UT students pursuing a master’s in fine arts, in fulfillment with their graduation requirement, have mounted solo exhibition work in the Art and Architecture Building, Ewing Gallery of Art, putting on display a culmination of three years of research making, experimenting and writing about their work extensively. Every year a new group of third year MFA candidates presents their solo exhibitions in the Ewing Gallery.
The MFA Thesis Exhibition will be open until April 21. Small groups of students have concurrent solo exhibitions on display due to the number of graduate students in the UT School of Art.
The exhibition is held annually and is often referred to as PILOT, or Project in Lieu of Thesis, Exhibitions. In addition to the PILOT, some students will write a thesis, as well as a final presentation of three years of their creative research and work and will defend their work during an oral examination in front of a faculty committee. This year features nine graduating MFA students with three group exhibitions on display.
Sarah McFalls, design and communications coordinator and collections manager for the School of Art, has watched the gallery go up for many years.
“The undergraduate students really enjoy this exhibition,” McFalls said. “For them, it is an opportunity to see the work of the students who have been TAs for many of their classes. Additionally, if they are thinking about applying to an MFA program after completing their undergraduate work at UT, it can be helpful to see the variety and caliber of work and ideas that art students are exploring at the next level of their education.”
Danqi Cai’s work utilizes a combination of handmade papers and animations to depict ancient Chinese characters and portraits. Her MFA focus is in printmaking.
“It was kind of my motivation to re-enroll myself in my past education so that I can reconsider and recreate what I learned as a child,” Cai said.
Cai’s work takes up a much more interactive and intimate part of the gallery: tactile handmade papers.
“My intention for the viewer was to remind people that we all see from a perspective where something is visible, but not everything,” Cai said. “There are things that are very easy to miss.”
The pacing of the animations in Cai’s work makes it so that there is a lot the viewer will miss, showing a frame for just a moment. A crowded area of the gallery was Cai’s first piece: a cutout of colorful children’s books that after some time of standing in front of it, the letters clearly say, “I gave you your life.”
“I’m hoping the viewer can realize that some information is kind of hidden, but once you see it become very, very important, in a way where you can’t unsee it,” Cai said.
Cai discussed the idea of reversal in her work and “afterwardness,” an understanding that comes after time has passed and a perspective has changed.
Hanna Seggerman, a third year MFA Candidate with a sculpture concentration is one of the students featured in the Ewing Gallery. Her focus being “Attention and Being,” defining the words in two ways.
Seggerman explained that the definitions of “Attention and Being” prompt action – to think, to care, to consider, to exist and to be.
“All tasks of the individual that directly nurture ourselves and our connective relationships with other people, places and objects that exist alongside us in the world,” Seggerman said. “The work exhibited in Attention and Being seeks to visually record the phenomena of human experience. It is the act of intentional art making that offers the ability to attend to ourselves and further examine our experiences, whether deemed extraordinary or mundane to the observer.”
Within Seggerman’s work, the steel sculpture, free-motion quilted textiles and their corresponding prints are derived from the careful extraction and abstraction of information found within the many contours that both separate and connect the earth, the sky and the recognizable, tangible objects and figures that all exist within the four corners of a single photograph.
An intensely thorough project with deep personal sentiment fueling it, Seggerman’s journey through her art was a long one. Developing the exhibition since August of 2022, the works included in the exhibition have taken anywhere between 5-75 hours to complete.
“I hoped that this exhibition would allow students to think, to care, to consider, to exist and to be,” Seggerman said. “I was hopeful that each student would leave with a greater appreciation of attention to themselves and the spaces they exist within and the objects and others they co-exist in space with.”
Seggerman has been included in a multitude of exhibitions, though this serves as her second 24th International Open at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, juried by Pritika Chowdhry, and No Bigger Than a Breadbox Biennial Small Works Show 2023 at the Emporium Center in Knoxville, juried by Josiah Golson.
Though having her work on display isn’t a rare occurrence, being featured in the Ewing Gallery will offer an audience that is different from those in other shows.
“I have had the opportunity to serve as a Graduate Teaching Associate during my three years here at the University of Tennessee Knoxville,” Seggerman said. “It was a wonderful experience getting to see my past and present students see my work in person.”
