Fall 2016 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition

red and green brightly colored ceramic work

Image credit:Roberta Restaino, detail ofOtherworldly Nature, 2016, ceramics and printmaking,36" x 60" x 60".Photo © and courtesy the artist.

print depicting abstracted figure

Image credit: Kim Shively, Social Amenities, 2016, digital collage print, 11” x 17”, Photo © and courtesy the artist.

deatil of a work made with tea bags

Image credit:Ariana Kolins, (untitled), 2016, collected tea bags and tea bag strings, dimensions vary, Photo © and courtesy the artist.

oil painting of a doll house

Image credit: Emily Quinn, A Doll’s House (After Ibsen), 2016, oil on canvas, 72” x 57”, Photo © and courtesy the artist.

Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition

November 5- 17, 2016

Artists featured:Ariana Kolins, Emily Quinn, Roberta Restaino, Kim Shively.
Ariana Kolins’ socially-engaged practice examines community exchange, emotional labor,and representation. Through collecting mundane objects and enacting repetitive gestures, she records her experiences and questions the function of the archive, while advancing a convivial and laborious program. Emily Quinn’s large-scale paintings interiorizes the fragility of domestic spaces.She uses muted colors and elevated vantage points, highlighting the indeterminable threshold between security and uncertainty.Roberta Restaino works at the intersection of printmaking and ceramics. Extracting subtleties from the biological world, her investigation of the natural world can be characterized as aesthetic and ontological. Kim Shively explores Denver’s gentrification at its most poignant—in real time, we see residents who are “not ready,” setting the stage for one “last party.”Through hand-drawn maps and nametags, Shively orients us to those who have no choice but to “ride it out,” offering a dystopian collage of Denver’s past, present, and future.

—Carrie Miller, Alexander Penn, and Sara Sisun