Compound Vision: 2013 Mills College MFA Exhibition

The Mills College Art Museum announces Compound Vision, the thesis exhibition for the 2013 Master of Fine Arts degree recipients, on view May 4–May 26, 2013. 

If art is an imitation of life, then Evan Barbour's work mimics a hybrid life, where specimens get mashed up and revitalized as miniature sculptures. Though fictitious, these amalgamations are neither so bizarre nor complex as actual microorganisms hiding in plain sight. The closer we look, the deeper our surroundings become.

Claire Colette works in drawing, painting and sculpture to create works that reflect omnipresent repetitive patterns. Studying sun flares and nuclear blasts, the seismic wave patterns of a volcano and a heartbeat monitor, she searches for an unnamed or undefined order; an underlying physics existing both materially and metaphysically. 

Lauren Douglas works with photography and installation to explore ideas about how we perceive reality and how we operate within the constraints of the space-time continuum.  Utilizing the practice of intensified looking her images hover between the familiar and the extraordinary as she examines how we understand and participate with time.   

Keegan Luttrell's work explores psychological responses to thrill and fear. She layers destructive undertones with collective recreational activities.  This duality considers the underlying principles of what attracts one to the adrenaline 

rush, while at the same examining the state of vulnerability in moments of turmoil.

Nadja Eulee Miller works in sculpture, performance and collaboration.  Her work examines how rituals facilitate interaction through a given framework of trust.  

Barbara Obata .I. Work. .II. Working to be human. .III. Grasp materials.  Manipulate.  Ferment, produce, extrude.  Exhaustion. .IV. Uniqueness nags -- turns out the soul is more malleable than originally described -- or so current studies indicate.   Again: manipulate.  Ferment, produce, extrude.  Exhaustion.  Work.  Working to be human.

Meri Page creates landscapes that call into question the authentic and artificial, reality and fantasy. Working with cyanotype, sand, salt, and raw pigments, the meticulously crafted environments reference satellite views, crystalline structures, and geologic and geographic forms, inviting shifts of perception and questions of our place in the physical universe.  

Simon Pyle explores the reductions and noise inherent in visual technologies of representation.  Through a focus on visual loss, the work considers what is discarded in a world dominated by representation and simulacra.

Jenny Sharaf explores the mythology of the California blonde.  Strongly influenced by the folklore of cinema history and the vernacular of L.A., she investigates the female's relationship to the camera as it pertains to contemporary feminism.  

Kate Short explores states of unrest through the juxtaposition of conflicting elements. Whether through imposed intimacy or deceptive seduction, Kate's work weaves together space, light, sound, and commodified objects to challenge the viewer to be the ultimate arbiter of their experience.

Katy Warner studies the human desire to find logic in an overwhelming reality.  Using giant chalkboards, video collage, found objects and performance, she explores the obsessive need to create complex systems which are often integral to the lives of individuals who cannot cope with reality as it is.

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