Cranbrook Academy of Art. Degree Show 2023

Artist list

Mengjie Mo, Miku Saeki, Linda M. Sánchez, Hankunyu Wei, Jing Xu, Eighteen Yuan

Hankunyu Wei
When the lock is hidden, the key becomes a connection between illusion and reality. When its role and function are blurred with the change of the key itself, the unknown completes the imagination. The curiosity and conjecture behind the key accumulate and expand, and when it is on the verge of some critical point, the key and the fantasy behind it collage a disorderly and ambiguous space. When the key touches the skin, the self-choice of belonging is completed. The key takes the form of a pathway, in approaching some purpose or result, as the dimension of all things.


Miku Saeki
The thesis series, Girl Good Good Miku acknowledges and gives form to a grown child's sense of frustration navigating a fraught relationship that reflects a conventional mother-daughter relationship. I explore repetition as a therapeutic process in service—not of resignation, but of trying anew—of maintaining a love that can be strained.
As one's level of assertiveness may threaten the other, her practice takes responsibility for negotiation. Posting a critical position may make one feel guilty, the effect of merely repeating the choreography of actions from within rote, familiar scenes of tension. The placement of the elements, scale, and weight of my installations and objects symbolize and reference tension, codependency, naiveness, and pressure.
The diverse choice of materials is seamlessly interwoven with the language of jewelry. There is also an obsession with repeating similar process methods: tracing, cutting, and folding to try to mitigate again and again an opening to spaces through which we can observe and question. The repeated patterns mimic my relationality with my mother and allow me to learn through the significant impact of small, fraught instances of frustration that pile up and overlap. As I pair and piles up elements, I achieve a delicate yet dynamic balance that compels viewers to contemplate.


Linda M. Sánchez
This installation is part of a series, Floating Landscapes. It is a journey that begins with the collection the water and thus follows the cycle of water between sky and earth. Rain creates the cycle of life. The installation is an ode to the rain that comes from above; it is a dew in the morning; it is what connects us with the underworld and death. Various materials evidence their voices in the process of making. Nothing is permanent, and everything changes constantly. Cycles and time are lessons from nature.
 

Jing Xu
I make vessels. In the process of raising vessels, I have come to acknowledge that I am born from vessels, raised as a vessel which my mom and dad hammered for a long time. And now, as each strike of my hammer makes a sound, every sound encourages me to hammer the vessel again.
I am informed by my movements— raising, enameling, beading, and sewing. These processes restitute me. They have become material lessons about care, and I realize that I make vessels that I long to hold.
I lost my father, I felt heavy. A promise was broken. Lately, I have been telling myself it may have been a gift, working through this period guiding me through a time of uncertainty.
 

Eighteen Yuan
I explore the intersections between memory, landscape, and intimacy through the mediums of jewelry and enameling. Jewelry serves as a reminder of home and the memories we carry with us. Through my work, I aim to map the emotional landscapes of the human experience and provide a tangible connection to the concept of belonging. inviting the wearer to connect with their inner selves and the world around them through the intimacy of jewelry.


Mengjie Mo
I portrayed my inner experience with performances, jewelry pieces, and sculptures. I examine the different values of red and, by using voice and tactile sensation, describe my inner experience. The weirdness of randomness and the beauty of math logic happening in the same piece represents that I am using my work as an exit to explore a random women's adventure in this world. Textile/beading shackles women's lives but also contains women's magic. By using the tension of beads and thread to call back the memory of typical historical women's labor, but now women's traditional skills are my new weapon to fight with patriarchy.

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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.