Cranbrook Academy of Art. Graduation Degree Show 2016

Artist list

Alyssa Bliven, Melannie James, Jingyuan King Liang, Mengdi Liu, Morgan Shipps, Juvana Soliven, Ronit Dayan Vishovski

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.


Alyssa Bliven
I am an object maker. I am not interested in conventional ideas of progress and my process is a reflection of this: a stepping to the side, a move backwards, and a jump back to where I was/am. It is never a straight line to my goal. I maneuver from one material to the next, wax to clay, from metal to fabric or leather, and back and forth and so on. I shift between these materials in search of resolution to the uncertainty I see in the world. This transformation creates a helpful confusion to the materiality of my work. The confusion in materials takes the viewer to a place where they focus more on the ideas within the objects than the materials they are made of.                                                        
I am specifically interested in these object’s relationships; their relationships to each other, the space around them (whether made or not), the relationships to the body as an object, and how the objects interact amongst themselves and begin to form their own entities through these connections. Objects fascinate me with their histories, stories, and functionality. I choose to suggest a history, story, or function that sometimes is frustrated by the object itself. Though self-involved, these objects cry out to the viewer asking for anything but pity. They have personality and beg for empathy.
These objects are depressed, impotent, and distressed. They are struggling. They are unrefined, not because of an inability to refine but because of the lack of  an immediate need to do so. Some are motivated, others are flaccid but none can perform for the viewer. They are seemingly haphazard. They are incapable of action and wish to cease to exist in hopes of freeing themselves from their abject state. Some are vague, incoherent, unresponsive, and lazy but most are depressive and tired. These are not failed objects in their incompetence but are successful tries at focusing hard-to-channel emotions, seeking the possibility of a new territory of being.


Juvana Soliven
"Relational Failures" explores human relationships through the formal language of systems —synthesized from the bodily, natural, and the man-made— draining, exhausting, and depleting. The organic nature of beeswax, in constant flux, becomes a vehicle for dialogue about the failing structures imbedded in human connectivity and emotional intimacy.  Fur— skin— reduces our human emotions to our instinctual animal yearning for another’s touch.  They are our vulnerable insides reaching out through fissures in our emotional barricades


Mengdi Liu
My work is evocative of how humans perceive and confront their own disease or even mortality. The power of the artificial meets the desire of human existence. My practice is based on generating tension between the comforting and unsettling. Through synthesizing formal qualities of medical tools and jewelry, I blur the boundary between the functional and decorative. These pieces interact with the body, eliciting visceral emotions of the sexual, humorous, and logical. 


Jingyuan King Liang
Small and simple things can cause big change. But only if one commits to it. What people believe and do create changes in them. Different actions and thoughts cause different reactions of emotions and sensory feelings. Doing these behaviors continuously day by day for quite a long time, through suffering and joy, offers the possibility to understand the ways of respecting life


Ronit Dayan Vishovski
"Spaces in Between"
The piece ‘spaces in between’ speaks about the relationship between arts and crafts.  I try to stretch and emphasize the relationship between the sculpture / object and its usage. Although the pieces in the work are mostly non-wearable, I believe they still speak in the jewelry language and whirl between these spheres.
I use jewelry techniques and methods in an artistic language such as a line, a spot, a shape and color, to create a 3D drawing or a composition, and implant narratives within.  I also try to integrate texture and distorted perspectives within the scenes of the casted parts, suggesting endless patterns covering spaces, which are embedded in Mediterranean arts and patterns I am inspired from.
The piece itself resembles a diagram of humans-nature-machine-technology, linked by the interconnections of the different realms. The shifting from a negative space to its negative positive, helps me shift between the different realities – abstract to figurative, reality to fantasy, while flowing whimsically within imaginary scenes.


E Morgan Shipps 
"Gotcha"
Cooties have wreaked devastation around the world. There always seems to be an outbreak taking place somewhere; and many suffer chronic cases of the disease. From our earliest days we are taught to beware of spreading this dreaded malady. We group, categorize, and separate - it is the only defense we have. You don't have to know who you are, after all, just who you aren't.


Melannie James
Using wearable objects which impose on the body, my work explores the feeling of being individualistically powerless and voiceless.  Discomfort felt by the wearer is inversely related to the comfort found in the ritualistic repetition of the works’ construction, thus investigating the potential of harm in what we believe is safe.


Artist in Residence 2016: Iris Eichenberg