Final MFA Thesis opens April 15
calendar icon01 Apr 2013
Graduate students Sam Berner, Gregory Scott Cook and Jacob Francois in the UNL Department of Art and Art History will present their MFA Thesis Exhibitions April 15-19 in the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery in Richards Hall.
Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 12:30-4:30 p.m. A closing reception will be held on Friday, April 19 from 5-7 p.m. in the Gallery.
Berner was raised in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area of Maryland. He went to Pennsylvania State University for a B.F.A. degree, originally for electrical engineering. Directly after his undergraduate degree, Berner found himself as a master’s student here at University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the ceramic department. Fueled by community activities at Penn State, he immediately sought out a community. Over time he found this community and has helped organize several events to promote the arts, Feast of the Most Precious, Project Mercury and most recently, Art Block. His MFA Thesis Exhibition, titled “Your Turn,” is a showing of interactive art that was created to be altered and played with by its audience. From self-destructive paintings to clay carving, the show will only come to be with the help of the viewer.
Cook was born in western Kentucky. He received his B.F.A. degree from Murray State University in Murray, Ky., in 2010. A nationally and internationally shown artist, Cook works in the media of print, drawing, audio recording/performance and installation. The work in his thesis exhibition, “PATH-LOSS,” is about change through time and distance, acceptable loss, brokenness, and reconstitution. A somewhat palindromic process is present throughout the work—dirty, mishandled documents are tightly remade/reconstructed, while real-world objects are translated through digital space and back to become broken, rough, opportunistically formed sculpture.
Francois is originally from the St. Louis metropolitan area. He completed his bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2008. Since 2010 he has continued his work at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln while pursuing his M.F.A. He has exhibited widely including Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Mo., the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, as well as public work currently on loan to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. His MFA Thesis Exhibition, “A Relationship of Parts,” is a show of kinetic work suggestive of a living body. The included pieces have a duality resting between artificial construction and the natural world.
The Eisentrager-Howard Gallery is on the first floor of Richards Hall, located at Stadium Drive and T streets on the UNL city campus. Admission is free and open to the public.