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.

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "Through my art I strive to raise awareness towards the protection of the ocean. Plastic pollution, over-fishing, species extinction, and nuclear waste are some of the problems I symbolize in order to create conversations around the issues and do my part in starting a wave of change. The ocean is one interconnected circulatory system for our plane,t so anywhere that humans are abusing the oceans, it affects us all. I hope to remind people of the sacredness of the sea in order to help renew our reverence and respect for it."

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "This body of work contains digital photographs, sculptures and wallpapers to highlight a personal journey through motherhood. Traditionally, the roles of a new mother have been handed down from generation to generation. A mother teaches her daughter how to soothe her fussy infant, her domestic responsibilities, to maintain her feminine mystique. Though many of these traditions of mouth to ear to mouth familial heritage continue, today’s society inundated women with visual language to remind them that although they can challenge the traditions and their choice to participate, those same discarded ideals of how to act or perform will continue to tug at the shoulder. "

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.

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "When I left my parents to venture out into the world alone, my white privilege was stripped. While my racial background is not white, I was raised by white parents who had two biological children. Being raised this way afforded me the comfort and ability to pass through life with little to no danger of being hurt, being granted permission to be anywhere I wanted, never shut out because of my color. I still have access to many of those things because I am still my parents' daughter. I am however increasingly aware of the color of skin and how I am perceived in the context of being on my own, a single, bi/asexual artist. I also learned of my membership in a club of other people of color that I didn’t know I belonged, small and yet furiously protective of its members. A language of nods, shrugs, and eye to eye glances are a part of the language of the club, our nonverbal communication that validates our presence in a white world. much of the work this group does involves teaching and explaining why we exist as a unit separate from the world …

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.

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.

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.

Artist Statement from the MFA exhibition: In my recent work, I explore my identity as a first-generation American, using my painting practice to think about early memories of living in-between two cultures. These remembered moments allow a space for me to consider how both cultures merge. Portraying vivid memories through colorful recognizable objects and body parts, memories take on a new context, showing the passage of time, and reflecting on how memories take on new meaning. My desire to save these moments relates to my wish to name what makes me belong, and what marks me as unique, within the two cultures in which I exist.

Photographs from the MFA Exhibition "Draw Me Near" as shown at the Cora Stafford Gallery.

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "My work represents my personal experience with having learning differences such as Dyslexia, ADD, Auditory Processing Disorder, and others. I create pieces that reflect my thoughts, experiences, and the obstacles that I face daily. I utilize materials obtained from school desks as memories that reflect on the long periods of time we spend siting at desks in classrooms, during which we discover how to process information. To articulate these experiences, I create marks and drawings on recycled pieces of school desks. These marks indicate equations, words spelling, and information that mimics symbols from my own learning experience. Through the inclusion of hidden stones and drawings, I integrate positive associations and humor."

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.

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.

Through painting, I use materiality to describe the material world. By rooting my practice in visual culture and art history, I seek to extend the meaning of images beyond their initial form. The coalescing of opposing and complimentary formal elements accentuate the visual and contextual friction. This allows the work to exist in an ambiguous state. Seen together, my works appear disparate, but they suggest alternative meanings through association with one another. The works can exist on their own, but engage in dialogue when juxtaposed against each other. Although about specific occurrences, the works afford the viewer their own interpretations.

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..