{"id":159899,"date":"2020-04-23T07:15:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T11:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=159899"},"modified":"2020-04-23T08:15:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T12:15:06","slug":"adjusting-pandemic-reality-2020-mfa-thesis-exhibition-benton-museum-moves-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/04\/adjusting-pandemic-reality-2020-mfa-thesis-exhibition-benton-museum-moves-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Adjusting to Pandemic Reality, 2020 MFA Thesis Exhibition at Benton Museum Moves Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photographer Elizabeth Ellenwood was working at a photo lab in Boston making prints when she decided it was time to further explore her own artistic endeavors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also had an interest in teaching. I wanted to find a place that would give me the opportunity to try out teaching and see if that’s something that I wanted to continue working on,\u201d she says about enrolling in the MFA program in Studio Art three years ago. \u201cWhile I enjoyed being in the dark room, I was making prints for other people. I just really wanted more time to focus on my own artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellenwood\u2019s exploration of her own photography and art can be seen in the unique 2020 edition of the annual Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at The William Benton Museum of Art<\/a>, which is posted on the museum\u2019s website due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online exhibition in Studio Art is titled \u201cTideland\u201d and in addition to Ellenwood includes the works of painter and sculptor Olivia Baldwin, multimedia artist Shadia Heenan Nilforoush, and artist and printmaker Chad Uehlein. The Digital Media & Design online exhibit is titled \u201cSquare One\u201d and includes the works of Jonathan Ampiaw, Karin Ching, Stefan Lopuszanski, Laurel Pehmoeller, and Jasmine Rajavadee.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/a>
Elizabeth Ellenwood, "Plastic Sandwich Bag Collected on December 3, 2018" (2019). Cyanotype print (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Elizabeth<\/a>
Elizabeth Ellenwood, "Collection #35, East Beach State Park, Charlestown, RI Collected on August 20, 2019" (2019). Archival pigment print (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Elizabeth<\/a>
Elizabeth Ellenwood, "November 3, 2018 Collection," (2018), Installation of 240 cyanotype prints (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Jonathan<\/a>
Jonathan Ampiaw, Mythren (2020), gameplay screenshot (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Karin<\/a>
Karin Ching, Bian Dang: Missing in American Supermarkets (2020), stop-motion animation (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Stefan<\/a>
Stefan Lopuszanski, Auto-Combat (2020), gameplay screenshot (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Laurel<\/a>
Laurel Pehmoeller, Late Shift (2020), film still (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Jasmine<\/a>
Jasmine Rajavadee, SHRINE: Eternal Belonging (2020), animation still (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Shadia<\/a>
Shadia Heenan Nilforoush, \u201cMother of the Blueness\u201d (2020), film still (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Olivia<\/a>
Olivia Baldwin, \u201cHold\u201d (2019), oil, colored pencil, canvas (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div>\"Chad<\/a>
Chad Uehlein, \u201cCodex of Clover\u201d (2019), glue bound glassine envelopes with individual pressed clovers (courtesy of the artist).<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

Spending many hours walking along the beach growing up in Florida and Connecticut, Ellenwood would pick up trash to follow the advice of her grandfather to \u201cLeave the beach better than we found it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now living in Pawcatuck, when she started the MFA program Ellenwood decided that one way to join her art and her lifetime of walking along the beach with an eye toward environmental awareness would be to use some of what she collected in her photography. \u201cI had this moment [thinking] that I’m collecting things that I use and that other people use and I wanted to share that awareness, so I started using photography as a tool to do that,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it just continued to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past three years the project grew into \u201cAmong the Tides,\u201d a collection of images in which Ellenwood uses a variety of photo processes to create an artistic visualization of the impact consumerism is having on the world\u2019s oceans and those who are trying to save them. \u201cAmong the Tides\u201d had its debut earlier this year at the Alexy von Schlippe Gallery at UConn\u2019s Avery Point campus and was supported by the School of Fine Arts\u2019 Zachs Award and a Connecticut Sea Grant Arts Support award. During the run of the exhibit, Ellenwood participated with J. Evan Ward, professor and head of the Marine Sciences Department, in a program titled \u201cVisualizing Plastic: Integrating Science and Art to Inspire Change.\u201d The program was part of the annual Coastal Perspectives Lecture Series at Avery Point.<\/p>\n

The images Ellenwood created include a crumpled plastic bottle printed on expired photographic paper; a collection of beach trash from 3,417 items picked during 39 beach walks covering nearly 36 miles; digital enlargements of plastic and sand in Petri dishes; prints of material viewed through a microscope; and video of the deterioration of debris materials in the water. She uses a range of photographic processes including cyanotype, a printing process used to create a cyan-blue print; and anthotype, an image created by using the light sensitivity from plants. She also uses expired photographic papers and film, which provide creative options in printing.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth
Elizabeth Ellenwood (Photo courtesy of Eric Swanson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019m using all of these materials and time in a different way. I really enjoy working that way as an artist,\u201d Ellenwood says. \u201cI love the creating aspect and that tangible feeling of making a print, either if it’s a silver gelatin print or a cyanotype. When I started making this work about waste and what people are using, I realized that I now have a perfect project to use all the [discarded] dark room paper and film that I’ve been squirreling away. It provided a really good opportunity to use materials that can also speak to what I’m making.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her other photography projects cover a wide range of subjects including a series of multiple exposures, portraits of city life, a series of telephone and electrical wires against the sky between buildings, and a hybrid of old photo prints transposed with digital images.<\/p>\n

Ellenwood says that following her undergraduate work at The New Hampshire Institute of Art, she was interested in the UConn MFA program because of the range of resources available at a large research institution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to be in a university that had the option of meeting people who are doing other things,\u201d she says, noting that she did a project on Hawaiian bobtail squid after learning about the research of Sarah McAnulty, an assistant research professor in molecular and cell biology who is a specialist on squids and the founder and executive director of the Skype a Scientist program. \u201cWhen I started becoming really obsessed with cephalopods and was working on a project focusing on their defense mechanisms, she invited me to her lab and I got to see her research. There’s this great opportunity to have all these crossovers at the university and I really appreciated that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellenwood recently won a Fulbright Scholarship and an American Scandanvaian Foundation Grant to Norway for 2020-2021. She will be collaborating with an environmental chemist and a marine biologist to create work based on marine pollution.<\/p>\n

In the \u201cTideland\u201d Studio Art exhibit, Nilforoush roots her practice in performance and video, mapping family archives, personal histories and polarized identities. Olivia Baldwin traverses sculpture and painting, casting color across walls, floors, and ceilings. Chad Uehlein\u2019s cheeky installations and ad-hoc inventions become sites for performances that suspend time and vanquish efficiency on his quest for hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cSquare One\u201d offers a variety of mediums including narrative film, hybrid digital and physical games, animation, installation, and projection mapping. Each exhibited work acts as a window through which the audience can access new worlds, personal memories, and cultural reflections, connecting visitors to where each artist started.<\/p>\n

Ampiaw\u2019s video game explores the themes of personal development and social growth. Lopuszanski\u2019s game blurs the line between the digital and physical realms to create an innovative gameplay experience. Ching examines her journey to a new country, illustrating the cultural differences she has discovered between Taiwan and the United States, centered around food. Pehmoeller\u2019s short film reflects on her own experiences as a young adult trying to find her way in the world. Rajavadee investigates the artist’s Lao-American upbringing with reference to cumulative memories and emotions associated with connecting the personal and the (multi)cultural.<\/p>\n

The 2020 Studio Art and Digital Media & Design Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at The William Benton Museum of Art is now online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Undaunted by the restrictions caused by the pandemic, UConn’s 2020 MFA exhibition is now online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":160164,"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":[1711,1914,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-159899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-sfa","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 13:32:21","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\/159899","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=159899"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160185,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159899\/revisions\/160185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/160164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159899"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=159899"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=159899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}