The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Thesis Exhibition is the culminating event of the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art. This year, the School of Art, Art History & Design has three groups of students presenting a thesis exhibition. Within each group is three distinct exhibitions. The first group includes Phoebe Jan-McMahon: The Adjacent; Kyle Nobles: It Can’t Leave You The Way It Finds You; and John David Richardson: Someday I’ll Find the Sun.
This first group of MFA thesis exhibitions runs April 2-6 in Eisentrager•Howard Gallery. The artists will give a talk at 3:30 p.m. on April 6th in Richards Hall 15, followed by a closing reception from 5:00-7:00 p.m. in Eisentrager•Howard Gallery. Gallery hours during the exhibition are M-F 12:30-4:30 p.m.
About the artists:
Phoebe Jan-McMahon | The Adjacent
The Adjacent is a body of work that explores the adjacent spaces found in my Lincoln, Nebraska apartment. These paintings explore the quietness of The Adjacent as a familiar space where one can process, escape, and heal from the cacophonous politics and harshness of everyday life. My paintings offer visual knots that invite the viewer to meander through and meditate on familiar subjects though a new lens. The focus on white-on-white interiors provide an unfamiliar observation of color; delicate patterns are studies of intersecting lines in the apartment’s architecture, furniture, and plants.
Kyle Nobles | It Can't Leave You The Way It Finds You
My work deals with ideas of identity and the self over time, exploring the inherent and often disorienting realization that you have changed so much you no longer recognize yourself. For me, this experience left me feeling confused, fragmented and alone as I tried to cling to an old conception of my identity that no longer matched the person I had become. My drawings are my attempt at a reintegration of my often disparate senses of self into a whole individual. I have rendered my image in graphite, carefully pulling my form out from the ether into being, birthing myself for a second time. This lengthy and highly focused exploration of my form has come to take on a meditative quality, allowing for deep introspection. I not only have to consider my external being, but the internal as well contending with all the intricacies that build up an individual. These drawings also take into consideration the relationship that the present, in flux self has with the more abstract and solidified past identities with which it still so longs to return to or absorb.
John-David Richardson Someday I'll Find the Sun
The atmosphere of my childhood prepared me for a world where economic and social worth is defined by class. My family fought to make ends meet, but due to addiction, domestic violence, and a lack of education, their efforts fell short. Multigenerational poverty drives families like mine to pursue — often hopelessly — the American Dream. Despite our forefathers’ assurances of a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, this goal is often little more than a pipe dream.
In Someday I’ll Find the Sun, I ruminate on my family’s troubled history by building relationships with those of a similar background, finding people that are simultaneously callous and tender. Through forging these relationships, I am coming to terms with my bloodline. My photographs aim to generate a conversation about the class divide that consumes our country, and the people most affected by this fracture in our system.
Parking is available in the Stadium Drive Parking Garage on the corner of Stadium Drive and T Streets.