Facsimile reproductions of two artist's books made as an extension of the exhibition "Meet Me by the Thing at Thing o'Clock." The titles are "Vague Waves" and "Clouds."

This thesis considers a wide range of topics in a colorful, multimedia format. Topics include subjects such as the nature of objects, power-structures and their relationship to the divine, and the subjective and abstract nature of making meaning.

This paper is a snapshot of an exploration. It is a map or an atlas; a laid-out terrain of thoughts, narratives, interests, tangents, comments, notes, drawings, and images. Working as a rhizome, it is a network of experience, knowledge, and discovery that will continue to grow, as I use it as a piece to come back to and keep adding, exploring and finding new connections.

The paper is more than a written document it is meant to be a physical object that is printed out, adhered together, and worn. It is an experiential artwork.

Structure and Surface

This paper is both introspective and of the world. I have retraced my steps and, in turn, the past changed with the present and time travel was achieved. It begins three years ago and meets at the end of graduate school, examining the work in the thesis exhibition.

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Toward Ilinx

This body of work, Baby Teeth, Flamingo Feet—All the Flesh That’s in Between, began with a poem titled HAUNCHES: Form Bottom form Legs, Thighs, Haunches Thunderous Power Voluminous, delicate Support, movement Power Ripples, Grooves, Tendons, Stretch, Adjust, Move Power Haunches What I see when I look up A Mothers legs Rippled, speckled thighs Power

It grew, as all bodies do, into a a form embodying memory, energy, the collective, the powerful and abject nature of the flesh body. It is an exploration of the corporeal female form, the lower half of the body, the haunches, reproductive organs, both the internal and external of these appendages. I view the body as a physical entity, formed in a hyper specific manner, but material in its existence and limitations none the less. The material existence of bodies gives rise to the question of energy, inherent and imbedded within, providing what is considered “life” to an otherwise stagnant form. I am interested in this contradiction, the simultaneous presence of power and strength in the legs of an animated body, while possessing a sense of fragility, able to somehow maintain an ephemeral and seemingly contradictory state. I explore the abject nature of materials and forms created and exuded from the body, hair, teeth, nails and cysts. I relate this to the experience and perspective of being raised by strong powerful women. In my sculptural work I use scale, form and gesture to recreate these specific feelings.

In an attempt to better understand the modes in which sculptural space operates, my work investigates the changes and failures that occur when trying to translate pictorial imagery into the third dimension or “real “ space of sculpture. Viewers are not as willing to suspend their disbelief when confronted with a thing very removed in appearance from a “real” object but presented as such. Perhaps this disbelief is due to a discomfort with a kind of pretending inherent to sculpture. My attempt to bring imagery from my drawings into a sculptural space, to maintain their fantasy while engaging with the real, is from conception an impossible task of translation. I see this exercise as an illustration of the failure of a sculpture to ever be convincing as a “real” object and hope it will open up a more honest, in-between space for sculpture to sit that is particular to its medium. This emphasis on failure and otherness in the work serves to expose the theatricality of a sculpture in its moment of pretending. A sculpture is actually a part but apart from the everyday reality most objects inhabit. The sculpture’s role as an actor on a kind of real world stage has always been present but not always admitted. My work seeks to lay bare the vulnerabilities of the medium of sculpture in hopes they can eventually be turned into a strength.

The original title for this thesis was ‘the Art of Being a God in the Universe’. The topic wanted to understand the removal of gods and deities in art from current visual representations. The work believed that the artist has taken these spiritual beings out of the frame and folded them into their persona. The defined persona in ‘the Art of Being a God in the Universe’ was not a selfless one and harshly denounced it in three sections. The prologue, ‘I’ for Thirteen Pages— In Exchange for all Other Words, and the epilogue all explored the ego. Together the three chapters fully accused artists of believing themselves to be godlike. The observation made in the writing was that, in their belief of high being, the artist commands the subjective outlining of their reality and within this construction get lost in it. These are conversations to be had.