Jes Gettler – 91探花News /news Mon, 10 Jun 2019 20:02:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Video: 91探花MFA + MDes students exhibit thesis work at Henry Art Gallery /news/2019/06/04/uw-mfa-mdes-students-exhibit-thesis-work-at-henry-art-gallery/ Tue, 04 Jun 2019 16:08:51 +0000 /news/?p=62593

The annual聽聽with the 91探花聽聽brings together the dreamy and the practical to cohabit at the . This year’s exhibit features the work of 10 artists and 11 designers, and will be at the Henry through June 23.

Read more in the related聽.

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Design, art thesis projects fill Henry Art Gallery for eclectic annual exhibition /news/2019/05/30/design-art-thesis-projects-fill-henry-art-gallery-for-eclectic-annual-exhibition/ Thu, 30 May 2019 21:20:16 +0000 /news/?p=62516

A skeletal house-like structure of thoughtfully gathered parts, a room suffused with horizontal stripes, lush oil paintings of ravaged landscapes, intimate portraits in pencil, an interactive statement on plastic-addicted consumer culture 鈥

“Spoiled Landscapes – Ocean,” an oil on canvas by Baorong Liang, is seen through a gap in Brighton McCormack’s house-like structure “Fully Furnished” (in video above) at the 2019 MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery.

And more: Art meets information with a toolkit for preparing college lessons, a mashup of woodworking and augmented reality, a way to remember and document the city’s disappearing spaces, a fabric piece remembering the victims of gun violence 鈥 and more.

The annual with the 91探花 reliably brings together the dreamy and the practical to cohabit at the Henry Art Gallery. This year’s exhibit features the work of 10 artists and 11 designers, and will be at the Henry through June 23.

“The range of work can be any thing from a small drawing to a large scale installation 鈥 it’s a really large mix,” said Jes Gettler, the Henry’s exhibition designer and lead preparer, who worked with the students to display their projects to best advantage in the museum. “It’s such a fun show, and it’s special treat to see everyone helping each other out through the process.”

The show’s full name is the School of Art + Art History + Design鈥檚 Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design Thesis Exhibition, but it goes by 2019 MFA + MDes for short. These works represent the last step in the 91探花journey for these talents, who will go on to become teachers or pursue art and design professionally or pursue related fields.

, professor and director of the school of art, praised the students in brief remarks to press and friends before a May 24 exhibition preview. Calling the Henry “one of the most beautiful spaces on campus,” he said the artists and designers employ “careful attention to the use of space and scale” in the exhibition.

“This year, almost all of the students seemed very aware of how they are presenting their work in the space that they were selected to use,” he said. “They’re really trying to figure out ways to communicate ideas that they are passionate about.”

The 2019 MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition will be on display through June 23.

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The Henry Art Gallery is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $10 general, $6 for seniors and free to 91探花students, staff and faculty. And it鈥檚 free to all on Sundays. For more information, visit .

  • Video by Kiyomi Taguchi, 91探花News

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Art, design provide eclectic mix for annual graduate show at Henry Art Gallery /news/2018/06/01/art-design-provide-eclectic-mix-for-annual-graduate-show-at-henry-art-gallery/ Fri, 01 Jun 2018 20:42:14 +0000 /news/?p=57852 Ian Cooper brings elements of myth and fantasy to "Predicament," an acrylic on canvas. The art is part of the UW's annual MFA/MDesign exhibition
Ian Cooper brings elements of myth and fantasy to “Predicament,” an acrylic on canvas. The painting is part of the School of Art + Art History + Design’s annual graduate exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery. Photo: Peter Kelley

A forest scene of a slumbering wizard. A poem occupying a wall in hand-cut lettering. A design for environmental advocacy. A thin wooden circle standing on end trailing netting like a veil. A faux “machine” filled with paper airplanes.

“A Voluptuous Surrender,” a work in acrylic, poplar, steel, concrete and LED by Daniel Hewat. Photo: Jeanette Mills

Art and design can amaze, inform, entertain, challenge or even gently baffle the viewer 鈥 and the annual thesis exhibition for at the Henry Art Gallery reliably offers a little of each.

More: A dark gallery with illuminated, cathedral-like arches. An “internet-of-things” design protocol for nonserious home use. Augmented reality for making digital models. A dark and stormy work in crayon, graphite and ink. Big sculptures of inner feelings expressed. A grouping of clothes and other items riffing on the Henry’s own employee handbook.

The full name is the School of Art + Art History + Design’s Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design Thesis Exhibition, but it goes by 2018 MFA + MDes for short. Both are two-year programs, and these works represent the last step in the 91探花journey for these artists and designers.

The MFA candidates for 2018 are David C. Burr, Nate Clark, Ian Cooper, Daniel Hewat, Alex Kang, Erin H. Meyer, Christian K艒un Alborz Oldham, Katie Schroeder and Caitlyn Wilson. The Master of Design candidates are Aubree Ball, Joe Costello, Emma Teal Laukitis and Christopher Seeds.

This is the 60th year for the exhibition, as , director of the art school, told those gathered for an early press preview. “Watching it through the decades has been pretty amazing,” he said. “All of the movements, trends, styles, processes in the world of contemporary art and design that have transpired during that time period.”

“Design for the Wild” by Emma Teal Laukitis, whose work explores the intersection between culture and the environment. This design, she said, seeks to inform people about a proposed mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where she grew up. Photo: Jacob Kelly

And yet each year’s show is very personal for those showing their work.

“It’s one of those moments in life as an artist or designer that really sticks with you” he said, when the work, long pondered in private, “suddenly becomes very, very public.”

The students got advice and assistance in mounting their pieces from Jes Gettler, the museum’s exhibit designer and lead preparator, who said the exhibit process starts as early as December of the preceding year, and is among her favorites.

Walker added that though these graduating student artists and designers may have had doubts along the way 鈥 a normal part of the process 鈥斅 they “are now considered professionals.”

The 2018 MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition will be on display through June 24 at the Henry.

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The Henry Art Gallery is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $10 general, $6 for seniors and free to 91探花students, staff and faculty. And it’s free to all on Sundays. For more information, visit .

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Beach scene, text game, draping still life 鈥 and pie 鈥 in graduate student art show /news/2015/05/22/beach-scene-text-game-draping-still-life-and-pie-in-graduate-student-art-show/ Fri, 22 May 2015 23:38:47 +0000 /news/?p=37139
“Still Life (Banquet Piece)” by Krista Schoening at the Henry Art Gallery. Photo: Peter Kelley

Creating an art installation piece is usually no day at the beach, except of course when that’s exactly what you’re making.

Like “Palace Pelagic” by Sarah Norsworthy, a seashore-style habitat dotted with oil paintings and found natural objects and a chair at the enclosed center that seems to invite one to stop, sit, and maybe listen for waves. The piece was made from materials, and inspiration, the artist gathered at the Discovery Park beach.

“It’s trying to capture the sense of a whole day, from morning to midday to end of the day,” Norsworthy said during Friday’s press preview, as artists and visitors milled through the gallery. “I was interested in it being like a snail shell 鈥 a moon snail shell sculpture 鈥 with the landscape spiraling into this interior space.” And indeed, outside becomes inside as you approach, hardly noticing.

The piece is one of many now on view at the Henry Art Gallery as part of the annual thesis exhibition from the , by students graduating with master’s of fine art and master’s of design degrees.

The exhibit 鈥 offering paintings, sculpture and elaborate design and video projects mixed together in the gallery 鈥 will be at the Henry through June 21.

“Palace Pelagic,” by Sarah Norsworthy. On display at the Henry Art Gallery, part of the MFA M-Des Thesis Exhibition. Photo: Peter Kelley

Kristina Schoening’s outsized “Still Life (Banquet Piece),” is a huge oil on linen that seems to have flopped down from a museum wall and taken on a wholly different sort of life. The resemblance to centuries-old banquet paintings is not accidental, the artist said.

“I’m purposely quoting that and trying to introduce it into three dimensions, and kind of have it on this spectacular scale where the piece is large enough it could become a tablecloth,” Schoening said. “I like to foreground the materiality of the fabric it’s painted on, that kind of sagging material we usually stretch flat.” A large and languid tulip leads as the big painting drapes outward and down.

Around another corner, artist Maria Rose Adams stood by her brightly colored five-part series “Three Good Things Yesterday,” which she said plays on themes of domestic comfort and domesticity, with just a hint of uncertainty thrown in.

Amanda Sweet discussed her painting “The History of Land,” which not only reflects the farmland her family has had in South Carolina for centuries, she said, but is made of it, too: “The painting itself is from the red clay soil extracted from that land. I made the clay into oil paint.” The process had her adding layers to the painting, then removing them, “also bringing attention to the skeleton structure beneath.”

“The Current Project” by Scott Ichikawa. Photo: Peter Kelley

But painterly art is only part of this annual exhibit. Students graduating with degrees in design were also well-represented.

Scott Ichikawa’s design piece, “The Current Project,” a sort of typographic fantasia, filled a corner with faux-newspaper headlines, t-shirts and an antique device possibly unfamiliar to the young which, if memory serves, is called “a typewriter.”

It’s all for breaking through barriers that keep college students from consuming news, he said: “Students don’t get newspapers and they don’t have television anymore, so how they are consuming news is very different. I’m looking at ways of connecting students with news so they can learn what’s happening in the world.”

“I Wish for an Animal” is a text-message-based role-playing game created by artist Shaghayegh Ghassemian about an imagined village surrounded by a large protected area full of animals. Participants, sent on missions by the master, try to save these animals over three days of artist-controlled gaming.

“It’s actually for bringing awareness of our responsibility toward wildlife conservation,” she said. “People who live in cities don鈥檛 understand how choosing between a cup of tea and a cup of coffee makes a difference in the end for animals.”

“Three Good Things Yesterday,” by Maria Rose Adams. Photo: Peter Kelley

In one playing of the game, she said, she unleashed a serial killer on the village, enabling that person alone with the ability to kill. But the more killings there were, the better the animals fared, lacking human interference. This sparked a debate among participants, she said: Should they all side with the killer and thus win the game together?

Abigail Steinem’s “Make Ready Initiative,” filling a corner with orange in the gallery, is both a book and a sort of design for helping designers design.

“When designers leave school they lack a community and a place where they can go and make things and experiment,” Steinem said. “So I designed a service, in this book, to help people no matter where they are. You can go through here and set up your own community and make it fit whatever your local needs are. It helps support their creative potential.”

“I Wish for an Animal,” a text-based game by Shaghayegh Ghassemian. Photo: Peter Kelley

In a darkened room are Morgan Mangiaruga’s “Surrogates” sculptures — intentionally monstrous mediations on self — and Katherine Groesbeck’s creations of fabric and paraffin and burlap.

Across the hall, Coley Mixan’s two hour-plus video, “Synkhra: Goddess of Music and Pie” played as the artist 鈥 its writer, director and chief performer 鈥 watched and took questions. She said. “I’m interested in the notion of historically queer feminists and performance art, how to use our own bodies as artwork in a physical way.”

As her video likeness played guitar, danced and engaged in costumed, occasionally pie-related antics, Mixan added, “For me, it’s the experience of just playing and being joyful. You own your mistakes. Failure is the best part of the fall 鈥 it’s the way into the creative moment. That and composing the music for the movie. And baking a lot of pies.”

Participating artists also included Matthew Schau Allen, Tim Coleman, Ryan Moeck, Zheng Wi, Lanxia Xie and Kun Xu. The exhibit was organized, and the student artists greatly assisted, by Jes Gettler, the Henry’s exhibition designer and lead preparator.

“Exhibiting at the Henry Art Gallery allows students to learn how to present and install their work in a museum environment,” Gettler said, “It also provides an opportunity to gain valuable exposure to the public and professionals in their field.”

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