Cranbrook Academy of Art. Degree Show 2018

Artist list

Victoria Bulgakova, Shelly McMahon, Nicanor Torres

Shelly McMahon: (www.shellymcmahon.com)
The Design Museum’s 1993 exhibition, Ideal Homes, hearkened to the turn of the twentieth century when the concept of a good home became predicated on acquiring good design. Its ‘The Back of the Kitchen Drawer’ exhibit brought design objects that were marketed to the public and purchased by individuals, back on display. The owner’s testimony was included alongside the object, providing insight into the relationship they developed with their thing.
 
My work is about the uncanny that we encounter in our every day and that reconciling this within our interiors is how we construct our sense of self. Thinking about our designed interiors, my interest lies in the emotional dependence that develops from using and being situated amongst material belongings. As a metalsmith, I’m invested in labor’s ability to communicate, and consider the use of materials, application of patterns, and particular techniques as physical manifestations of melancholy, failure, monotony, and routine. In the same way that personal associations with objects in the home develop from our daily or occasional interactions with them, I occupy spaces in a way that is reminiscent of the feelings that we experience within our dwellings, surrounded by our things.
 
Victoria Bulgakova: (www.vikabulgakova.com)
The experiences of being a first generation immigrant from a post Soviet Ukraine, having navigated through a corporate career in a new country, and having both succeeded and failed in many personal and professional relationships throughout my life – all have a direct impact on my work; a lot of it is focused on the inquiry into belonging, malleability, and coping with the unknown. How do we adjust to discomfort caused by the void of uncertainty? What does it feel like not to have a definitive answer? How much can one stretch, shrink, bend, thin, thicken? Through the process of jewelry and object making, I am exploring what can become of a material matter if the context it originally belonged to and the substance it consists of are reinvented.
 
Nicanor Torres: (https://nictorresart.weebly.com/)
The innate tendency of humans to venerate a supernatural power is where my interests lie: Belief. I grew up religious and observed the rituals used for worship. I have discovered a way to utilize materials and generate work that is a ghost of knowledge. That is, it reminds the viewer of a utilitarian object instead of a work of art. I consider this conjunction of materials to be essential to the core of my art making. These creations of mine undermine this reality. They exist because they are tangible, but do not exist because they are not recognizable. That sense of fake and simultaneously real is fundamental in how I produce objects and jewelry.

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Cranbrook Academy of Art is a one of a kind, graduate only, studio-based, program, located near Detroit, Michigan. The Metalsmithing department is one among 10 departments at Cranbrook Academy of Art: Metalsmithing, Ceramics, Fiber, Sculpture, Painting, Print Media, 2D Design, 3D Design, and Architecture.
 
The starting point for the work within the department is a healthy mistrust of the idea that the creation of certain kinds of artistic objects requires the use of specific materials; and that the choice of materials is prescribed, or determined by tradition and artistic conventions. The department implements its philosophy by relying upon a multitude of resources and support systems. Students come to the Academy with a high degree of personal motivation, intent upon beginning their studio activity immediately. From this point, an individual course of study is formulated in consultation with the Artist-in-Residence.