InForm is an exhibition of artwork that celebrates the body – created by students in Garth Amundson’s 494 and Margot Myers’ 495 class.
Featured Works
Calm
Yifei Wu
Acrylic Paint on canvas
48” x 36”
2022
Artist Statement: This painting represent the yearning for a peaceful life and the good expectations for the future. In them, I regard warm colors as the embodiment of pressure. Therefore, in the paintings, the background includes hair color. Free blue. The cosy appearance of the characters and cats in the paintings are endowed by love, happiness and a perfect life.
Body Types 1, 2 & 3
Madeline Moser
Plaster, Aluminum 18”X14”x4”, 12”X12”X6”, 14”X5”X7”
2022
Artist Statement: Taking inspiration from classical forms of body armor as well as contemporary couture fashion, these aluminum busts both highlight the human form and draw a connection between the body and our built environment. These busts have been made in conjunction with another series of works that investigates the individual’s performance and orientation within both physical and social space. Through these explorations I began to notice the uncanny nature of using a typical clothing textile as a sculpture medium and began to wonder about what it would look like to make clothing out of sculpture materials. The mold for the aluminum works were formed around the plaster bust during the original casting and are being displayed next to one another in order to highlight the role of process within my work.
Transition Composition: Phoenix Walker and Lou Sullivan
Phoenix Walker
Charcoal and clay
Drawing: 22” by 30”, Sculpture: 9” by 14” by 17”
2022
Artist Statement: These pieces explore my personal experience of transgender identity within the context of popular queer history and the journey of growing into one’s self. These pieces serve as a way for the viewer to experience the bitter sweetness I feel as a trans person. The joy of being myself contrasts with the painful, lengthy process to get there.
Bodies
Annika Taylor
repurposed cotton twill, synthetic crepe, and synthetic batting; mercerized cotton thread,
chemical and eco-dyes.
2022
6” x “4 or variable size
Artist Statement: In working with fibers and mixed media I evaluate humans’ relationship with the natural world.Important to my work are environmental ethics, eco grief, faith practices, and finding joy in the land even as we continue to pollute and destroy. In scaling planetary processes to the human dimension I create a more intimate understanding of the world: the land is alive in the same way that we are alive, just as we can die, so can the land. I source material from local sustainable businesses, giving life to what is already in existence. In doing this I hope to promote creative reuse and circular economy.
Morning
Ash Polk-Wheelock
Digital Painting
8.5”x11”
2022
Artist Statement: To be heard, seen, and known by another and to still be valued is a meaningful experience. My paintings explore the significance of domesticity, love, and interpersonal connection, capturing the memory of these moments in time. My work takes on a graphic and whimsical style to recreate this feeling of optimismand warmth.
Blooming
Brittany Pincus
Acrlic, molding paste, fabric, beads
3’ x 2’
2022
Artist Statement: My work explores my Korean background and Asian identity by visually representing Korean culture as well as a negative aspect of Asian identity I experience. Through the abstraction of traditional Korean patterns found in architecture, I add additional elements such as texture and embellishments to immerse the viewer in ethnic culture. I engage with themes of personal connection and memory allowing the viewer to experience this perspective of my identity.
Construction
Danny Brown
Oil on Canvas
12”x 16” X2
Artist Statement: Surviving grief is a central focus in my work. Oil and acrylic medium allow me to describe what it is like to live through grief as a stoic perfectionist. By drawing and painting complex human features I am able to capture a change in time, and a change in spirit. Loss has staying power which is why I must acknowledge its effects on our faces.
The Death of a Mentor
Seamus McGowan
Ceramic & Paper
Variable Dimensions
2022
Artist Statement: My work focuses on the fundamentally human connection between functional vessels and daily life. This theme began for me when I realized how little handmade art the average person interacts with in our modern world. I seek to reestablish this connection that we have lost through the industrialization of ceramics in our time. These works are functional wheel-thrown vessels that focus on that connection by being designed for daily use, while carrying an important and universal experience- the loss of a father figure, and all that follows in its wake.
Home
Angela Lovas
Ceramic
10”x10”x8”
2022
Artist Statement: Portraying impermanence and the limits of time through sculpture, drawing, and photography is what I seek to do with my work. Anatomy, medical tools, interior spaces, and household objects are subjects I use to explore people’s daily relationships with these themes. By creating work with these ideas, I seek to examine how our mortality is something that connects us all, and how grief and loss can deeply impact our lives.
mirrors don’t have any memory
Sophia lindstrom
Acrylic paint in frame
14”x22”
2022
Artist Statement: I’m a female, Neurodivergent artist based in Bellingham, Washington. My work focuses on visual thoughts: that I have thought out the day. Though I have from walking home after long days in the Western Washington University art studios to trying to fall asleep at night while my brain will not turn off. These thoughts include questions about human connection, grief, the passage of time, changing memories, nostalgia, loneliness, and humor.
My piece “Mirrors don’t have any memory” explores ideas of changed memories especially with oneself, due to growing up and ever-changing world events. Most of my new work reflects on the past and the present, with the effects it had on me. The piece “Mirrors don’t have any memory”, is a portrait of myself, that I painted while looking in a small mirror in the dark, I wanted to capture the idea of not really understanding how my face looks since it is hard to see. With my painting, I wanted to play with lights and darks, to show viewers different angles you would normally not see in a self portrait. I wanted to illustrate the idea of mirrors do not capture the image of you, that you have of yourself. I always remember the face I had when I was around 14 years old, it feels like I walk around with that face now, even though I am 22 years old now. Now when I look at my face in passing such as washing my hands or in reflective glass, all I see is what has happened since then, in all it’s good and bad.
Vitreous
Kasey Kitchel
Acrylic on Paper
22 x 30 inches
2022
Artist Statement: Through the Covid-19 pandemic, ideas of anonymity and isolation have been brought to the forefront of everyday life. A person’s face, one of the most influential tools of emotion, has been hidden. In my acrylic paintings, the subjects face is always obscured, hiding their identity and allowing the viewer to see past the figure to the environment surrounding them. Water is a constant in these works, providing movement, light, and themes tension on the precipice of rebirth.
Ariadne and the Minotaur
Megan Boyle
Mixed Media, Ink and Pastel
18” x 24”
2022
Artist Statement: I’ve always loved the story of an underdog, a character who is hated simply either for their appearance or their circumstances. Characters who were never given sympathy in their original narrative, deserved or undeserved. Characters who like The Minotaur and Frankenstein’s monster were never given a choice in becoming monsters, one through birth, one through circumstance. Through my work I want to give them a chance to be seen in a different light, be recontextualized, and give them a chance at the compassion they never received.
The Decay
Cedar Boyd
Acrylic paint on archival paper mounted onto cardboard
30”x32”
2022
Artist Statement: My work explores the cycles of pollution that our world is currently stuck in and the tolls it takes on us. I am a mixed media artist with a focus in painting. I use portraiture and narrative images to start conversations involved with death that may otherwise be dismissed.
Terrestrial Textures
Alexa Smith
Oil paint on canvas
2022
Artist Statement: Inspired by her own experiences in the outdoors along with artists like Zaria Foreman and Georgia O’Keeffe, Alexa Smith’s Terrestrial Textures veers away from traditional landscape paintings and concentrates on the incredible textures that can often be overlooked within a landscape. She finds immense value in experiencing places in nature that feel almost ethereal, that leave a potential to be silenced by the awe of it all. In hopes of evoking a similar feeling in her work, each landscape is obscured in order for the viewer to wonder where such geological features can be found. Displayed as a triptych, the audience is invited to compare the profound differences in texture, color, and composition in each painting. To Smith, her work and the way she paints allows the audience to experience her own personal connection to the natural world and the places that have overwhelmed her with their beauty.
Instagram: @alexaclaresmith
Allen Rogers
2022
Artist Statement: Allen Rogers is an artist motivated by a compulsion to communicate. Their paintings are intended to act as a conversation between text, image, and viewer, however, that conversation is intentionally crude and confusing. The conversation that is being depicted in the paintings can be understood as an internal dialogue. To stress the chaotic nature of the text and image, Allen implements bold text design, naive color choices, and an expressive handling of paint. The images included in the work can vary, but they are always rooted in self-portraiture. The text is organized in a way that is influenced by memes both in the font and the format. The role of the internet expresses a state of mind. Along with the influence of the internet on the work, Allen is also influenced by artists like Trenton Doyle Hancock and Philip Guston and their ways of dealing with the connection between text and image.
Blake Read
2022
Artist Statement: Blake Read is an artist, print maker, and aspiring tattooer finishing up his undergraduate in fine arts this spring. Through this short, 3 mono print series, he examines the similarities between tattooing and print making, as well as learning more about why he is interested in the semi controversial, but always changing tattoo industry. The term “Tattoo Flash” refers to the handmade design sheets tattoo artists make and hang to display in their shops, allowing patrons to pick and choose. Using screen printing, the artist has handmade editions of the monotype prints presented. Each monotype is based on the artist’s ideas of fear, depression, and uncertainty are in his life by using imagery that portrays what the artist views as beautiful, hopeful, and important. With a style reflecting the appropriated folk-artform of body art that is American Traditional Tattooing, the artist aims to blur the line between fine art and tattooing.
Colton Sampson
2022
Artist Statement: Colton’s Works Looks at the overlap between natural forms and forms found in our own body. The sculptures create are organic while speaking the language of human motion. This is done to entangle viewer between seeing the familiar and foreign. Visually what is created tends to be beautifully yet macabre. It hints at the inevitability of death, but only as one step in a cycle of abondance. As you approach this sculpture it changes and moves in response to your motion. The interactivity of this work gives the viewer crucial role in its completion.
As a artist Colton bridges the realm of technology and art. His work incorporates Projections, coding, motion tracking, 3d modeling and built sculptures, with this approach it allows for the built environment to be modify and illuminated for further engagement
Instagram: In.a.basket
Colvin Bowen
2022
Artist Statement: Non verbal communication is something all humans have some level of expertise in, and is involuntary to a degree. Facial expressions convey a variety of emotional information that is legible to others. This work seeks to use this inherent skill to start a dialogue with the viewer and between the objects themselves. The facial features on these objects are placed with intent to create an ambiguous expression, affording the viewer freedom of interpretation. These stoneware vessels are thrown on a potter’s wheel and the facial features are grafted to the surface. This process is entirely done by hand. The origins of these ceramic forms exist in sketches that were inspired by the work of Brooklyn artist Giovanni Forlino, who illustrates expressive and often unsettling characters. As an artist, Colvin Bowen experiments and makes decisions as he works, drawing inspiration from the natural world and its distortion, functional design, and the surreal.
Erin Albrecht
2022
Artist Statement: Erin Albrecht is an artist who works primarily in printmaking. She combined two traditional printmaking methods known as stone lithography and silk screen printing to create this collection of prints. The bugs shown are the Citrus Long-horned Beetle and the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug which are both invasive species in Washington State.Both bugs are found here in the Western Washington and the Citrus Long-horned Beetle was brought here on a shipment on bonsai trees. Each bug gets a label and different graphic elements silk screen printed in either gold, silver or black ink. The collection is to showcase invasive species that some of us see every day. As someone with a fear of bugs, Albrecht creates works with bugs to become more familiar with them and to understand the life of that bug to make them not so much of a scary thing.
Heather Pincus
2022
Artist Statement: In Heather Pincus’s collection“Cultural Countertops,”the appreciation and importance of East Asian cuisine is captured in three still life paintings.Said cuisines have all been included based on the beloved dishes that have remained a major aspect in each culture. The viewer is faced with three harmonizing paintings to admire yet ponder any possible deeper symbolism within. These paintings find equal importance among Asian dishes, which is not the particular mainstream subject matter. Capturing food in paintings can contain possibilities from symbolism, representations and messages, appreciation of realism and natural objects, relationship to cultural significance or even just technique and color coherence. The iconography of Wayne Thiebaud’s still life treats similarly interplays and explores connections between cuisines’ cultural significance, composition, and brushwork. Pincus strives to explore outside her comfort zone and paint a theme that brings attention to her culture and a unique illustrative style.
Huaying Liu
2022
Artist Statement: Huaying Liu is an artist with a lifelong interest in mixed media. This work explores her perspective on life, especially since the pandemic. She has divided her series of oil paintings into three titles, which are “Confusion”, “Hope”, and “Masquerade”.Influenced by Vicent Van Gogh with his painting “Starry Nights”, Huaying created her first painting “Confusion”, and based on the colors that she used on the first“Confusion”, she used the same colors on her two other paintings to make them still asa series. Like most people, Covid-19 has had a huge impact on her life and given her some new perspectives on life. Huaying’s goal is to create a series of art pieces that represent various concepts of life and express her feelings rather than illustrate them.
Jackson Sweeny
2022
Artist Statement: Jackson Sweeny is an artist who works primarily within traditional photography through analogue film. This specific body of work is meant to act as a catalog, capturing the relationship between a single mother and her only child. Through the use of cyanotype he developed a collage of images making reference to the history of botany and the greater relationship one can develop with mother nature through careful observation and analysis. Physical plants with symbolic significance were overlaid on top of the images as a way of describing the different roles and characteristics of each family member. Larry Sultan was a direct inspiration with his documentation of his parents in the 1980’s, but rather focusing on the aspects of a fractured home. The concept is very much time oriented as my family grows older and he begins to lose certain members. This collage arose purely out of self interest and a need to process and cope with the facets of death.
Lauren Rasmussen
2022
Artist Statement: Exploring abstract expressionism along with work by Jenny Saville, Viktoria Lapteva, Lucian Freud, this piece explores connections. Being two years into the pandemic has dramatically impacted our abilities to connect. The sense of something bigger, meeting new people, making new memories, brings a sense of relief.Social media has also played an important roll in the creation of this piece, hence the title “Connection: A Painting of a Photo Taken by a Woman named Anna in Ohio”. To Rasmussen this piece represents hope that the exploration of life will soon resume, new faces will become familiar faces and we live full of curiosity, empathy and compassion.This is therapy. Rasmussen is able to give themself the space to think about the body in terms of how it functions instead of how it looks, forcing them to give their own body the same attention as the ones painted.
Instagram: @painted.pants.by.lo
Grass Windows and Sage Hens
Meg Burris
2022
Artist Statement:Meg Burris is an artist with a lifelong interest in cartooning, comics, and graphic novels. She has been honing the art of abstraction through cartooning for years, drawing inspiration from comic artists Farel Dalrymple, Diane Di Massa, and Branson Reese, who have taken their abstraction of the human form to the extreme. This piece is the first chapter of Meg’s graphic novel Grass Widows and Sage Hens, and is a manifestation of her goals to make work that is joyful to create and experience, and to represent queerness in a less serious way. This work consists of water-based pen drawings on heavy weight paper which were then scanned and printed. Meg strives to create interesting characters and to deviate from the Western standard formal comic elements by experimenting with panel placement, borders, and transitions. These techniques affect the tone and how the reader experiences time passing in this piece of work.
Instagram: @megb.art
Parissa Rad
2022
Artist Statement: Parissa Rad is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist expanding their artistic practices within drawing, painting, and ceramics. The concepts explored are tied to their Iranian identity, taking inspiration from nostalgic memories of growing up Iranian and both the utilitarian and decorative traditional art forms originating from Iran. Elegant and detail-oriented motifs support the essence of Iranian art, culture, and religion.
Persian rugs, Persian miniature art, Islamic tile work, mythology, food, holidays, symbols originating from Iran, and artists such as Hana Shahnavaz and Arghavan Khosravi inform the richly detailed works on paper. Working in collage style drawings creates a flow of symbolism and memory relating to life in Iran and the diaspora. The desire to create art representative of Iranian culture and history translates into an embodiment of personal experiences and aesthetic appreciations. Creating these works serves as a platform where they can safely explore narratives within these contexts.
Instagram: @Persianspices
InForm will be exhibited in the B_Gallery from Monday, March 14th until March 17th.