poiesis
2024 Digital + Studio Art senior thesis Exhibiton
April 21st- May 11th, 2024
Gallery Hours: Monday- Saturday 10am - 4pm
Michael Finch
The body of work explores a reinterpretation and revitalization of Vietnamese cultural icons within the contemporary landscape of 21st-century America. Prompted by the artist’s upbringing as a second-generation immigrant in the Midwest, grappling with a disconnection from Vietnamese heritage, a consequence of the overwhelming influence of Western culture. In response, working to reassert and recontextualize these cultural symbols, particularly focusing on Buddhist iconography, within personal and collective thought and memory. The sculptures and paintings serve as vehicles for this exploration, incorporating contemporary forms, compositions, and mediums to contextualize these traditional symbols and place them into the public sphere. Through this work, aiming to convey the complexities of cultural identity and establish an internal and external memory, legacy, and resilience of these icons amidst the challenges of contemporary existence, inundation of mass culture, subversion, or erasure. The work utilizes mediums such as cardboard and stucco to communicate themes of immigration, embodied by a correlation to movement and shelter respectively. The personal narratives intertwined with the broader cultural context are reflected in an abstraction, dissection, or reduction of form and figure. These material and compositional choices contribute to the exploration of heritage, suggesting the lasting impact of immigration on cultural identity and iconography, as well as the legacy of the latter. This body of work seeks to provoke thought and conversation around the shifting nature of cultural identity and iconography. Additionally, the importance of reinterpreting and re-establishing cultural symbols in a manner that effectively and appropriately contextualizes them in a rapidly changing world. In bridging the gap between tradition and innovation, the work depicts the lasting significance of these cultural icons and their capacity to transcend generations, even in the face of diaspora, cultural assimilation, and societal subversion.
Andi haus
As well as existing as shrines to reclaimed and deities and saints, this work is an exploration of the past lives of discarded and found objects through reinvention. With this work I aim to walk the lines between the divine and the absurd, while exploring queer divinity, oppression and liberation through the lens of my youth. The process of found object assemblage began long before I knew it had, as I have impulsively accumulated the found objects I am using over the span of the last decade, even including certain items I have carried with me since my youth in my rural, religious community. My mothers family is Apastolic Christian while my fathers is Catholic. Elements of both these perspectives often bleed through my self identity and into whatever I am making. I feel compelled to make this work in order to reclaim for myself the concept of divinity, which I was taught from a young age was unreachable to me as a queer individual. Because I now know better, I wish to re-examine my own relationship with religion and the divine, salvaging what I can and telling a story through objects and symbols. I am also influenced by the dadaist mindset and the idea that art can be whatever I need it to be (for survival). Through my process, I draw upon queer divinity, oppression, and self invented liberation through the lens of religion. Reclaiming lost symbols and forging new ones, I co-opt elements from catholicism and invent others. Taken in parts and as a whole, I reconfigure queer divinity through the unique and personal relationships with divinity queer people often have due to religious persecution. The result is a multisensory message that divinity can exist in a wide variety of forms, even inhabiting objects and people labeled by others as trash.
Laina hooper
Many people oftentimes see the elderly as a reminder of our own mortality. We use them as a figure of fun in jokes and pop culture, place them in homes if they can afford it, and lose patience with them in everyday life. Different types of elder abuse have become a silent problem in our society. To that end, I created this book to dive deeper into this topic and to shed light on it in a different way. Rather than presenting statistics in a traditional textbook format, I pair them with stories and moments throughout my grandparents’ lives in a visually appealing way. This creates a lens of humanization for the audience while contending with the darker topics that are explored.
Louie Lee
When I woke up, I noticed that I couldn’t move my body. I could feel something watching me. My back was facing my closet and I could tell something was there. In the corner of my eye I could see the outline of a shadowy figure standing in front of my closet. It was looking at me and before I could react, it grabbed my wrist. I’ve had a few encounters with spirits in the past, which have had a significant impact on how I view life and how I approach my artwork. My religion is Shamanism, meaning that I believe in spirits and the spirit world. My work draws upon Shamanism by showing two different perspectives: how the human views the world compared to what the spirit sees. This animation explores the idea of how religion affects our lives and explores the questions: What if I, the human, was actually invading the spirit space in the spirit world? Or what if it was the spirit that was actually invading my space in the human world?
Andy LU
Through my game experience, I aim to challenge the misconception that game development is a straightforward process. In today's gaming culture, there's a prevalent belief that developers possess magical solutions to any bugs/glitches encountered in a game. My work aims to debunk this belief by demonstrating the intricate and time-consuming nature of game development. Bringing these ideas to life, my game offers players a direct experience of the challenges discussed. My game will expose players to the harassment that developers receive online by having players experience something similar through the game. By shedding light on the challenges inherent in game development, I seek to discredit the belief that fixing bugs or implementing changes is a trivial task as simple as tweaking a line of code. Instead, I hope to build appreciation for the complexity and dedication required to bring a game to life.
Katie Morris
Art is an expression of deeply human aspects, my work is an expression of distortion, confusion, and acceptance of the Human Experience reflecting the fleeting desires of life. Having suffered from depression from an early age, the future was something unattainable. However, alluding to the inevitable end I continue. It is difficult to grasp the feelings of inexplicable sadness, yet there is more, as the trials and tribulations are part of the human experience. History is cyclical, humans have desired acceptance, triumph, and the pursuit of happiness through many different eyes. Life is faulted, and death is a prosperous rebirth. My work is heavily inspired by dark, thick cuts of German woodblock prints, anti-pop culture music yapping about society, and the heavy weight of being alive as a conscious human. Life is cyclical; contemporary apathy hinders personal growth, there is always more trouble and struggle, as it is all a part of the experience. The creation process is messy, changing iterations with the current emotion and music. Faceless Hellenistic statues symbolize the immortal human expression of the experience, drawing ties to history and the repeating nature of man’s faults. The added text of the triptych primary collages includes inner thoughts, mantras, and consciousness; the erratic mind of a 20-something burnout. As you may only reap what you sow, carefully tend to your fields, and may your harvest be bountiful.
Max ridenour
We live in a world of avoidable violence sanctioned by colonial institutions. This can be a difficult reality to reckon with, especially as a young person living in a climate of constant access to information. While exposure to the cruelty of imperialist institutions is often unavoidable, either through perception of our immediate circumstances or our awareness of global perspectives via the Internet, it is a reality that must be addressed so that it can be overcome through empathetic community engagement and collective action. This project’s aim is twofold. Firstly, it serves as a conduit for disentangling and processing the ugliness of global realities of violence. This is achieved through a series of posters modeled after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it serves to transform grief into actionable, publicly accessible messages of solidarity. This aim is achieved by printing and distributing a series of posters addressing active social issues throughout neighborhoods in the Twin Cities and observing how the community chooses to engage with these artifacts. The two series are displayed side-by-side in the gallery setting, creating friction between “public” and “private” modes of expression. I chose the medium of the poster due to its ability to effectively communicate a visual message and its vast potential for various styles and multimedia applications. By exhibiting my posters outdoors before collecting and displaying them in the gallery, I wish to utilize the concept of decay, allowing my art to be changed and degraded by outside circumstances. In this method of ceding control, I also decentralize power between myself as the artist and the people who interface with my art, allowing this project to achieve a platform of collective solidarity.
charlie rundquist
cathryn salis
Most creative pursuits have been removed from public school curriculum in the US to make room for more intense academics, leaving students to an educational environment focused on products and test scores. As an arts educator, I want to empower students to find joy in their creative process and take ownership of their own creative flair. In this interactive sculpture, I worked with a group of local elementary students and guided them through the process of sewing small felt figures to live within a fictional environment. I created a wooden terrarium in which the participating students and myself have offered small figures to live within an aluminum ecosystem. However, their figures are made of felt and mine is represented in bronze. My figure is a heavy, dark bug-like form with large pinchers and ineffective legs, and could fit in your open hand. The students have offered softer, delicate and brightly colored sewn figures of similar sizes to live alongside it. The terrarium is protected by plastic walls and decorated with the shiny essentials to play and climb on. Our figures live in harmony in our world made of silver, surrounding the metallic lake and stream. My task for the audience is to participate in the documentation of the terrarium. The blue polaroid camera is available for photographs to frame folk’s favorite formation, and the polaroids are to be propped along the edge of the terrarium, offering the different and limited perspectives of others of the same open space for others to observe as well as building the presentation as the gallery opening goes on. In creating a collaborative and interactive terrarium, my project becomes an experience and everyone who encounters it has a chance to be a part of its creation; it takes a village to keep our kids safe, happy and curious about the beautiful world around them.
liz slostad
Sapphics of History is a series of trading cards that depicts queer women of recent history, with each of the 50 cards depicting a different woman. Trading cards, traditionally, have been affordable, and as the name suggests, tradeable. They also often feature information about a person, like baseball or other sports cards that commonly have statistics and facts about that player. These features make trading cards an accessible and useful way to educate people about these women. Queerness is not a new phenomenon. There have always been queer people and they have contributed so much that, historically, has gone unnoticed. While more visible now, many people, especially those outside the queer community, still have few examples of queer people in history. This may cause people to make assumptions based on their lack of understanding of queer people. They might think that queerness is a new fad, that it’s unnatural, or even sinful. Queer people not seeing themselves represented may cause struggles with their identity and internalized homophobia. Showing queer people in history actively fights these issues and broadens the idea of what a queer person is and can be. The women featured were pioneers, rebels, and advocates. Many broke gender norms and may have identified differently in today's more open and less binary world. Others broke barriers and were trailblazers. Most of them lived when homosexuality was frowned upon or even illegal. As queer women, they had to face not only homophobia but sexism as well. Many were also women of color who dealt with racism. These systematic disadvantages make their achievements even more remarkable and important to highlight. These women and their accomplishments should be remembered and celebrated. History books won’t teach you the full story about these women, so I will.
cassandra strate
From a young age, I've been drawn to the darker aspects of art and storytelling. I found myself captivated by a range of eerie and gothic artwork and literature as opposed to my peers' disturbance or passiveness. That childhood curiosity ignited a lifelong fascination with the grim and grotesque. In my series of paintings titled 'The Prelude to Chaos’, I depict a small portion of the anger spectrum: the numbing, heavy calm that sinks in before the storm of outrage. Through these works, I aim to explore the nuances of contemporary womanhood and the suffocating pressures of society on the current youth. Each painting portrays intense emotions—a reflection of the struggles and righteous anger of a twenty-something-year-old girl. The incorporation of dark elements and macabre symbolism in my art serves a dual purpose: to express the anger inherent in the female experience and to indulge my love for grim and gothic. My art is a testament to the righteous anger of women, challenging conventional notions of femininity and inviting viewers to confront the uncomfortable. Through unnerving imagery and themes, I strive to leave a lasting impression—a reminder that fury and growing up female are intricately intertwined.
nasra sufi
With the focus of interpersonal relationships, I wanted to explore the complicated feeling of distance and attachment through photography. A lot of the time, a person may have objects that were gifted to them by someone that were once close to them. However, the distance that has occurred between them may affect them deeply. In a sense, the gifter may not be there physically, that object still holds to the memories, emotions, and deep sentimental value that feels like said person would still be there through that object. In Feeling in Every Fiber, I wanted to spotlight each object and the stories behind them. By doing this, I interviewed three different individuals about what object they are attached to because of distance, and why. My main goals were to not only highlight each interviewee’s interest in their object, but to visually create their story of attachment and amplify their story of distance within their object. In an interesting twist, I also wanted to further expand on the distance, going from the seeing eye visuals of each object to their microscopic properties. I used a Scanning Electron Microscope to merge the ordinary object with the texture and high depth of field it offers, in order enhance the sentimentality of the object through each interviewee’s intimate story.
maria tiede
Growing up, like a lot of people, I was always trying to find a way to fit in. I felt different and was even told on occasion that I was. It left me confused and without any outlet, I realized it pushed me to hide parts of who I am. I knew I had a lot to offer, but I no longer felt like I had a voice. I sat with these thoughts and feelings for a long time, not knowing what to do with them. It has taken years and lots of reflection up until this point to accept that I am different and that it shouldn’t hold me back. I discovered that I can create my own definition of belonging or fitting in. The parts of me that were hidden, I no longer want to shy away from. It has been a long process, but this project has been one starting point for embracing and celebrating who I am. I will continue to face and work through these challenges, but moving forward my goal is to hold and carry these sentiments with pride and determination.
Nathaniel Brelsford
I am always looking for interesting and new ways to tell stories. I have decided to include AI in the creation of this project. It will be my prime collaborator and gain a large credit. One of the themes in this piece is finding purpose and meaning beyond what society tells is important. I think one of the easiest and honestly most relevant ways to explore that is with Artificial Intelligence. Since AI’s purpose is set out for them explicitly from the moment they are created, it is easy to explore what happens when that purpose is either rendered impossible or, in most cases for real life humans, obsolete. Stories are one way to explore that and explore that I shall. Ironically, in the creation of this film I have been working with,and reaching out to more humans than I ever have on any other project before. This was made a necessity due to the location I decided to shoot. The film takes place in a wasteland but is filmed on a stage with no audience. There is a saying that theater only requires two things:
A performer, and an audience.
What is the point of a story that no one is there to hear?
Can there be purpose in isolation?
Can AI be a friend? Or only serve as obstacles to our own survival?
Or somewhere in between?
I am very invested in finding purpose and discovering humanity.