{"id":3030,"date":"2026-02-24T21:37:52","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T21:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/artmuseum\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2026-02-26T20:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:05:41","slug":"2026-school-of-art-and-design-faculty-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/artmuseum\/2026-school-of-art-and-design-faculty-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"Artists’ Statements – 2026 School of Art and Design Faculty Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Raina Belleau Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Midsummer, <\/em><\/strong>2021<\/p>\n
Multimedia<\/p>\n
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Finders Keepers, <\/em><\/strong>2021<\/p>\n
Multimedia<\/p>\n
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Fire Danger<\/em><\/strong>, <\/strong>2021<\/p>\n
Paint on plywood<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I cry during nature documentaries. Stone-cold sober and crying because walruses are accidentally throwing themselves off cliffs because of climate change and crying again the next minute because there’s a lake of methane under the ocean with animals that can’t live anywhere else, suggesting maybe there is life on other planets. Nature, and more specifically animals, has always gotten to me: from the Disney animations of my childhood to the first pet I ever bought myself as a real adult, a lovebird named Percy who loved broccoli and thought a wad of paper towel was his girlfriend. The environments and animals, in real life or on screen, fill me with an unnamable feeling of joy and sorrow, energy and calm. The end result is like a ghost that needs to be exorcised and made manifest through sculptures.<\/p>\n
My sculptures are a remix, a playlist on shuffle, of all the sublime, comical, personal, and pop culture references to nature and wildlife that I’ve encountered and squirreled away. I hoard recycled paper—newsprint and packing materials from a few too many Amazon orders that cloud my eco-consciousness to build up armatures of North American wildlife. I impulsively buy solar-powered outdoor lights shaped like rocks and other items because their absurdity is like a philosophical question that maybe I can answer if I keep it in my studio long enough. If the answer doesn’t come, I’ll use it in a sculpture, I tell myself to justify the purchase. Some things just make sense to me, like a cardboard cinderblock I meticulously constructed and finished with a faux stone spray paint or the green fur that looks like Cruella Deville skinned Oscar the Grouch to make a coat, but also makes an excellent fake grass that would look at home in the 3D animated adaptation of The Lorax. Other materials I use in my sculptures are there because they do triple duty: creative reuse, cultural reference, and biomimicry, looking like something natural despite being human-made. Like the broken blinds from my apartment that became a proud turkey’s tail, its plastic caped cord engulfed in his wattle, or the striped rainbow duster I picked up at a Midwestern truck stop that became a raccoon’s bushy tail.<\/p>\n
I make animal sculptures out of trash, out of found objects, and whatever else feels right because this planet is as beautiful as it is horrifying, as tragic as it is hilarious, often all of these all at once, sometimes overwhelmingly so. I have fun because I’d be depressed if I didn’t. Sometimes I aim for realism, but only if I’m rendering an object that’s got a mix of attributes like Phallaceae, a family of fungi so gross and suggestive that they fill me with immature giggles. Other details need to be used against the viewer like a weapon. The soulful eyes of a doe weren’t good enough for Bambi; he needed giant eyes and lush lashes to get you to love him. I don’t see why my creatures shouldn’t try to do the same. And who doesn’t love the occasional rainbow or disco ball?<\/p>\n
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Caryn Bopp Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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The Patron Saint of Strength, <\/em><\/strong>2023<\/p>\n
Screenprint with dry pigments<\/p>\n
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The Patron Saint of Wisdom,<\/em><\/strong> 2023<\/p>\n
Screenprint with dry pigments<\/p>\n
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The Patron Saint of Patience,<\/em><\/strong> 2023<\/p>\n
Screenprint with dry pigments<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I think about the most important things I have learned so far in life, most have been taught by dogs. Lay in the sun, be a helpful member of the pack, wake up excited for the day, live in the moment, etc. My “Dog Saint” series aims to highlight the overwhelming goodness they inherently show, and what we could all learn from them. Patience, Strength, and Wisdom. They can do no wrong, and actually perform miracles, at least in my eyes.<\/p>\n
These are made using dry pigments that have been screen printed, along with collage. There is no direct drawing on them. Powdered pigments are squeegeed through the stencil and set using a transparent base. From there, I cut and collaged paper I had made using various printing processes.<\/p>\n
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Vincent Caranchini Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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San Carlo alle Fontane: Cloister, by Borromini, Rome, Italy, <\/em><\/strong>2017<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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San Carlo alle Fontane: Dome, by Borromini, Rome, Italy, <\/em><\/strong>2018<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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Santa Maria degli Angeli, by Michelangelo, Rome, Italy, <\/em><\/strong>2018<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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San Andrea by Bernini, Rome, <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
Italy, <\/em><\/strong>2018<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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Sacred Architectural Space<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n
As a professor of Interior Design at Northern Arizona University, my research is focused on the history of architecture, interiors, and the built environment. This research informs both my teaching, scholarship, and work as an artist. At NAU, my teaching includes Western architecture history courses and studio courses in architectural drawing. My artwork combines the methodological study of architectural history with architectural and plein-air drawing practice to depict, document, and understand space.<\/p>\n
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Over the past several years, I have been documenting sacred buildings in Rome, Lazio, Assisi, Umbria, and Tuscany as an artist-in-residence in Italy. The drawings presented in this gallery are from my travel sketchbooks. They are a sampling of the collection I have accumulated during artist residencies while traveling. I use these sketches in lectures, demonstrations, and they are exhibited in professional and academic galleries.<\/p>\n
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If you’d like to learn more or see more of my work, please see: caranchini.com<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vincent Caranchini<\/strong><\/p>\n
Associate Professor, Interior Design<\/p>\n
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ<\/p>\n
CARANCHINI.COM<\/strong><\/p>\n
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Neal Galloway Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Splintered Symbiosis, <\/em><\/strong>2005<\/p>\n
Multimedia<\/p>\n
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Hello?, <\/em><\/strong>2005<\/p>\n
Single-channel video<\/p>\n
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Wrapped Relationship, <\/em><\/strong>2005<\/p>\n
Wood, tin cans, string, and canvas<\/p>\n
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Tin Can Conversations<\/em> is an artwork series which uses the motif of a tin can telephone to explore the fragility, complexity, and profound value of interpersonal communication. Inspired by a difficult cross-country displacement, and by the challenge of maintaining healthy relationships during the COVID pandemic, these sculptures and time-based artworks explores physical and psychological distance, miscommunication, disagreement, sensitivity, power dynamics, love, and connection.<\/p>\n
This series is my most important conceptual departure from the core practice of making art related to human impact on the natural environment. But use of recycled, reclaimed, renewable, and natural materials grounds the artworks in eco-friendly studio practices. I enjoy using unconventional materials to connect with audiences, while pushing those materials to overcome their humble origins.<\/p>\n
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Christine Golden Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Ruminant Lattice Setting, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ceramic, glaze, glue, grout, and glass beads<\/p>\n
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Scorched Echoes, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ceramic, glaze, ashes, and acrylic<\/p>\n
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What happens when the structures that organize our lives obscure the underlaying systems that allow us to live? Daily life rests on hidden, interdependent infrastructures, both human and ecological. My work connects the idea of domestic life, societal structures, and ecological systems that merge into one symbolic ecosystem. Objects tied to family and community, like toys or dishware ware, become carriers of both burden and hope. Elements of the natural world, such as animals, rocks, and rain, are embedded within and around them. Indicators that the natural world is inseparable from our daily lives, even when unseen or unappreciated. Clay is the ideal material for this idea because it is both domestic and ecological; the ground we stand on is literally reshaped into the infrastructures of daily and societal life. The simultaneously strong yet delicate material reflects our collective precarity and endurance. It is a reminder that neither domestic routines nor ecological systems guarantee permanence.<\/p>\n
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Ryan Hawk Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Sowee the Immortal: Muddying Boundaries, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Video installation<\/p>\n
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U<\/strong><\/em>titled (Brothers), <\/em><\/strong>2026<\/p>\n
Silicone rubber, urethane foam, and tattoo fabric<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Spanning sculpture, moving-image, and installation, my scholarly-driven practice explores the dialectics of power that shape social hierarchy.<\/p>\n
Sowee The Immortal is a faux documentary that interrogates the symbolic and material conditions that have given rise to the current discourse of Western identity politics and protest––especially those recuperated by artists and cultural institutions. This project stems from my on-going interest in satire as a form of critical analysis.<\/p>\n
Untitled (brothers) is a sculptural installation continuing my work and research into the corporeality of silicone rubber and cultural history of tattooing. Functioning as a self portrait, the installation recreates a scene from my childhood to raise questions about taste, respectability, and sentimentality.<\/p>\n
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Helen Hawley Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Back of Clay Head (China, MET_DP272063), <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Oil on canvas<\/p>\n
Back of Clay Head (China, MET_DP222955), <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Oil on canvas<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Project Statement
\nTerracotta Series (2024–present) are paintings of terracotta figures shown primarily
\nfrom the back, shifting attention away from identification and toward form. Source
\nimages from Wikimedia Commons retain visible mounts and acquisition numbers.
\nOchres, siennas, and other earth pigments link the painted surface to the same
\ngeologic origins as the clay itself, reinforcing the connection between figure, color, and
\nearth.<\/p>\n
Bio
\nHelen Hawley is a visual artist whose projects begin with a question and take form
\nthrough language play and material inquiry. She works across painting, text,
\ninstallation, and time-based media. Recent exhibitions include Field Projects, New York
\n(2024), and CICA Museum, South Korea (2024). Her work has been supported by the
\nArizona Commission on the Arts and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency
\nGrant (New York), as well as residencies in the United States, Germany, and Senegal<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Janeece Henes Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Poppies<\/em><\/strong>, 2025<\/p>\n
Encaustic<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My work as an artist\/educator\/scholar is deeply intertwined. For nearly three decades, my artistic practice has evolved alongside my teaching, often emerging in community with students, youth collaborators, and interdisciplinary partners. Participatory art projects connected to border studies, environmental awareness, and cultural identity have shaped both my creative process and my educational philosophy.<\/p>\n
These experiences are grounded in transformative learning that informs my ongoing research into experiential education, service-learning, and humanitarian engagement. I am particularly interested in how collaborative artmaking within real-world contexts fosters empathy, civic awareness, and a sense of shared humanity. Art, in this way, becomes both inquiry and action — a method for understanding complex social realities while imagining more just and sustainable futures.<\/p>\n
Alongside this social practice work, my recent studio focus has turned toward encaustic painting — an ancient medium using heated beeswax, damar resin, and pigment fused in luminous layers on wood panels. The process is tactile, meditative, and forgiving, allowing for continual revision through carving, collaging, etching, and layering. I often build surfaces with modeling pastes, stencils, watercolor washes, wax layers, drawing, and mixed media.<\/p>\n
Within these layered compositions, whimsical poppy flowers frequently emerge. They represent joy, resilience, memory, and hope — small gestures of beauty that counterbalance the heaviness of the social issues that often inform my teaching and research.<\/p>\n
I believe creating art is both resistance and restoration. It is therapeutic, grounding, and an assertion of agency in uncertain times. As Amie McNee writes, “Art as an antidote to chaos: creating art gives us agency in a world where we often feel powerless.”<\/em> This perspective resonates deeply with my dual role as teaching artist and researcher.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, my work seeks to cultivate connection, reflection, and hope — demonstrating how art education, creative practice, and community engagement together can foster meaningful transformation for individuals and communities alike.<\/p>\n
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Jason Hess Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Five Tumblers, <\/em><\/strong>2024<\/p>\n
Woodfired porcelain<\/p>\n
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Teapot, <\/em><\/strong>2024<\/p>\n
Woodfired porcelain<\/p>\n
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Seven Tall Bottles, <\/em><\/strong>2023<\/p>\n
Woodfired porcelain<\/p>\n
A desire to have objects that fulfill specific purposes inspires me to make functional pots. The infinite and elusive variety of texture and color attainable through the various making and firing processes that I use has generated an interest in presentation. I enjoy presenting my work so that a viewer might notice and appreciate subtle differences in form and surface. By grouping similar forms of differing size and color I hope to compose a visually dynamic display, which invites the viewer to enjoy the tactile nature of each individual piece and how they relate to one another.<\/p>\n
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Tai Lipan Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Marching, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ink on flashe paint on canvas<\/p>\n
Spinal Passage, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ink on flashe paint on canvas<\/p>\n
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Eternal Slumber, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ink on flashe paint on canvas<\/p>\n
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My recent paintings envision spaces hidden beneath monumental landscapes, moving between surface and subterranean realms. Imagining the ruins of civilization, both modern and ancient, these works feel at once historical and anticipatory, shaped by loss and hope. In intimate relief paintings, cracks and crevices of imagined rock formations shelter quiet dwellings, suggesting sites of refuge. The rock becomes both witness and protector. Confronting human-driven destruction, the work proposes a speculative world in which the earth, despite harm inflicted upon it, continues to offer refuge.<\/p>\n
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Jennifer \u201cJ.R.\u201d Mackenzie Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Near Me Always,<\/em><\/strong> 2023<\/p>\n
Colored pencil on artboard<\/p>\n
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First Glimpse of Winter,<\/em><\/strong> 2025<\/p>\n
Colored pencil on artboard<\/p>\n
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Eyes of the Wolf,<\/em><\/strong> 2024<\/p>\n
Acrylic paint on canvas<\/p>\n
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Artificial Pisces,<\/em><\/strong> 2025<\/p>\n
Colored pencil on artboard<\/p>\n
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My work explores close observation as an act of care. Through realism—primarily in colored pencil and acrylic—I am drawn to moments of stillness, intimacy, and presence found in the natural world. Animals and organic forms serve as both subject and collaborator, inviting the viewer to slow down, look closely, and recognize the quiet dignity and complexity of non-human life. Rooted in a deep love for animals, my practice also reflects a commitment to advocacy and stewardship, using careful representation as a way to foster empathy and ethical awareness. The labor-intensive nature of realism is intentional; it mirrors my own desire to linger, to understand form through patience, and to honor the individuality of each subject.<\/p>\n
Alongside traditional media, I am increasingly interested in how emerging technologies intersect with handcraft. One work in this exhibition incorporates AI as an initial generative tool, which I then reinterpret and transform through colored pencil and marker. Rather than replacing the artist’s hand, this process reframes authorship as dialogue—between human intuition, digital systems, and material response. Together, these pieces reflect an ongoing investigation into observation, ethics, and making in a contemporary world where both nature and technology shape how we see, value, and relate to one another.<\/p>\n
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David Politzer Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Untitled #106, (Wait Here, Keep Distance, This Way), <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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Untitled #233, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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Untitled #167, (Thank You), <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ink on paper<\/p>\n
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My current research uses technology to interpret and reconstruct landscapes of the Colorado Plateau. Consumer devices like smartphones are often seen as impediments to authentic experiences with nature. I’m interested in investigating these devices as tools for mediated seeing and envisioning new, constructed landscapes that speak to our compulsion to document and share.<\/p>\n
To make the work in this show I use generative systems—AI, custom code, and a pen plotter—to produce iterative drawings that abstract characteristic landscape features of the Colorado Plateau. Some are man-made, like telephone poles, road signs, and radio and fire towers. Others are simplified terrain like mountain silhouettes, and mysterious geological voids. I establish rule-based parameters, then allow algorithmic variation to influence the composition. By using repetition and chance I’m able to reveal unexpected juxtapositions and surprising interpretations of the landscape. Letting the machine share authorship reflects my sense that nature is too big, too complex, to ever be fully contained in an artwork.<\/p>\n
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Thomas Pomarico Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Killer Prophet,<\/em><\/strong> 2026<\/p>\n
Oil on canvas<\/p>\n
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Killer Raid, <\/em><\/strong>2026<\/p>\n
Oil on canvas<\/p>\n
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Killer Captured, <\/em><\/strong>2026<\/p>\n
Oil on canvas<\/p>\n
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This work reflects an ongoing studio practice that engages contemporary image culture through painting, with a particular interest in the circulation and effects of images across the digital landscape. Pulling from various media sources, the work translates these images into the traditional form of oil on canvas. The practice is rooted in hands-on processes, including the preparation and construction of stretched canvases, the priming and sanding of the surface, and the careful cultivation of color mixing, shape language, mark-making, and composition.<\/p>\n
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Barbara Ryan-Gartin Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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rib\/cage, <\/em><\/strong>2025-2026<\/p>\n
Woodcut<\/p>\n
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sun\/light, <\/em><\/strong>2025-2026<\/p>\n
Woodcut<\/p>\n
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canary, <\/em><\/strong>2025-2026<\/p>\n
Woodcut<\/p>\n
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grief, <\/strong>2025-2026<\/p>\n
Woodcut<\/p>\n
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flight, <\/em><\/strong>2025-2026<\/p>\n
Woodcut<\/p>\n
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Grief is a Mark<\/p>\n
This body of work explores the tension between the structures we are born into and the spaces we inhabit when those structures collapse. This suite of prints is a bridge between the silhouettes of my Invisible Ancestors <\/em>series and the sharp, geometric forms of the Suburban Ten Commandments <\/em>series. The resulting woodcuts point to the complex intersection of societal expectations, gendered constraints, and the heavy tide of grief.<\/p>\n
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Barbara Ryan Gartin 2026<\/p>\n
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Steven Schaeffer Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Shards, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ceramic<\/p>\n
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Cluster, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Ceramic<\/p>\n
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My work is evidence of my experiences in the natural world. From walks in the woods, to river expeditions, these physical encounters have led me to a greater level of personal consciousness. Understanding my environment is an essential motivation for my creative process. Nature is the didactic arena that I seek. Through my studio work I have realized what these experiences are consciously revealing to me.<\/p>\n
River trips by boat have led me to many places. These vessels have been the carriers for my integration into the wild, which has allowed me to foster my personal connection with nature. As a result the form of “boat” or “vessel” is the inspiration core of my ideas. I’m intent on creating work that offers the notion of hope and the embodiment of strength. This is a direct response to nature itself and the risks that are inherent within it. Nature is a collection of many of the formal qualities that interest me and in turn influence my work.<\/p>\n
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My work is simple in its method, yet transfers a generosity of scale to the viewer. The forms define space, and their weight is connected to the landscape they are inspired by.<\/p>\n
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Within these works an entire canyon can be created with one line slicing through its surface. My work is about the spatial relationships I’ve experienced in nature and, in turn, the work has become a voice for those landscapes.<\/p>\n
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Christopher Taylor Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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a start of a new lost time, <\/em><\/strong>2012-2024<\/p>\n
Oil, acrylic, paper collaged with ink and acrylic on canvas<\/p>\n
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Rhizome: Contained\/Released, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Oil and acrylic on canvas<\/p>\n
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Parergon X, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Oil, acrylic, collaged oil on canvas, and wood panel<\/p>\n
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These works treat painting as a temporal field rather than a fixed object. Revision becomes a form of continuation rather than erasure. The frame is never neutral, and what appears stable or resolved is always shaped by time.<\/p>\n
My practice is slow and shaped by interruption. The hours available for painting arrive in fragments, divided between teaching, family, and the ordinary responsibilities of middle life.<\/p>\n
Ideas form away from the studio and return altered when I reenter the work. An image that felt settled one week often reopens the next. Over time, this rhythm of pause and return has become part of the structure of the paintings themselves. The starts and stops leave a trace. Duration<\/p>\n
becomes material.<\/p>\n
In Start of a New Lost Time<\/em>, I cut into a painting first completed in 2012. That earlier work belonged to a different period of my life. By removing part of its surface and reworking it, I disrupted its timeline. The gesture was direct but decisive. You cannot go back unchanged. Collage, fissure, and layered mark making became ways of revisiting who I was without restoring it. The painting now holds multiple temporalities at once, with the earlier self<\/p>\n
embedded within present intervention.<\/p>\n
Parergon X <\/em>began in 2018 under a different title. Years later, I removed text from the surface, collaged in a piece of raw canvas with lightly wide brushed acrylic, and constructed a shallow panel that extends the painting into space. The frame and the image exchange roles. What once seemed central becomes peripheral. Geometry and looping lines weave through one another,<\/p>\n
suggesting systems that both contain and exceed us. The work reflects an ongoing concern with visibility, aging, and the way structures define what remains seen and what recedes.<\/p>\n
Rhizome Contained \/ Released <\/em>continues this investigation through a diptych structure. The<\/p>\n
square shifts toward the rectangle, becoming less an ideal form and more an architectural frame.<\/p>\n
It operates as both scaffold and boundary. Organic forms circulate within this constructed<\/p>\n
containment, pressing against its edges and at times breaking beyond it. Rather than opposing order and growth, the painting stages their interdependence. The frame generates pressure; the release depends upon it. Systems are built and systems are breached. Containment generates release.<\/p>\n
Across these works, abstraction functions as a shared language that carries history while<\/p>\n
remaining open. The paintings are not illustrations of autobiography or theory. They are material negotiations with time. Cutting, layering, returning, and revising become ways of working through change. The surface records not only gesture but duration.<\/p>\n
Cutting into earlier paintings was less an act of correction than an acceptance that time alters authorship. The person who returns to the surface is no longer the one who left it.<\/p>\n
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Spence Townsend Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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phantasmatic scene, <\/em><\/strong>2025<\/p>\n
Acrylic on canvas<\/p>\n
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The title, “Phantasmatic Scene”, is a term coined by gender studies scholar and author Judith Butler in their most recent book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?<\/em>. The term refers to the actions of conservative political groups and media outlets around the world who have attempted to characterize gender theory as a dangerous “phantasm”, stoking fear and sadly resulting in countless acts of violence against gender nonconforming individuals globally. The painting is a meditation on this concept. The ﬁgure within the landscape is seen smiling, aware of this “Phantasmatic Scene” all around, and bravely existing in spite of it. The landscape itself is picturesque, not representative of the Phantasmatic Scene, which is, after all, not a visible physical space but rather a much more insidious, mental space…a Phantasm. The painting is also an attempt for me to grapple with my identity, exploring my own performative roles and daily habits, and examines the cultural time and place that shaped me. This piece also corresponds with an original piece of music of the same title, which features an image of this painting on the cover.<\/p>\n
The music can be found here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
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David Van Ness and Shay Linder Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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I’m Fine, <\/em><\/strong>2026<\/p>\n
Multimedia<\/p>\n
I’m Fine<\/em> stems from a moment that stayed with me since undergraduate school. A faculty member once asked, “How are you?” When I answered honestly, I was corrected: in polite American society, you are supposed to say “I’m fine.” Only that.<\/p>\n
The work explores the social performance of happiness and the quiet violence of compulsory positivity. A robotic arm holds a screen displaying my face. It tracks viewers, maintaining eye contact. When asked, “How are you doing?” the system responds automatically: “I’m fine.” The phrase becomes both answer and mask.<\/p>\n
The robotic arm becomes a prosthetic of social expectation. It enforces orientation, attention, and composure. It literalizes the script we carry in daily life: maintain eye contact, appear stable, reassure others, suppress disruption.<\/p>\n
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Elisa Wiedeman Accordion Closed<\/span><\/h4>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/a>\n
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Incubation, <\/em><\/strong>2021<\/p>\n
Mixed Media<\/p>\n
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Incubation<\/p>\n
Contemplative, reflective<\/p>\n
Observing, listening, feeling, sensing<\/p>\n
Concealed refinement<\/p>\n
Transformation<\/p>\n
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