Saturday, July 6, 2013

MFA in Visual Arts Graduate Exhibition, June 2013

Beautifully Grotesque is the title of my thesis and final body of work presented in the Art Institute of Boston Main Gallery on 700 Beacon Street. The fifth residency flew by, culminating in the graduation ceremony and gallery reception on June 29th. Aaron Lish created a blog for our class http://aibmfajune2013.blogspot.com/p/image-gallery.html. During the eleven day stretch, I presented an artist power point talk, defended my thesis, attended two seminars, gave critiques to current MFA students, and hung the work.

Our MFA graduate exhibitions in Boston and Cambridge were reviewed by Shawn Hill on June 26th in Big, Red, and Shiny: Thesis Show Round-Up #6: Art Institute of Boston MFA. Shawn wrote:

Fitz Gibbon's shapes are, by contrast, playful, abstract and weird. Her pottery skills are evident in the carefully drooping, folded, sagging and bulbous shapes, but most of all in her lush glazes of green, pink and turquoise. However, she's more interested in twisting and transforming her works so that they offer unusual surprises. Whether hanging pendulous from the ceiling or flopping over hooks and shelves, these oddly swelling sacks use Astro-turf, piano wire and mirrors to create hidden areas of incident and unusual bursts of texture and shape. They're somewhere between flora and fauna, alien creations giving birth to themselves.

Five of my pieces were presented. The show came down on June 30th. Two sculptures were shipped to The Clay Studio in Philadelphia for a juried graduate exhibition and the remaining work are on their way home to California.