Tr ansl ation less
Maris Souza
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Tr ansl ation less explores the conflicts of language and memory within my personal life.
Fine Art
Enclosing Spaces
Arden Craft
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Enclosing Spaces focuses on encompassing space, transparency, material ambiguity and environment.
Finding Sacred Space
Benjamin Scott-Brandt
Grand Valley State University
An adult student returning to college in mid-life, I bring a slow and curious perspective to my studies. My major is Liberal Studies, which allows me to integrate religious studies, philosophy, sociology, and psychology as I research various iterations of “sacred space,” my focus area.
Research in Contemporary Drawing Practices
Sutton Allen
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
In this research I explored various methods of generating disparate imagery, taking iPhone pictures, found imagery, photographs my peers collected, or online pictures.
Highlights from previous editions
Confronting Internalized Transphobia My Own and Society's
Kaci Sullivan
Madison Area Technical College
This series emphatically insists on spectrums in a binary world. While I consciously know there isn’t anything wrong with being transgender—that there’s absolutely no shame in it, this knowledge hasn’t protected me from internalizing all the transphobic messages integrated into every aspect of our “progressive” society. Glittering glass slivers, they dig in deep, prepared to stay a lifetime. So I decided to sit with myself. Naked. In front of a mirror and canvas. I would paint my body until it became one grounded, plein-air-inspired stroke after another. Until I accepted that it’s a perfectly valid body. This journey isn’t mine alone. This series challenges viewers to address their own internalized transphobia. To ask themselves again, “What does it mean to be transgender?” or “What does a normal body even look like?” and most importantly “Maybe I should expand how I think about gender and sex.”
Mixed Media Collection
Jacob Smith
Westminster College
This body of work reflects on the two-dimensionality of visual art, specifically in the realm of illustration, painting, and digital art. The pieces address the increasingly strict guidelines imposed on the artistic community, what it means to be an artist, and how we define art. Furthermore, the body of work questions the temporality of visual art, specifically in a physical form. The work is very important to me as it illustrates much of my world view: people and places exist as different from one another, but have the ability and propensity to blend, interact, and harmonize.
1 in 4
Audrey Miklitsch
University of Denver
The statistic that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted has been repeated over and over again. I wanted to create a piece that allowed women to react to their experience with sexual assault. Through the Red Tape Project at the University of Denver, as well as my own friends and family, I found a variety of women to participate in the piece. Some participants chose to do it together, while others made their creation in private. Each participant was given six cardboard squares. They were simply told to react to their experience using the squares. They could do anything they wanted to the squares, with the only requirement that at least one shred of cardboard was left. They could add things, build things, take things away, draw, write, paint, whatever they wanted. It was powerful to see the similarity of the women’s reactions. The piece is also interactive when it is displayed. Viewers can pick the pieces up and as each piece is put back down in a different spot, the individual experience becomes woven together.
My Paintings Would Be No Different than a Picture in a Biology Textbook
Andi Kur
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
I find that there are innate balances in life, universal dichotomies that permeate our understanding of the world. My paintings are about a duality such as this that exists between art and science. We are told from youth that these subjects are poles in constant strain, as miscible as oil in water. I spent thirteen years in school believing that I must choose between the two, that it is unnecessary to carry both with me. Drawn between a distinct love of each, I realized how vehemently I disagreed. Everything: every rock to every tree to every person is suspended between the two and therefore requires both to be fully understood.