STUDENT WORK SAMPLES

Students mentored by Nicholas Bauch

JAINE VANG

This assignment was about identity and photography. Questions I worked through with Vang included: What roles do we play? What personas do people adopt? What groups do people align with? How can you portray these elements in a photograph? Vang’s response came in the fall of 2020, after a summer of uprisings in Minneapolis and the country in response to George Floyd’s murder.

CAMILA LINAWEAVER

I selected and hired Master of Fine Arts student in Printmaking, Camila Linaweaver, to join my funded research project “Visualizing the Spaces of Actor-Network Theory.” Our aim was to break one of human geography’s most salient theories out of the confines of text (example here) and into other mediums of expression. As an immigrant from Santiago, Chile to Houston, Texas, Linaweaver’s approach was to visualize the organization of space as part of a toolkit for action, especially with respect to her core interest of immigrant rights and the immigrant experience.

Production Process and Exhibit

JORDAN WOODWARD

Using three projectors and a custom-build lattice, Master of Arts student Jordan Woodward (Department of English) manipulated her original footage of Lake Thunderbird and the hydrologic infrastructures of central Oklahoma. This region of the country is a flash point for the dangers of hydrologic fracturing (“fracking”), especially as it relates to Indigenous tribal land tenure. Woodward constructed a walk-in "experience machine" in which viewers can embody and consume her video-sculpture. She gives viewers an experience of what architect David Fletcher calls the "ecological freakology" of water and human body systems.

Watch the Videos

For a web-based approximation of the viewing experience, see Woodward’s documentation. (Click “play” on each of the adjacent videos, with about three seconds between starting each one.)

Here is one channel of the installation, with Woodward’s audio narration:

Further Reading

Fletcher, David. 2008. "Flood Control Freakology: Los Angeles River watershed." In The Infrastructural City: Networked ecologies in Los Angeles, edited by Kazys Varnelis. Barcelona: Actar.

Kirksey, Eben, ed. 2014. The Multispecies Salon: Gleanings from a para-site. Durham: Duke University Press.

Sutton, Gloria. 2015. The Experience Machine: Stan VanDerBeek's Movie-Drome and expanded cinema. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Walker, Stephen. 2003. "Baffling Archaeology: The strange gravity of Gordon Matta-Clark's experience-optics." Journal of Visual Culture 2 (2):161-185.

EMILY HOMAN

Along with Linaweaver (above), I selected and hired Master of Architecture student Emily Homan to join my funded research project “Visualizing the Spaces of Actor-Network Theory.” Our aim was to break one of human geography’s most salient theories out of the confines of text (example here) and into other mediums of expression.

Addressing this challenge—in her own words—Homan says:

This piece was created using acrylic paint, water, and acrylic sheets. Large pools of water were spread on each sheet and paint was placed in strategic locations. The sheets were then left to dry for 2-3 days. When placing the liquid and paint, the intent was for each of the sheets to be the same; however, this is impossible. Water pools are unstable and environmental influencers such as gravity, uneven ground, and air flow provide variation between the sheets. Negotiation: During this 2-3 day drying time, the artist had little control; the water pools could move and trickle off the sheet, the color in one pool could spread into another, or the paint could dry with a layering effect.

Process Documentation

OLIVIA COPIA

Copia’s work The Letter is based on the following assignment prompt: “Using a found photograph (one from home, a thrift store, or online), create a series of staged photographs using this image as a starting point; the series should make a narrative story.” Demonstrating her skill with lighting technique, Copia inserts herself into a story about her own familial lineage, re-imagining it, celebrating it, and critiquing it.

For Tipping Point, Copia visits friends in quarantine at her university housing complex in Minneapolis, and investigates the psychological trauma experienced at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here, we worked to forge a unified aesthetic and concept for isolation.

ANDREA BERGHOFF

Prompted to make portraits during quarantine without access to studio equipment, other people, and in some cases even outdoors, Andrea Berghoff worked with digital collage in attempts to express subjectivity and person-hood among her friends.

SEAN MUELLER

Master of Fine Arts student in Sculpture, Sean Mueller, created a maze-puzzle inspired by the street layout of Oklahoma City. For this gallery exhibit, he empathized with the myriad accessibility challenges brought on by transportation insecurity, including food, work, and opportunities for dependent children. Visitors to the gallery attempt to “solve” the puzzle of connecting a single path through the map-like grid.

SEAN LIM

This project assignment was called “Photography Changes Everything.” It is based on student-driven research about an issue, then travel to a location at which the student can photograph something about the issue at hand. Community activist and B.F.A. student Sean Lim chose to travel to the ongoing Dakota Access Pipeline protests in northern Minnesota, where he worked with and documented the logistic and operations camps.