2017 Intermedia and Digital Arts Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition: "Glass, Oil and Blood"
April 13 – 28
UMBC Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture

*An opening reception will be held Thursday, April 13, from 5 to 7 p.m., and the gallery will open for regular hours on Friday, April 14.*

UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) and the Department of Visual Arts present the 2017 Intermedia and Digital Arts Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition "Glass, Oil and Blood."

Intermedia works on display will include time-based works, digital photography, objects and installations presented by three MFA Candidates in the Intermedia and Digital Arts (IMDA) program: Melissa Penley Cormier, Ghazaleh Keshavarz and Jaclin Paul.

Originally from Appalachia, Melissa Penley Cormier creates time-based projects, installations, objects and works on paper. She received a BFA from Radford University in oil painting. Her MFA thesis project Fret + Focus is a time-based work made up of 365 microscope slides that physically sample worries in a way that allows them to be observed and archived. Viewing devices are borrowed and hand-made from various found objects and optical devices and fragments.

Naftoon is a multimedia art installation poetically integrating the essential role of oil in Iranian society through photo, video, audio, and animation elements by Ghazaleh Keshavarz. Keshavarz is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on photography, installation, and site-specific projects. This installation explores the history of oil from the discovery of it in 1908, through the nationalization of oil in 1951 and up till now. Keshavarz received a BA in Photography from Tehran University of Art in 2012 and is UMBC’s RTKL Award recipient of 2017.

Jaclin Paul presents Sibling Portraits, a series of large-scale photographs that explore relationship, similarity, difference and family mythology through digitally manipulated photographs of eight brothers and sisters, along with animation and audio elements. Her work about the semiotics and pragmatics of phenotypes depicts her subjects in real and imagined spaces, directly implicating the photographer, the siblings, and by proxy, the viewer. Paul, a Shriver Fellow at UMBC, received her BFA in Photography and Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2055 and spent a year in Ghana with the Peace Corps from 2012-2014.

For more information about the exhibition contact the CADVC. For more information on the IMDA MFA program or to contact the MFA candidates, contact the Graduate Program Director: [email protected].

The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and is located on the first floor of the Fine Arts Building.

Admission is free. Free parking is available immediately adjacent to the Performing Arts and Humanities Building in Lot 8 during evening and weekend hours.