Aaron Tennessee Benson

As a child wrestles with a balloon, twisting and moving the volume that is trapped inside, these form studies visually seem to grow with an ever-expanding volume developing inside. The manipulation of space impacts both the interior and exterior spaces. The smooth, swollen forms, as if frozen in a moment of movement, arch and bend, hovering on the pedestals. The space around each form is charged as the swells undulate and tuck from every angle.

Alexander Pate 

I am an object maker with my work coming from a place of material exploration, it is the exploration that often defines the work. In my work, there is a flow of conscious control and subconscious release. 

For me, this is a constant exercise of trusting my instincts and training to allow the forms to grow and evolve.  

To immediately understand an artwork is disappointing. I do not provide something with a direct narrative, but something meant to start a narrative. Through a lens of non-objectivity my work does not contain one meaning or way of being understood, but millions. 

Anthony Crisafulli

I close my eyes, and I see work fully formed. I sit in silence, and I hear full symphonies. Every detail of a work of art is all but made before it is started. Then I do a quick drawing to capture what I just experienced. This drawing never changes, even if I do. Deep in thought, I recoil within myself, not to discover its meaning but rather breathe it in, like a fresh spring morning, like a newborn child. I resist naming it until it tells me its name and why it is here, and I become the concept, and it becomes the Artist.  

Chiong-Yiao Chen

I have longed to know the life beyond the locale where I was born and raised. Whenever I travel, I observe keenly and document obsessively, intending to capture a slice of the surrounding life and to feel the wonderment of the other land, its local colors, and its vibe. I have savored the remains of ancient glories and bathed in the aura of modern-built human marvels. Making these images is a sojourner’s attempt to define the meaning of already lived moments and to make concrete the ineffable. 

Daniel Leonardos

Serif-8 is a board game that sets players at a space station in the year of 2551. The theme reinforces the feeling of insecurity towards exploring the unknown and leaving the comfort zone. Such feelings relate to designers when first entering the industry. Players work together and compete to survive in orbit for one year by taking and managing a variety of freelance design jobs in the station. The goal behind this product is to help students, faculty and professional designers explore new paradigms of the relationship between client and designer. 

Joseph Reynolds 

These photographs describe the shared experience of living in the small Brazilian town of Cristalândia. Cristalândia is a mining town whose mining no longer sustains it, and it is shared human experience – not economic opportunity – that holds the town together. As a Brazilian who has never lived in Brazil, my shared experience with the land and people of Cristalândia allows me to belong there even though I live in the US. I use the view camera of the19 century because it is slow and demands collaboration. Photography becomes a catalyst for building relationships, utilizing curiosity in one another to overcome difference.  

Kristin Husainy

Underlying themes of my work are within the acknowledgement and documentation of daily personal activities or interactions that often turn into the peaceful rituals of any given day. Within these themes, I am interested visually and conceptually in the conversation that happens with intermingling entities such as, strong and gentle, simple yet complex, sensual yet uncomfortable, delicate and eternal… the list goes on. My goal is to look for, and find relationships that exist between these seemingly divergent combinations. 

Lisa Kirch

Dr. Kirch is a specialist in the art of Early Modern Northern Europe. Her particular field is court visual culture in sixteenth-century Germany. The link below introduces her latest study on forgotten women artists. 

https://artherstory.net/the-calendar-and-the-cat-lady/

Martin A. Arnold

For many, art making is about self-expression…for me it is about discovery.  Each subject is an aperture providing yet another unique glimpse at the human condition.  

I am not a storyteller; I am loath to provide some pre-digested, graphical monologue. Instead, I leave observers little else to contemplate than the stark humanity of my subjects.  

Ultimately, I wish to prod, to provoke viewers into considering the things that are truly important. I do not concern myself with pleasing observers or with getting paid. I paint to feed my creative obsession, to probe what it really means to be human and to celebrate our myriad human diversities. 

Parker Seward 

Jean Baudrillard defined Hyperreality as a simulation of something which never really existed. As an artist working in the style of hyperrealism, I seek to create fabricated moments of time that when translated through paint, resemble a photograph while still maintaining a sense of ambiguity. My paintings focus on a very temporary instance — the split second when a photograph is taken. By painting it on a large scale, I can immortalize this imagined moment in time and seemingly elevate its significance. In this way, I am able to comment on Baudrillard’s definition of “hyperreality” by combining multiple photographs to form a single image, resulting in the depiction of an impossible observation. 

Robert Rausch

Robert was raised in a small rural southern town. Struggling with a speech impediment and dyslexia, traditional schooling for him was difficult. With an eye for balance and beauty, his work deals with identity, the desires, and dreams that make us who we are. 

Whether a real-life story or weaved into a fable, identity and equality are explored in Robert’s photographs. Using himself as a subject, he illustrates stories of desire and conflicts, the opposite of good and evil, and the basic idea of right or wrong. 

Suzanne Duvall

Dr. Suzanne Duvall is strongly committed to special needs art education for students with autism. Her current focus is teaching an interactive online art appreciation course designed to engage local, national, and international UNA students with art in an indiviually meaningful way. 

Tara Bullington

I find solace in drawing when I am completely void of creativity or vision. When inspiration eludes me there is always beauty to be found in the weight of a line, in the transient shadow cast by a thin wire. 
 
These two works are the starting point for a 25-piece series that I am developing. There is no meaning or underlying theme to be discovered, the work is purely autonomous, and I am making use of the mediums with which I am at ease. The work is merely an attempt to exercise my creativity in a time when the muse has forsaken me.