Carnegie Mellon University
March 20, 2017

School of Art Graduate Students Exhibit “The Very Best Deserts” at Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 937 Gallery

By Lauren Goshinski and Pam Wigley

MFA Exhibit

Carnegie Mellon University School of Art first- and second-year graduate students present “The Very Best Deserts on Planet Earth,” an annual Master of Fine Arts program exhibition, April 2-23, at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 937 Gallery.

The exhibition showcases new work by a diverse group of 11 emerging artists working in a range of methodologies, conceptual frameworks and media. A soft opening is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m., Sunday, April 2, and a closing reception will be held from 5:30 - 10 p.m., Friday, April 21, in conjunction with the Cultural Trust’s monthly Gallery Crawl.

About the Artists:

Shobun Baile revives design histories and buried institutions. 

Katie Rose Pipkin produces printed material as books, as well as digital work in software, bots and games. They also make drawings by hand, on paper. 

Nick Crockett makes games with bodies. 

Gray Swartzel works collaboratively with an artist he found through craigslist who serves as his surrogate mother. The documentation of their constructed mother/child exchange investigates biopolitics and the state of global currency in regard to the degradation of the patriarchal order. 

Paper Buck utilizes interdisciplinary approaches to traditional visual art media to critically engage contemporary social movement discourses, investigate the intersections of familial and national mythologies, and make visible the perpetuities of colonial processes within neoliberal capitalism. 

Erin Mallea is currently advocating for the ethical memorialization and representation of a local oak tree. 

Jisoo Yeo renders floors floorless by focusing on the idea of the impermanence of time-space. http://yeojisoo.com/contact

Joy Poulard Cruz fuses pop-cultural, Afro-Caribbean and Western mythologies to cultivate unity between the familiar and unfamiliar. 

Alex Lukas examines the quasi-sacral figure within a secular, souvenir-centric society. 

Lee Webster makes work on American mourning and the perpetual pop-culture nostalgia machine. 

Shohei Katayama explores the relationship between nature, technology and the scientific forces that shape the human experience.

Learn more about the April 21 reception.