Thesis Exhibitions Open in Gallery Three

The UWM Peck School of the Arts Department of Visual Art will host two
MA/MFA Thesis Exhibitions this spring. The first exhibition, featuring
work by John Ty Bender, Michael Julian, Dusanka Komnenic and Blyth Meier
opens on Friday, April 2 and runs through April 17, 2004. The second
exhibition, featuring artists Juan Juarez, Dorijan Kolundzija, Amy
ONeill, Rebecca Pearson, John Scotello and Andrea Skyberg opens on
Friday, April 30 and runs through May 15, 2004. Both exhibitions are in
the Institute of Visual Arts (inova) Gallery Three. Opening receptions
are scheduled from 5-7 PM on April 2 and April 30, and gallery talks
will take place from 4-6 PM on April 7 and May 5. All events are free
and open to the public. Gallery Three, located on the second floor of
the Art Center Building, 2400 East Kenwood Boulevard on the UWM campus,
is open Tuesday through Saturday, 12 noon to 5 PM.

For more than thirty years, UWM has offered Masters of Art and Masters
of Fine Arts degrees through the Department of Visual Art. Visual Art
Graduate Program alumni go on to work as artists, professors, and arts
administrators world wide with many of them continuing their work within
the Milwaukee community. The Thesis Exhibition is the capstone project
for graduate students completing their degrees.

About the Thesis Exhibition Artists: First Exhibition
TY BENDER
Benders works are free-spirited explorations of his relationship with
nature and culture, imprinted upon him since his youth in rural
Wisconsin. His bodily morphing forms often evolve through the ceramics
process and ultimately the fire where a piece gains its final
personality. It is his interest in the firing process that led Bender
to become involved in the Waterville Anagama Kiln Project with
Christopher Davis-Benavides and Jeff Noska. In this wood fired kiln
project he has had the opportunity to collaborate with other artists and
students from the community. Currently, Benders work fuses an
exploration of point of departure with an examination of how
site-specific formats relate to the natural forms that he is most drawn
to creating.

Bender was born and lived his first eighteen years among the rivers,
marshlands, and oak forests of Central Wisconsin. He has lived in
Milwaukee since 1992, where he earned his B.F.A. in ceramics from UWM in
1999. As a graduate student in ceramics, Bender received three Frederick
R. Layton Fellowships; won a scholarship from the Center for Latin
American and Caribbean Studies to travel to Peru to study animal
representation in Peruvian folk art; and was awarded a Professional
Development award from the Peck School of the Arts. Bender received his
M.A. from the UWM in 2002. He is currently an instructor and technician
in the UWM Ceramics Department where he works closely with the
undergraduate students on the aesthetics and technical skills necessary
for the production of ceramic sculpture.

MICHAEL K. JULIAN
Michael K. Julians work investigates the problems and possibilities
inherent in geometric, abstract painting as it relates to both Modern
and Postmodern theory. Julian believes that geometric/constructive
painting, while being a specific product of Modern art, was not simply a
historical phase but, instead, a different way of thinking and creating
that is still a viable mode of expression in the twenty-first century.
This current body of work courts interactivity and draws from fields as
varied as music, math, systems analysis, mass production, Gestalt
theory, and game structures.

Julian grew up in the northern Chicago suburbs in a family of engineers.
He received his B.F.A. in drawing, painting, and printmaking from the
College of Design at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. After a brief
return to the Chicago area in 1995 he moved to Minneapolis where he
received his M.A. in painting from Minnesota State University-Mankato
(May 2001) while maintaining a studio in the busy arts district of the
Midway area of St. Paul. As a graduate student at UWM he has taught both
beginning drawing and a two-dimensional composition class. Julian will
complete his M.F.A. degree this May.

DUSANKA KOMNENIC
Dusanka Komnenics work is a result of magical properties of material,
its transformation and her constant play with it. She sees herself as an
alchemist rather than a designer, an alchemist whose goal is to make a
man out of mud and to turn carbon into a diamond. The whole process of
making art is of importance to her, not just the artifact, and her
process is foregrounds accidental moves and unintentional mixtures of
materials. Komnenics creative engagement is focused on recognizing the
moment when the paintings start to breathe. Her work contemplates
transience, and for that reason she creates pseudo-scientific creatures
never born and never dead. Dusanka depicts them frozen in the fragment
of becoming, giving them a sense of immortality.

Komnenic received her B.A. in Applied Photography from the Academy of
Applied Arts, Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). She has
exhibited and participated in workshops throughout Europe as well a
number of venues and locations in the US. Her artwork has been published
in several literary and artistic magazines including Left Curve
Magazine, Afterimage, The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism,
Photo Net, Athens, Greece, and Politika, Serbia and Montenegro. Komnenic
will receive her M.A. degree in May 2004.

BLYTH RENATE MEIER
Blyth Renate Meier presents a series of photographs taken during her
two-and-a-half year employment as preparator and gallery site manager at
UWMs Institute of Visual Arts. Examining concerns of labor, authorship,
hyper-reality and documentation, Meier presents a series of images that
re-frame, re-curate, and re-present the paintings, installations,
photographs, and video exhibitions mounted by up-and-coming contemporary
artists and curators at this world-class institute.

Originally from North Dakota, Meier received her B.A. in English (1993)
and B.S.Ed. in English Education (1995) from the University of North
Dakota in Grand Forks. Since then, Meier has worked in various
occupations ranging from public school teacher to bartender to organic
farmer. In addition to digital photography, Meier also works in video.
Her 2002 work, oldgirl, was screened at the 2003 Wisconsin Film Festival
in Madison and the Spring 2003 UWM Student Film Festival.

About the Thesis Exhibition Artists: Second Exhibition
JUAN JUAREZ
Originally from Texas, Juarez now makes Milwaukee his home. According to
Juarez, The Midwest is different from South Texas and from a cultural
perspective is quite interesting. His studio research is focused on the
materiality of the working process, and how that sets up an
investigation of images as ideation. Running an image through various
states of manipulation with different applications of traditional and
non-traditional processes locates the work in an imagined space. The
studio research enables Juarez to act out his obsession with images and
how visual information bridges larger cultural issues. The ideas
explored through the work range from boyhood fantasy/hero worship, to
the masculine ideal and its conflation with whiteness, and how these
singular issues broaden into a social space involving comments on race,
class and gender.

DORIJAN KOLUNDZIJA
One of the most astonishing facets of the contemporary effort to
understand the complex environment influencing the human condition is
the endeavor to decipher the multifaceted interrelatedness of humanity
and technology. This has been the focus of Kolundzijas work in the past
couple of years. The aim of his art is to investigate, not the ensuing
manifestations of this relationship, but its true nature. Kolundzijas
latest work explores the possibilities of unconventional interaction
with technology by responding to people's positions and movements using
video and motion tracking. Using the familiar instrument of their
bodies, participants engage in somewhat playful contact with projected
animal-like creatures that do not really exist, blurring the boundary
between real and digital, human and technological. Dorijan Kolundzija
was born 1976 in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2000 he graduated from the Academy
of Applied Arts in Belgrade, with a degree in applied graphics. He will
receive his M.A. from UWM in May 2004.

AMY ONEILL
Self-portraiture has been a significant aspect of ONeills work for
many years. The urgency with which she makes self-portraits is connected
to her ongoing investigations into the practice of art, art theory, and
art historyparticularly past art historical movements and current
academic discourses surrounding queer issues as well as the issues
surrounding the female body in art and literature. ONeills work
explores traditional feminist tropes such as body image, sexuality, and
desire and critiques the visual representations of women as constructed
by popular culture vis-à-vis self-portraiture. The self she represents
in her paintings is an allegorical figure: the embodiment of complex,
and often, incongruous, aspects of her personality (a postmodern,
constructed self, rather than a natural one). Some of ONeills
paintings evoke a body, while others suppress the body in order to evoke
other aspects of the paintings: the psychic space of the studio and
psychic space between subject and viewer are two themes that currently
interest me.

ONeill is a Milwaukee native who has been a professional painter since
1997. She received her B.F.A. from UWM (1998), and will receive her
M.F.A. in May, 2004. She is the recipient of several fellowships and
awards, including two Frederick R. Layton Fellowships, two Elsa Ulbright
Memorial Scholarships, the UWM Faculty Scholarship, and the Clarice
Logan Travel Award. She has traveled extensively throughout the United
States and Europe, including a period of study in Italy. ONeill has
maintained an active exhibition schedule, exhibiting work throughout the
Milwaukee area. Her work has been included in an invitational show at
the Milwaukee Art Museum and she was the subject of a solo show at UWMs
Institute of Visual Art. Her most recent exhibition, i.d./a.d. at St.
Marys College in Notre Dame, IN, was part of a symposium on identity
and the politics of identity. ONeills work has been featured in
publications including The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee
Magazine. ONeills work is included in many private collections
nationwide, and her commissioned murals may be seen all over Milwaukee.

REBECCA PEARSON
Rebecca Pearson received her B.A. from UW-Green Bay and is currently a
candidate for the M.F.A. degree at UWM. Pearsons work reflects an
intensely tactile engagement with her materials: fabric, embroidery, and
beadwork. She explores the elements of innocence and awareness through
the emotional and sensual quality of these materials. Pearson balances
this sensual and textural experience with a conceptual base that
reflects her research into fairy tales, Jungian psychology, and feminist
ideology. Her artwork is included in the permanent collection of the
Lawton Gallery at UW-Green Bay, and she has exhibited at inova Gallery 3
at UWM, the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay and the Fibers
Invitational at the Slocumb Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee.

JOHN SCOTELLO
Milwaukee artist and M.F.A. candidate John Scotello presents work based
on grand scale, art-historically archetypical figure paintings. Scotello
deconstructs this art historical genre by imposing his own portrait and
comedic symbols over the traditional figure paintings. The result is
paintings that are hysterically funny and a critique not only of art
history--but of himself and contemporary culture as well. Scotellos
work is richly beautiful, educational, entertaining, and proves that no
one and everyone can be a hero.

ANDREA SKYBERG
In The Filling Andrea Skyberg takes us into a world of excessive
consumerism that is scattered with products of confusion and enticement.
Her use of video narrative with unique costumes and sets lends the
appearance of reality, but with a slight exaggeration, prodding the
viewer to reassess their own reality. In her narrative, we witness the
continuous cycle of selling and buying. Through the excess of these
activities we understand a new type of violence, afflicting both the
mind and body. Whats for sale in this reality is more than your usual
trip to Wal-Mart. Skyberg creates bodily forms that are ripped open to
reveal a shallow filling, something that is unnatural and tainted. These
forms appear beautiful, but violated. They become the layer of skin we
cannot see, symbolizing the psychological effects of commodity and violence.

Skyberg was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota and currently resides in
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. She graduated from the Maryland Institute, College
of Art in 2000 with a B.F.A. in fiber arts. After being awarded a
National Fulbright Fellowship to research female genital mutilation,
Andrea spent 10 months in Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana. Upon returning
to the United States, she began to pursue her graduate degree in fiber
art at UWM. In addition to receiving several art and display accolades,
Skyberg has been awarded the Chancellors Fellowship for graduate study
at UWM. She will obtain her M.A. in May of 2004. For the past nine
years, working toward an ultimate goal of female empowerment and
understanding, Skyberg has produced numerous live performances, wearable
costume-art, and documentary videos.