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2012-2014

Amy Boone-McCreesh

Amy Boone-McCreesh

functional items and decoration

My work is a tribute to craft and the long human tradition of making. I am interested in exploring the cultural lines between functional items and decoration, and revisiting these themes in the context of contemporary art. My primary vehicles for expression are found objects, second-hand fabrics, celebratory ephemera, repetition, mark making, and the amassing of materials. Referencing visual vocabulary within my three dimensional work acts as a way to inform and ground the abstract compositions of my two dimensional work.

Milana Braslavsky

Milana Braslavsky

alienation, detachment, and desire

My family moved to the United States from the Soviet Union during my formative years. In my photographs, I aim to express the alienation, detachment, and desire to assimilate into a strange new society. I work with domestic settings and distorted figuration. I use common place objects, sometimes in combination with the human figure, to convey the desire to integrate and feelings of loneliness and comfort.

Billy Friebele

Billy Friebele

attention on temporal events

Time is difficult to see. It is constantly flowing around us, yet barely visible. I am creating artwork that focuses attention on temporal events occurring at the periphery of our perception. The work evolves in time with us, before our eyes, but only if we slow down and allow ourselves to be in the slippery position of the current moment. The heart of these projects is the act of seeing. Observing the ephemeral nature of our surroundings gives an appreciation for the dynamic nature of our interactions and the fragility of our existence.

Annette Isham

Annette Isham

commingled layers of the self

 

My work deals with the construction of identity, role-playing, and commingled layers of the self. Concentrating on these dynamics through video, photographs, installations, I perform characters based on standard social behavior like falling in love, being discovered for celebrity and staying fit. Through my characters I interrupt and expose the subtle ways we absorb popular categorical media models.

Timothy Thompson

Timothy Thompson

highlight their function

We encounter common objects everyday but often ignore or take for granted the purpose for which they are designed or exist. I seek to employ these axiomatic objects in my sculpture. I want to highlight their function and bring them back into our contemplative view. By using these objects as materials, I am able to create comparisons between their functions and the places where they are employed. I have continued this strategy by creating my own historical highway markers. Rather than marking events of local or national significance, I make markers for people to observe the important events of their lives. These markers are intended to confront viewers’ notions of place and connect them to the events in the lives of others.

Jerry Truong

Jerry Truong

I grew up in a small town in Northern California, coddled by the suburban American dream, oblivious to the social and political mechanisms as well as my parents’ sacrifices that made my way of life possible. I never once heard of the horrors my parents survived when they escaped from war-torn Vietnam by boat: the constant fear of pirates, starvation, and witnessing family members drown. 

We take for granted that the pristine and aesthetically structured world we comes at a cost. Using transformation and deception as conceptual strategies, I force the viewer to peel back the formal facade. In the process, new questions about history, memory, and identity are revealed, which offer the potential for a deeper understanding of our roles within a civil society.

There is no greater accomplishment than to be a catalyst for change, a force that is able to break people out of the mundane routine of passive acceptance.