nothing's wrong

Author

Christina Mesiti, Claremont Graduate UniversityFollow

Date of Award

Spring 2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Art

First Advisor

Rachel Lachowicz

Second Advisor

Carmine Iannaccone

Third Advisor

Katie Grinnan

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2015 Christina M. Mesiti

Abstract

I adjust the edges of materials both physically and intellectually. I work with flexible containers. Physically, I push two or more materials together so that they can find their own form, their own edge. I pour the plaster into different kinds of flexible emptinesses like envelopes or discarded gift wrap so that the two materials can exercise their own material agency and vitality, the materials working with themselves and the space to decide their own inevitable shapes. I allow the pieces their own logic.

I want to level the space, the objects, and the viewer so that none of the three plays foreground or background to the others. Activities, architecture, furniture, and bodies all become active, equal players in a spontaneous game of call and response. By reprioritizing physical specificity of an object in its space, time becomes equally specific (i.e.this plaster feels this way to me right now). This temporal specificity creates the sense of potential movement across many individual moments. The work circulates and breathes, the objects moving around the viewers as much as the reverse. The objects’ shiftiness defends them from crystallization and purity. This is why I intuitively reach for materials that circulate or are modular (envelopes, gifts, blocks). A sense of the equal possibility of movement between the viewer and the pieces knits our relationship to the material world closer together. It creates a felt sense of interconnectedness or interbeing.

Link To Artist's Gallery

scholarship.claremont.edu/cmesiti_mfate

Recommended Citation

Mesiti, Christina, "nothing's wrong" (2015). CGU MFA Theses. 103.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_mfatheses/103