2015 MFA Exhibition

Future Cycles

Cameron Van Dyke
Feb 25 — March 13
Closing Reception: March 13, 5 — 8 pm
Duderstadt Gallery
Hours: Monday — Friday, 12 — 6 pm

At the intersection of engineering, urban planning, and art, and design, the Future Cycles project presents three vehicles that challenge American car culture to consider the use of human power and the resource of time as alternative energy options.

Breathing Room

Mary Ayling
March 13 – April 4
Opening Reception: March 13, 5 — 7 pm
Slusser Gallery — Slusser Video Room & The Parlour Room

Breathing Room is a duo site, sculptural exchange meant for individual viewing. Participants are invited to make an appointment at the opening in Slusser Gallery Friday March 13^th from 5 — 7 pm where they will receive an invitation with the full details for their scheduled time. Questions of how fragile forms show their strength and seemingly solid structures buckle arise in this exploration of negotiating our own private and shared spaces.

Hive

Mike Bianco
March 13 – April 4
Opening Reception: March 13, 5 — 7 pm
Slusser Gallery

Drawing from a variety of mediums, ranging from beeswax and neon, to cooking and performance, Bianco’s practice is invested in issues of sustainability and environmental and social justice, with a focus on honeybees. Hive includes a number of sculptural objects, including a mobile bee house for sleeping with honeybees, and features a live honey tasting performance. Also included is documentation relating to Bianco’s social practice focusing on his own environmental activism and honeybee advocacy. Hive project outcomes have benefited from work with the schools of Mechanical Engineering, American Culture, and the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, in addition to Bianco’s participation in the Dow Sustainability Fellowship. 

For more information on Mike’s work, see Mike Bianco: Activist, Artist… Curator of Bees.

Tellings

Math Monahan
March 13 – April 4
Opening Reception: March 13, 5 — 7 pm
Slusser Gallery

Tellings explores how the impermanent state of storytelling is interpreted into visual art through the agency of the viewer. More specifically, it examines how storytelling can negotiate the difference between text, information and myth. This exploration is presented in a series of sculptures, installations, and narratives drawing on folklore, mythologies and personal memories. The aim of the work is to deconstruct the narratives/​fables into key moments, translating them into viewer experiences in visual storytelling while remaining congruent with an oral tradition.

Connecting Curriculum

Laura Amtower
March 13 — April 4
Opening Reception: March 13, 5 — 9 pm
Work: Ann Arbor

Connecting Curriculum documents a multi-faceted playground redesign by students attending Ann Arbor STEAM @ Northside Elementary. This exhibition features the yearlong project arc, highlighting aspects in pedagogy, play and participatory research through Laura’s creative interpretation. Methodologies applied in this project benefit from work with the School of Education, School of Social Work, Arts of Citizenship, Center for Engaged Academic Learning, and collaboration with the Northside community.

For more information on Laura’s work, see Laura Amtower: The Wild Idea of a Child-Designed Playground.

Listener

Trevor King
March 14 — March 28
Opening Reception: March 19, 7 — 10 pm
9338campau: 9338 Joseph Campau, Hamtramck, MI 48212

A contemplative installation, including ceramics, installation, video, sound, photography, and sculpture, Listener encourages sensory consideration of the human being as a vessel. Referencing the ancient relationship between the clay vessel and the human body, the work creates as a space to discover intersections of materiality and the transcendent.

Below Shepherd’s Hill

Joshua Nierodzinski
March 19 — April 1
Opening Reception: March 19, 6 — 9pm
Russell Industrial Center (Building 1, Room 133) — 1600 Clay Street, Detroit, MI 48211
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 12 — 5 pm or by appointment

Below Shepherd’s Hill is a narrative exhibition by Joshua Nierodzinski. Enter through the red safelights of a darkroom into a story about an accidental rite of passage for a young boy and his brother. The exhibition features painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography to trigger the forensic imagination. 

The House on Four Waters

Nataša Prljević
March 19 — April 1
Opening Reception: March 19, 6 — 9 pm
Russell Industrial Center (Building 1, Room 131) — 1600 Clay Street, Detroit, MI 48211
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 12 — 5 pm or by appointment

The House on Four Waters is a multimedia installation based on a personal narrative that addresses the mechanisms of real and imagined sites of memory of two sisters. The exhibition uses collage, video, and audio to open multiple points of departure and return for the viewer, while mapping the experience of a child’s understanding of territory. It is an embodied desire to create, protect or occupy space. 

Wake the Town and Tell the People

Cosmo Whyte
March 19 — April 1
Opening Reception: March 19, 6 — 9 pm
Russell Industrial Center — 1600 Clay Street, Detroit, MI 48211
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 12 — 5 pm or by appointment 

Wake the Town and Tell the People is an art exhibition that explores postcolonial identity as a liquid identity, one in a constant state of flux co-exist in multiple locations. In this MFA thesis exhibition the viewer will encounter an installation comprised of drawings, photographs and sound sculptures. Taken in its entirety the show seeks to ask the following question: Can one form a sense of self, while not owing to or being owned by one place?