The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: Out & About

Media Credit: JAKE DANIELS Graduate art student John Powers talks about his project Friday. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: JAKE DANIELS Graduate art student Susan Vaclazik laughs as she talks about her work in her studio at the Cedar Street Art Building Saturday. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: JAKE DANIELS Graduate art student Euni Jigi laughs as she talks about her project Friday. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: COURTESY JOSHUA BIENKO Graduate art student Joshua Bienko draws in his studio recently. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: JAKE DANIELS Graduate art student Susan Vaclazik poses for a portrait in front of her work in her studio at the Cedar Street Art Building Saturday. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: JAKE DANIELS One of the pieces by John Powers that will be featured in the exhibit. [Click to enlarge]

magine preparing for a graduate thesis by shopping at Neiman Marcus or stuffing a dress full of rice.

It's just another perk (or quirk) in being a student in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

After three years in the program, 17 degree candidates will showcase their works at an annual exit exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art.

Starting this Saturday, the art will be on display until the end of April.

While the museum has allotted an entire month for visitors to admire the pieces, it's not everyday someone gets to pick the minds of the artists behind the easel, sewing machine or welder's mask.


Editor's note: Here are a few of the candidates being shown.

Josh Bienko

(Caledonia, N.Y.)

Josh Bienko may or may not have ruined a pair of 5-inch Christian Louboutin heels.

Phoning in from Iowa on Saturday, 29-year-old Bienko related others' reaction to his piece "ever so much more so," an oil painting of what looks like an alien baby on a pair of $600 shoes.

"People would say, 'You're going to ruin them.' That was point. Do I ruin them or do I make them 'ever so much more so?'" he said. "Do I make them worth more money?"

Inspired by the Marxist idea of commodity fetishism and Freud's idea of fetish, Bienko explores the two ideas in relation to people's want and desire for name brands.

"When you smush [the ideas] together, you get these shoes," he said.

Ultimately, Bienko said he wants to be the catalyst for social change.

"There's a lot bad things in the world - art gives an opportunity to remedy some of them," he said.

To him, that change begins the moment art makes the viewer think.

"We are subjects that look at art, this thing that doesn't do anything," he said. "But as soon as that art makes us feel something, it's not passive anymore. The paint can return the gaze."

Euni Figi

(Sittard, Netherlands)

Inspired by the fashion industry, gender issues and her eclectic background, 27-year-old Euni Figi incorporates the three elements into sculpture-like garments with a statement.

Born in South Korea but raised in the Netherlands and the U.S., Figi said she grew up wanting to be an artist.

"I don't really remember a time where I wasn't thinking [about] or making art," she said.

Figi's signature style is to take a normal industry design and exaggerate the features by adding elongated sleeves and backward trains.

"The pieces themselves are modifications of aprons and domestic garments and related to the wedding dress, but with backward trains," she said. "Forward movement is impossible for the wearer."

She then inserts about 115 pounds of rice (equal to her own weight) into built-in channels.

"It comes from a childhood memory," she said. "The work started out as these manifestations of worry, the need to eat every single piece of rice."

For Figi, clothing is a segue into her audience, a medium to which everyone can relate.

"We all wear clothing, we all have relationships to it in our lives," she said. "In many ways, what we wear is our own identity and self-portrait.

Zuzka Vaclavik

(Austin, Texas)

While most people fear the idea of being naked in public, 27-year-old Zuzka Vaclavik is naked every day - in her self-portraits.

Specializing in "the sensuality and sexuality of my own self as a woman," Vaclavik said she started by daring herself to paint a nude portrait her first year at the University.

"I did it to take me out of my comfort zone," she said. "I just painted myself completely nude and realistically just to see if I had the guts do it."

Now, what began as a challenge has become her primary inspiration.

"It's like painting the body from the inside out," she said. "It's the sensuality that I respond to. To me, it goes with the sensuality of the paint."

For her, painting hearkens back to a less frantic sense of time.

"In our society, everything is so digital and so slick, people are forgetting the beauty of the paint," she said. "It kind of slows time down. And in such a fast-paced world, [painting is] kind of a luxury. I like not knowing where it's going to take me."

John Powers

(Dickson, Tenn.)

After trying on a wardrobe full of majors, 29-year-old John Powers finally found his calling in an undergraduate art class.

But his art is a far cry from kindergarten finger-painting. Constructing elaborate, moving structures powered by electric motors, Powers' work is nothing short of an engineering science.

"Even as a small child I was taking things apart," Powers said about his interest in mechanics. "When I got to college and in the sculpture class, I realized that all this stuff I had been doing since I was young, I could consider sculptural materials."

But rather than taking his talents to the repair shop, Powers wanted to infuse it with his creativity.

"When you're a mechanic, people are telling you what to make and what to do," he said. "There's not that much freedom."

Inspired by his travels, readings and upbringing, Powers said his moveable pieces are a way of creating new experiences based on his own.

"I'm really hooked on this idea of time and memory," he said. "As a person, you are moving through time and accruing new experiences, so as an individual you are constantly changing."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools