John Halligan

John Halligan

Inhibition

2020

Holly

16" x 9" x 5"

March 11th a little before 1 am I laid on a table in the sculpture studio thinking about what if this is was one of the last late nights I spend here this semester. Less than 12 hours later shit hit the fan and it ended up being the last night. I couldn't process much over the first 2 weeks as my sleep schedule descended into madness. I tried drawing but it just was not the same for me, i felt trapped in my box of an apartment. This piece is a representation of life inhibiting my art practice and having us all in a stranglehold that is out of our control.

Nate Robison

Nate Robison
Congregation of The Damned
2020
Sculpey, acrylic paint, dismantled toys and statuettes, photography, whatever device the piece is being displayed on becomes part of the piece
1920 x 1080 px

Most of my interactions and relationships now happen entirely over Zoom, a service I had never even heard of before quarantine. Many of my pre-COVID close relationships seemed to have a momentous quality to them, like something deeply profound, intimate and unknowable was happening. Now that those relationships have been moved onto Zoom, there is a feeling of deflation sometimes, as human relationships are parsed down to two senses, with hiccups and glitches in between.

I wanted to make five characters that, while goofy in their own ways, seem to belong in some inter-dimensional cult, with their own dark rituals. By moving their meeting onto Zoom, the character's relationships and personalities have triviality and humiliation thrown over them, boiling what would have been a really dramatic scene down to a screen with five boxes.

The piece is any computer that fullscreens the image. I did the emails because I really like having supporting documents for the worlds my pieces are a part of.

Here's the full size:

Doff Pantaloon

Doff Pantaloon

Useless Sound Machine 002

2020

Concrete, brick, metal pail, wire, rope

24" x 48" x 24"

I'm interested in the feelings that materials generate in us through the use of our senses. The rhythm and motion is calming to me, like a bell tolling in a distant town while out for a walk on a sunny day. The materials on the other hand are coarse, hard, unforgiving and cold. The visual tension is stressful but the rhythmic strumming is hypnotic. I have been interested lately in combining as many senses into my work as possible with elements of sound, motion and texture. How do these materials and their combination make you feel?

Esther Lee

Attraction
2020

Mixed media:

paper, thread, twine, wood, mulberry paper, paint, watercolor, candle
72"x82"x90"


I was inspired to make an ethereal atmosphere of butterflies after watching a show that held a symbolic meaning of the butterfly. I was never into butterflies, but these days I find it to be so beautiful and delicate. And in order to create that feeling I tore paper into the simple shape of a butterfly. An important factor of this sculpture would be the Korean traditional lantern. The butterflies are swarming around this one source of light.  For the lantern I decided to leave two sides open and instead add flowers.

Sami Lupacchino

Samantha Lupacchino

Guess the Embarrassing Family Member

2020

plastic, paper, tape, glue, ink, paint

2.5" x 9.5" x 12"

We all know the average game called Guess Who? but has there ever been different versions of the game? Of course, having a strong connection between my family and I, I wanted to create my own version of this game I used to play when I was little. Adding my family members to this was my inspiration especially making this a collaborative piece by asking them to send embarrassing photographs of themselves in order to put it into this board game. Creating this piece gave myself a lot of reflection especially around this time during a pandemic and being thankful for those that I love most even when we are distant and cannot see one another. This piece will be one memory to never be forgotten.

Mathea Madsen

Mathea Madsen

Homeward Bound

2020

Thread, block prints, photocopies, glue

33" x 42.5"

Homeward Bound is a representation of the fragile comfort that comes with dreaming about a future. Featuring personal letters, and block printed houses, this piece is a quilt made of paper. There is something nostalgic and comforting about quilts, usually passed down, becoming worn overtime through use. It is the same with writing letters, it calls back to a past communication we often overlook in our busy world. In a conversation with my last piece, Homefront, these two works are two different sides of one coin. Whereas Homefront was about the fear and uncertainty that comes with the future, Homeward Bound is about the hope and romantic notions that come when we begin to dream. Although paper is fragile and could be torn, it often withstands the test of time. This quilt can not be used in a traditional sense; it is a symbol, something to tuck away in an attic and be remembered and thought about during our darkest times. Although the world can be uncertain and scary, there is always room to dream of days to come, and there is a sense of comfort inherently in that act. 

Deanna Marino

Heavenly Bodies parts I & II
Deanna Marino, April 2020

These gowns have been my first foray into fabric arts and material design. They embody my love of grandeur and fantasy and marry it with theatricality and performance art. Over the course of these two gowns I went from never having used a sewing machine to crafting full unique patterns that function and wear like standard clothing. I will be updating with subsequent iterations as they come.

Jeff Kim

Jeff Kim

Deer

2020

Tree Branches, Metal Screws

95” X 114” X 35”

As a child I grew up in different cities in the U.S. like New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Because of this I never saw wild animals in their natural environments. Now that I live in an area where animals roam around my backyard, I get to enjoy nature and be a part of the habitat. A family of deer visits my backyard every morning to forage on my bushes. The bushes are bare by the end of winter but it’s worth it to watch my forest friends thrive. I also get visited by foxes, raccoons, possums, skunks, rabbits and squirrels. This piece is inspired by my backyard habitat to show that we can live in harmony.

Colin Shakespeare

Colin Shakespeare

Wastelanders Shop

2020

6x4x6

Steel, Tires, Repurposed scrap

The Wastelanders Shop is an exploration piece with repurposed materials. In order to keep to the specific theme of a broken down rag tad sort of shop the materials selected were already run down items themselves. Torn upholstery, rusty wheels all help create the environment where this lives. Although the initial intent of this piece was to create a functioning vehicle, it later because about creating a cohesive environment. I image many different types of torn apart and half put together wasteland vehicles, tools, work stations, and other decorations taking up an entire room space that allows you to walk into and through a continuous wasteland workshop.

Catherine McKnight

Catherine McKnight

Silence

2020

7' x 6' x 12'

Aluminum and Steel

Silence is a representation of people's voices being taken away by other people, more specifically relating to victims. It is for anyone who has felt trapped and couldn't speak out. Silence could mean a lot of different things to people and I didn't want to confine them to what it meant to me. So even though I went into this project with this meaning I decided when creating this that I wanted it to be very simplistic with how the room looked, I wanted a very clean white room so when people walked in there was nothing there to distract them. I wanted them to feel their own emotions when walking into this room and I wanted the simplicity of the room to amplify their emotions so they could have their own experience, therefore making the space unique to anyone who walked in.

Nate Robison

Nate Robison
Madlib Tombstone
2020
27 x 15 x 1 1/2 inches
Sandblasted granite slab, acrylic paint, sticky notes and sharpie


For my first sculpture project this year, I wanted to make what is best described as a madlib tombstone. The concept started when I got a scrapped slab of polished granite from Troy Granite. I wanted to make a tombstone full of blanks, so that those blanks could be filled with any details by any person, to eulogize themselves. In my own experiences with the mourning and funerary process, I think people have a tendency to be unrealistically positive, and as a result they sterilize the memory and identity of their loved one. Trite sayings like, "They brought joy to all who were lucky enough to meet them" inadvertently strips dignity from the person being memorialized. This piece is, in a way, a manifestation of my own fears of how I will be remembered. I do not want to be a scrubbed, sanitized obituary. I want myself, and my loved ones, to be remembered for flaws, for things that no one else has. To me, love is paying attention and understanding, not idolizing.

I chose bright colors to give a feeling of childishness, and a bit of ironic joy. I also wanted it to feel like a person injecting humanity into an otherwise sterile ordeal. I wanted to evoke the bright, sun-bleached stone of Salvation Mountain in California.

Jeffrey Churchman

Jeffrey Churchman

release

2020

Steel, Aluminum, String

6' x 4' x 3'

The act of removing one from another. 

The polished aluminum and rusted steel do not represent good and bad.

They represent a difference.

Together they could not exist, they had to break through.

They do not stray far, they stay close enough to love and far enough away not to hurt.

Mathea Madsen

Mathea Madsen
Homefront
2020
steel, charcoal
24" x 30" x 24"


With the future comes uncertainty. "Homefront" explores the hope and fear that comes with a future that is directly tied to an active duty military member. The house itself is modeled after a dream farmhouse that I one day hope to occupy and fix up, it represents an idyllic future I wish to share with my boyfriend. Although all plans are subject to change, this piece is about building a beautiful future that can only be attained by working through a period of anxiety and violence, as the very nature of his job is war. This dream is fragile, and fear and worries threaten to destroy it, while also being an unavoidable obstacle in the journey to achieve the dream itself. "Homefront" is a home, made of unforgiving and cold steel, this house is the shadow of the dream. It is the shell of a dream that could be lost, but also the foundation of what will be. The burnt charcoal words are a stream of consciousness, pouring out every worry and fear onto its walls, facing outward, raw and vulnerable. Nomenclature, words of love, and repetition are the direct embodiments of every anxiety. "Homefront" is an expression of fear, but a fear that is worth the dream itself. Sometimes the things that scare us the most lead us to something beautiful.