Master of Fine Arts Exhibition at CSU

I can’t let an MFA show come and go without a word or two.  And this one’s been up for a month so it’s about time, right?  Arguably these exhibits present the best new talent of our region, poised to be launched into the greater Art World.  I won’t argue with that:  the work on exhibit now at the University Art Museum is confident and thoughtful-  but only a few works really made my heart sing.  Here are my three favorite artists from CSU’s Spring 2010 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition.  What were yours?  Comment with your own best-of-MFA picks.

Sara Goldenberg White, "Refractions" (installation view).

Sara Goldenberg White

White’s Fiber installation Refractions (2009-10) contextualizes her textile pieces as an “underwater environment,” with the long cloths and organic scrunched forms hung in a tranquil blue alcove replete with booming oceanic soundtrack.  Although i’s a pleasant and meditative way to encounter the work I’m not totally sold on it as an under-the-sea vignette.  My feeling is that White overemphasizes the marine reference:  pounding the message home with the install, where she could trust the viewer to appreciate this reference intrinsic to the forms.  Which are very fine taken on their own.  Her palette comes from the red tones absorbed by the ocean, so that the piece “highlights the colors of absorption, inverting our usual view of the ocean.”  I was best able to appreciate this in the vertical cloths:  the subtle shift from wine-red into plum, into gold was shown to full effect here; so was all the richness and nuance of the weave.  In the scrunched forms-  wrinkled cylinders like tube worm shells- color and medium seem less important than the biomorphic metaphor.  Because they seem like creatures to me, I wonder about if they could be arranged to interact more.  Dispersed separately throughout the alcove, they seem a little passive.  What if they were piled and clustered together the way tube worms or corals are?

Bart Mills, "Focused Meditation" (detail).

Bart Mills

Of Mills’ three mixed media pieces, the only one not working for me is the single figurative piece.  The other two canvases rely on physical surface rather than depiction; and they’re stronger for it.  Mills seemingly acknowledges that this is where his strength lies- in the making of physical objects which are psychologically connotative.  In his artist statement he explains, “My interest is in making contemplative work.  The work requires the viewer to participate with patience, allowing time to reflect and let thoughts wander instead of directly decoding something that fits neatly into verbal language.”  Mills’ square canvas Untitled (2009) is visually simple at first:  it might be a section of bisque-colored plaster wall.  But the longer you look at it, the more variation you see; and you begin to infer a long history and sense of place from the stains and uneven fading, the cracks and rough patches.

Focused Meditation (2009)  similarly appears as an aged relic. Raised letters cover the the surface of the long horizontal canvas in uninterrupted rows:  meaningful phrases can be made out, but no spaces and no punctuation, so the text is evasive.  The whole surface is corroded and peeling, as if the letters are stamped in what is now badly rusted metal.  In some places they give way altogether to a crusty deposit, so one can imagine the eventual obliteration of the text.

Farrell Tompkins, "Self-Portrait Grid" (detail).

Farrell Tompkins

Farrell chooses a stance as “the quiet observer of the world around me.”  Indeed, her self portraits are powerfully quiet: whispery apparitions that force the viewer to hold very still and look closely.  She presents herself in classic three-quarter profile, rendered variously in fragile line etching, or subtlly colored block prints.  In Self-Portrait Map she draws selectively, using a minimal contour line to choose what information she’ll share, and what to hold back.  Her block printing palette is also designed to veil as much as reveal:  in Self-Portrait Grid she all but disappears in nine almost white-on-white panels.  Tomkins recognizes a metaphorical function in the process of reductive block printing.  What comes across is the individual reduced to a quiet presence.  The artist is frank about the distillation that results from translating her initial drawings into a prints, a process in which layers of color and shape are isolated, thus abstracted from the whole image.  “…I intend to raise questions as to whether the viewer can ever know my personal psychological truth….  The manipulation of abstract shapes causes a sense of separation between the viewer and the artist, and ultimately underscores my role as creator of my own image.”

The Master of Fine Arts Exhibition is on exhibit at the University Art Museum through June 12.