'Yale MFA: Five Years Later'

'Yale MFA: Five Years Later' opened last night with a great reception and all the artists were there to receive the huge crowd who came to celebrate them.

"Students in the Yale MFA programs are extremely committed.  Giving up or failing isn't really an issue.  The question is really how far can they push themselves, what problems are they willing to take on, and how much can they develop beyond what they already know." 

"These seven artists are all at a point where their graduate experience is, probably, hopefully far from their minds.  It's a place where they have found their own paths and are establishing their own voices."

 Clint Jukkala, Associate Professor, Yale

"My work involves an integrated attempt at creating hybrid forms of planned ideas and things discovered through the process of making."   John Bianchi 

"I am constantly researching advances in engineering, science, and technology.  My work is driven by these new advances outside of art, but at heart my art is focused on a traditional object-oriented approach to sculpture."   Johnathan Brand

"My paintings are about extended moments of solitude, often within public spaces.  Within these moments, one can focus on light, color, objects, labor, history etc. to show places that don't instantly reveal their function, so that one experiences them as offering a sense of possibility and freedom."

    Beth Livensperger

"Light and color figure more prominently in my current work.  Singular form has given way to pattern. I have also become interested in social practice: teaching, collaborative painting projects, and arts and healthcare work."   Cat Balco

"My paintings create a field of selective focus.  Activity occurs both in and out of this zone. The effect is jarring, because the viewer is unable to connect their blurred vision.  This discomfort suggests psychological states of unease..."   Andy Lane

" My work explores codes of masculinity, class and the inherent violence in homo-social interaction." And " ...opens a discourse about the intersection between craft, subculture as family and alienation."   

     Jacob Rhodes

"My work is centered around my desire to feel connected to nature and to experience wildness.  The paintings portray specific places I have explored and revisited with family and friends throughout my life."   Breehan James

'Yale MFA: Five Years Later' is curated by Tracy McKenna and Kirsten Dieterich Pitts and will be on view through March 6, 2013.