Blue Mountain Gallery Hosts 2013 WCSU MFA Thesis Exhibition, Now thru 7/6

Blue Mountain Gallery has announced the 2013 MFA Thesis Exhibition from Western Connecticut State University. The exhibition will run from today, June 18 through July 6 with an opening reception on Thursday, June 20 from 5 to 8 pm.

The Master of Fine Arts is the terminal degree for practicing artists, and the Thesis Exhibition demonstrates the culmination of two years of work and represents the students' highest personal and academic achievements. The graduates, consisting of four painters and one illustrator, will present a distinct range of work from the figurative to the fictitious.

Pamela Boily, of Sandy Hook, was raised in New Orleans and bases her work on the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina. Within the chaos of the debris and cleanup efforts, she senses the resiliency of the human spirit.

Antonio Carvalho, of Danbury, is from Portugal and his realistic paintings come from both careful observation and from his imagination. He said his "invented paintings" are "a summary and distillation of all [his] inner tension."

Xenia Hodza, born in New York City and now residing in southwestern, Connecticut, uses large, collage-like canvases that reference historical art. She said, "My work is an attempt to discover what the paintings themselves have known all along. No matter from which trailhead I begin, the marks lead me to that cairn at which I find another painting beckons."

Karin Mansberg, of Danbury, is a student of illustration, born and raised in Estonia. Her work is a complex collage of mixed media and source materials, control and experimentation. She said her work is about people's experiences of the world and she uses language-based symbols to interpret her subject matter.

Sherri Schwartz, of Hartford, said, "My portraits are natural, yet stylized. They are reductive, almost minimal. My choice of editing is just as important as painting what is important." Her portraits are penetrating and very personal, edited down to the essentials of both form and color, remaining revealing.

For further information, contact WCSU Department of Art at 203-837-8403, or Darby Cardonsky, Interim MFA Coordinator at 203-837-8881. Blue Mountain Gallery is located at 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY. Call 646-486 - 4730 for more information.

Pictured: A collage of five artist's works. See http://www.bluemountaingallery.org/wcsu-2013/‎ for individual works.