I combine maternal feminist experiences with hand-built ceramic vessels to create functional ritual objects. Pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood transformed me. I am not just “mother" but also “artist” and “woman:” this multiplicity is intersubjectivity. I reconciled my conflicting priorities through my art with authentic testimony, memorialization, and activism. Rich red earthenware is clothed with rhythmic, radial pinch marks and stylized floral illustrations. Pottery has a strong association with the body, combining naturally with corporeal forms. My installation and performance pieces use the pot's function as a conceptual vehicle. Perhaps a little solemn reflection kneeling before Vessel of the Female Spirit or listening by Fountain will make my viewers better stewards of their selves, the mothers in their lives, and this precious planet.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "My work about place attachment and the physical markers within the landscape that I consider home - Minnesota. I am interested in space and place and where those two things intersect. Using a limited color palette, metalsmithing and enameling techniques, texture, drawing, and photographs, I imbue my work with the memories of the landscape. My work is about experiencing space and is meant to bring pause -a moment of quiet and calm.."

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.

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "I create figurative sculptures that explore the anxieties and rituals of acceptance. These sculptures embody ambiguous, self-referential narratives that act as a resolution between myself and my anxieties. My work is primarily ceramic because clay is an extremely intuitive medium, allowing me to explore the figure from both an emotional aesthetic and an anatomical scrutiny. I am also interested in multiplicity and its visual relation to habits and rituals. Repetition can be a very calming activity, but it can cause adverse effects as well. I am interested in that fine line between compulsive and compulsory."

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "In my artwork I explore my concept of home in relation to my memories growing up in the border cities of Juarez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas. Being a young immigrant, the only constants in my life were my sense of home and the common landscape on both sides of the border. In order to create a connection of that time and place, I investigate materials that are symbolic to my Mexican heritage and my life in the United States through the combination of traditional handwork and digital fabrication. I utilize various materials such as clay and corn husks, unifying them through the formal elements of value, line, and shape. My work becomes abstracted to symbolize the passage of time and the way in which our memories are imperfect representations of events."

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "My work merges craft and queer iconography to reflect on my journey of is covering identity in the absence of a positive sexual role model. It has resulted in a body of work that is heavy with sex-toy imagery, and explores multiple disciplines including quilting, soft sculpture, crochet, and printmaking. Through this exploration of material, I humorously combine wholesome and taboo imagery in order to reclaim and confront sexual commodity, an industry that is heavily dominated by male pleasure. While questioning my own constructed identity, I use humor as a defense mechanism to ease into the conversation of Queer identity and the Queer female gaze."