Department of Art

Kansas State University BFA students Chase Brazzle, Brigitte Bruna, Sloan Smith, and Rebecca Tincher are featured in the final of three BFA Thesis Exhibitions, opening May 2, 2011, in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art presents the third of three BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Chase Brazzle, Brigitte Bruna, Sloan Smith, and Rebecca Tincher. The artists will exhibit their work from May 2nd through the 6th in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, first floor Willard Hall. Gallery hours are 9am – 5pm, Monday through Friday.

There will be a reception for the artists on Friday evening, May 2nd, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Photographer Chase Brazzle believes his work is most effective when shot in series form. He says, “I am intrigued by the challenge of producing a single photograph that is compositionally and visually strong enough to stand alone as well as work within the confines of a group.” His thesis work, “These Hands That Bind,” is a series exploring body image. His photographs attempt to liberate viewers from a false sense of perfection in our bodies. For Brazzle, to accept the potential beauty of human imperfections is the only way to end the vain pursuit of unrealistic expectations. He says, “…we bind ourselves with the actions of our hands… from a young lady putting on makeup to cover a blemish, to a young man squeezing his bicep to make sure it is adequate.”

Painter Brigitte Bruna asks the question, “What are you saying about yourself through your own self-presentation?” While not strictly self-portrait paintings, she represents herself taking on dramatic or archetypal roles. Each of her intricate oil paintings is a performance – the subject (herself) demonstrating how restrictions or standards set by society throughout history dictate how we interpret our identities. Whether it is through an elaborate dress or hat, the ways people present themselves says something profound. She says, “My work conveys a sense of being overwhelmed, consumed and being taking over, an intricate baroque abundance of clutter of unavoidable change.”

Sculptor and printmaker Sloan Smith grew up listening to tattoo machines hum away. His parents’ love of tattoos replaced Renoir and Monet with Sailor Jerry and Paul Booth in the pantheon of artists. After working his way through his foundation art courses, he returned to his first creative inspiration. He says, “I realized that fine graphite portraits and figurative bronzes weren’t for me. I turned to what I liked to draw in my free time, which is heavily inspired by tattoos: bright colors, bold lines.” The content of his sculpture and prints are inspired by tattoo “flash.”  These are stock design sheets that frequently line the walls of a tattoo shop allowing tattoo artists to recreate specific designs rapidly. While his print work directly reflects the tattoo process – embedding ink into the skin-like paper, his sculpture has evolved to large cast representations of traditional tattoo imagery. He says, “Cast metal speaks of permanence. Without determination and/or a blast furnace, these pieces aren’t going anywhere. Tattooing also speaks of permanence. There is little else in your life as permanent as a tattoo. Barring amputation or intentional removal, your tattoo will be with you longer than your hair, car, or those fancy shoes.”

Photographer Rebecca Tincher was born in the suburbs of Kansas City but grew up in a small town in Kansas. Her family instilled in her a fascination for the diversity of different cultures. Her passion for photography was inspired, in her teenage years, by the discovery of an old album of her father’s photography work. She says, “My interests as a photographer combine the journalistic aspect of learning one’s sociological and anthropological context with the ability to change the details of one’s setting and appearance.” She likes to observe how people manipulate every aspect of their lives – clothing, settings, and objects, to alter the way they are perceived by others. For her thesis work she composes digital images of distinctive characters, with provocative make-up, and hand-made or found props. She says, “The purpose of my work is to show the viewer that the world is theirs to shape. Creativity does not stop at the pen and paper or the photograph. We create every minute of every day.”

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee

Kansas State University BFA students Whitney Bandel, Sarah Shuster, Nicole Schneider, and Adrian Wallace are featured in the second of three BFA Thesis Exhibitions, opening April 25, 2011, in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art presents the second of three BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Whitney Bandel, Sarah Shuster, Nicole Schneider, and Adrian Wallace. The artists will exhibit their work from April 25th through the 29th in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, first floor Willard Hall. Gallery hours are 9am – 5pm, Monday through Friday. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday evening, April 29th, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm, in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Whitney Bandel claims that competition with her equally talented twin sister is one reason for her dedication to drawing and sewing. She also found a need to communicate her individuality, especially after suffering, and recovering from a severe illness. She says, “I finally had to realize that I was my own unique person, full of my own unique life experiences.” Concepts of personal identity have developed in her BFA thesis.  This series of mixed media drawings that include sewn elements focuses on how the human body leaves impressions of its presence and how these layers of impression accumulate and alter over time. The threads and contours that travel through the drawings add to the history of their predecessors and the timeline created, but also tear it apart. She says, “Since I learned sewing at a young age … the movements of the thread and needle have become innate to me. I am able to utilize these instinctual movements and marks in my drawings and create a document of my body’s presence as it exists in the space between my hands.”

For Nicole Schneider, Hoisington, Kansas did not offer much exposure to the art world. It did offer a very family oriented setting, in an environment with scenery that encouraged creative thought and an open mind. The inspiration and encouragement of her grandmother ultimately led to art contests and prizes. The untimely passing of her grandmother also brought the realization that she wanted to capture people in portraiture. In this body of work, her subjects are drawn using candid shots, in moments caught deep in thought or focusing their energy elsewhere. She says, “I believe drawing these moments lure the viewer in, questioning and wanting to know more about the individual.”  The delicate way these works are developed and rendered acknowledges the fragility and vulnerability of people. She says, “It is a welcomed challenge to try and represent these individuals on paper, showing their differences…yet showing they’re a person just the same.”

Photographer Sarah Shuster found success with photography in grade school, again in high school, and finally caught the bug for good at Kansas State. She says teachers and students “commented on my prints a lot, and this was something I was not used to or expecting so it caught me off guard and it made me take photography seriously.” For her BFA thesis she found unique image possibilities in aquariums. The elegant creatures she encountered, with their vibrant colors deep in unique shades of blue, red, and yellow captured her attention. She says, “With my photographs I try to capture that beauty and show viewers the wonders that are housed in the seas all over the world.”

Ceramicist Adrian Wallace grew up in rural Kansas and was raised eating food grown in her family’s garden, drinking milk from goats they milked themselves, and wearing clothes made by her mother. Her current work is inspired by the idea of taking something from nature and transforming it into something produced in a factory. She says, “Unless we make a conscious effort, almost everything in the average American’s daily life is a synthetic product that was originally derived from nature.” This body of work in porcelain consists of non-functional thrown, and then altered, forms. The forms have an organic, full shape, and resemble plant life, though some have angular and geometric qualities. She formulated her own glazes in a range of muted yellows, or used highly saturated neon yellow, orange, and hot pink spray paint to finish the pieces. Specific areas of the pieces are left unglazed. She says, “I made the choice to leave parts of the pieces unglazed to show the luminous quality of porcelain.”

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee

Kansas State University BFA students Emily Larson, Allison Mendoza, Caitlin Schneider, and Rachel Weber are featured in the first of three BFA Thesis Exhibitions, opening April 18, 2011, in Mark A. Chapman Gallery

MANHATTAN —Kansas State University Department of Art will present the first of three BFA Thesis Exhibitions of the spring season featuring Emily Larson, Allison Mendoza, Caitlin Schneider, and Rachel Weber. The artists will present an exhibition of their work from April 18th through the 22nd in the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, first floor Willard Hall. Gallery hours are 9am – 5pm, Monday through Friday. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday evening, April 22nd, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, in the gallery.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Photographer Emily Larson’s grandmother was her artist role model while growing up in southeastern Kansas. She was also inspired by the rural landscape that has evolved into a component of her work in photography. She has expanded this interest to include the human figure. She says, “I think a person, even if it is just an arm, leg, or foot, adds so much more to a landscape.” Using a photo-journalistic approach to photography, she seeks out unique imagery. She says, “I want to make people see something simple in a way they never have before.”

“I was raised by these wonderful scavengers in a wisp of a town called Humboldt, Kansas,” says photographer Allison Mendoza in describing her background. Since then, she has strived to tie two aspects of her artistic nature together. During childhood she learned to take and collect from her surroundings and make something new. Collecting these found objects – old portraits, book covers, and book pages became an ongoing passion. In her studies at Kansas State University, she has focused on nude figure studies reproduced on transparent film. These figurative transparencies have evolved to overlay the found objects. She says, “I am combining the ideas I was taught as a child with the ideas learned at university.”

For Caitlin Schneider, drawing in mixed media might have something to do with growing up in an English village straight out of a storybook. She says, “In that perfect setting I made up my own stories and adventures and I credit those early years of creative independence to my creativity in my later life.” Now after years of drawing the figure, she attempts to bring to the surface, emotions that we often deny. She says, “I created this body of work because I wished to understand myself better – to pull to the surface the ugliest parts of myself and examine them.” As this process progressed she became aware that this struggle was not just her own. Her large imaginative figure-based works are meant to ask the viewer questions about their own struggles.

Photographer Rachel Weber was raised to love projects, whether finger painting or projects involving extensive research. She says, “They were always ‘go big or go home’ projects and to this day, I pride myself in that.” Her choice of photography as her medium stems from an interest in documenting time, especially when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Photography has been a method to capture time and preserve it providing a kind of catharsis. She says, “I capture moments in time that most people wouldn’t find interesting on an average day.” Her studies have led her to an interest in moments of heightened awareness – specifically color. Her thesis work, titled “Photography – A Color Series,” consists of six separate color-coded grids of individual photographs that are printed on canvas. This work focuses on color and its effect on each individual’s physical state and their mindset, both conscious and unconscious.

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

Funded in part by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee

The KSU Department of Art is happy to announce the Senior Bachelor of Fine Arts Show in Graphic Design & Digital Art.

Friday, May 14 2010

5:00pm -8:00pm

Room 212 • Second Floor

K-State Student Union

Kansas State University