April 25–May 10, 2014
Opening: April 25, 6–8pm
MFA Colloquium: April 29 and 30, 6:30pm
Visual Arts Center
Department of Art and Art History
The University of Texas at Austin
Art Building
23rd and Trinity Streets
T +1 512 471 1108
The Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin presents POOL, an exhibition showcasing the work of ten studio artists completing their Master of Fine Arts degrees. The work will be on display at the Visual Arts Center from April 25 through May 10. An opening reception honoring the artists will be held Friday, April 25, from 6 to 8pm. The MFA Colloquium, a two-night series of artist gallery talks, will take place April 29 and 30 at 6:30pm.
The culmination of an intensive three-year program of research, POOL features work made in a variety of media including video, painting, printmaking, photography, installation and sculpture. These ten artists use their work to explore the world around them—to connect, describe, communicate and question. Their works explore a diversity of themes including cultural history, land use, identity, representation and power structures.
About the MFA program
Over their course of study, MFA students work closely with department faculty to fine-tune existing skill sets and develop new approaches, both conceptual and technical, to their studio practice. In a challenging interdisciplinary environment, students often work across media and in close collaboration with one another, exploring the potential overlaps and depths of established disciplines. The department’s visiting artist and critic program brings acclaimed professionals from outside the university into graduate studios. As part of the diverse intellectual community that makes up The University of Texas at Austin, students have access to resources across campus allowing for a richly informed approach to art-making.
About the Department of Art and Art History
The UT Department of Art and Art History is one of the largest and most diverse in the country. It includes the divisions of Studio Art, Art History, Design and Art Education. 52 full-time faculty oversee the education of 500 undergraduate and 135 graduate students. The Studio Art Division’s 22 full-time faculty work closely with the division’s 28 graduate art students. The faculty proudly celebrate these ten artists whose culminating exhibition, POOL, completes their graduate education.
About the artists
Lily Brooks (Massachusetts) photographs commonplace objects as a way of looking at how we live and what we want, creating a catalogue of history, desire, expectation and failure.
Kelly Donovan (Colorado) examines our relationship to digital culture, using the mechanism of Internet search engines to curate information and images relating to surveillance, national security and privacy.
Jonas Hart (Ohio) employs nontraditional materials including cement to create modular landscape paintings that investigate the infrastructure of urban development and question our conflicted relationship to the natural world.
Phil LaDeau (Texas) examines the latent memory of existing architectural spaces through drawing and sculpture.
Sara Madandar (Iran) makes painting and video work related to cultural identity, displacement and conventions of femininity.
Samantha Parker Salazar (Illinois) uses traditional printmaking techniques as a foundation for cut-paper installations that explore notions of interiority and exteriority in relation to the body and nature.
James Scheuren’s (Virginia) photographs function in a nonlinear narrative form, addressing a tradition of photographing intimate life as well as a contemporary search for intimacy and wonder.
Taylor Swan (Montana) makes video works that operate as objects to shift the mechanism of time, stacking it in a way to suggest inertia.
Erik Shane Swanson (New York) uses readymade materials alongside handcrafted forms that summon, reclaim and examine the camouflaged and the conspicuous.
Shalena White (Texas) intersects traditional metalsmithing with non-traditional natural and manmade elements to explore the extraordinary potential of ordinary materials.
