BFA Theses

Collaborations is a joint effort between Aaron Smith and Colin Cathey who are organizers of participatory events. The panels and drawings that you see in front of you are artifacts from these events; we’ve been applying the term Happening to these because it helps describe the participatory, performative, and impromptu qualities of these collective actions. The work ultimately is about setting up a collaborative experience where participants can engage in a very automated state of creative energy exploring the physicality of mark making, sound and movement.

The inquiry is about exploring the language of mark making and how it correlates into understanding the dynamic of the Happenings themselves with a focus on how participants styles push and pull and influence one another. It has gradually become a process of engaging in this communal energy with friends and allowing it to teach us about the visual language of painting. Chance is a central influence and is the main guiding principle. The work operates very much on its own with us and the other participants functioning as vessels under the collective influence of the work.

Conceptually this work is trying to live outside the realms of the consumer marketplace
from a cultural and socio political perspective while also sharing a strong resemblance to the philosophy of the Fluxus and Gutai. The work is meant to be in opposition to professionalism and the pretentious, serious and inaccessible aspects of the traditional art scene while also focusing to explore the pure vitality of these mediums. The materials are just the materials and speak for themselves. The work utilizes the vocabulary of play, automatism, and action painting within the context of community involvement.

Things Will Get Better: An Alphabet Journey is an illustrated poetry book that focuses on key moments in childhood, both the light and the dark. It is a journey through the growing pains of adolescence and the realization that we’ve made it out the other side okay. Though it is hidden within the imagery, this book is heavily inspired by the traditional alphabet book. The poem flows through the alphabet, touching on each letter as a memory, moment in time, or feeling. These moments are often activated through visual metaphor, characters and/or symbols. Each letter has a story, a history in which there are countless moments of significance. The repetitive mantra, “things will get better” is at the center of the book’s rhythm, while the alphabet pushes the loose narrative forward. The overall goal of this publication is to promote opening up, relying on a the network of supportive people you have in your life, and hopefully coming to the realization that we aren’t defined be the difficult moments in our lives, rather it is how we move forward and learn to trust again.

This work has been driven by the idea of the technological Singularity. Like science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s famous adage says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Once humans build a self-improving intelligence we will have effectively created a machine god. This machine will be infinitely more intelligent and capable than humans. I believe this could result in the complete loss of human autonomy. This work uses religion to talk about the development of intelligences greater than our own and what effects they may have on humanity. It draws parallels between religion and humanity’s dependence on technology and points to both as means of social and moral control.

These sculptures are a cautionary tale, meant to make the viewer ask themselves about the future of humanity and its development of technology. These pieces are constructed primarily from discarded objects sourced from the refuse of everyday life and cheap or secondhand materials. By viewing these sculptures the audience is asked to look at the technological methods of control that have subtly affected their lives and to imagine futures where those methods are taken to an extreme. These works demonstrate that the road to Singularity will be a rocky one that poses risks to humanity’s future.

Iyeska is a multimedia installation combining the processes of photography, printmaking and sculpture. Iyeska encapsulates sacred space as a continuous presence of indigenous narrative through ancestral landscape, movement, color and light. This work evokes remembrance through the ceremonial interaction with my sacred homelands in the Makȟóšiča, South Dakota. Iyeska explores the concepts of Indigenous survivance and traditional Lakota knowledge through the combined language of ancestral memory and sacred space.

Haven is a post-apocalyptic children’s book that tackles living in a world devoid of plant life. After finding an curious pouch while exploring the wasteland, Tala and her friends are guided by three spirits on a journey to bring flora back to their desert town, Haven. Each spirit is representative of different positive influences of nature on the environment including food, clean drinking water, and beauty. Throughout the book runs a parallel narrative of the giant androids that rule Haven with an iron fist and their gradual decline in affluence during the course of the story. The androids are representative of the dangers of conformity, utilitarianism, and unhindered negative influences of technology. Haven is an 8” x 8” book that runs for eighty-four pages and is divided into a prologue and three chapters. It is aimed at children between six to nine years old. For my thesis project, I took the entire book will be taken up to the final line-art tonal stage, with two interior full-color spreads and an illustrated cover in order to appeal to publishers at the concept stage.

The Hyperflat artist aggregate is a collective art practice that doesn’t distinguish between art and the everyday performance. In my thesis project I have created a system / stomach designed to digest hierarchies, and make feedback loops out of the leftover fragments. it is a system of humans and puppets working to shatter dichotomies in identity, building connections and harnessing the paradoxes between contrasting perspectives. A person’s position in the Hyperflat artists aggregate is determined by their costume, know as a Scarab. A Scarab is a mask / hat / puppet hybrid that connects its wearer to the artists aggregate and to a language of icons. all Scarabs have an elemental and a psychic signifier built into their design / structure that is directly connected to the Hyperflat language. Scarabs are intended to shift between individual and collective identity by being worn as hats and masks. This range of functions is designed to provide the wearer with a palette of identities, a kind of toolbox for making performance art including Animation, everyday Fashion and sensory deprivation.

Analog Oceans and Nuclear Fusion is a triple channel panoramic projection in the shape of a broken circle. You can’t go outside of the circle, you can only go inside of it; into total immersion. Surrounding you, a fabric constantly activated by found footage. The fabric’s smooth surface allows the screen’s form and visual content to be emphasized. The silence accentuates the visual immersion and screen shape. The footage is from my own personal 16mm collection and online archives. I have minimized temporal signifiers with the exception of the frailty of analog film: the scratches, color transformations, and glitches. This indicates a sense of time and history. The past is collected and crystallized into the present viewing experience.

Watch the film of the installation here: https://vimeo.com/246697884

Each illustration features a different phobia, 5 natural and 5 societal fears. While there are hundreds of phobias, I’ve picked out the ones that I had familiarity with the most in my life. Whether it be me having the phobia, or the people that I associate with. In addition to also picking the ones that inspired me the most. Due to the lengthy creation process and other obligations, I have since reduced the series to 6 but topically split in the same way. The three natural ones are: Melissophobia the fear of bees, Herpetophobia, the fear of reptiles, and Trypophobia the fear of holes. The three societal ones are as follows: Aichmophobia, the fear of sharp things, Automatonophobia, the fear of false human representation, and Sciophobia, the fear of shadows. Once I chose the phobia I sought out medical information and then first hand perspectives on each one. What inspired me the most were online posts that were places for people to vent their frustrations; especially in poem form.

Allusion/Illusion is a room installation consisting of a multitude of mirrors and two projectors. From each projector, a five-minute progressive video loop of black and white photographs I created in the studio of mirror sculptures, are projected onto the walls. When these images are projected onto the mirror compositions placed throughout the room, they add an additional layer of fragmentation, aiding in the creation of a more dynamic and confusing optical illusion. These materials work together to disorient the viewers’ perception of self, space, time and reality by fragmenting themselves and the room surrounding them. Although the medium of photography is continuously evolving with new technologies, techniques and practices, one thing that has stayed consistent throughout its short 200 year history, is the underlying expectations for it to depict truth and reality. Due to the mechanical and scientific nature of the medium, artists have been continuously working in ways to either embrace or disrupt this promise of a ‘window onto the world’. Exploring the topics of truth, reality and photography’s ability to produce magic and illusion within an installation rather than the conventional two-dimensional print, allows for the experiential exploration of the essence of photography and the activation of the spectator’s presence within the space. Alongside the exploration of analog and digital technologies, I am experimenting with deconstructing the presumption that the camera is a faithful ‘mechanical eye.’

The second idea of importance is duality. The duality of exterior beauty and inner turmoil. The duality of cool, humid climates and dry, hot climates. The duality of precise, colorful, painted imagery and jittery, dark, animated graphics. The duality of being killed by the environment, and being an accessory in killing the environment. The duality of the beauty of landscape and the grotesque nature of life.

The paintings versus the animations represent the ideal versus the reality. Stillness versus movement. What I saw versus what I thought and felt. The animations distract from the paintings just as my uncomfortable feelings distracted me from being able to completely lose myself in the beauty of my surroundings.

The animations are representative of the raw, honest emotions I experienced as reactions to these environments. These animations are the inner turmoil to the paintings’ exterior beauty. They serve the purpose of being an unappealing, ugly distraction to disrupt the neatness of these paintings. They are manifestations of the ugly feelings I experienced while in these settings. The paintings are the seemingly-staged photos you bring home. The animations are the feelings you probably don’t want to talk about. The paintings are the ideal, the escape. The animations express the inescapable, imperfect reality that is often difficult to bear,

My practice is heavily process oriented. I find myself asking a lot of questions, and through the process of drawing and painting, I am able to find answers, and most of all more questions. The process of painting and drawing allows me to investigate the ways that I interact with the world, by slowing down and reflecting on what is really there and what has been missed. My work focuses on the limitations that my own perception has while questioning my habits of seeing. Through different methodologies of meaning making, I reflect on my perception as well as myself. This work is a series of observational drawings which have come from photographs that I have taken and posted onto instagram. Each sheet of paper depicts a corner of a photograph in chronological order that the photographs were posted in. The drawings are made starting at the top left hand corner, moving to the right, until the row is complete, then I move onto the next row. When I am drawing the information which is presented within the photograph I am able to see what is missed through my own lense. I am able to notice what was once the background. The background, corner, is now at the foreground. I find an infinite unknowing as well as an infinite opportunity of growth through my own lens with these drawings.

“Superfun: A silly willy place that gets more bigger and more funner every day!!”

Superfun is a science fiction comic book that utilizes the accessibility of cartoon storytelling to critique and analyze complicated content such as corrupt systems of power and the loss of innocence. It is the tension between the cute and creepy, the cuddly and claustrophobic, that Superfun visually and conceptually relies on. Capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy and other hateful systems that plague our world manifest as a colossal wacky metropolis.  

Lullaby of Frogland is the first of nine issues which will complete this story. In the first issue, the primary characters and themes of the larger narrative are introduced, opening up the world for future installments. Superfun is meant to push and pull between immersive fiction and sobering allusion to real situations. Our world is so fucked up to begin with, that the cartoon veil of Superfun is often thin.    

In addition to telling a fun and engaging story, it is my goal with Superfun to question my role within the chaos of an unstable and unjust society, as well as encourage readers to do the same.

Fishkill is a concept for an animated horror-drama television series about the inhabitants of a small Colorado town, who in the aftermath of a massive local earthquake must contend with the sudden appearance of monsters in their community. The series uses the tradition of monster-as-metaphor storytelling to explore themes of mob mentality, “othering” as a form of violence, physical manifestations of a collective unconscious, and the dark underbelly of small towns in the American west. The two main characters, Frankie and Wesson, must contend with the roles they’re forced into by the rest of the town, and struggle with placing morality above compliance with tradition, all while trying to survive the monsters closing in around their town. Fishkill is a concept for an animated horror-drama television series about the inhabitants of a small Colorado town, who in the aftermath of a massive local earthquake must contend with the sudden appearance of monsters in their community. The series uses the tradition of monster-as-metaphor storytelling to explore themes of mob mentality, “othering” as a form of violence, physical manifestations of a collective unconscious, and the dark underbelly of small towns in the American west. The two main characters, Frankie and Wesson, must contend with the roles they’re forced into by the rest of the town, and struggle with placing morality above compliance with tradition, all while trying to survive the monsters closing in around their town.

The current festival scene states a foundation on teaching Eco-conscious lifestyle practices, yet they themselves rely on fossil fuels to power the festival as well as allow campers to also use these gas powered generators in a place that is supposed to be eco-conscious. With the implementation of my projects system festivals will be able to act upon what they preach and step closer to a true eco-conscious lifestyle through alternative energy sources that also enhance the beauty of the festivals.

My intent was to create a body of work that exists as more than the sum of its parts; for each piece to be able to function in a unique, distinct way aside from every other piece, yet, remain a cohesive body of work when each piece came together to form said body. While considering the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance formulated by Leon Festinger in the mid-20th Century and researching the philosophy of love and its various manifestations, I have created and archived a personal symbolic lexicon that serves as a foundation for emergent structures to develop, aiding in compositional generation. Through painting as a medium, I am attempting to create discrete narratives with myself regarding such topical themes as sexuality, gender identity, masculinity and femininity, consumerism, socio-political current events, an ethic of love, personal histories, and Art History. These discrete narratives, in conjunction with my own symbolic lexicon, allow for the creation of dynamic, engaging compositions that serve as a vehicle to allow room for personal assuagement to personal dissonances. I do this through aesthetic jest.

This project is meant to share stories from the forgotten territories of the US. Hawaii, Alaska, Mariana Islands, Samoa, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands. Also to introduce indigenous cultures to an audience who may not be familiar. It is a portfolio of images that will form the bulk of my professional children’s book portfolio. Consisting of 6, 8×20 full colored images and 6 spots based on the stories chosen. Some stories included will be “The Creation of the Hawaiian Islands”, and “How Brother Rabbit Became Wise”, from Puerto Rico. The images were created to interest viewers into wanting to know more about the tales behind the pictures and as a result, want to know more about the cultures that created them. To help create new bonds between cultures that might have trouble relating to each other.

My thesis project titled Fifty Leven. Fifty Leven means a large or infinite quantity. The project is a collection of 14 long sleeves that have been designed with 14 individual slang words for each shirt. The shirts are designed with a range of imagery, graphics, colors, and words. The unique set of visuals creates unexpected contextualization of multiple slang meanings for one word on the shirt. The end result is what I refer to as “visual slang”.

During this process I designed 100+ shirts. The quantity of the exploration as well as the infinite number of combinations for how any one shirt can be made directly relates to the title and branding.

Fifty Leven is about my interest in slang and the way it has evolved over time. It provided an opportunity to explore the way that context is critical to communication. In order to further investigate these ideas I created this streetwear brand.

Through the punk and DIY aesthetic that streetwear culture has embraced I was able to create unusual and interesting graphics. By putting the graphics on shirts I hope to spark conversations about language, slang, where and how we all bring it together differently.

When you buy a Fifty Leven shirt you also get the word’s history. One Fifty Leven package includes the shirt, its hangtag, and a zine. The hang tag contains the Standard English and slang definitions, the word’s etymology, and a bibliography of sorts that identifies the definitions used to create the word’s visual slang. The zine also contains the definitions, the graphics and imagery I used to create the visual slang, and it shows what I refer to as the conversation that created visual slang. It shows the different rounds of design the shirts went through, showing all the possibilities that can be produced from one word, relating back to the definition of Fifty Leven: a large or infinite quantity.

The website acts as a database for new slang. Users are able to order custom Fifty Leven shirts based of slang they define and graphics they upload or select from our vast database. This is an important aspect of the way that slang is created, which is typically through community based interactions.

Daus is a world all its own, with its own ecology and unique species. The only humanity that encounters this world are those who “disappear” from Earth, whether it be in the blink of an eye or they simply awaken from sleep to find themselves within Daus. This installation is an effort to recreate the sensation of finding oneself entirely alone, in a wild and unfamiliar land. Considering the time in which this project was being made, my sociopolitical concerns became entwined in the work. Seeing policies and opinions shift around me, without much control to affect them, felt incredibly disempowering. This piece is still about the feeling of having to survive in an entirely new place, but there has been this metaphorical element that grew inside it. How do I deal with a world that has so suddenly become hostile to the very roots of who and what I am? Things that were once reliable and familiar are now sharp and dangerous.