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 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.

In my work, I explore the ancient occult concept of the egregore or collective thought-form and its continued relevance in contemporary life. One might not think of the systems that we operate in today as ritual in nature, especially those that utilize new technology. We may imagine cyberspace as the ultimate rational and objective realm where all things can be categorized, quantified, and monetized. However, it is a place saturated with ceremonial situations upon close inspection. I seek out these ceremonies of niche digital communities and reconstruct them in new forms operating adjacent to their original stream.

My background in fashion relied on the use of sewing machines as tools to create garments made of new materials. My current artmaking has evolved away from the body and functionality to become relief sculptures in cloth. This work is the embodiment of moments in time and space that have stopped me mid-stride, compelling me to closely examine the details. As a fine artist, I translate these observations of nature into my art by using a needle and thread to hand stitch on reclaimed cloth. I invite the viewers to pause, wonder, and think about their place in the world.

This paper is a part of the presentation, "Automating the Authority Control Process," for the Innovative Users Group Conference in 2020. The presentation introduces ideas on how to handle authority control using a variety of tools, both paid and free. The paper details the specific procedures described in the presentation.

My artwork uses the traditions of printmaking, photography, and fiber arts to dissect the myths, history, and current moment of American culture. My methodology includes photographing sites where governmental and capital power is most present. Photography is my tool for documenting the present, while quilting and printmaking are my way of reflecting on and digesting ideological concepts that are present in our culture. The quilt is a symbol of comfort in our personal ideologies. My work aims to destigmatize direct action and encourages the viewer to reevaluate how meaningful change can be made today.

Data management plan for the grant, "Collaborative Research: Research Infrastructure: CCRI: ENS: Enhanced Open Networked Airborne Computing Platform." The project aims to develop an enhanced open networked airborne computing platform to facilitate the design, implementation, and testing of an airborne computing platform that seamlessly integrates control, computing, communication, and networking. The project will provide community support based on the flywheel model, and to attract and engage community users through organized support from four regional sites in the nation, hands-on workshops, testbed access, and technical user services.

Data management plan for the research grant, "Collaborative Research: Using Uncertainty Quantification and Validated Computational Models to Analyze Pumping Performance of Valveless, Tubular Hearts." This project will develop a computational model of the essential features of the circulatory system: the electrical activity of the heart, muscle contractions of the tube walls, and the fluid-structure interactions of the heart walls and blood within. This computational framework aims to be faithful to that of a real, model animal (tunicate, or sea squirt). The model will then be analyzed with mathematical tools to determine the physical limits of the pumping system. Results of this project will improve the understanding of human heart development at the earliest stages. Also, it will point to how the large, multi-chambered hearts of vertebrates could have evolved from smaller structures.

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.

Constructed Self is an exhibition of life-size forms that blur the line between photography and sculpture while being both stable and on the verge of collapse. These damaged concrete columns, slabs, and hand-formed bricks used to create walls are inspired by architecture's support structures to convey my internal psychic framework. Photographs are transferred on the surface of these forms that depict environments where I have processed and experienced my struggles with mental health. This work explores how to communicate and convey the interior and exterior of my emotional self in visible terms while bringing me healing emotionally through the process of making these sculptures.

Data management plan for the research grant, "Development of Combinatorial Processing Techniques for Accelerated Discovery of Complex Concentrated Alloy (or Multi-Principal Element Alloys) for Structural Applications"

Data management plan for the grant "Discovering Potential for Sense of Community, Social Support, and Wellness Impacts within Interscholastic Sports Officials." Research seeking to provide an in-depth exploratory look at the behaviors of interscholastic sport officials as they relate to motivation for initial and continued participation, barriers to participation as an interscholastic sport official, and the social, community and health impacts of participation.

I make work that engages the porous and sensate body. The larger question for me is the interdependency of how we exist within our environment and how our environment exists in us. Caves, deep time, and the feminine landscape factor into my work, as well as thinking beyond a humancentered narrative to address concerns about the earth. My process involves using raw pigment, wax, rain, dirt, and the language of abstraction to point to a raw, interior space. My source material is equal parts imagination and field research, most recently into cave systems.

Brief Artist Statement by Kyung Hee “Kate” Im as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Entanglement” in the Union Art Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on April 5-22, 2021.

Photography, as a way of recording, is often high-definition and highly descriptive. Therefore, photography has a close relationship with visual perception. In my soft and abstract photographic images, the particularity of time and place is deliberately diluted, and the traditional objects in the photographic images are eliminated to challenge the viewer to locate themselves in relation to the photographs. The ambiguity of the photograph stimulates the viewer's self-consciousness to the greatest extent, while also spurring profound examination of the particular ways one expects photographs to affect them.

Data management plan for the grant "Formation of cotton bast fiber as a means to modulate carbon capture and increase bio-product utilization."

Since my youth in Ukraine, I have been inspired by the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, who went to outer space in April 1961. Since then I have been imagining the fragments of an unknown space that is divided into a variety of different felt locations. I am interested in envisioning fractured terrains, where the intrusion of sharp elements interact with a soft transparent and atmospheric space. I want to create a sense of discord as a metaphorical reflection on the absurd, political situation in Ukraine where I am originally from. For me, navigating or transitioning from one imaginary space to another through the act of making painting feels equivalent to experiencing a new place for the first time.

Brief Artist Statement by Shellita Tow as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Fragmenting Time” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on April 15-20, 2021.

Data management plan for the grant "G-RISE at the University of North Texas." The University of North Texas (UNT) serves over 32,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students of which 50% of the undergraduate population and 20% of the graduate population are underrepresented minority (URM). UNT is ranked by the Carnegie Classification as a Tier 1 institute, is a Hispanic Serving Institute, and is dedicated to providing quality mentoring to a diverse group of Ph.D. students. The UNT G-­RISE mission is to provide a biomedical Ph.D. training program that is inclusive, culturally responsive, increases diversity, enhances scientific skill sets, develops trainee career and professional skill sets, provides opportunities to participants, and increases faculty development as a mentor.

Brief Artist Statement by Marianna Seaton as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Golden Anecdoche” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on March 15-21, 2021.

Brief Artist Statement by Cosmo Jones as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Green Man Action Cycle” at Cora Stafford Gallery, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas frpm March 15-21, 2021.

Working to unravel my sense of the world and challenge the narratives and beliefs I hold as truths; I have created a reimagined and surreal bathroom that offers a private and vulnerable space filled with hidden horrors. The animated, imperfect, decayed, and cracked bathroom forms bridge the gap between the impermanent fragility of memory and the ongoing beliefs of a personal narrative. I worked to overcome the assumption that, to heal, something must be completely resolved within itself. Instead, I offer that healing is an undescribed area, that is unmeasurable, and it is forever evolving and never finished.

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..

Data management plan for the grant "High-throughput Screening and Quality Assessment Testing and an AI-based In-Situ Process Monitoring and Quality Control Framework for Additive Manufacturing New Builds and Repaired Parts."