Black’s work presents The Ubiquitous, an entity that propagates into subhuman beings that ravage the deserts in search of sacrificial circles or homing beacons. Their physical nature is heavily influenced by: Languid, liquid human body language; the otherworldly visage and tenacity of plant life; the heaving monstrosity of mountains and rock formations; and the joyous allegory of movie monsters, puppets, and pulp fantasy. The Ubiquitous is explored in Black’s whimsical writings and intensive drawings which are characterized by her mark’s immediacy; and her work seeks to understand this Being’s purpose, function, and correlation to her own life..

Brief Artist Statement by Randal Robins as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Interiority” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on March 15-25, 2021.

My artwork is a record of mundane yet impactful experiences of everyday life. The subject of memory and my interest in pictorial space create a visual narrative of the physical and metaphorical ways I navigate the world. I envision space as sometimes a place of comfort, or at times a souvenir of a distant event. Through my paintings, I process and rediscover the past through the intimacy and tactility of mark-making. Each work presents a bittersweet narrative where I examine the complex circumstances that have brought me to a specific moment in time.

Memory Beast was a series of experiments in multispecies collaborative storytelling. A new tool was created, a memory beast, a holotype representing our ideas of specific species, based on memories and drawings collected in participatory research. The fabricated memory beasts, placed next to their biological counterparts, made visible the conflation of living species with personal memory and cultural imagery. Using this new tool, implanted with sonic recordings of cows, the beginnings of an interspecies pidgin language was developed. Memory Beast imagined and enacted new pathways to finite flourishing on a wounded earth, planting story seeds for alternative realities.

Brief Artist Statement by Sean Lopez as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Always Girls and Forever Boys” at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park in Dallas, TX on April 17-18, 2021.

Brief Artist Statement by Jihye Han as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "11,009km” at the Goldmark Cultural Center in Dallas, TX on April 9-May 7, 2021.

Brief Artist Statement by Maria Villanueva as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Legend Systems: an escape to a hidden land” in the Environmental Education, Science and Technology Building Atrium on the campus of the University of North Texas on March 1-5, 2021.

Brief Artist Statement by Naomi Peterson as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "liminal_ties” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas from April 12-22, 2021.

Brief Artist Statement by Russell Anderson as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Modified Aesthetics on an Inner Space” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on March 29-April 9, 2021.

Works of art on mixed media by artist Victoria Gonzales as part of a 2022 MFA exhibition, entitled "Into a Spacious Place" in the Cora Stafford Gallery South, 1201 W Mulberry St, Denton, TX 76201, from April 20 to 23, 2022.

In my work, I create collections of small objects from a variety of materials and curate them into a larger composition in space. These objects are made from clay, wood, paint, sand, beads, cardboard, paper, yarn, tape, and other materials. I arrange these objects into a composition that is informed by painting, which manifests as the wall and floor serving as substrate, along with vinyl shapes delineating areas of the painting as a whole. In these arrangements I aim to break away from taught boundaries in regards to physical space and expectations of familiar materials.

Works of art on Wood, Acrylic, Vinyl by artist Felicia Jordan (detail shot of puzzle 2) as part of a 2022 MFA exhibition, entitled "Without/Within" in the Cora Stafford Gallery South, 1201 W Mulberry St, Denton, TX 76201, April 20 - 23, 2022.

In A Narrative Rewritten, I explore two distinct periods of my past. One group of work deals with the emotional effects of trauma I experienced as a child during years of practicing ballet. The other celebrates a pivotal moment of spiritual awakening that gave me the strength to confront internal falsehoods I previously developed. I paint from observation, to engage with my subject and to ground myself in the present moment. In my oil paintings, I paint representationally, while delving in to the spectrum of abstraction. I use imagery symbolically from ballet and boxing to represent a shift from inadequacy to empowerment.

My current work investigates visual meditations on water and its connection to the human experience. Through observation and reflection, my process allows me to make associative connections with water’s powerful metaphorical qualities. Water’s multiplicity of meaning is vast. It is a complex force of nature that begs to be explored through various modes of thinking. Mindfulness combined with the act of discovery and adaptation allows my imagery to evolve organically. Working between drawing and printmaking, I create variable series of artworks, that oscillates between mimicry and abstraction as a contemplation of our human relationship and natural forces.

Works of art on copper by artist Courtney DiMare as part of a 2022 MFA exhibition, entitled "Mostly Covered" in the Cora Stafford Gallery South, 1201 W Mulberry St, Denton, TX 76201, from March 9th to 12th, 2022.

My work consists of clothing jewelry hybrids that combine the sentimentality and materiality of jewelry with the coverage and protection of clothing.

My artwork dialogues with three topics: climate change’s economic and societal impact, plant genetic engineering advances, and art’s influence on scientific creativity and innovation. These intersect in my focus on the mystery and promise of plant genetic research and the creative innovation needed to advance this research. I manipulate, massage, and mix contemporary mediums and traditional sculpture, fiber and painting mediums. My sculptures often have translucent elements that interact vividly with visible and UV light spectrums. Undulation and emergence figure prominently in my artwork as metaphors of the active living organism coming forth from the genetically altered primordial soup.

I have impulses to make things, sometimes the idea happens prior to its construction, sometimes it happens after. I doubt the presumption of art's ability to save or better people, which creates for me, a conflicted relationship with art-making. I think in most cases, the best it can do is attract people's interest for a moment or so, to the extent that they feel compelled to see it again. Upon those sentiments I make things that provoke a thought or pleasure in myself that I hope other people can relate to. That seems to me to be the bitch of subjective activities. You do what you feel but are never quite sure how it's felt.

As we travel through life, we lose pieces of ourselves. It’s inevitable. Yet we are more than the sum of our parts. These pieces can be cast aside, lost to the wind or imply left behind. They can also be stitched back together, forming a patchwork quilt of sorts. The world is constantly changing, and now more than ever we live in a time of uncertainty. So, I feel the need to stitch together my reality. I am a Maker, and I choose to make a reflection of the world I want to inhabit; a world of my own making.

Brief Artist Statement by Jacob Phillips as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Unicorn Magic” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on April 12-22, 2021.

I am an interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges mental health, body dysmorphia, and the visual arts together through sculptures, paintings, performances, and large installations. I work with traditional and nontraditional materials through a manual and digital process to physically represent my realities of living with body dysmorphic disorder. I use padding, paper, and other fibrous objects as metaphors for the flesh and manipulate these materials in numerous ways to create exaggerations of the body.

My work explores the interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships we have with our physical, mental, and emotional bodies. Using techniques ranging from traditional carpentry to digital fabrication, the works are created to represent individual traumatic experiences as well as the universality of loss. My pieces are meant to elicit an empathic response from the audience. There are common traumas and pains that bring humans together as a form of bonding.

Works of art on Raw pigment, graphite, watercolor, acrylic, ink, p by artist Erika Jaeggli as part of a 2022 MFA exhibition, entitled "A Dog Named Robot" in the Cora Stafford Gallery South, 1201 W Mulberry St, Denton, TX 76201, April 6 - 9, 2022.

Each of my oil or pastel paintings is an observation of seemingly mundane familiar places that I encounter day-to-day. I think of my art as a kind of visual journalism, where I examine common human emotions evoked by a careful consideration of the substance of light interacting with spaces or objects. The naturalistically rendered compositions are cropped and depicted in small fragments, allowing the viewer a brief glimpse into a quiet portrayal of the world. Essentially, my art allows me to share my sensibilities and to connect with others through portraits of ordinary, yet intimate, moments in time.