCH, FEEL, HEAR, ACCEPT AND LOVE. 136

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

SELF PORTRAIT Archival ink-jet print.

13” x 17”.

SEXT POTS (FOLLOWING PAGE)

Porcelain, found decals, luster. 5” x 3” x 2”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

KELSIE TYSON

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DILMAR M. GAMERO SANTOS

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AUSTEN CAMILLE WEYMUELLER WRITTEN BY

SARA POTTS

If you don’t hear Dwight Yoakum immediately upon looking at Austen Weymueller’s work you are clearly looking at it wrong. If one stares at a piece long enough, a soft melody of a country-and-western song will flow through your mind and you can almost feel the rush of a canyon wind passing by. Influenced by childhood memories of recurrent moves around the country, Weymueller searches for a balance between outward and inward connectivity. This quest has melted into a love of land and the ethereal force that tethers all of humanity to a shared home.

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The ecological connections between familiarity and the “frontier”—a space at the periphery of what is known—are seen in the combination of delicate abstract forms created out of sturdy organic materials and the distribution of art into nature. Just as ecology is ever fluid, so too are her forms, which transform common geometric elements and create organic visual relationships between materials and styles.

The uniting factor internally in the works and externally between her entire oeuvre is the understanding that human impact is affecting the earth. The precarious connections formed between materials, colors and structures warn viewers of an overlooked ecological tightrope. Just as Yoakum’s messages of failure and rebirth are involved in humble melodic tunes, Weymueller’s work involves powerful messages in an unpredictable free-flowing style

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

The ocean has begun leaking into familiar spaces (On the banks of the Brazos).

Cement, wallpaper paste, plaster, raw pigment, linseed oil, india ink, acrylic paint on drop cloth. 85” x 54” x 5.5”.

Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

AUSTEN CAMILLE WEYMUELLER

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If nature is a construct, then.

(LEFT) 35 millimeter color photograph, dried flower, text on paper.

I’m all one skin like a fish.

(ABOVE) Graphite, cast iron filings, charcoal, lamp black, bone black, raw pigment, linseed oil, wallpaper paste, plaster on drop cloth.

50.5” x 84” x 5.5”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

JUST AS ECOLOGY IS EVER FLUID, SO TOO ARE HER FORMS, WHICH TRANSFORM COMMON GEOMETRIC ELEMENTS AND CREATE ORGANIC VISUAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MATERIALS AND STYLES. AUSTEN CAMILLE WEYMUELLER

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JULIANA WISDOM WRITTEN BY

NOAH RANDOLPH

What is the aesthetic of decadence? Making sense of this question is at the center of the work of Juliana Wisdom.

Ultimately, it could be Piranesi’s Vedute or Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, with their simultaneous admiration of ancient engineering and the poetics of ruin, conflating the natural and unnatural. It could also be the Las Vegas strip in the Mojave desert or the ubiquitously shabby technicolor apartment blocks among rowhomes and brownstones, with their unabashed capitalist self-indulgence.

Wisdom uses her research and background in ceramics to create objects that explore this liminal relationship between the natural of ancient ruin and the artificiality of the contemporary. When this liminality is explored through Wisdom’s unique ceramic practice, completely disparate states become two sides of the same token: death and life; natural and artificial; manicured and organic; past and present.

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As stated by Wisdom, “My process is driven by a combination of traditional technique and untrained improvisation, resulting in sculptural objects that oscillate between discordant and aesthetically pleasing.” All of this comes together in Vegas Column. Upon first glance, the work is a sculptural tableau consisting of a Corinthian column, springing from a patch of green grass underneath against a cloudy sky: a natural scene, familiar from any number of Renaissance paintings. However, the artificiality is exposed once you locate the duplex electrical outlet on the column—a distinctly modern moment in a classical vista.

The grass is then revealed as turf, with the column casting shadows onto the fictive sky. Like the sensation of seeing a balloon caught up in the painted sky of Caesar’s Palace, the illusion of the natural is broken and an acceptance of the absurd is embraced, inviting the spectator to find beauty in the discord. While the objects that Wisdom creates may seem “absurd,” as she willingly admits, so is the world around us. By accepting futility, her work invites a smile on our faces as we turn to face a world on the brink of ruin.

After all, is Las Vegas any more artificial than Piranesi?

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

D I L M A RA U MS. TGEANMW ER EO Y MSUAENLTLO ER S

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Vegas Column (PREVIOUS PAGE) Ceramic, mixed media. Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

Piranesi Island (RIGHT) Ceramic, mixed media.

9” x 8” x 5.5”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

Untitled (BELOW) Ceramic, mixed media.

9” x 6” x 6”. Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

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TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Janus Planter (detail) Ceramic, mixed media.

65” x 28” x 15”. Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

JULIANA WISDOM

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VIVIEN WISE WRITTEN BY

MARK CLAES

Getting to know a person can sometimes be challenging and feelings of familiarity gained by having intimate knowledge about another leads to a sense of shared vulnerability. The often haphazard pathways toward those good feelings are how we fall in love and, in turn, if we were to ask the right questions, we could fall in love with potentially anyone. Such a proposition turns human relations into a game of sorts.

Vivien Wise is interested in investigating personal relationships of all kinds, including our social relationship with plants.

For one part of her thesis venture, The Tree Connection, she devised her own series of relationship-oriented questions in a project she calls 50 First Tree Dates. Wise maintains a broad definition of what constitutes a date—friends, coworkers and family are all fair game, in addition to romantic partners—and the trees are just as important as the human factors, as they influence the potential outcome of the date. The trees, in their outdoor settings, which Wise has mapped and selected for their variety, provide a location for social bonding but also function as a means to learn more about the individual trees themselves. Wise says her intention in these exercises is to “get to the root of how we are social, how we are romantic and how that can be related to trees,” and ultimately, “how we can be social with plants.”

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Nature has always played a significant role in Wise’s work but in The Tree Connection, she incorporates a multivalent approach to investigating our environment, which is rooted in mediated social structures. These settings: a living room, a visitor’s center with information about Philadelphia’s trees and a game show replete with all the bells and whistles of 1960s television all allow for an interactive, educational and fun experience that successfully reflects all of the directions Wise feels pulled to explore

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

The Tree Connection (50 First Tree Dates Flags). Detail.

(ABOVE) Screen-printed collectible flags, one for every Tree Date. 4” x 6” each.

Photo credit: Bridget K. Rogers.

If A Tree Falls

Repurposed family blankets. 72” x 48” each.

Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.

(FOLLOWING PAGE)

WISE SAYS HER INTENTION IN THESE EXERCISES IS TO “GET TO THE ROOT OF HOW WE ARE SOCIAL, HOW WE ARE ROMANTIC AND HOW THAT CAN BE RELATED TO TREES,” AND ULTIMATELY, “HOW WE CAN BE SOCIAL WITH PLANTS.”

VIVIEN WISE

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VIVIEN WISE

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SHUANG WU WRITTEN BY

ZIXIAO HUANG

Shuang Wu was born in Southeastern China, in the province of Fujian. Hundreds of ports are located along Fujian’s coastline—for many Chinese people, they sailed from these harbors to explore the world. Historically, Fujian is the hometown of Zheng Chenggong, the famous general who defeated the Dutch fleet in Taiwan, and it is also the place that Marco Polo admired as the wealthiest place in China. Even today, the people of Fujian Province continue to encourage their descendants to cross the ocean and explore the unknown. Wu finished her undergraduate degree in graphic design at Asia University in Taiwan and then came to America to further examine the potential power of visual design.

In her recent work, Wu designed an exhibition called Extraordinary to examine Chinese-American women’s contributions to the United States during and after the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19th century. In the graphic design section of this exhibition, we can quickly identify those Chinese elements that Wu carefully planted, like the magnolia flower in the design of the title. The magnolia is often the first flower to bloom after the long, cold winter. The purity and strength that it reveals makes it a symbol of female virtue in Chinese culture. Beyond this long-held traditional understanding, the metaphoric meaning of the magnolia flower was further reinforced by Disney’s animated film Mulan in 1998. The titular main character, a girl named Mulan, or Magnolia, became globally recognized as an image of a strong and brave Chinese woman.

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In Wu’s other work, we also see how she carries on the spirit of a Fujian woman in seeking more possibilities to present different kinds of art. In her project Printmaking Around the World, she presents printing techniques from three different countries: China, Japan and the Netherlands. In each poster, she combines flat images on paper with animation and augmented reality to help viewers better understand the process of making a print and the differences in the printing process from these three countries. Like many other inspiring Fujian women, Wu enjoys leading viewers to learn about her own background and experience other cultures.

Her designs educate audiences by combining both cultural and historical references. As she mentioned herself, “I believe culture and life experience are always intertwined in my works. By looking back at history, I would like to solve problems in a contemporary method”

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

App Design_relish Pickle Recipes.

750 x 1334 pixels.

SHUANG WU

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Infographic & AR_Printmaking Woodblock printing posters Series. 44” x 33” each.

BY LOOKING BACK AT HISTORY, I WOULD LIKE TO SOLVE PROBLEMS IN A CONTEMPORARY METHOD.

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Exhibition Design_ Extraordinary (ABOVE) Chinese American Female’s Achievements.

3000 x 2015 pixels.

Branding & Infographic_ MILKING IT (LEFT) Dairy Waste in the States. 22” x 28”.

SHUANG WU

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JIAYI XIAO WRITTEN BY

MARK CLAES

Jiayi Xiao is interested in fat accumulation and how we connect with our bodies, culturally. Just underneath the skin is where much of the fat on a human body is found. As a result, when we look at our bodies, we do not “see” fat so much as we see the cumulative process of how efficiently we have stored and used energy. Culturally, we tend to think of fat negatively or as something to avoid; nonetheless, everybody needs a certain amount of fat to maintain health.

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In the past, Xiao struggled with using diet pills but after coming to the United States, she has learned to view herself as one of many body types—all of which are healthy. Her work brings to the surface that which lies beneath and it is within the structure and form of these hidden fat cells that Xiao sees beauty. The wearable pieces are formed using a 3D printer and cast in resin, which Xiao then colors in a realistic appearance—albeit many times magnified—of clusters or individual fat cells. Their bulbous forms bring to mind abstract jewelry of decades past, yet the knowledge that Xiao is actively working to undo social stigma gives her work a powerful sense of contemporaneity. Through donning her fat cell jewelry, Xiao hopes to instill a sense of empowerment and strength in the wearer. She says, “My fat cell bracelet is strong and shines to reflect that it is full of life.”

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Fat Cells (LEFT) Form2 resin, iDye poly, acrylic paint, resin.

4.2” x 4.2” x 1.0”.

Body Image (BELOW) Form2 resin, wool, felt, iDye poly. 2.5” x 2.5” x 1.5”.

JIAYI XIAO

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Accumulation Form2 resin, yarn thread, iDye poly. 6” x 7” x 2”.

JIAYI XIAO

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Body Image (Tissue) Form2 resin, iDye poly.

2.5” x 2.3” x 1.8”.

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Blood Cells Form2 resin, wool, felt, flock, oil paint, steel. 3” x 3” x 1.4”.

JIAYI XIAO

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JUNGMOK YI WRITTEN BY

ZIXIAO HUANG

Many of Jungmok Yi’s works are performance-based series.

In the performance Ms. PiggyLee, for example, we see a character dressed in a traditional Korean costume with a pig mask interacting with people at a Korean barbecue while also performing mysterious rituals. In a conversation with Yi, I expressed my reading of this work as engaging with ideas of “witchcraft,” but Yi explained that Ms. PiggyLee was more of a shaman. Understanding this figure as a shaman means that we can disregard the connotations of gender and social class associated with witches. In this ancient occupation that we often ignore, Ms. PiggyLee is a faceless and semi-genderless messenger, a shaman who resides in between different worlds and groups. In the modern world, we can find similarities in other social characters that we often ignore, including immigrants and sex workers.

Yi’s works triggered an emotional response in me as well.

In their MFA thesis show, they bring the audience in front of the Korean phrase “AeMulDanJi,” which is often used to describe the kind of immigrant child who does not meet the expectations of their family. In my personal experience, I also have felt that I was not considered “good enough” either in my academic field in the United States or in my family life in China. Both Yi’s and my unstoppable impulse to talk about our identities in our work seem to come from the shared loneliness of being a minority, especially in terms of our foreignness and queerness.

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How do we understand Yi through their art installation? We might consider them as a native Korean, a queer artist, or a 1.5 generation immigrant (a Korean-American term for immigrant children who left as young adults) in the United States.

Looking at their art is like listening to Yi’s internal dialogue.

In their recent work-in-progress The Star Spangled Banner, Yi deconstructs the American flag to explore all the fabric and metal elements that were used to make the object itself. Through the process of deconstructing this symbol, it reminds me how Betsy Ross made the first flag more than two centuries ago. For both of us who reside in Philadelphia, where Betsy Ross created the flag, Yi observes that practically no American flags today require hand sewing by white females, not to mention that the flag and what it symbolizes has evolved so much that it no longer carries the original meaning of unification that it represented when Betsy Ross first created it. Ironies like these found in this project are the kind that inspire viewers like myself

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JUNGMOK YI

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AeMulDanJi(Dul) Performers: (Sarah Kim), (Harim Kang), (Christine Jung), (Guava Rhee).

Photo credit: Manny Figueroa.

(PREVIOUS PAGE)

AeMulDanJi(Dul) Performers: (Sarah Kim), (Harim Kang), (Christine Jung), (Guava Rhee).

Photo credit: Manny Figueroa.

(ABOVE)

BOTH YI’S AND MY UNSTOPPABLE IMPULSE TO TALK ABOUT OUR IDENTITIES IN OUR WORK SEEM TO COME FROM THE SHARED LONELINESS OF BEING A MINORITY, ESPECIALLY IN TERMS OF OUR FOREIGNNESS AND QUEERNESS.

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Untitled (following traces of you) (TOP) Digital.

Halmuhni, how are you?

Halmuhni, I miss you.

Halmuhni, I am sorry.

Halmuhni, I love you.

Halmuhni, thank you.

(LEFT) Digital.

JUNGMOK YI

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YIGE ZHANG WRITTEN BY

LUCY MASON

Yige Zhang melds play, exploration and delight so seamlessly, such that after spending time in her created worlds, you realize only later how much you’ve learned along the way.

An illustrator and graphic designer who moved from China to study at Tyler, Zhang intertwines storytelling throughout her body of work, imbuing practicality and functionality with myth and magic, and playful interaction with educational illumination.

This is particularly true in Ocean Light, a standout among Zhang’s thoughtful, artful products. Here, she melds concepts of biology and oceanography with themes of hierarchy, education and magic. A series of stackable light boxes emerge from elegant packaging as humble, impeccably crafted wooden boxes into whose panels perfectly molded sea creatures nestle, then ignite into a glowing seascape. Illuminated from within, this brilliant creation is conceived as a children’s toy but guarantees the equal transfixion of any adult.

Her cover designs for a series of DVDs are whimsical, pastoral landscapes whose moody colors and flowing typography bring narrative scope to the viewer. In a flourish that is characteristic of much of Zhang’s work, each piece in the series employs a distinct color scheme while remaining in coherent dialogue with the others.

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Through a pop-up book titled “Mori and Her Silkworm Babies,” Zhang explores the life-cycle of the silkworm, each page unveiling a complex, interactive experience of surprise and delight. She describes the study of the silkworm as an essential component of her early education; she and her classmates raised them as part of an assignment when she was about 10 years old. This exercise, she says, was to teach children about protecting the fragility of life. It is a sentiment that this book illustrates and animates, with a deep respect and no loss of joy.

Zhang’s mother is a kindergarten teacher in Guizhou Province in China, where Zhang was raised. Her influence guides Zhang’s approach to her work, encouraging her to consider a child’s psychology and perspective. Their ongoing dialogue about how to engage and enchant a young audience is a through line of each creation. Not lost, though, is the sophistication of a creative and detail-oriented designer who respects the subtle sensibilities of her craft, whatever the age of the audience

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE CATALOG 2020

Toy Design_Hmong Stories 13” x 8.7”.

ZHANG INTERTWINES STORYTELLING THROUGHOUT HER BODY OF WORK, IMBUING PRACTICALITY AND FUNCTIONALITY WITH MYTH AND MAGIC, AND PLAYFUL INTERACTION WITH EDUCATIONAL ILLUMINATION.

YIGE ZHANG

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Musical Poster Design_ Emiliana Torrini (OPPOSITE PAGE) Mock-up.

13” x 8.7”.

Toy Design_Ocean Light (RIGHT) 13” x 19.5”.

Branding & Packaging_ Philabundance (LEFT) Performers: 12” x 8”.

YIGE ZHANG

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CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

JENNIFER BEDFORD

KRISTINA CENTORE

MARK CLAES

ZIXIAO HUANG

Jennifer Bedford is a PhD student specializing in modern and contemporary art. She has a background in art history and art conservation from her time at the University of Delaware and an MA in history and philosophy of art from the University of Kent. Bedford is primarily focused on the concept of creativity and the inception of the term in the early 1800s. Her thesis will focus on the connection between creativity and modern French art, history and philosophy.

Kristina Centore is a Philadelphiabased writer, curator, artist and musician. She is currently completing her MA in art history at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. As part of her broader interest in the intersections between modern and contemporary art, world politics and technology, her thesis project, currently underway, is concerned with connections between temporalities, aesthetics and networks of artistic exchange in Egypt after World War II.

Mark Claes is a second-year student in the MA in Art History Program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.

Their interests are in modern and contemporary photography. In the past, they curated exhibitions in conjunction with the San Francisco Arts Commission and interned at Pier 24 Photography as a docent, research librarian and archivist. They received their BA in art history from Mills College and currently they work on campus for Temple’s Digital Library Initiatives as an archivist.

Zixiao Huang is a second-year graduate student in the Art History Program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. His studies concentrate on paintings in the Venetian Renaissance and artistic communication between China and Northern Italy. In his thesis, Huang will be focusing on a Peter Paul Rubens’ drawing from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through this drawing, he will explore the activities of Jesuit missionaries in China and how Chinese culture was presented in Western Europe.

LUCY MASON

SARA POTTS

NOAH RANDOLPH

ERIN RILEY-LOPEZ

Lucy Mason is an MA student in Tyler’s Art History Program, focusing on fine arts management. An experienced museum professional, she works to cultivate communities and connections built around shared experience and artistic expression.

Before coming to Tyler, she worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art developing programming for the curatorial affinity groups Collect and Focus, and for special exhibitions including Wild (2017), American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent (2017), and Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life (2016).

Sara Potts is a first-year MA student studying modern and contemporary Mexican art and arts management.

She received her BA from the University of Utah in 2018. Her academic research examines the networks of exchange between Mexico and the United States from the 1930s to the 1950s through socio-political prints and the use of printmaking as a tool for cultural development. Her work in arts management emphasizes the need for institutional and cultural critique to rebuild America’s nonprofit arts sector.

Noah Randolph is a master’s candidate in art history at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, where he specializes in modern and contemporary art. Before coming to Philadelphia, he received his BA in art history from the University of Louisville and has worked in museums and galleries across the eastern United States and in Italy. His current research involves theories of cultural transference, territory, site-specificity and politics in visual culture.

Erin Riley-Lopez is a third-year PhD student at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.

She was formerly the curator of the Freedman Gallery at Albright College in Reading, PA, where she also taught courses in art history and arts administration. Prior to that, she was an associate curator at The Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City.

She is transitioning to teaching while maintaining a curatorial practice. Her areas of interest include contemporary art, performance, exhibition histories and queer and feminist theories.

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KEDRA KEARIS

MICHAEL LALLY

LIAM MACHADO

SAM MALANDRA-MYERS

Kedra Kearis has an MA in literature and is a PhD candidate in art history at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. An educator at the Barnes Foundation, she recently completed a fellowship at the New-York Historical Society.

Her dissertation focuses on the transnational portrait and the artistic and literary exchange between Belle Époque Paris and Gilded Age New York, Philadelphia and Boston.

Michael Lally is a second-year art history PhD student at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. Receiving undergraduate degrees in both art history and theoretical physics from Middlebury College, Lally incorporates a scientific approach in his research, with a focus on ritual, phenomenology, material and subject-object relations. His areas of study range from Byzantine to the “global” Early Modern period, with current research focusing on vernacular architecture and ritual in both Christian and Islamic communities in the “Greater” Horn of Africa.

Liam Machado is a first-year PhD student specializing in the contemporary art of Latin America and queer Latinx communities. He received his BA in art history at the University of La Verne in 2016 and his MA in the same field at the University of Oregon in 2019.

Sam Malandra-Myers is an MA candidate in art history at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, focusing on “post”coloniality in southern Africa, specifically the notion of knowledge production. Before beginning a more academically focused career, Malandra-Myers earned their BFA in photography at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Their background is diverse in both academic and artistic endeavors, like working at Peters Valley School of Craft as a studio assistant and lecturing for student-run organizations at the University of Cape Town.

TYLER ROCKEY

EMILY SCHOLLENBERGER

Tyler Rockey is a first-year PhD student studying Italian Renaissance art.

He received a BA in art history from Penn State University with a minor in classics and ancient Mediterranean studies, and an MA in art history from the University of Massachusetts.

His research examines the classical tradition and the modes of early modern archaism, the early modern restoration and collection of classical sculpture, and questions surrounding the use and meaning of classicizing sculptural forms in Christian religious images.

Emily Schollenberger is a secondyear PhD student studying modern and contemporary art at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. Before coming to Tyler, she earned her bachelor’s degree from Covenant College, GA, in art with a concentration in art history.

She has volunteered and interned at several museums, including the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, TN, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

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2001 N. 13th St. Philadelphia, PA 19122 tyler.temple.edu/2020-mfa-exhibitions Graduate Catalog Advisors Mariola Alvarez Chad D. Curtis Philip Glahn Graduate Catalog Coordinator Kati Gegenheimer Graduate Catalog Student Representatives Juliana Wisdom Noah Randolph Faculty Editors Mariola Alvarez Philip Glahn Leah Modigliani Emily Neumeier James Merle Thomas Copy Editors Zachary Vickers Nell McClister Catalog Design Modern Good Matt Bouloutian, Tyler BFA ‘99 Emma Lindsay, Tyler BFA ‘18 Printer Sea Group Graphics, Inc. Copyright © 2020 Tyler School of Art and Architecture All rights reserved Copyright for individual images belongs to the individual artist as listed on each page.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the Artist or Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

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