BFA Thesis (2023)

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS BFA THESIS SHOW (2023)

Edifice

May 9 – 19, 2023

Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery • 808 Gallery

Boston University School of Visual Arts’ 2023 Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Thesis featured two large exhibitions showcasing the work of graduating students from BU’s BFA programs in Graphic Design, Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture. An overall exhibition identity Edifice connects BU’s two professional galleries along Commonwealth Avenue.

The brand identity of the 2023 BFA thesis reflects the significant building projects at CFA and BU since the class of 2023 arrived in 2019. The Graphic Design team behind the brand identity, Mina Chung, Hannah Hong, and Jacqueline Mang, also reflected on the overall meaning of Edifice, “As the buildings transformed, we also transformed culturally, communally, and intellectually. We are inspired to ask bigger questions and motivate one another to reach goals that once seemed impossible.”

Edifice, a conceptual and visual identity created by the BFA Graphic Design branding team, points to the College of Fine Arts’ buildings, classrooms, studios, and galleries as sites of meaningful action, personal engagement, and growth toward professional lives.

-Dana Clancy, associate professor and Director of BU School of Visual Arts

“As the buildings transformed, we also transformed culturally, communally, and intellectually.”

Boston University Art Galleries’ 808 Gallery hosts the BFA Graphic Design exhibition with the related title, Lived In. The 6,000 sq. ft. gallery has been transformed into a home-like space for 41 student design projects, a response to the way these students’ senior studios were considered home. “We don’t just work here – we live here. Lived In is an approximation of the home we’ve established over these semesters together.” They molded the space, and the space molded them, and as the graphic design students move out of their improvised home in the College of Fine Arts, Lived In marks both an ending and a beginning for them.

“We don’t just work here – we live here. Lived In is an approximation of the home we’ve established over these semesters together.”

BU Art Galleries’ Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery hosts the Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture exhibition titled, To build a nest and leave it empty. An impulse for worldbuilding – through fantastical imagination, investigations into memory, or playful proposals for more vibrant futures – thematically binds this group of 16 artists. Curator Leah Triplett Harrington, who co-taught the senior seminar for Painting and Sculpture majors with visiting Lecturer Fox Hysen, writes in the exhibition statement, “This year’s senior class pushed themselves to work ambitiously, both literally in terms of scale and more figuratively, with the tremendous scope of narratives and concepts they amplify. I am excited to show such determined, intrepid artists in this year’s exhibition.”

“The three printmakers this year are very ambitious in scale and concept, working in installation and across multiple mediums, including lithography, etching, woodcut, and cyanotype,” says Lynne Allen, Professor of Art, Printmaking. “Each has created an exhibition that speaks to their concerns, their place in the history of art as well as deep personal content.”

The following faculty members worked closely with the graduating class: Mary Yang, Nicholas Rock, Krystyn Wypasek, and Claire Bula (Graphic Design); Richard Ryan and Fox Hysen (Painting); Lynne Allen (Printmaking); and David Snyder and Cathy Della Lucia (Sculpture).