Glen Shrum
BALTIMORE – Maryland Institute College of Art’s annual MFA in Studio Art Thesis Exhibition opens Tuesday, July 1 in the Meyerhoff and Decker galleries, Fox Building (1303 Mount Royal Avenue), and its First- and Second-Year Student Exhibition opens July 1 in Pinkard Gallery, Bunting Center (1401 Mount Royal Avenue). Free, public receptions take place Friday, July 11, 6-8 p.m. in the three galleries. Work is on view through Saturday, July 12.
MICA’s Summer MFA in Studio Art (MFA) allows experienced artists and educators to develop a professional body of work, a unique personal voice, and an expanded understanding of contemporary art through intensive, six-week summer residencies that are combined with independent work during the academic year and winter critique. Areas of concentration include painting, mixed media, sculpture/installation, and photo/digital media.
The seven artists who make up the class of 2008 have explored personal identity, urban culture, public space, and public roles. Some thesis projects ended up as discrete objects, some are gallery-based installations, and others are interventions in the city environment.
Billy Friebele
Billy Friebele explores the transitory nature of contemporary public space through video and sculpture. The central reference for Lisa Hill’s current work, which examines the effects of change over time within one’s identity, is skin. Her chosen medium is handmade paper formed from finely beaten, pigmented flax.
Hillary Hogue
Hillary Rumpel Hogue has made a series of paintings that illustrates and defines hidden and realized identities of the feminine psyche. Hogue says the identities began as half-developed, injured, or dormant parts of the psyche, but they have evolved into a hidden world of heroes, guides, deities, and shadows. Photographer Christopher Sims began his series on contemporary American military life shortly after the start of the war in Afghanistan. He photographs his subjects away from the battlefield, on military bases in the United States and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Glenn Shrum was trained as an architect, which informs his interest in perception and the lighted environment. A member of MICA’s faculty since 2001, his award-winning projects span disciplines of art and design. Wayne Toepp has made a series of paintings based on an investigation of the implications of surveillance technology in the current political climate. He has examined the disintegration of privacy through images culled from actual surveillance video. Tory Wright collects, reclaims, and reuses Duratrans (light box advertisements) and fragrance campaign posters seen within department stores as source material for her exploration of the intersection of fashion and consumerism.
Tory Wright
MICA’s galleries, which are free and open to the public, are open Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. They are closed on major holidays. For more information, go to the MICA MFAST 2008 Website.
