Sculpture

Hamza Walker, director of LAXART, a nonprofit art space in Los Angeles, and an adjunct professor at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, will be in conversation with Jessica Vaughn, a Brooklyn and Philadelphia-based multimedia artist whose practice is a dedication to understanding materials and images and how they function politically, socially and conceptually in the world. Her most recent artworks in sculpture, video, and photography interrogate questions of labor, race, architecture and modularity in space.

This paper discusses the work I have created for my MFA thesis project. It is the culmination of the themes, concepts, styles and research that I have explored leading up to this work and outlines the development of my concept of representing myself metaphorically through architecture. Radical Architecture, modernist design, and science fiction are all influences and become the building blocks for the conceptual and visual components of the thesis installation. This installation is built to exist as a perpetual site of construction, one that represents my past, present, and future self, and tells the story of how I constantly flow in and out of these layered experiences. I have executed several paintings on panels as well as sculptural concrete towers, and small geometric forms cast from concrete. The paintings and sculptures are situated in the same space, creating a formal and conceptual conversation. The installation as a whole is a visual metaphor, depicting the experience of how my self identity has evolved over time and is represented through architectural imagery.

Precipice is a multimedia miniature installation that uses rotoscope animation to critically examine how the performance of self interacts with cultural scripts of bureaucracy. The piece chronicles an interruption in the bureaucratic process which turns the viewer's attention to the individual's activity within the collective. Through my research I explore how miniature scale may be used to manipulate a viewer's experience, examine the representation of the everyday as a site for the profound and the uncanny, and introduce the potential for agency found within futile repetitive actions. In conclusion, through my culminating thesis project, I examine how these ideas converge on the stage of bureaucracy and its relationship to the topics outlined throughout the paper. Through the use of shifting scales, quotidian subject matter and repetitive actions, Precipice illustrates the alienation and derealization caused by cognitariat labor and posits the experience of bodily discomfort as a potential site for agency under these conditions.

Language—both spoken and written—has, is, and always will be susceptible to spin, manipulation, obfuscation, and misinterpretation. This paper explores how communication's inherent vulnerability has long formed the core of my conceptual inquiry. As a visual artist, I am a tireless experimenter—with both ideas and materials. The foundation of my interdisciplinary practice is my artist's books, which have been referred to as "patchwork quilts of the subconscious." Projects related to my book practice include performance videos along with text-based drawings, paintings, and sculpture that may be characterized as both personal and social critiques. As the inherent nature of humans remains impulsive and fallible, these works may illuminate our unconscious reluctance to convert rational awareness into a more positive and sustainable life practice. My final thesis project will demonstrate emboldened approaches to these facets of my practice. I will present up to thirty new artist's book entries, a dozen new hand-sculpted UNBOUND book prints (up to 7 x 10 feet), five new text-based works on paper and canvas, and one new wall sculpture fabricated in mirrored stainless steel.

This thesis paper attempts to identify problems encountered by queer and trans individuals in the Minneapolis area. A number of interviews were conducted by Jordan Moen in Minneapolis during 2017 and 2018 with LGBTQIA identified individuals as well as heterosexual, cis-gendered allies. The final thesis project was centered around three individual interviews with transgender women. As a transgender individual and Minnesota native, Jordan Moen seeks to learn more about how to develop a chosen family, seek out trans and queer inclusive communities, and find places of safety and inclusion throughout the United States. She explores issues of inclusion and exclusion in community and family dynamics. As example, she analyzes symbolic language such as hobo codes, the use of camouflage in rural spaces and in art, and the queering of low, ordinary construction and craft materials. This thesis is a statement of Moen's continued research towards creating a queered-utopian society.

I am a sculptor living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My source of inspiration comes from an interest with American values as they pertain to varied perceptions or definitions of "The American Dream." In some instances means having bigger fancier things than your neighbor. Utilizing consumer goods, I activate a visual dialogue that pits material against value, asking the viewer to evaluate their relationships to objects and priorities. These materials and subjects include processed foods and food packaging, cheap interior "McMansion" materials, and various plastics associated with swimming pool culture, juxtaposed with fine art contexts. Following minimalist guidelines in both object based and installation works, I disassemble, reassemble, distort and wrap various forms in these exploited materials. Referencing interior and exterior spaces, the objects we choose to surround ourselves with extend our preconceived biases as they upgrade/downgrade perceived statuses and facades. We place importance in aesthetics for molding our identities, surrendering reality to maintain appearances, inevitably exposing our insecurities.