Consumerism and Death are both very political and ever present in our lives. Violence and death are seemingly on the rise, coinciding with the use of media as a distraction. It seems as though every time there is a catastrophic event, the president takes to social media to pick fights or make outlandish claims to distract the people from what is truly happening. Consumption of physical goods is another fixation heightened by the media and celebrities. For the average human, keeping up with social trends is the thing to do, and there is such a quick turn around with what item is considered “hot”. This way of living leads to mass production, leading to mass consumption, ending with mass waste. This societal residue of consumption is pushing us ever closer to mass extinction and we can’t seem to kick our wasteful habits. All of my work for my MFA show will be like encountering an ooey-gooey shiny glitter coated acid bomb. The viewers will be drawn in with the sweet scent of sugary treats and hypnotized by the bright sun-shiny colors, only to realize they’ve been distracted and an acidic tinge lingers in the air. The dark rippling undertones start to reveal themselves to the audience and suddenly we realize that it's not all fun and games. Behind the bright colors are dark truths ready to spew some truth juice into your blissed out mindset.

Painting and Intermedia arts

Glacial Warm investigates romantic, human relationships and our collective commitment to the environment we inhabit. A couple travels and settles into polar and tropical landscapes, gathering, taking shelter, and finding sustenance together. They build their climate, adapting to continuous change. Through glaciers melting, volcanoes hissing, whales breaching, and nude bodies touching and holding, I develop a painted mythology. Partnership is embodied through separate entities working together. Everyday tasks become intimate gestures. The tenderness of these gestures is rooted in their separation as individuals. Paint application is direct. What melts, drips. What freezes is preserved in cloudy impasto. A kiss is an oily smudge.

Space Camp sets sail on a Cruise to the Moon.

This work is regarded as casting symbolic spells: spells for the health of degraded prairie remnants, the thriving of bats, fearlessness, romantic love. Spells are a call for transformation, and images of transformation occur throughout the work - snakes molting, mummies decaying, insects in metamorphosis. Whether examining a construction site or the end of a relationship, the author is asking herself "when is change good and when is it catastrophic?" Right now the author is looking closely at punk, witchy contemporary artists like Rosy Keyser, Maria Loboda, Marisa Merz, Victor Man, and Sterling Ruby. The author is also influenced by artists who smash a lot of pictures together, or have an overwhelming "Google Image Search" aesthetic like Isa Genzken, Anne de Vries, and Camille Henrot. At the same time, the author is drawn to old, mysterious, precious things (Viking runes, Taureg amulets, Hilma af Klint paintings, archaeological digs) and have an abiding love of altarpieces, medieval objects, Botticelli, and Van der Weyden. Depictions of the Expulsion from the Garden serve as regular references. In them, the author finds an entwinement of her interest in ecological and romantic upheaval and a relationship to the body and touch that is both tender and precarious. The author wants to make the work that's about all the inexhaustible things: love, death, history, sex, mysticism, family, nature. It's not there yet, but she is working to make them happen.

I do not know what inspires me to use geometric shapes in my artwork. It may have started when I took my first jewelry and metalworking class in college. For one assignment, I had to find an artist and make an artwork that was inspired by his artworks. I choose is Sol Lewitt because I simply liked his opened cubes. Since I started studying in Jewelry and Metalwork and Sculpture at the University of Iowa, I my artworks are still based on geometric shapes. I enjoy them because they are shapes that I see around me everyday; such as textbooks, chairs, doors etc. In my thesis, I will explain my artworks and the techniques that I used, why I made them, what inspired me. My first semester, I just made containers which were based on geometric shapes. After that my ideas and concepts evolved to a simple object based on geometric shapes with no function. A simple geometric object without a function is better for exploring beautiful geometric. Firstly, I find a subject that I can use my ideas and concepts on. It can be something that I see everyday such as myself, faucet, jewelry etc. Sometimes, I find an interesting thing in textbooks, magazines and catalogs. Other times, I find them when I buy materials for my artworks; just shopping at the hardware. There are many things around me that I could use to create my artworks. I just choose some of them to make art and finish assignments.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture.

These paintings are a record of my recent past, a past with a new son, major life shifts, big decisions and risks. These paintings are a record of my distant past, of my relationship with my father and siblings. These paintings are a record of my present, my relationship to art, current, past, good and bad. These paintings are both joyful and cathartic, simple and confusing. They are about my life, and my attempt to not repeat the mistakes of the past, but to try create joys for the future.

In my whole working, I have always wanted to identify myself through the visualization of images from the ideal thought. The skillful manipulation of physical materials enables my work to reflect the innocent willingness of humanity's struggle to create and achieve. Thus I choose to create work that demands intensive labor and technological excellence, combined with the tradition of Oriental craftsmanship, in its fabrication. In the 1990s, when I had my first solo exhibition, I was deeply involved with life modeling in a realistic style, exploring and questioning "human" themes like anxiety, pain, self-marginalization and the other. Since 2000, I have been working on manipulation and transformation of objects and materiality. Solid metal is finally reborn into totally new images after being cut into pieces, welded with electricity, severed with gas, and finally polished. I found that the aggressive involvement of the artists' idea could transform the existing materiality and defy the reputation of metal as rock-hard and cold. The newly appearing or sometimes transformed forms hold another perception different from the old one. I have developed my artistic identity by establishing my own viewpoint in relation to the labor-intensive fabrication process, while recognizing my position as an activist. In these days, my interest is wood-work through accumulating pieces with used woods. I still find various thought and image from another work in my working.

The hypothesis that this project aims to investigate is this: That through the arrangement of letterforms in space, a graphic designer can manipulate this voice in order to deliver a nuanced impression of language as it is intended to be heard. As a graphic designer, my job is to communicate meaning visually. When my choice of typography aids in the assignment of proper tone of voice to words, communication is made more clear. In the typographic studies I've created in the course of this exploration, I've tried to establish the pitch, tone, and volume of typographic voice by manipulating how words look. I've created compositions that explore how we see and hear language through typography, in order to assemble data that supports my hypothesis.