MFA Thesis Exhibition III opens April 18
calendar icon15 Apr 2016
The third MFA Thesis Exhibition features the work of Amanda Breitbach, Keith Graham and Shalya Marsh.
Breitbach’s exhibition is titled “Land/People.” She attended Montana State University, graduating in 2004 with degrees in photography and French. Prior to attending graduate school, she was a volunteer with the United States Peace Corps in West Africa and worked as a newspaper photographer and reporter. She is a graduate fellow at the Center for Great Plains Studies and won a national scholarship in 2014 to become a fellow with the Joy of Giving Something Foundation/Imagining America. Her photographs, video, and audio work focus on the connections between people and land. Growing up on a family farm and ranch in the wide-open landscape of eastern Montana fundamentally shaped the way she sees the world. The framing and interpretation of the view in each of her images was formed by her background, including a deep love and respect for land and the people who work it, as well as a critical interest in the representation and mythology of the American West. “Land/People” is a series that represent the artist's own relationship to the land where the third generation of her family still farms, but may not much longer. The photographs are intended to critically examine the history and future of family farming. Breitbach will give an artist lecture on Monday, April 18 at 3:30 p.m. in the Center for Great Plains Studies, 1155 Q st.
Graham’s exhibition is titled “Zero Street.” He was born in Bend, Oregon, and grew up in Seattle. He received a B.A. in studio art from Carleton College. His past includes work as an English teacher in Japanese cram schools, a bike messenger in New York City and building straw bale homes in rural Washington state. In recent years, his work has been exhibited in Washington, Minnesota, Nebraska, Egypt and Italy. The title of his exhibition comes from a line in Allen Ginsberg’s poem, “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” referring to Lincoln’s O St. In his artist statement, he writes, “Zero Street is a reflection on my immediate surroundings filtered through print processes and my attraction to the abject. The project takes the form of books and mixed media prints (mainly silkscreen with monotype and woodcut) responding to the physical environment of Lincoln, its people and how they shape each other. It is a highly subjective portrait of Lincoln, Nebraska, that started with a series of questions: What is the relationship between a large population center and the idea of emptiness that haunts the Great Plains? Can a city be empty? What are the elemental forces acting upon this environment? What beauty can be found in places that have been made deliberately ugly?”
Marsh’s exhibition is titled “Tangled Knot Tied.” Marsh is originally from upstate New York. She received her B.F.A. in ceramics from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Between undergraduate and graduate school, she exhibited, taught in the community, participated in residencies and worked in the nonprofit sector. In her artist statement, she writes, “My current series of work began with an investigation of knots as symbols for connection, apprehension, security and strength. Knots are used to bind and fasten; they are protective in the way they relate to these functions and others. The controlled tangles in this body of work lose the specificity of a recognizable form and suggest disorder or angst, rather than stability or strength. These formal studies relate to readability, veiling and transparency and indicate the complexity of the relationship we as individuals have with anxiety, communication and connectedness.”
Gallery hours for the MFA Thesis Exhibitions are Monday-Friday, 12:30-4:30 p.m. Admission to the gallery is free and open to the public.
The Eisentrager-Howard Gallery is located on the first floor of Richards Hall at Stadium Drive and T sts on the UNL city campus. For more information, contact the Department of Art and Art History at (402) 472-5522.