black box honey: MFA Exhibition

Opening Reception:

March 16

5 pm – 8 pm

Evocative shapes and symbolic colors seek the past. Multiple layers of meaning can be derived from a seemingly arbitrary assortment of words. Metaphorical materials form morbid puns and domestic commentary.

The Master of Fine Arts candidates Taylor Battle, Reina Castellanos, and Alesha Hassard will be showing their thesis bodies of work in a group exhibition titled black box honey. Their works embrace complex issues of identity, communication, language, and empathy. The varied work on display will include painting, drawing, installation, mixed media, printmaking, and video art.

Alesha Hassard’s Artist Statement:  I make soft sculptures, groupings of wax replicas of my personal possessions, and handmade books. I work with the push and pull between girlhood and womanhood, object and subject to generate psychological ambiguity.

Biography: Alesha Hassard is a native Floridian. She has always equally devoted herself to the fields of art and writing, receiving a degree in both. She currently has two guinea pigs named Donny and Spike.

Taylor Battle’s Artist Statement:  My work explores the lives of past generations of women in my family. The abstract nature of my drawings and paintings show the discordance of wanting to memorialize them and avoid their erasure without having the knowledge or tools to do so.

Biography: Taylor Battle was born in Landstuhl, Germany and raised in Florida.  The combination of being a black artist in America and growing up in a military town of interesting, transitory people was the inception of her interest in familial roots and portraiture.

Reina Castellanos’ Artist Statement:  I explore identity, communication, and alienation through video art, readymades, and works on paper. By deconstructing images and manipulating language, I seek comfort in uncertainty.

Biography: Reina Castellanos is a Venezuelan artist. She holds an AS degree in Graphic Design from Valencia College and a BFA in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design.