Boston University School of Visual Arts Hosts Edifice, the 2023 BFA Thesis Exhibition
Boston University School of Visual Arts Hosts Edifice, the 2023 BFA Thesis Exhibition
The exhibition, on view from May 9-19 at select BU galleries, features the work of 58 graduating students from BU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Graphic Design, Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture programs.
Boston University School of Visual Arts is proud to present its 2023 Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Thesis Exhibition, on view from May 9-19, 2023, with a public opening reception on Tuesday, May 9, from 5-7pm, and a closing walkthrough at noon on May 19 before the work is deinstalled in the afternoon. Two large exhibitions feature the work of graduating students from BU’s BFA programs in Graphic Design, Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture.
Edifice, a conceptual and visual identity created by the BFA Graphic Design branding team, points to the College of Fine Arts’ buildings, classrooms, studios, and galleries as sites of meaningful action, personal engagement, and growth toward professional lives.
An overall exhibition identity Edifice connects BU’s two professional galleries along Commonwealth Avenue. “Edifice, a conceptual and visual identity created by the BFA Graphic Design branding team, points to the College of Fine Arts’ buildings, classrooms, studios, and galleries as sites of meaningful action, personal engagement, and growth toward professional lives,” says Dana Clancy, associate professor and Director of BU School of Visual Arts. The brand identity of the 2023 BFA thesis reflects the significant building projects at CFA and BU since the class of 2023 arrived in 2019. The Graphic Design team behind the brand identity, Mina Chung, Hannah Hong, and Jacqueline Mang, also reflected on the overall meaning of Edifice, “As the buildings transformed, we also transformed culturally, communally, and intellectually. We are inspired to ask bigger questions and motivate one another to reach goals that once seemed impossible.”
“As the buildings transformed, we also transformed culturally, communally, and intellectually.”
Boston University Art Galleries’ 808 Gallery hosts the BFA Graphic Design exhibition with the related title, Lived In. The 6,000 sq. ft. gallery has been transformed into a home-like space for 41 student design projects, a response to the way these students’ senior studios were considered home. “We don’t just work here – we live here. Lived In is an approximation of the home we’ve established over these semesters together.” They molded the space, and the space molded them, and as the graphic design students move out of their improvised home in the College of Fine Arts, Lived In marks both an ending and a beginning for them.
“We don’t just work here – we live here. Lived In is an approximation of the home we’ve established over these semesters together.”
BU Art Galleries’ Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery hosts the Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture exhibition titled, To build a nest and leave it empty. An impulse for worldbuilding – through fantastical imagination, investigations into memory, or playful proposals for more vibrant futures – thematically binds this group of 16 artists. Curator Leah Triplett Harrington, who co-taught the senior seminar for Painting and Sculpture majors with visiting Lecturer Fox Hysen, writes in the exhibition statement, “This year’s senior class pushed themselves to work ambitiously, both literally in terms of scale and more figuratively, with the tremendous scope of narratives and concepts they amplify. I am excited to show such determined, intrepid artists in this year’s exhibition.”
“The three printmakers this year are very ambitious in scale and concept, working in installation and across multiple mediums, including lithography, etching, woodcut, and cyanotype,” says Lynne Allen, Professor of Art, Printmaking. “Each has created an exhibition that speaks to their concerns, their place in the history of art as well as deep personal content.”
The following faculty members have worked closely with the graduating class over the past semester: Mary Yang, Nicholas Rock, Krystyn Wypasek, and Claire Bula (Graphic Design); Richard Ryan and Fox Hysen (Painting); Lynne Allen (Printmaking); and David Snyder and Cathy Della Lucia (Sculpture).
The BFA exhibition is free, and open to the general public.
BU School of Visual Arts 2023 BFA Thesis Exhibition
DATES & TIMES
May 9-19, 2023 • 11am-5pm • Galleries are open Tuesdays-Saturdays; closed Sundays, Mondays, and major holidays. On May 19 the exhibitions close at 1pm to prepare for graduation.
LOCATION
BFA Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture Thesis Exhibition: To build a nest and leave it empty
Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery • 855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
BFA Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition: Lived In
808 Gallery • 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline, MA 02446
EXHIBITING STUDENTS BY MAJOR
Graphic Design
Kira Ajas • Rebecca Benoit • Isadora Bernasconi • Danielle Chang • Mina Chung • Claire Collins • Andreina De La Blanca • Faith Garcia • Emily Griffin • Lauren Had • Hannah Hong • Max Huang-Debow • Felix Huang • Christine Kim • Minsuh Kim • Xiang Li • Yiqing Li • Yuqing Lin • Yantong Liu • Yushuo Liu • Asjha Malcolm • Jacqueline Mang • Kelsea Mann • Shelby Mitchell • Michelle Nie • Seyun Om • Eugene Park • Mary Pyrdol • Avishi Rajgarhia • Hannah Ramos • Crystal Sealey • Nell Sheridan • Emma Snavely • Julia So • Perry Sosi • Sambridhi Subedi • Dennis Tran • Laura Wagner • Tianliang Wang • Zhipeng Wang • Kexin Zhang
Painting
Evelyn Bi • Julia Diaz • Madison Flaherty • Liran Hu • Yaming Jiang • Dilyara Kuanysheva • Alessandro LoPresti • Asjha Malcolm • Ligaia Meyer • Jenna Riedl • Emma Schmidt • Rachel Schneider • Kathryn Schuldenberg • Sofia Scully-Power • Shamayam Sullivan • Xianying Yu
Printmaking
Lily Wynne Fine • Heeseung Han • Xianying Yu
Sculpture
Felix Huang
CHAIRS BY PROGRAM
- BFA Graphic Design, Christopher Sleboda
- BFA Painting, Richard Raiselis
- BFA Printmaking, Deborah Cornell
- BFA Sculpture, Gregory Gómez
Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 34,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 17 schools and colleges, along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University’s research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. Learn more at bu.edu.
Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. With programs in Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, CFA prepares students for a meaningful creative life by developing their intellectual capacity to create art, shift perspective, think broadly, and master relevant skills. CFA offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, as well as a range of online degrees and certificates. Learn more at bu.edu/cfa.
Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts prepares students to think seriously, to see critically, to make intensely, and to act with creative agency in the contemporary world. The School of Visual Arts merges the intensive studio education of an art school with the opportunities of a large urban university, and is committed to educating the eye, hand, and mind of the artist. With rigorous graduate and undergraduate fine art programs that are rooted in studio practice, CFA School of Visual Arts provides highly motivated students with programs in the bedrock disciplines, of the fine arts coupled with a vast array of electives and liberal arts opportunities.