Graduate Studies Pub.

GRADUATE STUDIES
2018
IN ART
LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART
University of Georgia

FRONT
> DEEPANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY, MFA 2018
Minutes from the Congress of Scam International
TELEPHONE HEADSET, AUDIO
5 X 15 INCHES
2017
BACK
> KALEENA STASIAK, MFA 2018
Corbeau
PINE AND PINE BOARD
48 X 36 X 36 INCHES
2018

GRADUATE STUDIES
2018
IN
ART
LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

FROM THE DIRECTOR

The students and faculty at the Lamar Dodd School
of Art are engaged citizens possessing expertise
and the highest levels of integrity. Every day, they
dedicate themselves to discovery as historians,
educators, designers, and artists. And, every day
it is my honor to lead them into a future filled with
challenges and promise, encouraging risk-taking in
the name of achieving some measure of greatness.
We are an artistic and intellectual community, but
also an entrepreneurial one. We understand that
significant innovation requires both obstacles
and opportunity. Obstacles serve as catalysts
for important questions and impactful solutions.
Opportunities lead to ideas that take root and make
a difference, now and for generations to come.
In a climate that seems evermore transactional,
it is vital that artists and scholars take a deliberate
approach — one that is measured not merely
in dollars and cents but in lives bettered and
cultures renewed.
CHRIS GARVIN
DIRECTOR, LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART
> KATHERINE MILLER// MFA 2018
| 3

The mission of the Lamar Dodd School
of Art is to promote art and design
as a significant means of inquiry,
integral to problem solving and the
production of knowledge. Our faculty
teach students to be empathetic and
engaged citizens and prepare them
for careers as creative professionals.
We achieve these goals by addressing
critical issues through innovative
research in art, art education, and design.
> ANNEMARIE DICAMILLO // MFA 2018
| 5

> ALEXIS SPINA // MFA 2018
GRADUATE STUDY
AT THE LAMAR DODD
SCHOOL OF ART

The Lamar Dodd School of Art is among the most
distinguished art departments in the nation, drawing
students and faculty from across the U.S. and the globe.
Offering graduate degrees in studio art, art history, and
art education, the School is home to dozens of students
and faculty working intensively, often collaboratively,
across a wide range of media, disciplines, and fields.
Housed within state-of-the-art facilities on the campus
of the University of Georgia, the Dodd is a porous but
tight-knit community, dedicated to the rigorous production,
analysis, and dissemination of visual culture. As
this publication bears out, the School of Art believes in
excellence across disciplinary boundaries and is committed
to the idea that research in the arts is a profound
method of inquiry—essential to the academic mission
of the university and the production of knowledge.
DR. ISABELLE LORING WALLACE
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND GRADUATE STUDIES
| 7

The Dodd Galleries consist of five separate exhibition spaces,
but, together, they serve as a laboratory—a testing ground for
innovation located amidst School of Art classrooms, studios, and
offices. Committed to the idea of art-as-research, the galleries
exhibit the work of students and faculty, but also feature
internationally recognized artists whose shows are enhanced
by interdisciplinary programming designed to question, educate,
and inspire. It is the mission of the Dodd Galleries to challenge
contemporary perceptions of art making and promote the idea
that art is a form of wisdom in its own right.
> COURTNEY MCCLELLAN // POST MFA FELLOW
> PAUL PFEIFFER // LAMAR DODD PROFESSORIAL CHAIR

DODD GALLERIES
| 9

FACILITIES

The School of Art is housed in a spacious, eco-conscious
building located next to the Hugh Hodgson School of Music,
the Performing Art Center, and the Georgia Museum of Art.
The Dodd’s facilities and equipment are state-of-the-art,
and our faculty and graduate students are generously
accommodated—all with their own dedicated studios. In
addition to traditional classroom spaces, the School of Art
has several fabrication labs and project spaces designed
to facilitate collaborative, cross-disciplinary initiatives. The
Dodd is also home to an art library and several galleries,
and is located in close proximity to other facilities dedicated
to the arts on campus including an extraordinary facility
devoted to ceramics, completed in 2011.
| 11

FACULTY PROFILE: PAUL PFEIFFER
LAMAR DODD PROFESSORIAL CHAIR, 2016–18
FOUNDED IN 1970, THE LAMAR DODD PROFESSORIAL CHAIR
OF ART IS AN APPOINTMENT OF HIGH DISTINCTION INTENDED
TO HONOR ARTISTS OF INTERNATIONAL STANDING WHO HAVE
MAINTAINED AN EXCEPTIONAL RECORD OF EXHIBITION. ARTISTS
SELECTED FOR THIS POSITION TEACH COURSES AT THE LAMAR
DODD SCHOOL OF ART, FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF
ELAINE DE KOONING, THE FIRST ARTIST TO HOLD THIS POSITION.
Since 2016 the Dodd Chair has been held by Paul Pfeiffer, a pioneer and exemplary
practitioner working in the fields of installation, photography, and video. Best known
for digitally manipulated images of athletes and celebrities, his work uses ubiquitous
imagery as an occasion to plumb the depths of con¬temporary culture, assessing
its racial, religious, and technological dimensions. Simultaneously, Pfeiffer’s objects
and images look back in time, establishing unexpected genealogies that connect
contemporary culture and its many particularities—professional sports, televised
game shows, Michael Jackson, etc.— to the long, seemingly remote histories of
art, media, religion, politics, and nationhood. While in residence at the Dodd, Pfeiffer
is teaching courses in studio art and furthering his studio practice, working with
graduate students on an ambitious video installation that uses the University of
Georgia football team and the Redcoat Band as its primary source material.
Pfeiffer is represented by the Paula Cooper gallery in New York City. He has received
numerous awards and had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Barbican Art Centre in London, The List Visual
Arts Center at MIT, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Contemporary Museum
in Honolulu, Gagosian Gallery in New York, MUSAC in Léon, Spain, Museum für Gegenwart,
Berlin, and The Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila, among others.

KRYPTON (WORKING TITLE)
2016-2018
STILLS FROM A MULTI-CHANNEL
AUDIO/VIDEO INSTALLATION
WORK IN PROGRESS
| 13

ALUMNA PROFILE: LINNEA WEST
MA ART HISTORY, 2014
COORDINATOR, CONTEMPORARY &
MODERN ART PERSPECTIVES PROGRAM
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART,
NEW YORK, NY
WHEN LINNEA WEST EARNED A BA IN ENGLISH FROM THE
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA IN 2006 AND MOVED FROM ATHENS,
GA TO NEW YORK CITY, SHE HAD NOT YET DISCOVERED HER
LOVE OF THE VISUAL ARTS OR SUSPECTED THAT SHE WOULD
RETURN TO SCHOOL FOR FURTHER STUDY. BUT, THE BUSTLING
ARTS SCENE IN NEW YORK CITY HAD A PROFOUND IMPACT ON
WEST AND LED HER TO ENGAGE MORE AND MORE WITH CON-
TEMPORARY ART IN HER WRITING. SHE WON A FULBRIGHT
GRANT TO RESEARCH AND WRITE ABOUT HUNGARIAN ART
AND SPENT THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2012–13 IN BUDAPEST
WORKING AT THE LUDWIG MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART.
Inspired by this experience and desiring a solid foundation in art history
and theory, West applied to several graduate programs, ultimately
choosing the MA program in Art History at The University of Georgia.
In the fall of 2013, as West began coursework in Art History at UGA,
she took advantage of several opportunities to develop curatorial
projects around the School. In 2014, she co-curated an exhibition
of instruction-based art in the Dodd Galleries with art history PhD
candidate Brooke Leeton and also curated the annual exhibition of 2nd
year MFA students at the Madison Museum of Fine Arts in Madison,
Georgia. Simultaneously, under the direction of Dr. Isabelle Loring
Wallace, West embarked on a thesis entitled “Memento Park and
Skopje 2014: Transition, Monuments, and Memory.” Building on her
previous research in Central and Eastern Europe that she began while
a Fulbright scholar, West’s thesis dealt with the lingering impact that
the shift from socialism to capitalism had on public space in the
region. In commendation of her original and important work on this
topic, she graduated from the School of Art in May 2015, receiving her
MA degree with Distinction.

“I WAS GIVEN FREEDOM TO
PURSUE MY RESEARCH.
IN ADDITION, I FOUND
OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK
After graduation, West returned to New York City,
where she worked as a freelance writer and editor WITH MFAS AND OTHER STAFF
before joining the staff of the Museum of Modern
AND STUDENTS ON CURATORIAL
Art (MoMA) in January of 2016. There, she coordinates
the Contemporary & Modern Art Perspectives PROJECTS, WHICH WAS TRULY
(C-MAP) Program, MoMA’s exciting, global research
REWARDING AND SOLIDIFIED
initiative. West manages programming and communication
across three research groups committed MY DESIRE TO WORK WITH MODERN
to the multi-year study of artistic production outside
AND CONTEMPORARY ART.”
the Western canon, including one focused on Central
and Eastern Europe. Having come full circle, West’s
journey speaks to the richness of the program at the School of Art,
which supported her interest in a lesser-studied area of art history
in the United States and prepared her to bring that passion to the
museum world.
As West says of her time at the School: “I was given freedom to
pursue my research on monuments in the former Eastern Bloc and
had ample opportunities to work with MFAs and other staff and students
on curatorial projects, which was truly rewarding and solidified
my desire to work with modern and contemporary art. In retrospect,
I’m very happy with my decision to come to the Dodd and am grateful
for the support I received in these diverse endeavors, which directly
relate to my current position at MoMA.”
| 15

AREA PROFILE: ART EDUCATION
A NATIVE OF ATLANTA, CALLAN STEINMANN HOLDS UNDER-
GRADUATE DEGREES IN STUDIO ART AND PSYCHOLOGY FROM
THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA AND A MA IN ART EDUCATION
WITH A FOCUS ON MUSEUM EDUCATION FROM THE UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. IN 2017, SHE RECEIVED A PHD IN ART
EDUCATION FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA.
Steinmann has worked at the Georgia Museum of Art (GMOA) since 2013
and was recently promoted to Curator of Education. Creating opportunities
for visitors to experience the museum in different and engaging
ways is central to her work as a museum educator and is fundamental
to her research interests, which focus on the museum as a site for creative
exploration, particularly as it relates to the experiences of visitors
engaged in sustained studio practice in response to works in a museum
collection. Her dissertation, Making Art, Making Meaning: Examining the
Experience of Artmaking in an Art Museum, brought together Steinmann’s
interests and background in studio art, education, and museum studies.
Participants in the study included adults enrolled in Studio Workshop,
a four-week artmaking program at GMOA that combines studio practice
with gallery experiences. The results of Steinmann’s study suggest
that the context of the participants’ artmaking impacted their approach
to the overall museum experience, enabling them to embrace a spirit
of wide-awakeness and forge meaningful connections with artists,
artworks, the museum as a whole, and one another. Steinmann regularly
presents at state and national conferences and is a co-chair of
Georgia Museum Educators, as well as a member of the National Art
Education Association, the Georgia Art Education Association, and the
Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries and Museum Education
Roundtable. Steinmann serves as an adjunct faculty member in Art
Education at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

THE ART EDUCATION PROGRAM AT THE LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART is grounded in critical,
experiential, and interdisciplinary inquiry. Faculty and students benefit from close proximity to the
Georgia Museum of Art, partnerships with schools and community organizations in diverse settings,
and the expertise of renowned studio and art history faculty within the School of Art. As a community
of art educators, we explore the intersections of contemporary art, histories of art education,
visual culture, service-learning, social justice, and digital technology. Graduates are encouraged to
be innovators who challenge the status quo through locally and globally transformative practices.
RECENT ART EDUCATION GRADUATES:
Amber Coleman earned her MAEd in Spring 2018. Her applied project, titled
Understanding Black Feminist Theory and the Representation of African
American Women’s Art in Museums: Engaging Black Women in Critical Dialogue
investigated how exposure to Black feminist theory can inform critical pedagogical
experiences in museum settings. Art created as part of her research
was exhibited in a show she co-curated with research participants titled, To Be
Black and Female. Coleman will continue this line of research at the doctoral
level, starting in the fall of 2018.
Jessica Harms received her MAEd in Fall of 2018. Her applied project, titled
Voices of Addiction: Connection, Empowerment, and Awareness through
Community-Based Art Education explored relationships between addiction,
education, art, and the community through action research with adults in
active recovery. Her study demonstrated how connections created between
ourselves and others through experiences with visual art have the power to
heal, promote self-advocacy, construct new perceptions, and potentially
awaken social consciousness. Harms currently teaches art at Brighten
Academy Charter School in Douglasville, Georgia.
Amber Pitt is currently in her first year as a PhD student in Art Education.
Completing her MAEd in the fall of 2018, she continues to investigate possibilities
for the integration of visual arts into homeschool settings as part of her
doctoral research. She brings years of teaching experience to her work having
taught art at the Seisen International School in Tokyo, Japan and Darussafaka
Egitim Kurumlari in Istanbul, Turkey. Pitt currently teaches a student teaching
seminar course in Art Education and supervises Art Education interns in schools.

> KELSEY SCHARF // MFA 2018
FEATURED ARTISTS: DIMELZA BROCHE, AC CARTER, ALLY
CHRISTMAS, LINDY ERKES, MATTHEW FLORES, WILL MAJOR,
LAUREN O’CONNOR-KORB, DEEPANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY,
AND KALEENA STASIAK

DODD INVITATIONAL:
GIVE THEM THE SLIP
SINCE 2015, WORK BY MASTER OF FINE ART CANDI-
DATES FROM THE LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART HAS
BEEN REGULARLY EXHIBITED IN NEW YORK CITY.
Organized by New York-based curator Wendy Vogel, Give
Them the Slip was presented by Regina Rex gallery and exhibited
in bitforms gallery on the lower east side of Manhattan.
The exhibition was on view for four days in late May, with
an opening reception on the evening of May 24th. Of the
exhibition Vogel wrote: “Give Them the Slip — an idiom for
avoiding capture—has a hard, metallic edge of criminality. It
conjures cinematic images: a furtive chase by nightfall, or a
skillful operation by a brilliant yet sympathetic criminal. The
gangster-movie phrase came to mind as a way to unite the
works on view, by MFA students at the University of Georgia.
Their art gives our expectations the slip, through operations
like performative masquerade, humor, and critically unpacking
notions of digital labor.”
Wendy Vogel is an art writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. A former
editor at Flash Art International and Art in America, she also contributes to
Artforum.com and MOUSSE, among other publications. She has organized or
co-organized curatorial projects at venues including the Hessel Museum at
the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY;
The Kitchen, New York; VOLTA New York; and Baxter Street CCNY.
| 19

FIELD STUDY PROFILE: NYC MAYMESTER PROGRAM
NEW YORK CITY OFFERS ADVANTAGES THAT THE TRADITIONAL
CLASSROOM CANNOT, AND IT WAS IN RECOGNITION OF THIS FACT
THE NYC MAYMESTER PROGRAM WAS LAUNCHED IN THE SPRING
OF 2014. FOCUSED ON CONTEMPORARY ART AND DESIGN, THIS
intensive, three-week long program uses the city as its campus,
and significant class time is devoted to visiting its world-class
museums and galleries. At the same time, participating students
benefit from more intimate experiences, visiting artists and
designers in their studios and networking with alumni who work
in arts-related fields in New York. Visiting the Biennial exhibition
at the Whitney, design firms in midtown, artists’ studios in
Bushwick, and galleries in Chelsea and the Lower Eastside, the
Maymester program is ambitious and inspirational and is a key
asset for the Dodd’s graduate programs in Art and Art History.

“I once lived in the heart of Manhattan.
I woke up every morning and bought
coffee at the café beneath my apartment.
I scrambled across bustling avenues to
catch the subway. I traveled to an art
studio in Brooklyn for class; grabbed lunch
at a food truck, fruit stand, or pizzeria, and
met my classmates at a famed museum
or an artist’s loft for tours in the afternoon.
I fell asleep to the sounds of taxi horns,
fire engine sirens, and outdoor concerts
in Times Square. It was awesome.”
GRACE NELSON, AB STUDIO ART ’15
“Every year, participating students
and faculty are profoundly energized
by the knowledge that so many
artists and intellectuals are
dedicated— with stunning, often
provocative results — to the practice
of contemporary art and design.”
ISABELLE LORING WALLACE, ASSOCIATE
PROFESSOR OF CONTEMPORARY ART
“Looking back on my trip, I can't help but
recall the great experience I had at the Jim
Campbell exhibition hosted by the Museum
of Moving Image. I fell into Campbell's digital
wonderland expecting little and walked out
feeling enchanted, maybe even hypnotized, by
the display. Seeing work like this in a book or on
a screen is nice, but after seeing it in person, I
really believe that nothing really compares to
seeing the objects firsthand. I guess I mean to
say that despite what I've written here, I don't
think I can adequately tell you what it was like
to experience this exhibition or for that matter
what it was like to catch a glimpse of the art
world of New York City. That is where I find the
beauty of this program: it offers a chance for
students to see what is meant to be seen. Not
just read about it. Not just analyzed through
reproductions. But SEEN. After all, if vision is
that grand unifier of visual art, it should be
given high priority in learning to understand
art in its many forms, right?”
NIC WALTER, BA ART HISTORY ’15
| 21

> MFA CANDIDATE EXHIBITION 2018 // KARINE LEPAGE

MFA
2018
MASTER
OF FINE ARTS
DEGREE
CANDIDATES
EXHIBITION
APRIL 7 TO MAY 20, 2018
GEORGIA
MUSEUM OF ART

THE
REANIMATORS
BY WENDY VOGEL, CURATOR &
CONTRIBUTOR TO ARTFORUM.COM &
FORMER EDITOR AT ART IN AMERICA
IN 1907, THE PHILOSOPHER HENRI BERGSON TERMED THE LIFE FORCE
PULSATING THROUGH ALL ORGANIC BEINGS ÉLAN VITAL. THIS “VITAL IMPULSE”
WAS LINKED TO CREATIVITY AND BURGEONING SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OF EVOLU-
TION. AT FIRST, BERGSON’S THEORIES ATTRACTED CONTROVERSY FOR POSITING
A DIRECT ASSOCIATION BETWEEN HUMANS, ANIMALS AND THE NATURAL WORLD.
BUT IN THE DECADES TO COME, HIS PRIVILEGING OF IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE
AND INTUITION CAME TO INFLUENCE GENERATIONS OF THINKERS. BERGSON’S
LEGACY CAN BE TRACED FROM PHENOMENOLOGISTS, WHO STUDIED CONSCIOUS-
NESS, TO ECOFEMINISTS, WHO STRIVE TO CONNECT THE PILLAGING OF NATURE
TO EXPLOITATIVE PATTERNS OF PATRIARCHY AND COLONIALISM.
In art, capturing élan vital is a central preoccupation. What is art, really,
if not a reanimation of consciousness on some level? The practices of
the 2018 MFA Candidates at the University of Georgia all revolve around
this idea of reanimation. Some artists create objects that memorialize
histories, while others pursue practices that index traces of the body.
Still others question the facticity of history and the transparency of our institutions.
Several artists resurrect and sanctify personal histories in their works.
Katelyn Chapman paints images of her family and friends in the rural Midlands
of South Carolina, imbuing their daily, blue-collar activities with the gravitas
of religious works. In the lifesize oil-on-canvas Ascension (2016), she renders
a scene of her family members skinning a dead deer with the chiaroscuro
drama of a Renaissance painting. Her smaller paintings depicting crushed beer
cans, such as Nancy Drinks Busch (2017), recast the idea of portraiture as
the accumulation of everyday branded objects, with charged connotations of
social class, regional identity, and other identity signifiers. Johanna Norry’s
installation He Called Me Crazy similarly delves into family history, with a
darker result. Her work is based on research into the lurid story of her greatuncle
and great-aunt, John and Kathleen Drewry. Kathleen was convicted of
attempted murder of her ex-husband John—the first dean of the University
of Georgia’s journalism school—and his then-fiancée Miriam Thurmond
in 1949. Norry discovered that the attempted murder followed years of

Kathleen’s escalating mental illness. Her project recreates a domestic space
with embroidery and a wallpaper installation that digitally appropriates text
from the couple’s personal letters and newspaper articles about Kathleen’s
trial. Norry adds that the claustrophobic environment echoes the atmosphere
of the 1892 feminist narrative “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman. Gilman’s narrative traces a captive woman’s descent into psychosis,
and Norry’s installation reminds us that women’s complaints continued to be
ignored in the 20th century—and often still are today. Like Norry, Katherine
Miller’s practice also considers personal letters as a site of intimate exchange.
Miller crafts handwritten missives on handmade paper, which are then reconfigured
in ways that reduce their legibility. She often embeds fragments of
sentences in stacked, transparent mylar configurations. Her work emphasizes
the tension between serial, industrial production and the personal touch,
between physical transparency and emotional distance. Another group of artists
find inspiration in reanimating the history of architecture.
Kaleena Stasiak, a Canadian-born artist, investigates how notions like
national identity are built upon stylized notions of authenticity. She is especially
fascinated by history consumption and the tourist industry in the American
South, which relies upon nostalgia for the antebellum era. In works like Early
American (2016), she collages together table legs made to resemble the Early
American style—itself a hodgepodge of references, from European
Neoclassicism to British Georgian design—into a form resembling
a spoked wheel. Her work draws upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s SOME ARTISTS
theory of eternal return, which, in her words, cautions that “the
circularity of time is a burden of the ‘heaviest weight’.” Her video CREATE OBJECTS
Tote the Weary Load (2016) consists of a supercut of staircase THAT MEMORIALIZE
scenes in the 1939 Civil War drama Gone with the Wind. The film’s
HISTORIES, WHILE
romanticized depictions of the Confederacy gain new significance
after the election of President Trump under the backwards-looking
slogan “Make America Great Again.” Where Stasiak creates
OTHERS PURSUE
PRACTICES THAT INDEX
ersatz architectural elements, metalsmith and artist Alexis Spina
makes sculptures and wearable pieces that prompt a “recognition,”
in her words, of forgotten or disused architecture. Working
TRACES OF THE BODY.
with found materials, she commemorates dilapidated dwellings
and industrial ruins in surprising scales, allowing the viewer to imagine the
original locations. Like Spina, Kelsey Scharf has devoted herself to depicting
a changing industrial landscape. She has developed a series of Polaroids and
paintings of the abandoned Puritan Cordage Mill on the outskirts of Athens. As
a former Ohio factory worker, Scharf was drawn to the site for its industrial
familiarity. Using copper as the ground for her paintings—a highly valuable
material that is often poached from construction sites and resold—Scharf
depicts the traces of the mill’s transient communities, who mark the space
through graffiti and temporary sheltering. The space has recently come under
threat of development, so Scharf sees a commemorative aspect to her work.
| 25

The processes and products of labor become revivified in a number of
practices. Printmaker Ali Norman considers her artistic medium as a source
of creativity. Norman describes her use of etching technique in spiritual and
alchemical terms: “a small piece of personal magic; recording time on copper
and committing it to memory with acid.” Through this process, she builds fantastical
worlds depicted in her densely illustrated prints, populated with regal
animals frolicking in imagined environments. Yeonsoo Kim’s work also foregrounds
the history of his medium—in his case, ceramics. He began his art
education by studying onggi earthenware in his native country of Korea. He is
now working in a process-oriented way, constructing daily masks
or vessels with a variety of illustrative and coloring techniques.
WHAT IS ART,
He seeks to explore the relationship between humans, nature
and space. For Katlin Shae, the act of weaving becomes the
REALLY, IF NOT A metaphorical warp and weft of her art. Her tactile, vibrant work
REANIMATION references global systems of knowledge, from optical science
to mystic traditions. As she writes, “It is the irregular patterns
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
(or glitches) inside of the endless mesh that connect all things
ON SOME LEVEL? where glimpses of the sublime exist.” The photographic series
Ambiguous Bodies with Talismanic Identity Tools suggests transformation
through the wearing and performing with headdresses
and other objects, while in Looking into Myself, a digital image of the artist’s
mirrored face is covered in patterned textiles that resemble digital effects.
Also working with fibers, Erin A. Geagon draws upon her experience as a
textile designer and consumer to create installations and sculptures through
textile waste. Geagon’s materials include ‘upcycled’ domestic fabrics, such
as bed linens, that she transforms into semi-functional objects (as in a series
of textile buckets) or abstract bundles. Geagon is attracted to details such
as the underside of printed cloth, which reveal faint impressions of patterns.
Informed by personal histories of domestic control, her objects include a chair
bound in textiles.
With perhaps the most transparent approach to reanimation, several artists
explore the relationship between bodies, language and objects. Annemarie
DiCamillo states that “the means are the flesh” in their work, which seeks to
communicate an “aliveness” operating between the artistic, philosophic and
religious spheres. DiCamillo’s manifesto describes their work as queer, though
“desiring the Feminine.” Human-scale abstract paintings, with vivid washes
of color, hint at natural phenomena like fire and floods. The short, nonlinear
film infold (2016), a collaboration with Luke McCusker, is infused with spiritual
symbolism; one scene shows ocean waves flowing over a body clad in a white
sheet, evoking a baptism. Whitney Cleveland’s semi-abstract paintings probe,
as she says, “the narrative force of objects” and the “embodiment of sensation.”
Details from everyday life emerge mysteriously in her abstract paintings,
as in several chain links (partly overpainted) in her oil-on-canvas composition
Jungle Cat (2016). Other works explore texture and color, as in the work
on paper Department Store Camouflage (2017), dominated by overlapping
shapes of red and yellow. The movement-based work of Elizabeth Rogers’

series Topolography address, in her words, “the impacts of language and
sounding in the making of the body and the body as a site of subjectivity and
singularity.” Her slow, intense choreographic language, focused on individual
segments of the body, is inspired by such traditions as the Japanese dance
Butoh. A psychoanalyst as well as an artist, Rogers considers the migratory
aspect of how we forge social bonds and navigate public space.
A final group takes a structural approach to the idea of reanimation.
These three artists question the neutrality of institutions, from governmental
structures to the Internet. Karine Lepage’s abstract works consider the
contradictions between systems of knowledge and categorization, from the
urban grid to systems of religious classification. Her work hinges on dichotomies
such as transparency and opacity and comprise a variety of materials
from nylon thread to paint. Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay’s work is concerned
with postcolonial history and labor politics. Hailing from the Indian state of
West Bengal, which was ruled by the Left Front from 1977 to 2011, he writes
that his practice resides in a “position between being a parody of ‘socialist
nostalgia’ and an expression of sincere concern towards exploitation of labor.”
Works such as Red Shift (2017), a red-tinged lightbox resembling an old-fashioned
timecard embedded in the wall, combine the enticing visual language
of minimalist art with ephemera evoking the Fordist assembly line. Tips for
Wealth Distribution (2017) is a wry nod to gallery labor and the relationship
of nonprofit art spaces to the larger economy. In
this work, a clear gallery donation box holds crisp,
new dollar bills (and donations by viewers) that are
fed through a bright-red money gun into another
box. Gallery attendants must constantly “refresh”
the sculpture by removing the bills from the box
and feeding them back into the gun. As the bills
get recycled through the system, they wrinkle and
crease, making the smooth operation of the cycle
harder to maintain. Related to Mukhopadhyay’s
economic interests, Ally Christmas’ practice in
digital media concerns the notion of personal identity
as a set of quantifiable data and asks to what
extent this data can be used and manipulated. In
Overwrite (2017), a video that serves as a poetic
digital manifesto, she meditates on how the photograph has been severed from
its indexical qualities. Today, the digital self is composed of a variety of traces
that become monetizable beyond individual control. Christmas writes of her
practice, “While making the work, I have found the most unnerving consequence
of this constant uploading to be a constant feeling of being haunted—haunted
by my digital presence, by the network, by the looming threat of being erased or
hacked, by the aftershocks of each post I make.” Christmas’ work points toward
new challenges for artists in the age of speculative data and artificial intelligence.
She may be reanimating her digital self, while watching her own digital shell
become reanimated. Here the notion of reanimation comes full circle.
| 27

KATELYN CHAPMAN
HAILING FROM THE MIDLANDS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, KATELYN CHAPMAN
INVITES HER VIEWER TO CRACK A COLD ONE AND TRAVEL WITH HER BACK TO
HER ROOTS. IN A SERIES OF SMALL OIL PAINTINGS THAT DEPICT BEER CANS
WITH UNEXPECTED INTIMACY, CHAPMAN EXPLORES WORKING-CLASS LIFE AND
CULTURE IN AMERICA’S RURAL SOUTH. DOMESTIC LIGHT BEER IS UBIQUITOUS IN
THIS CULTURE, JUST AS IT IS IN CHAPMAN’S PAINTINGS.
For Chapman and the culture she portrays, beer is connected to celebration, leisure,
and fellowship, all of which is highlighted by the artist in her work. Beer cans are
often encountered, but not typically considered. Yet, Chapman’s most recent work
portrays life-size heaps of crushed, empty cans, with each canvas dedicated to a
single domestic brew. Looking through Chapman’s eyes, the viewer
begins to see these discarded containers and all they represent as
BY EMILY DUVALL
a unifying factor of a particular culture. At the same time, because
typically associated with a blue-collar crowd, inexpensive, domestic
beer is not frequently a subject within the realm of high art. Chapman hopes to
change this and more by extension, encouraging viewers to acknowledge and question
the differences between low- and high-class cultures, especially as pertains to
the subject of leisure.
The idea for this series stemmed from a collection of photographs taken over the
years that reveal raw and personal glimpses into the lives of Chapman’s friends and
family. From photographs of her grandfather and uncle drinking Busch to her father
and brother skinning a deer, she takes familiar imagery and shares it in a new and
expressive medium. As Chapman began developing this series, she discovered that
Southern rural culture drinks American light beer exclusively. However, each member
of that culture has his own beer to which he or she remains true. With titles reflecting
the preference of the drinker, each canvas speaks not only to a culture, but also to
an individual.
Executed with meticulous realism, Chapman’s paintings betray the artist’s attention
to detail and facilitate the viewer’s direct connection with the gritty, rural culture she
admires. She stresses the beauty found in frugality and in the everyday. However,
looking closely, the viewer can see the undertones of the paint and purposefully
neglected areas. Chapman intentionally does not create perfection; she allows the
“flaws” in her work to stand as a kind of analogue for the shortcomings of southern,
rural culture. Hidden in each painting are what Chapman calls “Easter Eggs”: objects
and symbols that only a local would know. Pine straw, Carolina Reaper, and store
logos create subtle signifiers of a unique lifestyle and pay tribute to a particular way
of life.

Dirt Rich
2018
OIL ON CANVAS
78 X 66 INCHES
| 29

Syncing (stills)
2018
HD VIDEO
13 MINUTES 26
SECONDS, 1080P MIN.

ALLY CHRISTMAS
AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, INTERNET CULTURE IN AMERICA
WAS BOOMING, PROMPTING THE CREATION OF COUNTLESS, ALTERNATE IDENTI-
TIES FOR DISPLAY ON SOCIAL MEDIA. AUTHORS OF ONLINE PERSONALITIES WERE
AT LIBERTY TO EXAGGERATE, CORRECT, OR INVENT WHOLESALE AN INDIVIDUAL
ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY WANTED TO PROJECT TO THE WORLD, NO LONGER
RESTRICTED TO THE TRADITIONAL PRESENTATION OF A REAL, ACTUAL BODY.
In the wake of this upsurge in the constructed self, confusion about what aspects of one’s
life were true or false was underscored. These anxieties have been a consistent theme
in the work of artist, Ally Christmas, which meditates on the notion of fractured identity,
while considering what separates and connects our physical and our digital lives, and the
insecure boundaries between these entities.
Christmas’ video Syncing highlights these concerns. In the work, viewers are introduced
to three versions of Christmas. We encounter the first Christmas at the beginning of the
video, as the camera follows her through an open field with tall, brown stalks of grass. We
only see her from behind, however, never making eye contact with her as she meanders
through a landscape seemingly borrowed from an Andrew Wyeth
painting. Scenes of Christmas entrenched in this natural setting are BY BROOKE LEETON
juxtaposed with images of another version of Christmas that stares
directly out at the viewer. She stands against a green screen wearing
a bright green body suit that zips over her head, revealing only her eye and a sliver of her
nose and mouth. In some instances, through the magic of editing, the green is replaced with
scenes of rushing water, interrupted by the fissure through which the slice of Christmas’
face appears. Both of these adaptations are interrupted by a third, off-screen version of
Christmas, concerned with the logistical minutiae of creating the video. We neither see nor
hear her, but this Christmas manifests control by, for instance, manipulating home pages,
moving cursors, inserting text, and selecting editing functions from dropdown menus.
This narrative of interwoven Christmases exposes the inextricable link between physical
and digital life, as these aspects of ourselves merge and diverge in an endless cycle.
Christmas entrenched in the natural landscape discloses an innate need for something
real, something earth-bound. Yet, these scenes are complicated by technical elements and
glitches—whether scrolling text along the bottom of the screen or the image of the sky
that will not quite buffer—that deny the viewer any sense of commune between Christmas
and nature. The green screen allows Christmas an immersive experience only attainable
in a digital world. Yet, what allows Christmas to appear in these fantastical scenes—the
green screen itself—is in some vignettes fully visible; the illusion is revealed as mere
simulation. Finally, the Svengali Christmas that conducts the symphony of events in the
video unites the quest to compartmentalize three-dimensional and digital life on a singular
screen. Viewers might relate to this Christmas more than the other two despite her
invisibility, as we connect with the notion that managing our physical and digital identities
is never straightforward and accept that no amount of editing can isolate or integrate
them fully.
| 31

Atavist
2018
OIL AND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
40 X 40 INCHES
RIGHT
Salient Attrition
2017
OIL ON PANEL
22.5 X 24 INCHES

WHITNEY CLEVELAND
WHITNEY CLEVELAND FINDS ORDER THROUGH ABSTRACTION AND THE
CONSTANT REWORKING OF A PATTERN OR SET OF SHAPES. FOR THE ARTIST,
IT IS IRREGULARITY RATHER THAN UNIFORMITY IN PATTERNS THAT HAS COME
TO DEFINE HER WORK. THE ARTIST DESCRIBES HER PROCESS AS ONE OF
PERPETUAL SELF-EDITING IN WHICH A FINAL WORK MAY BE THE RESULT
OF AS MANY AS TWENTY LAYERS OF PAINT. IN DESCRIBING HER FORMALIST
APPROACH, CLEVELAND SAYS THAT SHE IS DRAWN TO ABSTRACTION FOR ITS
“SPECIAL QUALITY OF BEING ABLE TO BE PARED DOWN TO PURE FORMS.”
She works primarily in oil, acrylic, and oil stick to capture sensations through the
formal relationships of color, pattern, and shapes. Cleveland’s painting Monuments
to Oblivion, no. 1 features a large, pale pink rectangular form set against a pattern of
interlocking triangles rendered in alternating shades of green and brown. The nature
of this foreground/background relationship, one in which a seemingly unrelated form
disrupts a set pattern, occurs frequently in Cleveland’s work and signifies the types of
interruptions the artist encounters in her daily life. At the bottom
left of the painting, the recurring triangles lose their opacity and
BY ERIN RIGGINS
give way to the layers of paint beneath them. The revelation of
under painting, which Cleveland refers to as “relics of past paintings,”
figures prominently in her work and speaks to the revisionist practice of the
artist. The artist constantly reworks her paintings not to obtain a finished product, but
to enact what she describes as a “tactile thought process.” She finds inherent value
in the liminal stages of her works rather than feeling compelled to push for a sense
of resolution.
It is important to Cleveland that people make sustainable connections to her paintings.
Because she aspires for her work to become an integral part of a viewer’s daily
life, Cleveland has greatly reduced the scale of her paintings during her time at the
Lamar Dodd School of Art, with most canvases ranging from 12 x 12 to 24 x 24
inches. When considering the best environment for her paintings, Cleveland prefers
the intimacy of the domestic environment to the oftentimes impersonal, white cube
of the gallery. Inspired by New York Times writer James R. Mellow’s characterization
of Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment as the “first museum of modern art,” the artist
states, “The home is the ultimate cube for realized agency of individuals and artists,
capable of acting as a private retreat and receptacle for exhibition.” The possibility of
a viewer finding a personal connection to her work outweighs the benefits of commercial
exhibition exposure. Indeed, Cleveland’s paintings appeal to familiar spaces
more readily than the comparatively clinical arena of the white cube.
| 33

INSTALLATION VIEW
Wretched Baptism (left), Flesh of My Flesh (right), and To Enfold (front)
2017-2018
OIL ON CANVAS AND MIXED MEDIA SCULPTURE
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

ANNEMARIE DICAMILLO
WHILE FEMALE-BODIED PERSONS TODAY HAVE MORE FREEDOM IN THE
EXPRESSION OF GENDERED IDENTITIES, WOMEN THROUGHOUT HISTORY, FROM
THE GLOBAL TO THE LOCAL, HAVE BEEN LIMITED BY PATRIARCHAL NOTIONS
OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “FEMININE.” ADDRESSING THESE COMPLEX ISSUES
HEAD-ON, ARTIST ANNEMARIE DICAMILLO CREATES ABSTRACTED COLOR FIELDS
THAT SYMBOLICALLY EXPLORE THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE FEMALE BODY.
Deliberately subjective and ambiguous, DiCamillo’s works use traditional symbols of
femininity, specifically the inverted triangle, to reclaim the female body and explore the
multifaceted connotations of female reproductive organs: simultaneously life-giving and
violent, liberating and restrictive, inviting and frigid. Indeed, there is something irreducible
and complex in DiCamillo’s work – an idea borne out in the artist’s
preferred, plural pronoun. Color theory is essential to DiCamillo’s
BY JORDAN DOPP
work, as it intentionally juxtaposes expansive, cool color fields
with dynamic strokes of warm hues. In ways that recall Jackson
Pollock’s revolutionary technique, DeCamillo’s expressive and somewhat violent application
of paint seems to impregnate the canvas with color. In one example, Wretched Baptism
(2017, oil-on-canvas, 6 x 5 feet), the lower two-thirds of the horizontal painting is a field
of flat, teal blue, which is visually disrupted in the upper third by blends of reds, oranges,
and yellows in intentionally triangular, yet organic forms. Recalling seeping blood, the piece
could signify the holy birth or Passion, punctuated by its visually distinct title scrawled in
cursive in the depths of the baptismal water.
While this description might seem theatrical, DiCamillo strives for intense, subjective
responses from viewers, hence the confrontational scale of their work. Importantly, the
gestural marks they create with four-inch brushes could not be accomplished on a lessthan
life-size scale. This intimacy between the artist’s body and subject matter (the female
body) is central to their work, as DiCamillo confronts what they term the “personal hauntings”
of their past, familial expectations for the female-bodied. In one such vertical piece,
a dark blue, stalactite-like v-shape is framed by highly gestural and repetitive strokes of
red. The viewer can immediately visualize the dramatic movement of DiCamillo’s entire
body while creating these curves, instantly linking the content with the artist. This piece
highlights DiCamillo’s intuitive “visual thinking,” a technique in conversation with artists
like Amy Sillman who, like DiCamillo, does not consider herself an abstract expressionist.
DiCamillo is not limited to one specific medium. In the MFA exhibition, the artist juxtaposes
their oil paintings with a sewn-quilt sculpture and a book of staged photographs,
both of which combine their interest in matriarchal history and queer identity. Using their
deceased grandmother’s fabrics, DiCamillo monumentalizes their grandmother’s profession
as homemaker and quilter. The quilts are also incorporated into the constructed yet
domestic photographs of queer friends of the artist, exploring the many ways in which
queer identities can individually manifest. Regardless of media, DiCamillo uses the female
body as a metaphorical and literal creation point to inspire the works, inviting the viewer
into dialogue.
| 35

ERIN GEAGON
ERIN GEAGON’S WEIGHTY, HAND-WOVEN INSTALLATION FEATURES
STACKS OF “PACKAGES” MADE OF RECYCLED FIBERS PERCHED
IN PRECARIOUS TOWERS ON REPURPOSED, ORDINARY WOODEN
CHAIRS. THE ARTIST’S STURDY TETHERING OF THESE FIBER AND
CHAIR TOWERS TO NEARBY WALLS CREATES AN UMBILICAL CORD
EFFECT THAT INVITES THE VIEWER TO CONTEMPLATE THE CONNEC-
TIONS BETWEEN CONSUMERISM AND TEXTILE WASTE.
Her careful selection of textile waste products that would ordinarily end up in a
landfill invites contemplation of the relationship between consumer culture and
the problem of textile waste. In her installation, Geagon examines the dysfunction
of modern, highly consumeristic domestic spaces as seen
through the ultimate culmination of this process of continual
BY TAYLOR GLENNON fabrication and casting off of fibrous material. Through her
work, Geagon thus poses an important question: can the
utilitarian object (in this case, reused textiles and repurposed
furniture commonly found in the home) be made into art, while still maintaining
its own identity as a functional object? By way of direct engagement with the
waste stream of textiles from which she sources her raw materials, Geagon’s
artwork attempts to pose this question and strives to elicit nuanced, personal
responses from viewers through the careful crafting of domestic objects such
as chairs and blankets.
The origin of Geagon’s exploration into the flow of consumer goods stems from
her personal experience in an American household and the regulated distribution
of these objects through the strict familial structure common to most modern
homes. By using materials such as pillows, blankets, and rugs, the artist takes
the hallmarks of home textiles and repurposes them to create relationships that
evoke an environment of emotional vulnerability. This invites the viewer to experience
layers of judgement within the installation as they contemplate the ways
in which material objects variously denote socio-economic status.
Even though Geagon’s work sometimes directly relates to her personal history
and experiences, she emphasizes the universality of her creations and intends
for her audience to create new layers of meaning and ever deeper, personal
connections. Such connections the artist hopes to facilitate through her use of
the fabric’s reverse side, which invites viewers to attend to the dyes that bleed
through from of the printed side of the fabric. Her keen interest in the historical
value of the textiles serves as an exploration of the ways in which people
continually re-invent themselves while still retaining the residue of previous
experiences and past relationships.

Empty Bags, Empty Bellies
2017
18 HANDMADE BAGS HARDENED
WITH WHEAT PASTE, TEMPERA PAINT
36 X 36 X 30 INCHES
LEFT
Quid Pro Quo
2018
106 CUSTOM COTTON/LINEN TEA TOWELS,
FABRIC TAPE PLUS CUSTOM WOOD RISER
AND ARMATURE (CONCRETE/STEEL)
12 X 10 X 60 INCHES
| 37

Listening
2017
CERAMIC
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

YEONSOO KIM
YEONSOO KIM’S CHILDHOOD SPENT SWIMMING AND FISHING ON A SMALL
ISLAND IN SOUTH KOREA GAVE HIM AN INTIMATE FAMILIARITY WITH AND
FONDNESS FOR NATURE THAT IS MANIFEST IN HIS CERAMICS. KIM HAS
BEEN CREATING CERAMICS FOR OVER TEN YEARS AND HAD HIS OWN STUDIO
BEFORE BECOMING AN MFA STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA. THE
PROMINENCE OF THE COLOR BLUE, HIS FAVORITE COLOR, IN HIS WORK IS AN
EXPRESSION OF HIS APPRECIATION FOR THE SKY AND THE SEA. HIS CHOSEN
MEDIUM OF WHITE CLAY IS BOTH ROOTED IN TRADITIONAL KOREAN CERAMICS
AND A REFLECTION OF HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE EARTH.
The cyclical nature of time and the seasons is evident in the repetitive pinches and
consistent iconography of faces in his work, which provide an organic structure
through which he can express himself and bring positive energy into the world. Kim
creates new ceramics every day and considers his work, which
ranges from handheld to large-scale, to be a personal diary. His
BY BRENT CAVEDO
desire to “just keep making” and combining new forms lies behind
this prolific rate of production. While he uses many different and
traditional ceramic processes, his regular employment of the pinch method speaks
to his desire to maintain a tactile bond with his medium and indicates the artist’s
presence in the subtle and nuanced surface texture of his work.
Kim expands the traditional medium of ceramics not only through the representation
of human forms but also through a synthesis of media including painting and drawing.
The application of pigment as well as the use of stratigraphy in two-dimensional
depictions of imaginative and self-representative human figures on three-dimensional
surfaces create a signature style that draws from both Western and Eastern traditions.
With these forms, Kim is able to express his memories through shapes and
himself though images and, as a result, brings his imagination into the world by instilling
his work with gratitude and kindness.
Kim “believes in instinct” and considers the moment to be more important than
thinking. The prominent depiction of faces in his work represents the artist’s inner
artistic voices as well as his fundamental interest in relationships. Kim seems to
recognize his own existence as a liminal space: his desire to express himself and
his relationships in his work is balanced by a desire to “read the market” and create
his own aesthetic that will allow him to be a successful artist. His work for the MFA
exhibition serves as the culmination of his productions throughout his degree: by combining
smaller, individual representations of faces that in the past would have stood
for themselves into a single large and cohesive landscape, Kim creates a programmatic
and polyvalent depiction of the duality between isolation and connectedness.
| 39

Dream Away
2017
PORCELAIN, STAINS, AND WIRE
8.5 X 8.5 INCHES

KARINE LEPAGE
KARINE LEPAGE’S RECENT WORK EXPLORES TRAUMA AND LOSS.
BEGINNING HER CAREER WITH A BACKGROUND IN TRADITIONAL
CERAMICS, LEPAGE HAS EXPANDED HER PRACTICE TO INCORPORATE
PAINTING, VIDEO, AND PERFORMANCE. SHE IS REPRESENTED IN THE
LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART MFA EXHIBITION BY TWO INTERRE-
LATED, MULTIMEDIA WORKS: BRUISES AND TRAUMA.
In Bruises, dense layers of paint bleed through the underside of rectangular canvas
panels, ranging from 12 x 5 inches to 12 x 36 inches. Lepage began working on this
project about a year ago, when she built an enclosed canvas structure scaled to fit
one person inside. Over the course of six months, the artist spent time alone in the
structure repeating specific gestures with squirt bottles of paint to create various
marks on the canvas’ walls. After entirely coating the interior with paint, Lepage cut
the canvas into strips and mounted them, painted side down, onto long horizontal
stretchers. “Ultimately,” Lepage says, “I am more interested in the physical experience
of making artwork than the final result.” The emphasis on
physical experience is no doubt linked to the artist’s twenty years of
BY ERIN RIGGINS
martial arts training, which, according to the artist, “trains the body
through repetition and rhythm.” When it comes to creating works of
art, Lepage draws on her background in martial arts: “I try to work in the same way.
When I start a project, I usually start with a small and repetitive task…I create a kind
of choreography that I repeat mentally and sometimes physically.”
Movement of the artist’s body figures prominently in Trauma as well. A video Lepage
created to accompany the canvas panels, Trauma features in the background a faint
silhouette of the artist performing the gestures integral to the creation of Bruises.
In the foreground, black paint splatters across the screen, abruptly confronting the
viewer with the visceral residue of the artist’s gestures. The audible smack of the paint
against a surface and sounds of bodily exertion amplify the physicality of the work. As
the video progresses, black splatters dominate the screen and start to merge with the
silhouetted figure so that the artist’s work and her process become one.
Bruises and Trauma also reveal Lepage’s epistolary practice. In Trauma, letters
written by the artist to her friend Kellyann are displayed in the video as they were
written—line by line—while the horizontal arrangement of the rectangular canvas
panels that comprise Bruises mimic blocks of text in Lepage’s letters. For Lepage,
letter-writing provides a platform for discussions of identity and loss. Through letters
to Kellyann, the artist not only addresses her own loss but connects to others
experiencing trauma as well. Taken together, Lepage’s works demonstrate not only
the power of art as a coping mechanism, but its capacity to reach beyond the artist to
those facing their own painful challenges.
| 41

Idk
2017
CLAMSHELL BOX, MYLAR, PAPER,
AND INK
7.75 X 5.5 X 1.25 INCHES
RIGHT
Jacob’s Ladder
2017
RESIN, HANDMADE PAPER, INK,
AND TYVEK
2 X 2 X 1.5 (WHEN CLOSED,
AS PICTURED) INCHES
BELOW RIGHT
Months
2017
HANDMADE PAPER
WITH WOODEN SHELF
6 X 4.5 X 6 INCHES

KATHERINE MILLER
KATHERINE MILLER’S OBJECTS REWARD THE PATIENT VIEWER—ONE IS NOT
DRAWN IN BY BRIGHT COLORS OR LOUD SUBJECT MATTER. INSTEAD, MILLER’S
WORK EXUDES A CALMNESS AND IS ATTRACTIVE FOR ITS SUBDUED AND
GENUINE QUALITIES. WHILE HER WORKS CAN BE VIEWED AND UNDERSTOOD
INDIVIDUALLY, THEY WORK BEST TOGETHER AS PARTS OF A LARGER WHOLE
INSPIRED BY THE AFFECTIVE MEDIUM OF THE HANDWRITTEN LETTER.
In Months, a series of horizontally-stacked, handmade envelopes constructed with delicate
handmade paper, Miller’s interest in the epistolary medium is palpable. If the goal of
exhibiting artwork is to communicate an idea or feeling, then Miller’s objects literalize this
possibility, using the letter to reference the idea of communication between individuals.
But, because the envelopes seem empty and cannot be touched, they are isolated from
their function. In this way, the artist investigates the emotional space between people
and the impossibility of fully communicating with someone else. Indeed, these unread
letters act as surrogates for both sender and artist, emphasizing
the hand, even as they also insist on the distance between
BY CICELY HAZELL
writer and reader, artist and spectator. The qualities of any type of
communication are heightened in Miller’s quietly assertive works:
the distance between people, the delay between sending and receiving, and even the dissection
of something carefully composed. In other works, Miller folds and distresses strips
of handwritten words, which are individually legible but incoherent in their fragmentary
state. And, since the viewer is placed in the position of the reader / receiver, Miller’s work
feels intensely personal and genuine, especially when considering the source material of
her exhibited words: fragments drawn from her own letters, instead of contrived clauses
manufactured specifically for her artwork.
If these epistolary objects evidence her interest in communication, so too does her insistence
on the medium-specific qualities of printmaking. While her handmade envelopes
and strips of handwritten words intimately tie the artist’s hand to her objects, they do not
immediately tie themselves to printmaking. Instead, Miller emphasizes the necessity of
parts making a whole. This is achieved in both a work like Months, composed of multiple
envelopes whose months make years, and a work like “That ‘How the hell do I fold this
thing up again’ Feeling,” where the crumpled but still segmented map cannot be understood
all at once. Despite the compartmentalized qualities of a map, its very purpose is
to communicate directions to a location, a purpose in which the user must participate
through reading. Similarly, when Miller encases her strips of words individually in plastic
and layers multiple pieces together, viewers can see through layers of plastic to the other
side but not physically arrive there themselves, creating a familiar type of barrier not dissimilar
to whatever may be lost in translation—that small, ineffable element that makes
complete communication impossible.
| 43

ABOVE
Code-switching
2017
LCD SCREEN EMBEDDED IN WALL,
MAGAZINE CUTOUTS, TEXT ANIMATION
6 X 18 INCHES
BELOW
Red Shift
2017
LIGHT BOX EMBEDDED IN WALL
8 X 14 INCHES
Minutes from the Congress of Scam International
2017
TELEPHONE HEADSET, AUDIO
5 X 15 INCHES

DEEPANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY
DEEPANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY’S ONGOING WORK, WHICH GOES BY THE NAME
OF PRE/POST/EROS, EXPLORES THE TRANSITION FROM POSTCOLONIALISM TO
NEOCOLONIALISM; THE INTERSECTIONS OF HISTORY, CAPITAL, AND SPECTATOR-
SHIP; AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE SPACE OF THE GALLERY.
As a non-resident alien in the United States originally from formerly colonized India,
Mukhopadhyay deals with identity and politics, often addressing the issue of labor as it
manifests across geopolitical borders as well as in the gallery. Mukhopadhyay is deeply
influenced by Lisa Lowe’s The Intimacies of Four Continents (2015), which posits that
capitalist modernity focuses on the European rise of the nation state,
political democracy, and a civil society organized around market
exchanges. She argues that the social inequalities of our time are BY ABIGAIL KOSBERG
a legacy of processes through which man is freed by the illusion of
liberal forms while “other” peoples and geographies are placed at a
distance from society; the West promotes its invention of freedom while simultaneously
denying it to people outside its norms. Mukhopadhyay takes this concept and incorporates
it into the heavily loaded institutional space of the art gallery, placing his work in dialogue
with its own formal properties and the spaces and mechanisms of display.
For example, his work Outsourced (2016) is a Brother LaserJet printer, installed high on
the gallery wall, timed to continuously print Karl Marx’s Capital (1867); Volume 1, chapter
10, titled “The Working Day,” during traditional working hours of 9 am to 5pm. “The Working
Day” addresses the problematic consumerist assumption that labor is valued by the
amount of time and work necessary for a finished product. Marx argues that the amount of
labor needed to provide subsistence does not always equal the length of the workday, thus
producing surplus labor and requiring the working day to be a variable quantity adjusting to
the amount of surplus labor required. Mukhopadhyay precisely timed the printer to produce
(and quickly discard) 10 copies of this tenth chapter during the traditional working hours
of the United States. The repetitive and predictable cycle of the printer mimics the repetitive
process of the workday, but creates an exact and predictable relationship between
labor and time. By then placing this piece in the gallery setting, Mukhopadhyay is firstly
commenting on the relationship between artist, institution, and labor, but perhaps more
poignantly on the imbalance between the “luxury” 9 to 5 workday of the upper classes and
the surplus labor necessary to run the capitalist machine.
Mukhopadhyay states “My work literally and conceptually interrogates the apparatus,
the tool, the image-maker, the agent, the laborer, the product, and the politics of its own
making imbued with humor, futility, and violence. The pieces occupy a precarious position
between a parody of “socialist nostalgia” and an expression of sincere concern towards
the exploitation of labor.” Using physical readymades, scans, computer generated product
images, declassified army documents, educational documentary films, and stock photography
as poignant signifiers of history, economics, and culture, Mukhopadhyay critiques
cultural indifference towards the seductive power of things and the language of advertising
by implicating the viewer in the socio-political content of the object and work, often
subsequently addressing inherent imbalances of power.
| 45

ALI NORMAN
ALI NORMAN’S INTIMATE INTAGLIO PRINTS FEATURE COMPLEX, NATURAL
LANDSCAPES FILLED WITH SYMBOLIC FIGURES AND INTRICATE, INTERLACING
DESIGNS. BASED IN PERSONAL PRACTICES OF CHAOS MAGICK AND MEDI-
TATIVE RITUAL, SHE APPROACHES THE REPETITIVE AND LABOR-INTENSIVE
PRINTMAKING PROCESS AS A MEDITATION THROUGH WHICH SHE UNEARTHS
SYMBOLIC AND MAGICAL REALMS THAT PARALLEL HER OWN EXPERIENCES.
Norman’s symbolism is personal and derives from the subconscious, playing with
historical associations and drawing on intimate relationships. Heavily influenced by
Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols (1964), Norman examines conscious experiences
through subconscious imagery, creating a personally relevant symbolic system. Her
figures both stand in for specific people in her life and function as a form of selfportraiture.
For example, the recurring serpent-like dragon, which often represents
fertility and rebirth (found in Cultivation, 2017), stands in for an icon of femininity
but also serves as a personal icon of self. Cultivation depicts
a central, large moon encompassed by a large, elongated
BY ABIGAIL KOSBERG
centipede Ouroboros—traditionally a depiction of a serpent
eating its own tail that symbolizes the cyclical nature of
the universe. The moon, which reoccurs in her work, is often considered a feminine
symbol, representing time through its repetitive cycle. In Cultivation, there is a second
smaller moon to the upper right behind the Ouroboros, which Norman argues is a
doubling of her personal identity, reflective of her struggle with traditional conceptions
of femininity. Below the moon is a thick bamboo forest that grows up and around the
central Ouroboros, sprouting from a small, heavily vegetated pond that is filled with
an impossibly long and seemingly never-ending snake.
Norman’s work stems from her own use of Chaos Magick—a contemporary magical
practice that emphasizes the cultivation of aspects of various belief systems to
create personally relevant rituals. She approaches her work as ritual and as sacred
craft, tapping into historical associations of the printmaking process as transcendent.
Norman looks to her art as a therapeutic practice, seeking to actively trick the
psyche through ceremonial ordinance. Her final installation, which consists of twoand
three-dimensional elements, is a personal high altar, featuring a symmetrically
arranged wall of intricate, intaglio prints and an intimate altar book. Each individual
print is relatively small, but highly detailed. The delicate craft brings you in, rewarding
the spectator and revealing significance through private interaction.

ABOVE
Home Grown
2018
INTAGLIO
8 X 8 FEET (ENTIRE INSTALLATION)
LEFT
Home Grown (detail)
2018
INTAGLIO
11 X 14 INCHES
| 47

He Called Me Crazy
2018
MIXED MEDIA INSTALLATION
8 X 8 X 8 FEET

JOHANNA NORRY
JOHANNA NORRY’S INSTALLATION CONSISTS OF A METICULOUSLY CONSTRUCTED
BEDROOM THAT TELLS THE STORY OF KATHLEEN AND JOHN DREWRY, HER
MATERNAL GREAT AUNT AND UNCLE, THROUGH A VOYEURISTIC ATMOSPHERE.
HERE, VIEWERS ENCOUNTER A NUMBER OF MUNDANE OBJECTS THE ARTIST HAS
CAREFULLY MANIPULATED IN ORDER TO HINT AT THE DISTURBING UNDERCUR-
RENTS OF THE DREWRYS’ TURBULENT RELATIONSHIP, WHICH WAS FRAUGHT WITH
ADULTERY, PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION, ATTEMPTED MURDER, AND OTHER
DARK DETAILS THAT WERE SWEPT UNDER THE RUG, STARTING IN THE LATE 1940S.
Norry’s practice is grounded in research, but also in the personal and biographical. Recently,
through her examination of the Athens city archives, she discovered more about the Drewrys.
In her reading, she learned about the Drewrys’ deteriorating marriage in the
years leading up to Kathleen’s attempt to kill both her then ex-husband, John
and his mistress, Miriam Thurmond just before Christmas in 1949. Much of BY TAYLOR GLENNON
the information Norry gathered about the Drewrys came from newspaper
articles; collections of letters between Kathleen and her lover and John and
his mistress; Kathleen’s psychologist’s correspondence, which details the ways he was effectively
gas-lighting his patient under the advisement of her husband; and Kathleen’s forty-two
page, unsworn testimony, which she read during a hearing for the attempted murder charge.
Norry has also uncovered numerous photographs, both published and unpublished, taken by
journalists that provide insight into the relationship between Kathleen and her son that hint
at further familial transgressions.
Norry has mined this source material for her installation, using it as a catalyst for thinking
about the fragile construction of family history and the resulting tensions between memory
and the truth. She uses the Drewrys’ history as inspiration to create pieces like the armchair
with its elaborate golden brocade-like patterning that Norry has painstakingly altered so the
embroidery of the fabric on the seat cushion appears as if it has been obsessively picked
apart, creating long tendrils of thread that sluggishly fall onto the floor below like frayed
nerves. Norry’s deliberate use of the bedroom, the room most closely associated with the
institution of marriage and sexuality, allows for a more intimate examination of Kathleen and
John’s tense and unhealthy relationship. This idea of the decaying marriage bed ultimately
culminated for Norry with the inclusion of a literal bed complete with a duvet cover made of
sheer chiffon. Digitally printed with text from a letter written by Kathleen, it details the events
of the unstable marriage, as do pillow shams with the portraits of John and Kathleen along
with their respective lovers. Through the inclusion of this primary source material, Norry
allows a troubled narrative to permeate all material aspects of the eerie atmosphere in the
Drewrys’ bedroom. The treatment of the material and the corresponding physical objects
Norry has created, coupled with the voyeuristic experience of the viewer when presented
with the opportunity to snoop through the darkest secrets of another family, in this case quite
literally, reflects on our obsession with the sensational and the evermore fragile distinction
between public and private lives.
| 49

“That which is once”
stills from “She”
2017
SERIES OF THREE
CHROMOGENIC PRINTS
24 X 36 INCHES (EACH)

ELIZABETH ROGERS
TOPOLOGRAPHIES, PAMELA ELIZABETH ROGERS’ SERIES OF PERFORMANCES AND
MULTI-MEDIA INSTALLATIONS, EXPLORES “THE MAKING OF A BODY.” IT EXAMINES
THE SOLIDIFICATION OF THE SELF AND THE OTHER INTO ONE ENTITY, AS WELL AS
THE UNIQUE INTERSECTIONS OF ART, MOVEMENT, AND PSYCHOANALYSIS.
Indeed, Rogers has studied Lacanian Psychoanalysis since 2007 and is a member of
the Lacanian Compass – the first US-based affiliate group of the World Association of
Psychoanalysis – and currently has a private psychoanalytic practice. Notably, she draws
on this background in her art, especially in her collaborations with the dancer who ultimately
performs her choreography. The dances, which take place in relation to props that
Rogers has made, generate an intimate experience for the viewer.
Collectively known as Topolographies, Rogers’ performative installations derive from
her study of the effects of language on the body, as the artist is concerned to understand
what informs our everyday movements, which are themselves inextricable from our subjectivities
and singularities. In its final form, her project consists of performance, video,
photographic, and sculptural elements that visualize the body and affirm it as a locus of
subjectivity. The gestures that populate Topolographies stem from two places. The first
type of movement is generated from within the physical framework of the body itself.
“Engines and echoes” is the term used by Rogers for a movement
is generated from deep within the body — the pelvis or the
BY AUGUSTA GAILEY
solar plexus. From this “engine,” movement is further shaped to
trace a path through the body, i.e., an “echo.” It may travel from
the solar plexus, get caught by the bones of the right rib cage, be pushed to the bones of
the sternum, rise and roll the right clavicle bone upward and out, from which point it might
continue to resonate through the arm, finding a singular expression in the relation of the
right hand to the face, which it has sought in a fold back in, a response to the outward
extension of the echo. In the second instance, there are those gestures comprised of
movements that begin outside the body, with an image of the other that reverberates
through the body – for example, a sound that percusses the body, or a textural or structural
environment that shapes the body. These two ways of moving, that is, of making a
body are interdependent, and each betrays the imaginary nature of boundaries such as
inside and outside, subject and other. At times, Rogers’ work explores the body as a site of
subjectivity — the particular ways in which the experiences of language and image form
the unique attributes of an individual. In other moments, such as the final moments of the
video piece, Topolography no. 4: She, these movements incorporate absolute singularity —
that is, the unique way an individual has forged ahead, working with whatever means are
available in order to take up and make do with that which is unbearable. These moments
where the singular is incorporated in the body in so far as they take up and do something
with the earliest experiences of language, sound, and other, are suggestive of the ways
in which the subject is marked and created. It is in these performances and multi-media
installations that the audience is able to witness a live creation.
| 51

KELSEY SCHARF
PURITAN CORDAGE MILL IS A FAMILIAR SIGHT TO ATHENS NATIVES. AN ABANDONED
COTTON MILL THAT SERVES AS A REMINDER OF THE TOWN’S INDUSTRIAL PAST, IT
ALSO REMINDS KELSEY SCHARF OF HOME, RECALLING ONE OF HER FAVORITE PLACES
IN OHIO. HENCE, IN A SERIES OF SMALL, COPPER PAINTINGS,
Scharf preserves and celebrates her current circumstance in ways that also pay tribute to a place
she has left behind. Scharf’s attraction to ruins began at an early age and has stuck with her. Her
investigation of decay and human mark making derives from her exploration of factory ruins in
Ohio. Due to the rapid decline in industry over the last few decades, Scharf had access to such
sites. She became invested in these storied spaces and curious about how people were navigating
them. In addition, visits to old cemeteries with her mother to search for long lost relatives and old
gravestones prompted her need to seek out the past and record it.
Provocatively, Scharf’s medium is as important to this act as her imagery. Copper paintings,
widely used during the Dutch Renaissance, require the substantial layering of paint, which elevates
the surface of the painting with each stroke. This purposeful application of paint acts as an indicator
of the passage of time and mirrors the physical degradation of the space. She also utilizes
Polaroids and found objects throughout the project, which she keeps in her studio, referring to
them often.
To create her compositions, Scharf focuses on small details from the mill, such as parts of
words and fragments of eroded brick. At a scale of several inches, decay and graffiti become
transformed into abstract beauty. Almost unrecognizable, though done in a hyperrealist style,
the blended and refined paintings draw out the splendor of the abandoned space. The intimacy
of the smaller scale invites the viewer to approach while emphasizing
texture and providing a sense of touch. Removing these images from
BY EMILY DUVALL
their original location and placing them within the white walls of a typical
gallery space, the viewer is transported as well and becomes invested in
the beauty of Puritan Cordage Mill.
Through her medium and subject matter, Scharf illustrates a fleeting moment in human history.
So, too, the mill documents and records the daily, weekly, and monthly changes made by locals
swimming at the nearby blue hole: couples writing their names on the walls, or the homeless
seeking shelter for the night. It is constantly evolving and adapting to the needs and whims of
various people who pass through the decaying space. By critically focusing on the markings on
the mill through her copper paintings, Scharf reveals the aspects that make this site unique and
appealing. The paintings pull out a moment from the unstable life of the mill in order to pause time
and allow the viewer to reflect on the beauty of that moment.
With the mill under threat of gentrification, Scharf’s examination and attention to this unique
place becomes not only personal, but important. The decay of the mill and its past represents, for
Scharf, the struggles of poor, working-class people. This marks the old cotton mill as a significant,
almost sacred spot. So, if Puritan Cordage Mill becomes a housing development and shopping
center, Scharf ‘s paintings will have preserved the peace it brought her and so many others. They
will have become a postcard that celebrates the past and reminds her viewers of what existed
once upon a time.

Trace, Mark, and Refuge
(Series Title)
2017
OIL ON COPPER MOUNTED
TO PANEL
9 X 12 INCHES (EACH)
| 53

Cosmic Web (Zip Tye Net)
2018
RECYCLED STRETCHY KNIT FABRIC,
MX FIBER REACTIVE DYE, POST
CONSUMER RECYCLED PLASTIC
DRINK YOKES, ZIP-TIES
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE
RIGHT
Wood Weave / Loom Sculpture #1
2018
HAND WOVEN MIXED MEDIA : FIBER,
WOOD, STRING, PLASTIC, ROPE,
ZIP-TIES, POM-POMS, BROKEN
ELECTRONIC EARBUDS, PLASTIC AND
GLASS BEADS, RIVETS, WOOL, COTTON,
SYNTHETIC AND METALLIC THREADS,
PAPER-CORE, ROCKS, BARRETTE
53 X 18 X 20 INCHES

KATLIN SHAE
DRAWING ON ANCIENT CRAFT METHODS AND CONTEMPORARY AESTHETICS,
ARTIST KATLIN SHAE COMBINES TRADITIONAL WEAVING TECHNIQUES WITH
FOUND MATERIALS, LIKE PLASTIC BAGS AND EXTENSION CORDS, CREATING
ORGANIC SCULPTURES THAT ARE AS ORDERED AND CHAOTIC AS THE UNIVERSE.
Interested in challenging the many presumptions individuals bring to weaving, for example, the
expectation that it offer two-dimensional, decorative functionality, Shae’s works juxtapose traditional
structural elements with playful bursts of color, pushing the tapestries off the walls into the
viewer’s space. Five things are constant in Shae’s artistic process: pattern, line, material, color,
and time. Because weaving is labor intensive, Shae’s schedule must be meticulously organized.
However, the artist finds a certain transcendence in the process and is inspired by repetitious
work that engages her body and mind. On her fifty-six inch, floor loom, Shae creates waved line
patterns that recall the over and under movements of her threaded shuttle. For the spectator,
the artist’s imagined pace is often interrupted; for example, in one monumental piece of a blackand-white
thread tapestry, the artist includes explosive bursts of multicolored pom-poms made
of knotted plastic and colorful threads. Serving as a disruptive change of tone, these elements,
comprised of non-traditional materials, challenge the rules of weaving in
a structural sense as well, reimagining the tapestry as three-dimensional
sculpture. As a further articulation of her work as sculpture, Shae also BY JORDAN DOPP
constructs hand-made looms from wood scraps found around her studio,
repurposing art materials discarded by other students. Certainly, the artist’s
material environment impacts upon the development of her work. In one piece, displayed
on a steel-fabricated metal armature, Shae weaves together found materials, including neon
plastic bags, extension cords, and a cut-up tape measure, transforming their inherent properties
in ways that highlight the importance of materiality in the work. This piece, realized in-the-round,
exposes the artistic process and reminds the viewer of her own occupation of space, as is further
emphasized in a thick rope that coils onto the ground.
Shae’s sculptures speak to the idea of connectivity through found materials that, though
removed from their original contexts, intersect in unanticipated ways. In her largest, most
deconstructed tapestry, the artist zip-ties together six-pack yokes with blue-died cotton fabric.
She then stretches and suspends the materials over a corner of the gallery, creating a mesh of
organized chaos. Dozens of concrete blocks systematized into a grid pattern on the floor provide
the foundational weight that stabilizes the work, yet simultaneously the installation spills into the
viewer’s space. Formally disparate materials are deliberately juxtaposed in a work that speaks to
the symbolic relationship between the ordered and disordered.
In these unexpected moments of contact between materials, whether through bursts of color
on regularized planes or heavy weights stabilizing almost weightless objects, Shae bridges what
she considers to be the gap between the sporadic and systematic. Shae’s weaved creations are,
perhaps unexpectedly, transcendent for their mathematically precise, repetitious beauty, made
possible through her adoptions and adaptations of historical traditions.
| 55

“Kill the Indian, and Save the Man.”
Captain Pratt
2018
10,000,000 -14,000,000 HAND-CUT PIECES OF
RECYCLED COPPER WIRE
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE
RIGHT
Rumor: Q’s Rape Policy For: Hillary
2018
COPPER AND BRASS
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

ALEXIS SPINA
“DID YOU LEAVE A HANDKERCHIEF?” THIS QUESTION FIRST APPEARED IN
SUSAN SANDLER’S EMAIL TO JOHN PODESTA ON SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2015
AT 5:54 PM, AND, THEN AGAIN, IN RELATION TO ALEXIS SPINA’S COPPER
SCULPTURE OF THE SAME TITLE. SPINA, WHOSE PREVIOUS WORK OFTEN
CONSIDERED THE SPACES AND OBJECTS OF FORGOTTEN ARCHITECTURE,
HAS TURNED TO HER CRAFT AS A JEWELRY AND METALWORKER TO
LEGITIMIZE THE CONVERSATION AROUND CONSPIRACY THEORIES.
While the change in subject matter might seem abrupt, Spina has always seen her
task as one of documentation and recognition. In “Did You Leave a Handkerchief?,”
she continued to pursue this objective, recording and acknowledging a different
type of forgotten, overlooked, or ignored object – in this case, the 33,000 emails
deleted from Hillary Clinton’s server, deemed personal and thus irrelevant to the
State Department. The sculpture consists of roughly 33,000 infinitesimal sheets
of copper, each cut and soldered on to each other by Spina, who ultimately created
a ball of copper sheets about the size of a baseball with unexpected weight.
Thus, in her own way, Spina has documented the mostly
lost emails through a different medium, elevating their
BY CICELY HAZELL
status from objects implicated in a conspiracy theory to
art. Spina’s process is extremely precise and long, lending
substantial metaphorical weight to the conspiracies she references. First, she
frames her work in relation to some restrictive element, like the Clinton server’s
33,000 emails. From there, the object grows organically, aided by the research
she undertakes while working. Through different types of metal sculptures, she
has made objects that reference the mythic 5G network and Gaddafi’s dream
of a gold-backed currency. In each case, the object derives from some aspect
of the conspiracy. For example, when considering Gaddafi’s plans for a Libyan,
gold-backed currency and the theory that he was killed by NATO allies to prevent
the currency’s fruition, Spina solders different pieces of scrap and metal left over
from other projects to create a pile of literal junk. Likewise, her meditation on the
5G network, a faster wireless network that would require millions of miniature
cell towers installed on top of houses, inside rooms, and on top of fences, makes
visible the invisible frequencies of an invisible spectrum. Spina’s counterpart to
the 5G network is made up of yards of slim, dark metal that fold and expand
like a paper fan as it twists around its space. Both of these objects display the
sheer abundance of information available on the internet and the impossibility of
absorbing it. Indeed, Spina’s works serve to rupture information’s constant flow
and provide a welcome space for contemplation.
| 57

RIGHT
Rokken
2017
TURNED ASH SPINDLES
AND ROCKERS, MIN
WAX GOLDEN OAK
WOOD VARNISH
54 X 54 X 54 INCHES
BELOW LEFT
Folly
2018
POLYSTYRENE,
SPACKLE
48 X 48 X 4 INCHES
RIGHT
Corbeau
2018
PINE AND PINE BOARD
48 X 36 X 36 INCHES

KALEENA STASIAK
ALTHOUGH RAISED IN CANADA, KALEENA STASIAK FEELS A PROFOUND AFFINITY
FOR THE DEEP SOUTH. AFTER TRAVELING EXTENSIVELY THROUGH THE SOUTH-
EAST, STASIAK FOUND HERSELF SEDUCED BY COLONIAL SOUTHERN CULTURE
STILL DISCERNABLE IN THE GEORGIA LANDSCAPE, ESPECIALLY OLD PLANTATION
HOMES WITH THEIR MASSIVE FRONTAGES AND PORTICOS COMPLETE WITH HAINT
BLUE CEILINGS AND ROCKING CHAIRS.
These aspects of southern culture appear frequently in Stasiak’s three-dimensional work,
yet she reshapes the vernacular of nostalgia. For instance, the artist references colonial
interior design in the sculpture entitled Folly, an oversized circular ceiling medallion
approximately four feet in diameter, made of thick foam with a vine-like motif incised into
the surface.
Stasiak takes the ornamental flourish from its typical perch along the ceiling and sits it
flat on the ground, lavishing attention upon this otherwise overlooked architectural feature.
Likewise, in homage to the ubiquitous rocking chair, Stasiak’s sculpture Rokken consists
of rocking chair parts rearranged to radiate from a central core. The sculpture instantly
recalls, yet strangely reconstitutes and renders dysfunctional this well-known symbol of
southern porch culture. Despite Stasiak’s affection for the rocking
chair and other remnants of the Antebellum South, other works
BY BROOKE LEETON
in her oeuvre challenge nostalgic manifestations of a bygone era.
For example, Stasiak’s sculpture entitled Façade is comprised of
two pilasters, each eight feet tall and two inches thick, complete with incised fluting and
featuring the instantly recognizable Ionic base and volute capital and painted in smooth,
matte white. The Ionic pilaster is a loaded symbol, a sought-after homage to antiquity and
the birth of democracy that appealed to early American architects in search of a national
identity. Colonial builders bowed to tradition in their blueprints for a new nation by appropriating
a neoclassical style in the construction of antebellum homes, creating a symbolic
bond between the newfound republic and its Greco-Roman roots. However, the use of an
architectural vocabulary intended to convey freedom and equality is incongruous with a
pre-Civil War society that was built and sustained by slave labor. Stasiak highlights this
discrepancy in that the pilasters are made of a thin, light plywood, a far cry from stone
pillars that evoke strength and stability. Likewise, the pilasters lean innocuously against
the wall, almost like theater props that can be transported with ease, again betraying the
notion that pilasters are supportive, permanent architectural elements. Façade is a powerful,
if subtle, disclosure of the contradiction between the Ionic pilaster and its deployment;
the South’s difficult history destabilizes the narrative of democracy otherwise invoked by
the architectural motif.
Stasiak’s practice endeavors to renegotiate objects deeply ingrained in the southern
collective memory, a desire achieved by the artist in that each of these works—Folly,
Rokken, and Façade—deconstruct customary parts of colonial homes. The artist takes
this ambition a step further with Façade, reconfiguring the recognizable object while also
exposing an unsavory layer of meaning often ignored in romantic recollections of the
South’s controversial past.
| 59

CATALOG CONTRIBUTORS
Brent Cavedo is a Master’s candidate in art history specializing in Greek
and Roman art. He holds a BA in Latin and classical civilization from the
University of Mary Washington in Fredercksburg, VA and an MA in Latin
from the University of Georgia. His thesis considers the reception of Pliny
the Elder’s anecdote about the artistic collaboration between the sculptor
Praxiteles and the painter Nicias and proposes a new interpretation of the
contested term circumlitio.
Jordan Dopp is a Master’s candidate in art history specializing in Greek
and Roman Art. She received a BA in art history and religious studies with
a concentration in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations from Furman
University in Greenville, SC in 2015. Her Master’s thesis is a visual and
technical analysis recontextualizing a “Fayum” mummy portrait within
the larger corpus of Romano-Egyptian panel paintings. She looks forward
to an archaeological dig in the Summer 2018 field season in Petra.
Emily DuVall is a first-year MA student in art history. She received her
BA in history and art history from Birmingham-Southern College in 2016.
Before beginning graduate school, she worked as a curatorial intern at
the Albany Museum of Art and as a gallery intern at Portraits, Inc. Her
research interests include seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French
painting, particularly the work produced out of the Ancien Régime.
Augusta Gailey is a second year student in art history, as well as a
graduate from the paralegal studies program in conjunction with the
Center for Legal Studies. She graduated from Piedmont College with a
major in history and minors in both art history and political science. At
UGA she studies contemporary art, specializing in Cindy Sherman’s film
and photography and their relationship with each other.

Taylor Glennon is a first-year Master’s student in art history. She graduated
from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA in 2017 with
a BA in art history and minors in classical studies and anthropology. Her
undergraduate research focused on the correlations between ancient
Greek gynaecological and obstetrical treatises and Roman midwifery
reliefs. Building upon her interest in depictions of the female body, her
current research explores representations of human anatomy during in
early modern Europe.
Cicely Hazell is a Master’s candidate in art history. She received her BA
in art history and French from McDaniel College in 2015, after which
she spent a year teaching in Turkey through the Fulbright Program. Her
research interests are focused on postmodern and contemporary art,
including spectacle art and architecture and relational aesthetics. Her
thesis examines Jeff Koons’s 2008 exhibition at Versailles.
Abigail Kosberg is a second-year Master’s candidate in art history. She
received her bachelor’s degree in art history, studio art, and German from
Lawrence University in 2016. Her research contemplates intersections of
race, class, and gender with mass media, focusing specifically on Dada.
Her thesis contextualizes Dada artist Hannah Höch’s photomontage series,
From an Ethnographic Museum (1923–1935), using her photographic
source materials to discuss how their original locations and meanings
bear out in her final compositions. She was the recipient of a Rydquist
travel grant, which she used to travel to Paris, London, and Berlin in 2017.
She also was a winner of UGA's 4'33" thesis competition in 2017.
Brooke Leeton received a BA in communications and political science from
the University of Tennessee and an MA in art history from the University of
Louisville. At present, she is a PhD candidate in art history, concentrating
in modern and contemporary art. Her current research examines Ryan
Trecartin’s digital videos and their curious blend of traditional and new
media strategies.
Erin Riggins is a first-year MA student in art history. She began her arts
education in studio art, studying at the UNC School of the Arts and the
Kansas City Art Institute before shifting her focus to art history. After
completing her BA in art history at UNC-Greensboro in 2014, she spent
two and half years on the curatorial staff at the GreenHill Center for North
Carolina Art in Greensboro, NC. Her current research examines “unofficial”
art made in the former Soviet Union. Her thesis will address issues of
authorship in Russian artist Ilya Kabakov’s installation work.
| 61

ARTIST BIOS
Katelyn Chapman received her BFA with an emphasis in drawing from
Clemson University in 2014. Exhibited nationally, her work is inspired by
deep familial ties to the rural South. Her drawings and paintings index
celebration, leisure, and fellowship of the working class through the lens
of her own family and friends in the Midlands of South Carolina. In support
of her graduate research at the University of Georgia she was awarded the
Looney Foundation Graduate Fellowship and the Willson Center Graduate
Research Award. She will be published in Manifest Gallery’s 12th Volume
of their International Drawing Annual. Most recently, she was invited to
be a part of an exhibition at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, FL
entitled She Is Of The South. Chapman is currently living and working in
Athens, GA.
Ally Christmas is from Northern Virginia, and she currently lives and
works out of Athens, GA. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in studio
art from the University of Virginia in 2013, where she was also selected
to be an Aunspaugh Fifth Year Fellow from 2013–2014. Her work and
research have won awards at the National Conference for the Society for
Photographic Education, the 4'33" Spotlight on Scholarship competition,
and from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. Christmas works
with lens-based media, and her practice is characterized by a constant
process of filling and emptying—of materials, of time, of herself. Her
work grapples with the algorithmic formation of identity, the contemporary
notion of Barthes’ punctum as manifested through the glitch, and
the spectral nature of our virtual selves as they are performed, split, and
extended across screens.
Whitney Cleveland is an artist from Garrett, Indiana. Her most recent
work addresses the residual, narrative force of objects; the embodiment
of sensation; kinwork and craft; and the American construct of freedom.
Her studio practice orbits around equal forces of compulsion and refinement,
pioneering a sense of order that is both irreverent to and fluent in
the language of abstraction. She champions the home alongside the institution
as an idyllic place of display. Cleveland studied at Indiana-Purdue
University and received her BA in sculpture through the University of South
Florida. She is the recipient of the Frierson Fellowship.

Annemarie DiCamillo is an artist interested in tangible expressions that
translate, mediate, or evoke the intangible or interior. Having garnered
their BA in art and business management from Mount Vernon Nazarene
University in Ohio in 2015, they continued to pursue a course of study that
would allow their studio practice to become increasingly interdisciplinary.
Philosophy and anthropology are especially relevant to their practice,
as each discipline handles, among other things, the mediation of poetic
spaces between the internal histories of humans and communities and
the external orders and systems of the political and physical world.
Erin Geagon is a freelance textile designer and artist who works with
waste textiles in art and design in order to prolong the life of fabrics that
would otherwise end up in landfill. Working with a nonpermanent medium
to create temporary artworks created from functional objects, her work
focuses on humans’ relationship with the objects they buy and own and
how this relationship influences and mirrors human relationships within
the communities. Erin has shown her work at a variety of venues, most
recently taking third place in the Surface Design Association’s Future
Tense exhibition in Portland, Oregon. Erin received her undergraduate
degree in painting and textile design from UMASS Dartmouth in 1993.
> ALLY CHRISTMAS // MFA 2018
Yeonsoo Kim’s focus on the relationship between the old and the new
widens and widens until it reaches humanity, nature, and space. Through
the daily creation of hand-built vessels and masks, his work acts as a
journal of his inner voice. He explores identity and psychological conditions
through mark making and surface applications. Yeonsoo Kim was born
in Haenam, South Korea. He earned a BFA in ceramics and glass from
the Hongik University in 2006. He has held apprenticeships with Onggi
masters in Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do, Korea. He has participated in
several artist residency programs including the Baltimore Clayworks,
Korea Ceramic Foundation, Montana State Unversity, and Innon Art
Center. He has shown his work at numerous venues in the United States
and abroad and is the recipient of numbers awards including: Emerging
Artist at Macon Museum Arts & Science.
Karine Lepage is a multi-media artist from the region of Témiscamingue,
Québec, Canada. She is interested in humanity’s disconnection from the
animal kingdom and its struggle to understand the nature of reality. She
received her BFA in studio arts from Concordia University, Montréal, Canada.
| 63

Katherine Miller is an artist from St. Louis, Missouri. Through her printand
book arts-based work, Miller references the handwritten letter
to investigate communication, distance, and emotional intimacy. She
received her BFA in studio art from Southeast Missouri State University
(Cape Girardeau, MO) in 2014 and has exhibited nationally and internationally
including at Gallery Protocol (Gainesville, FL), the Zuckerman
Museum of Art (Kennesaw, GA), and The Luminary Center for the Arts
(St. Louis, MO).
Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay works in photography, video, installation,
sculpture, and new media, investigating shifting meanings within post- and
neocolonialism while still reflecting on the very mediums of representation
that he uses. Deepanjan is originally from Kolkata, India and received
his BFA in photography from Louisiana Tech University. Deepanjan’s work
has been published in Aperture.org, Burnaway, Aint-Bad magazine, and
PDN magazine. He has also received honors for his work from Society of
Photographic Education, 2015 PDN Photo Annual, and was named one of
the Atlanta Celebrates Photography 2017 Ones to Watch. His work has
been exhibited in India, Canada, and across the United States in galleries
such as Aperture Gallery, and Elizabeth Houston Gallery in New York, NY.
Ali Norman is a printmaker working primarily in intaglio processes.
Utilizing craft as ritual, her works tangibly record ever-changing perceptions
of emotion, time, and reality. Ali was raised in Tampa, FL and
received her BFA in photography and printmaking from the Savannah
College of Art and Design.
Johanna Norry employs traditional hand techniques of weaving, knitting,
coiling, embroidery, and stitching, alongside digitally-printed fabric, her
work combines comforting materials with discomforting images and
ideas. She received her BFA in textiles from Georgia State University
in Atlanta, GA in 2015, and her BA in anthropology and writing at Sarah
Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. She had her first solo show,
Open and Shut, in 2017 at the Goat Farm Arts Center in Atlanta, and her
work has been featured in many juried exhibitions and invitational group
shows in Georgia, New Mexico, and New York.
Elizabeth Rogers is a an Atlanta-based artist, licensed professional
counselor, and psychoanalyst in private practice. Her current body of
work addresses the other side of quotidian movement, the impacts of
language and sounding in the making of the body, and the body as a site
of subjectivity and singularity. Her work is interdisciplinary, situated at the
intersections of art-making, movement-making, and the in-formations of
psychoanalysis. She works in and between the mediums of video, choreography,
photography, and performance. She is a recipient of the Wilson
Center Graduate Research Grant.

Kelsey Ann Scharf works with painting and photography. As a factory
worker from Northwest Ohio, she has spent her past three years in
Athens, Georgia searching for connections that reminded her of home.
Hyperrealistic representations of space have always been a factor in her
work, and she aims to capture the abandoned buildings that surround her.
Kelsey is currently participating in a group show entitled Small Beauties
that is travelling from Philadelphia to New York City and a landscape show
at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado. Kelsey
received her BFA in Art Education from Bowling Green State University
in 2013.
Katlin Shae is an artist whose work is centered around the process of
weaving, intertwining contemporary art with ancient craft. Receiving
inspiration from the systems and patterns that are carried out on the
loom, she is in awe of the complexities and possibilities that exist within
the grid. She has exhibited extensively though out the United States in
group and solo exhibitions including The Ohio Craft Museum, The Biggs
Museum of American Art, and Arrowmont Gallery. Honors include the
Surface Design Association’s Creative Promise Award for Excellence,
Best in Show, Gallery Directors Award, and Complex Weavers Award. She
received her BFA in fibers and textile arts from Kent State University, in
Kent Ohio.
Alexis Spina is an artist working primarily in small-scale metal sculpture
and installation. Her work is constructed through an extensive body of
research rooted in governmental injustices, global politics, and objective
truth in the age of disinformation. Alexis was raised in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania and obtained her BFA in metalsmithing from the University
of Edinboro in 2015.
Kaleena Stasiak is an interdisciplinary artist who uses an assortment of
haptic media such as printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and wood furniture
to explore the consumption of history. Her material investigations question
the way individual, regional, and national identities are constructed in
order to understand the formulation of collective myths, their relevance
to the present, and ways to productively disrupt them. Stasiak’s work has
been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Recent shows
include Clues and Scientific Inquiry at the Marcia Wood Gallery, Ancient
Art Objects at Whitespace and Eternal Return at Whitespec, all in Atlanta,
GA. Stasiak received her undergraduate degree at the Ontario College of
Art and Design in Toronto, Ontario.
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In compliance with federal law, including the provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and Executive Order 13672, the University of Georgia does not
discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or national origin,
religion, age, genetic information, disability status or veteran status in its administration of educational
policies, programs, or activities; its admissions policies; scholarship and loan programs; athletic or other
University-administered programs; or employment. Inquiries or complaints should be directed to the
Equal Opportunity Office, 119 Holmes-Hunter Academic Building, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.
Telephone (706) 542-7912 (V/TDD). Fax (706) 542-2822. Email ugaeoo@uga.edu.
© 2018 THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED
WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

EDITOR
ISABELLE LORING WALLACE
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH &
GRADUATE STUDIES
ART DIRECTOR
JULIE SPIVEY
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR
DESIGNER
SAHAR AGHASAFARI, DOCTORAL STUDENT
PHOTOGRAPHER
STEPHANIE SUTTON, MFA 2017
WE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE SUPPORT FROM
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF GEORGIA AND THE GEORGIA MUSEUM OF ART.
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OUR
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