Graduates 2015
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Matt Allison
photo by Corry Arnold
My work is about cultivating moments of unexpected synergy. I’m constantly assembling and reassembling the things I collect from the world around me; always in search of some combination that expands my understanding of it. My goal is to move fluidly from public spaces to the privacy of my studio and then back again. I often invite those I meet along the way to join me and the process of synergy repeats again.
Meaning isn’t fixed. Shifts happen.
www.afuturememory.com
matt.t.allison@gmail.com
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Patrick Gilbert
 
    
I am continuing to look at how craftsmanship can be used as a value-maker even when placed in awkward, unconventional or downright inappropriate contexts, reflecting directly back onto everyday activities. Having the context of a multi-faceted practice allows for these things to come to light. Rather than looking directly to inborn art problems, I hope to address aspects of overlooked situations within our daily lives and research the visual cues and cultural signifiers inherent within them. It is, then, within the acts of making that my practice fabricates objects, places, landscapes, and situations that seek to present a widened image of our culture of production, all the while focusing intensely on the importance of the aesthetic.
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Jenalee Harmon
    
By focusing on the production of myth-building within the art world and the culmination of a series of minor failures, my work questions how euphemistic statements affect exchanges between the ‘ordinary’ and ‘sensational’. I’m interested in dissolving the notion of the artist as demiurge and oracle, and instead re-contextualizing my identity as an autonomous space. By performing for the camera, I am able to control the gestures and nature of the performance and shape a quiet but tense world for the viewer. By situating myself as a device of self-mockery, my work recursively references the absurdity of performance as an effort to inoculate one’s self towards exchanges of failure.Â
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Oree Holban
   
“A change is gonna come” is playing on the radio. It’s tempting to think art can bring about a gender-revolution, so maybe for now one can just settle for bits of evolution sparks in the horizon, like waves which will be breaking eventually.
I’m interested in magical liminal spaces, places which still seek exploration, states of “limbo” or in-between: dreams, new-identities, alternative genders, between falling in/out of love with your body and your country, between performance and painting, stardom and misery, happiness, between escapism and mindfulness. My work varies from lip-synch/live performance, singing-songwriting, installation, painting/drawing to poetry.
https://cargocollective.com/oreeholban
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Megan Mueller
I am heavily influenced by stand up comedy, the environment, weather, living in other people’s homes as a pet sitter, and the physicality of sculpture. Overlapping areas of the built and natural environment are of particular interest. I tend to think spatially, in cast shadows but underestimate gravity, wind, and weight. The logic of my work is similar to the logic of an infinity pool, in that, it is man made but desires to connect with the horizon for infinity.
www.meganmueller.com
meganmuellerart@gmail.com
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Jeff Page
30” x 24” mixed media on paper
My work moves in multiple trajectories between painting, collage and sculpture.  Through exploring intersections between masculinity, the built and natural environment, the past and future, I create hybrid objects or imagery that embody a peculiar synthesis of these ideas. My process in the studio is equal parts emotional and cerebral–  it’s a constant juggling of materiality, experimentation, calculation and risk-taking. The inspiration points for the work are vast– drawing from the lively spaces, communities and characters of my life, both real and imagined.
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Emily Thomas
After visiting the Freemason’s Grand Lodge in NYC on a school field trip in 2007, Emily C. Thomas experienced a rupture in her dreamworld resulting in heightened awareness of altered states of consciousness in combination to imagery. With her fascination of the occult sciences piqued for the next few years much of her time was devoted to attempting to join the ideal initiatory magick cult or freemasonry lodge. After failing miserably in this endeavor, an outsider of outsiders, she is now engrossed in the the process of designing her own secret society, The Divine Daughters of the Temple Within (DDTW) for little girls and women, ideologically inspired by ancient goddess religions of a Golden Age nurturingly ruled by feminine forces. Miss Thomas’ feminist, visionary paintings, films and installations are created by receiving images during the physical, or otherwise intellectual, peak of orgasm. Her favorite pastimes are gardening, petting animals, investigating mysteries, watching films about nuns (and/or) Sister Wendy, researching the visual, etymological history of “Goddess/God” and exploring the overall symbolic construction of reality. She received her BFA from New York University in 2008, and is currently living in sunny Santa Barbara, where she will receive her MFA in 2015.
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Matthew Usinowicz
My current works examine my experiences with American capitalist ideologies, specifically the relationship between human and commodity. Rooted in the American working class, I grew up as a paperboy, butcher, and US Navy sailor. My work reflects the political and conceptual outlook of these experiences.
matthewusinowicz.com
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