Only the Beginning: USF MFA Exhibit

Only the Tip: 2016 USF MFA Graduation Exhibition

Through May 7. USF Contemporary Art Museum. 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa. 813-974-4133. ira.usf.edu.

Artists in USF’s interdisciplinary MFA program don’t have to stick with one medium for the entire time; they can experiment with whatever they want. As a result, the thesis exhibit features a wide range of media including painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, neon, found objects, sculpture and animation.

Entering USF's Contemporary Art Museum, Gary Schmitt’s monolithic, obelisk-like vinyl sculptures immediately greet you. Looking like an elongated boat cushion, the largest tower, Love Can Be So Cold, dons an embroidered Maltese portrait on the front and a melted ice cube tattooed on the backside. Schmitt employs satire by juxtaposing customized vinyl seats, like in souped-up cars or motorcycles, with more sentimental topics like a puppy or love. His works destabilize hierarchy of emotions, simultaneously displaying vulnerability while softly poking fun at it, with the melting ice cube as a cutesy symbol for real emotional struggle.

Heading clockwise through the gallery, you’ll find Merritt Fletcher Evripidou’s little nook full of her hanging and crawling mixed-media sculptures. Originally from Alabama, this artist celebrates everything that nature in the South has to offer using glitter, iridescent pen shell fragments, wood, paint, tufts of fiber and other indecipherable materials. The 13 suspended sculptures resemble cypress knees poking out of the water, with their reflections mirrored beneath them, and the viewer put just below the water level (though these hangings are equally reminiscent of stalactites found in caves). Beneath them are three anthropomorphic, earthy mounds walking on stubby cypress knees. The color palette of these sculptures adds to the mystical quality of the dream-like installation the artist has created.

Approaching Sasha Adorno’s pieces, your little inner voice may say, “Don’t stick your head in there.” These interactive sculptures require you to press a button and bend over to peek into these web-like hives to view the illuminated world that dwells inside. Blurring the lines between micro- and macrocosms, we could equally be looking into a microscope at landscapes on the cellular level, or peering through a telescope at a spectacular solar system.

Jenn Ryann Miller’s background is in ceramics, but her wall pieces work in tandem with her mixed-media sculptures. At a distance, the “paintings” display pleasing domestic pastel color palettes in plaid patterns. It’s only upon closer inspection that you notice the depth of the thick layers of opaque enamel. Layering stringy paint lines across the top, it creates a shadow on the many layers beneath it. Thin strips of tinsel run across one of the deeper layers, sparkling when it catches the light just right. Her sculptures mimic the same plaid patterning across their possibly slab-built construction. With structures carefully balancing and teetering on others, Miller explores the fragility and vulnerability of form and materials.

Along the back hallway, you’ll find Tamesha Kirkland’s quietly powerful charcoal drawings of abandoned building, fated to be demolished. The full composition is made up of varying sizes of square and rectangular sheets of paper that have been pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle — almost as if she is trying to put the deteriorating buildings back together again. The frantic lines that have been drawn, erased, and smoothed over add to the sense of impending destruction. The imperfection of the architectural drafting of her piece Jackson House puts the abode on edge; the jutting lines from the awning over the front porch come out at us like it may explode or crumble at any unstable moment.

Craig Hanson’s large Untitled installation in the last room subdues the viewer as she walks around the makeshift landscape. A fitting description would be how Tony Smith recounted his famous midnight car ride on the New Jersey Turnpike: “You just have to experience it.” Hanson wants his viewers to be aware of their bodies and the space around them as they encounter his large “windows” constructed from wood, plaster and Styrofoam. Directly facing the installation from afar, the airy pastel colors on the multi-paneled vertical bars almost blend into the wall. Once you walk to one side, you notice the vibrant, neon colors on the side edges of the sculptures. This vibrancy highlights the form of the spindly bars as they try to break from the solitary wooden plane they were constructed from.

As these 11 MFA students finish their last semester with a sigh of relief that all of their hard work through the past three years is coming to a close, they know that this is just the beginning of their studio explorations. For them, the best is yet to come.

This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2016.