Art Beat: New exhibit celebrates the work of UMass Dartmouth MFA graduate students

For the first time since the pandemic disrupted the art world, along with everything else, an in-person exhibition celebrating the achievements and work of MFA graduate students at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth’s New Bedford campus is open to the public.

It is a triumphant return.

An octet of artists — four ceramics majors, two sculptors, a painter and a printmaker — display work throughout the first floor of the elegant building that once housed the fabled Star Store department store, albeit without the escalators and the charming basement restaurant.

It is notable that most of the eight exhibitors are, despite their declared concentrations, work in multiple media, clearly demonstrating the skills that have been honed by working across a wide platform of studio arts, to create engaging art that defies simple categorization.

The most basic footing in the visual arts resides within drawing.The painter, the printmaker, the sculptors and the ceramicists all know this. It is the starting point; it is primal. It is the foundation.

The paintings of Yurie Hayashi are as bold and flamboyant as any of Frank Stella’s more playful constructs. The best example is her large (80” X 126”) “Feast on My Brain”- which has no obvious zombie connection- and consists of three juxtaposed canvases.

Shadows are painted on the surface, giving the initial illusion that some elements sit off the surface. There are significant patterns, disconnected from each other, that suggest a faux collage. There is the inclusion of painted pop elements: a dangling stuffed animal, a tissue box emblazoned with valentine hearts, the word meme repeated over and over, and a tiny human skeleton. She doesn’t explain her chaos. She just offers it up.

Ceramicist Jordan Blankenship displays a series of functional vessels and objects- pitchers, cups, saucers, bowls- almost all black, stacked and presented in such a manner as to teeter into a presentation that is decidedly sculptural. Her wall-mounted “Cabinet Unit for Living” (created in collaboration with Frank Sienkiewicz) speaks to a certain kind of understated modernist elegance.

Elizabeth Pena-Alvarez’s does large scale non-functional ceramic works (as they are not utilitarian, they are sculptures) in which she explores physical and emotional trauma. Her “Pryophytic Growth” is a gathering of gray-black orbs from with something sprouts.

It is a reference to the trees and other plants that emerge and thrive in post-forest fire environments. That is an apt metaphor for the evolution of trauma, that point when one starts to do something new, maybe even something good and it arises from the darkness.

Ceramicist Katy Rodden Walker has transformed Gallery 244, a gallery within the gallery, into a new space, in which the lighting regularly shifts and a repetitive soundtrack mimics inhalation and exhalation. “The Breathing Room” is enthralling, even a bit hypnotic. It is part tent, part altar, part bad trip flashback. And all of it is beautiful.

Kelly Devitt displays a series of ceramic sculptures, primarily atop pedestals. They are a bit disturbing. They are all the color of flesh- and that is a reference to the old, pre-woke Crayola Crayon color by that name, before Crayola realized that not everyone is the same hue as a Band-Aid. (Maybe Johnson & Johnson needs to rethink their bandage color(s) as well).

They appear as body horror piles of corpulent skin, replete with repulsive goose bumps and bluish medical sutures. And yet even in that, it is hard to look away. They intrigue in a way that’s difficult to understand, perhaps because it means looking too hard into ourselves.

Katrina Benner, with a concentration in printmaking, presents several short quiet videos. One is a digital collage titled “Street Conversations,” which highlights her skills as a printmaker, as they include animated images derived from her own serigraphs and woodblock prints.

She also plays “Imposter,” a roughly nine-minute performance video, in which someone peels a thin translucent filmy substance (likely dried wood glue) off the surface of an old school desk, that falls apart as it is pulled. On an endless loop, it is a strange look into futile endeavors.

Joseph Schairer, displays a series of works in both two- and three-dimensional formats. His “End of Line'' features a welded steel decorative form rising off a brilliant red velvet panel. Another of his works is “Crib/Coffin,” made of welded steel, raw canvas, copper wire and black velvet. The velvet sits in a recessed area, behind a diamond-like shape on to which short strips of what-appear-to be sawblades are adhered.

It suggests a vagina dentata (or toothed vagina) from crosscultural cautionary myths and folklore, warning about promiscuity.

Of the seven graduate students already mentioned, there are two ceramists who displayed sculptural works and another doing installations, a sculptor who is an amazing draftsman, and a printmaker who is making short videos. The fine arts and artisanry bounce off of each other. It’s a dance.

The eight exhibiting grad student is Daniel S. DeLuca, an interdisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, performance, installation art and conceptual practice.

He displays a large installation in the windows on the south side of the Star Store Building. Across the top of the window panes is a large sign that reads “Every Thing Must Go.” At sidewalk level other small placards read: “Fine Art” / “Going Out of Business” / Launching Untitled Business” “Artificial Future.”

Disgruntled? Savvy? Prophetic? DeLuca’s installation comes at a moment when students, alumni, faculty, local politicians and artists in the greater community are sensing a seachange in that very building.

Keep looking.

The 2022 MFA Thesis Exhibition is on display at the University Art Gallery, Star Store Campus, 715 Purchase Street, New Bedford until May 5.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: UMass 2022 MFA Thesis Exhibition is on display at the Star Store Campus