Month: March 2022

Deziree Jordyn

Posted on by Flynn Forester
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Deziree Jordyn

Where do we go from here?

The room is meant to step between time and into the space of conscious thinking. Posing questions to think about, not answers.

The intimate moments we chose to document and the things we keep are the sum of who we are. No two are the same; it is inevitable to fall victim to misunderstanding one another because of this. Yet how can we view the moments and objects of others to reflect the questions back on ourselves and challenge our own perspectives? While there may be misunderstanding there are plenty of similarities in experiences. Working specifically with found vernacular photography and objects allows for direct access to uncrafted, real experiences.

The objects collectively create stories, intertwining amongst each other. As we do when we as people collect. The documentation of these articles through installation, painting/collage and sculpture represent a narrative of the weaving webs of humanity and pose questions of perspective, belonging, and the intangible aspects of existing.

The revolution will be internal.

Devon Borkowski

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Devon Borkowski

No Trespassing


My thesis project is a collection of paintings, drawings, photographs, and found materials that work together to craft an invented mythology for the South Jersey Pine Barrens region. This invented mythos is centered around insular communities, protective hostility, and trespass.

The oils paintings in the series depict familiar pinelands locations— the woods, the local convenience store, and farms— but with a hostile figure present, usually up front in the composition and always directly confronting the viewer with their gaze. Most of the figures are human in appearance (with a surrealist twist that makes them uncanny and unnerving) and are based on people I knew growing up. They are dressed like locals of the region, unapologetically “Piney hick”. The paintings are meant to be somewhat inaccessible to people not familiar with the region, depicting things like Control Burn fires and partially obscured signs that are easily understood facts of life to locals, but confusing and maybe even frightening to outsiders.

The drawings are thirteen charcoal sketches of the Pine Barrens most famous actual myth, the Jersey Devil. I depicted him in a number of different ways, reflecting the many different ways a local legend gets told. The sketches are meant to look a little rushed or hazy, as if maybe someone did them from memory after an encounter with the creature. Like the paintings, his eyes are always towards the viewer.

I also included a selection of black and white photographs I’ve taken of my home town. These do not have any figures in them. They give the viewer a glimpse of the world that these figures are protecting. Real No Trespassing signs are also interspersed with the artwork.

The collective effect of all these parts is meant to put the viewer in the position of the “outsider”. Someone who has wandered into a space where they are not wanted. The paintings and drawings take on the empowered position. They make direct eye contact with the viewer, so that if the viewer wants to stare they must accept the painting staring back in return— far more menicinly, and with hostile intent.  

Doris Doku

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Doris Doku

To you in 27 years
My work explores the relationship between my inner child and myself currently. Through the themes of escapism, confrontation, denial, and nurturing I am representing myself through child-like and matured imagery. The journey through this thesis holds importance to the conversation of how the relationship between yourself as a child and yourself and how it has impacted you throughout your life. I have always been aware and fascinated with what makes me who I am as a person and what I have developed into my own personality. Whether it deals with strengths, weaknesses, triggers, or character traits, it is proven that it stems from the development stage of your childhood. Because of this, I am using my thesis to question my avoidance of my inner child and how it affects how I address myself as a person. With the use of a red string that symbolizes trauma that bonds me to my inner child and the spiked hair to symbolize an abstract version of the African thread method hairstyle my mom would frequently style my hair in, it opens a small window to the narration of my past stories. An important aspect of my work is the two characters being a form of me now and my inner child creating a dialogue in every work they are presented in.

As an artist, I am essentially interested in creating works that call for the participation of an audience with similar experiences that they dealt with in their childhood. A lot of childhood trauma is connected to the inner child and has a wide variety through the masses. I want to continue creating art that explores these topics in a way where it is relatable and eye opening to the audience. What challenged me in making this thesis project was actually having a conversation with my inner child as I created these various works. It was a triggering yet needed experience because not only did it make me break down in tears but it brought me to a point of self realization. A lot of my worries were brought to light and were made more light-hearted than heavy. The experience in making these works has been fulfilling and an inspiration for the next group of works to come.

Jessica Cisse

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Jessica Cisse

It Started With A Single Pale Opal

My work explores putting black bodies in spaces of comfort while confronting the trauma that comes with it. Throughout the years, I’ve noticed that black bodies in paintings and gallery spaces were almost always depicted in spaces of trauma or pain and I didn’t want to contribute to this archetype that black people are placed in. I want to show that Black people are more than just their trauma and can exist in spaces that are typically geared towards our white counterparts.

I’m interested in Rococo and Baroque art because of how it depicts comfort. I also noticed that black people were never in these spaces so I wanted to infiltrate these spaces that weren’t made for us. When I first started thinking about ideas for my thesis, I knew I wanted to incorporate my family in somehow. My mother has chests of photos taken over the decades that I’ve always been fascinated with as a child and I started looking at them again when I started my research. I started taking images and used them as reference for the drawings that I was creating. I have an interest in tapping into memory space because a lot of these images I’m drawing from were from a time where I wasn’t born or I don’t remember. The figures in the drawings are clearer and more consistent compared to my backgrounds which are distorted or imaginary to play with this idea of memory space. This body of work has made me realize several things. I realized that I’m detached from several aspects of my life like my culture and my parents’ stories. I’ve also realized while creating this body of work that an artist can’t always make happy work. While it was beautiful to depict my family members in these spaces, I also realized that the photos and memories I was tapping into also carried a lot of trauma that I felt like I couldn’t ignore. While yes, it sounds like a contradiction to my original statement, I feel like the work I’ve created tiptoes between the two ideas I’ve presented. My mother’s middle name is Opal, so in a way this body of work is a tribute to her because her photos were what pushed me into this journey of self-discovery in my art.

Lauren Krasnoff

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Lauren Krasnoff

Sorry 4 Oversharing

Making art is my way of contending with the over-saturation of imagery and media we experience on a daily basis. I use paint to materialize “snapshots” of the important people, places, and experiences in my life which I feel exceed the representational limits of the photo. 

I am fascinated by my generation’s obsession with sharing images of our lives on social media and the ridiculousness of the perfectly curated existences we create for ourselves. I think about encapsulating my life in paint as both earnest depictions of my own memories as well as a satirization of this obsession. The compositions I create begin as preliminary drawings and studies which I eventually scale up. The editing process of drawing parallels the way we embellish our visual identities online.

Sara Venturi

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Sara Venturi

As a person creating art, I feel like any medium can be used to be passionate about the other. When I make any piece of art, I like to think about it mechanically: the amount of detail it will have and the amount of space it will take up (literally and compositionally). My exploration with photography, design and painting is taking an image, having the overall composition unique as a photographer; thinking about the mechanics as a designer but translating it into a painting with a significant change with color and orientation. Even though I have only taken one photography class, the amount of information I have learned by it reflects my work. Translating information can be simplified as translating a language. The science of construction and deconstruction can be different when working with design. When looking at a phone screen, laptop screen or tv screen, the mechanics of them are related to design when looking at the measurements in pixels. Each pixel gives off a different color but when put together they create an image. Translating this two dimensional image into an image that has texture and depth is what influenced me to continue translating design work into paintings. This is my door that I want to open up to people, to share how I can view the world.

Some inspiration of mine has been branching off from impressionism work dated back from the late 1800s and early 1900s to current date and a touch of cubism. Works from Jean Metzinger, Alex Brown and Chuck Close have inspired me to create something that I can understand from my translation. With these amazing artists in consideration, my thought process in any work has driven me to illustrate something completely different for the viewer and for myself to understand what I am capable of as an artist. Learning about each medium to its fullest potential creates a significant amount of idealization for the product I will create. 

The process of my work takes time. I first take photos of the scenes or areas that I can picture in my mind to distort into pixels. Second, I work on my iPad to transform my ideas on screen. Lastly, I work from my ipad screen to translate what I have pixelated into a painting. None of my images gets printed out, I only work from screen to challenge my eyes in the translation process of color making.