A Tese Confissões | Não | Declaradas apresenta um conjunto de experimentos poéticos realizados entre 2011 e 2015, cujo foco toma o corpo - para além do masculino e feminino - como subjetividade encarnada. Neles estão incorporadas tanto as investigações no campo das práticas artísticas quanto as reflexões no plano conceitual. A criação de campos sensórios em desenhos, esculturas, fotografias, gravuras e videoperformances refere-se às práticas artísticas. Já o desenvolvimento ensaístico do texto sobre as noções de corpo e sua conversão em imagem - de subjetividade como objeto de encarnação e de corpo fluido em estado artístico - remete ao plano conceitual em que os resultados dos experimentos poéticos se rebatem e se multiplicam. Como desdobramento disso, ainda são desencadeadas ideias sobre questões de gênero na interação erótica e, numa outra perspectiva, são desenvolvidas reflexões sobre o sujeito múltiplo metaestável como resultante de um processo de individuação contínuo. A metodologia que está na base dos experimentos poéticos é a pesquisa da sensação, porém empreendida com o objetivo de criar zonas estéticas capazes de dissolver formas corporais culturalmente crista / This thesis, entitled Confessions | Not | Declared, presents a series of artistic experiments conducted between 2011 and 2015, focusing on the human body beyond the categories of male and female, taken as embodied subjectivity. These experiments embody both artistic practice-based research and theoretical considerations. Artistic practice refers to the creation of sensory fields in drawings, sculptures, photographs, prints and video performances. The theoretical analysis examined some notions of the human body converted into image: the notion of incarnated subjectivity and the notion of a flowing body in artistic state, and how these concepts related to the artistic experimentation. Furthermore, both ideas on gender issues in erotic interaction and, from a different perspective, reflections on a metastable, multiple subject resulting from a continuous process of individuation, were considered. Sensation research was the methodology underpinning the artistic experiments. With this approach, aesthetic zones were created that dissolved culturally constructed notions of human body forms, and the images produced, rather than mere images, were infused with story-telling power.

Apresento um conjunto de figuras - construídas através do desenho, fotografia e gravura- que movem um imaginário de seres e lugares, em trânsito entre o olhar, a memória e o sonho. A forma é proposta em sua materialidade e em correspondência a seus referentes. O enfrentamento de questões técnicas e poéticas está presente necessariamente na realização de cada trabalho e no trânsito entre eles. Da necessidade de invenção das figuras operam o entendimento e as ações em sua construção. O estudo e experimentação dos meios empregados no trabalho constituem-se nesse escopo. Proponho que toda manifestação se singularize e abra-se ao cotejamento, no tempo, entre diversas manifestações. Nesse sentido, permeiam-se as figuras, os meios construtivos e seu imaginário. Imaginar e figurar como sentimento e ação em si e no mundo. / I present a body of artwork - build through drawing, photography and printmaking -that move an imagery of beings and places in transit between the perception, the memory and the dream. The form is proposed in its materiality and in correlation to its referents. The confrontation between technical and poetic matters is necessarily present in the making of each work and the movement among them. It is from the need for the invention of each piece of work that the understanding and the actions through the construction work. The study and experimentation with the media applied in the process are within the scope of this work. I propose that each manifestation is singled out and then cross analyzed, in time, with the other manifestations. This way each work permeates imagination and media. Imagining and figuring as feeling and action in itself and the world.

De prata e de tinta tem como corpo principal um álbum com 25 pranchas de impressões originais de imagens fotográficas produzidas em sistema digital entre 2011 e 2013 e procura ressaltar como a aproximação a este meio viabilizou a junção de valores relativos à luz, aos pigmentos e ao suporte em obras que investigam os limites da subtração da cor para que o espaço possa se revelar nas modulações de cinzas. / Of silver and ink comprises a main body of 25 original prints of digital photographic images produced between 2011 and 2013. This piece seeks to highlight the use of the photographic medium to blend values relative to light, pigment and the support. These prints investigate the extent to which the subtraction of color can unveil the presence of space from increasingly grayer modulations.

Apresento um conjunto de figuras - construídas através do desenho, fotografia e gravura- que movem um imaginário de seres e lugares, em trânsito entre o olhar, a memória e o sonho. A forma é proposta em sua materialidade e em correspondência a seus referentes. O enfrentamento de questões técnicas e poéticas está presente necessariamente na realização de cada trabalho e no trânsito entre eles. Da necessidade de invenção das figuras operam o entendimento e as ações em sua construção. O estudo e experimentação dos meios empregados no trabalho constituem-se nesse escopo. Proponho que toda manifestação se singularize e abra-se ao cotejamento, no tempo, entre diversas manifestações. Nesse sentido, permeiam-se as figuras, os meios construtivos e seu imaginário. Imaginar e figurar como sentimento e ação em si e no mundo. / I present a body of artwork - build through drawing, photography and printmaking -that move an imagery of beings and places in transit between the perception, the memory and the dream. The form is proposed in its materiality and in correlation to its referents. The confrontation between technical and poetic matters is necessarily present in the making of each work and the movement among them. It is from the need for the invention of each piece of work that the understanding and the actions through the construction work. The study and experimentation with the media applied in the process are within the scope of this work. I propose that each manifestation is singled out and then cross analyzed, in time, with the other manifestations. This way each work permeates imagination and media. Imagining and figuring as feeling and action in itself and the world.

Points of Contention, an MFA exhibit, features fifteen works of relief-printed images from carved linoleum and layers of type printed with antique letterpress wood type. The work constitutes a visual exploration of dissatisfaction and disenchantment presented through the context of odd stories in the news and major current events, such as election politics and the closing of Hostess bakeries, as well as, NSA data collection and gun violence. This supporting thesis explores the conceptual and physical processes of creating the pieces, including researching other artists who have wrestled with similar topics and produced their own unique reaction and resolution through art. The paper also discusses the technical and mechanical side of the artistic process, especially the anachronistic attraction to the methods of letterpress and printmaking in a digital age. Finally, this thesis chronicles the artist’s sources of inspiration from cartoon monsters and brand mascots during childhood to letterpress printmaking.

The artist discusses the work for his Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, Mind under Matter, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, Tennessee. Exhibition dates are from March 27th through April 5th 2017. ‘Matter under Mind’ explores the balance of control and non-control within the art-making process. This technique creates an automatic dialogue resulting in abstraction guided by the subconscious. The title ‘Matter under Mind’ is a slight play on the phrase ‘mind over matter’ emphasizing how matter/material is manipulated by the mind through the making of artwork, and within the mind’s eye or imagination. The video installation featuring the work is accompanied by a soundscape to bring the viewer deeper into the creative process. The video symbolizes the idea of ‘solve et coagula’ or, dissolve and coagulate, destroy to recreate by revealing how the process of cleaning paint off of a surface creates artwork in itself.

Potential alliances between queers and animals populate queer scholarship, while dominant culture has relegated both groups to similar sites of subjugation and abjection. My work presents utopic visions crafted from these shared sites of marginalization and asks how they can enable new biopolitical communities. I ask: can we co-habitate, with non-human animals, these particular sites of marginalization in a manner that enables cross-species, affective solidarity? And can this co-habitation also encourage ruptures within heteronormative and human-centric paradigms? Rescuing the subjectivity and cultures of animals from extent subjugations can build new multispecies communities that are essential in an era of environmental devastation and climate change. Through printmaking, installation and time-based media, I explore real, psychological and metaphorical environments of cross-species encounters.

This body of work explores multiple technical and aesthetic methods of representing complex statistical information in an approachable visual language, bridging the boundaries between data science, graphic design and fine arts. Ordinary data charts are combined together with other charts and diagrams and transformed in unexpected ways in order to form the basic structure of mythical landscape scenes. Line plots over time become the rising and falling curves of hills and mountains, bar charts are morphed into industrial factories on the horizon, and bubble charts become billowing smoke, a forest of trees, or a school of fish. The hope is that the work will act as an engaging alternative to traditional data representation and will encourage curiosity and a fresh perspective.

Through sculpture and drawing, I create my own versions of natural specimens primarily based upon the visual unity of disparate organisms. Invented specimens are composed using a variety of processes employing a mixture of atypical materials following the (20th, 21st century) Postmodern shift away from formalist and traditional uses of any singular medium. As well as a variety of art materials, the specimens are hybrids of organic and biomorphic elements, blurring boundaries between botanical, animal, fungal, metal, and mineral. Is my approach perhaps like Charles Darwin, observant and studious naturalist, or am I more like Dr. Frankenstein, science fiction maker of monstrosities?

Defining Moments / A Life Portrait In his MFA Thesis Exhibition, Defining Moments / A Life Portrait, Timothy Haerens explores and celebrates our connectedness to one another as members of the human race. “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” Haerens chose this quote from the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, as the inspiration for his show because it affirms his belief that we are linked to one another by virtue of our humanness. Through his abstract paintings on canvas and plexiglass, as well as through his prints and collagraphs, Haerens reflects on many facets of life – the sweet and sour moments we experience as part of the human condition. His art elicits an internal dialogue in an attempt to better understand himself and the world around him.