{"id":101776,"date":"2015-05-01T09:21:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T13:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=101776"},"modified":"2015-05-07T09:32:48","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T13:32:48","slug":"bentons-mfa-exhibition-shows-a-world-still-in-the-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2015\/05\/bentons-mfa-exhibition-shows-a-world-still-in-the-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Benton’s MFA Exhibition Shows ‘A World Still in the Making’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Works<\/a>
Works by Georgia Polkey ’15 MFA, on display in the MFA Exhibition at the Benton Museum through May 10. (Benton Museum\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Georgia Polkey \u201915 MFA grew up in New Orleans, a city known for its nonstop nightlife, and in a family she describes as \u201cfrenzied.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[The city] is this mash-up of really weird people in places where you don\u2019t think they should be,\u201d says the mixed media artist and painter whose work is part of \u201cA World Still in the Making,\u201d the annual MFA Exhibition at the William Benton Museum of Art. \u201cMy own family is a family of addictions very much like the city of New Orleans. But to me, it was my home. This is where I grew up. I feel uncomfortable when things are too calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polkey says when she began to paint, she wanted to show \u201csome type of turmoil and wearing of the surface\u201d in her artwork. She began her undergraduate studies in art history, but in her second year switched to painting and drawing. She was attracted to the German Expressionists, particularly Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, who did portraits of people whose lives she describes as \u201cworn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something honest about them that I didn\u2019t see in other works,\u201d she says. \u201cThe German Expressionists really captured for me trying to make sense out of the world. Even the way they painted or drew. Schiele\u2019s lines were shaky and anxiety-ridden. Kokoshka would clump paint on the surface so it felt like skin was falling off and you were revealing some kind of internal psychosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arriving in Storrs for the two-year MFA program, Polkey knew she would be moving in a new direction with her art, no longer painting portraits but experimenting with a new genre.<\/p>\n

She says, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to paint the body. I\u2019m in a new place. I\u2019m getting paid to work. This is the only time I\u2019ll have this much freedom. I have a huge space at the graduate studios. I\u2019m just going to unleash. Whatever is inside of me is coming out.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has emerged in Polkey\u2019s art is a large scale abstract vision that helps her make order out of the usual buzz of life in the Big Easy. Using construction materials such as drywall, paint, insulation foam, wire, and various forms of paper, Polkey references what she describes as \u201cthe battle that takes place\u201d inside the human body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe resulting aftermath is not only preserving an internal domesticity but an internal reflection upon one\u2019s body,\u201d she says in her artist statement for the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first got here, I was doing sort of card catalog paintings and putting them together to make a larger composition,\u201d Polkey says. \u201cBut I was always searching. I love scale and I love it being large. I used to make smaller paintings, but I like when smaller paintings make a larger whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'A<\/a>
‘A Built In Remedy,’ a mixed media on drywall work by Georgia Polkey ’15 MFA, on display in the MFA exhibition at the Benton Museum. (Benton Museum\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cA Built In Remedy,\u201d a mixed media on drywall work, was among her first creations. She started using a wall of her studio as a canvas and continued to add dyed tracing paper, paint, caulking, and other materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just worked on my studio walls. I wasn\u2019t thinking that I\u2019d have to move it to the Benton, literally working on the wall,\u201d she says with a smile. \u201cI learned my lesson after that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polkey says her studio is cluttered with material detritus, making it easy to retrieve something that had fallen on the floor to be used in a new work. Seeing her art in a more ordered museum setting, she says she is \u201cintrigued\u201d by its appearance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt more fine arty to me,\u201d the artist says. \u201cI still don\u2019t know how to feel about that. I still like the idea of creating an ugly aesthetic. People are drawn to these.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polkey says she has mixed emotions now that she is completing the MFA program with her cohort of classmates in the Benton exhibition \u2013 Claire Coleman, a printmaker and photographer; Elliott Katz, a sculptor and photographer; Cynthia Melendez, a photographer; and Linda Smith, a photographer and video artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m scared of losing the community we have, but I\u2019m excited that I found something that I can pursue,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s another art community out there for me. It\u2019s a question of where it is. I haven\u2019t done all the possibilities for this yet. There are so many different options, so many different scales.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2015 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition: A World Still in the Making\u201d continues at the William Benton Museum of Art, 245 Glenbrook Road, through May 10. For more information, go to the Benton website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NOTE: The newly remodeled Beanery Caf\u00e9 has opened in the Benton and is open seven days a week: 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. on the weekends. The Caf\u00e9 features a new modern-tiled, subway look, more Torani syrups than can be found anywhere else on campus, space for musical performances, and a special selection of sandwiches and baked goods, along with about 60 seats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The work of this year’s five MFA graduates is on display at the Benton Museum through May 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":101877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-101776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 11:19:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101776"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102035,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101776\/revisions\/102035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/101877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101776"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=101776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}