The Mississippi State University senior art students comprising the spring 2013 Bachelors of Fine Arts Fine Art and Photography Thesis Exhibition tell stories that are only understandable in person. These works ask to be interacted with, to be grappled with in a gallery; as Brent Funderburk, senior thesis coordinator, said, digital images on glass screens are not the work’s intended viewing experience. The students’ stories are multifaceted and can only be told through the work they have created. These stories flow through a diverse range of media, utilizing photography, sculpture and drawing as well as combinations of all three. According to the exhibition’s news release, the 2013 students represent the five fine art concentration areas of painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing and photography.            
The show blankets itself across multiple galleries, including the Department of Art Gallery in McComas Hall, the Colvard Student Union Gallery and the MSU Visual Arts Center at 808 University Drive. The 16 tales scattered through the walls and displays of the galleries cover a broad range of inspirations, as students explored concepts spanning pregnancy and motherhood to psychological and sociological theories.
Funderburk said the show attempts to shatter the expectations and limits often implemented on artwork by both artists and audiences.
“We’re trying to not only break the students’ limit of the concept of what art is but allow the public to gently be broken and expanded in terms of, perhaps, their widening perception of what art can be,” he said.
The sculptures of Jon Nowell follow this trajectory, as Nowell said he uses combinations of three-dimensional and two-dimensional media to uncover ideas he doesn’t fully comprehend.
“I feel that most of times my work has just as much to do with shedding light on something I do not quite understand as it does with expressing an idea with confidence,” he said.
His “artistic objects,” he said, are at times created objects as well as amalgamations of found and created objects.
“I find immense joy in fabricating objects. For whatever reason, I was designed to manipulate materials and make things,” he said. “I also think there is something interesting about an unaltered object when in conjunction with a heavily designed object. Sometimes it is more difficult to leave something alone than it is to embellish it.”
Destiney Powell’s thesis work is a synthesis of media on paper. Powell’s organic, fluid drawings of watercolor, guache, graphite and ink hang like long vertical scrolls, expressing what she said were the moods she experienced during her pregnancy.
“Well the work is meant to show what emotions I felt during my pregnancy as well as make the viewer feel emotions of their own,” she said. “I want them to take an experience from viewing theses pieces and I don’t want to tell them what to feel.”
Powell’s thesis became urgently personal when her two-year-old son was diagnosed with a hole in his heart and scheduled for surgery within a week of the thesis exhibition opening. She said the close proximity of the operation and the show’s opening gave new purpose to her drawings.
“My son’s heart problems made this work so personal because it is about growing and experiences,” she said. “But his condition made me reflect on our journey together as mother and son beginning in the stages of pregnancy.”
Riley Reid’s black and white photographs build on sociological and psychological theories exploring self-perception which claim “our perception of ourselves is really based on how we think others perceive us.” She said the photographs of subjects inside their own homes, taken from the exterior through glass windows, were shot, and then she gradually distilled the psychological concerns behind the images.
“I have been drawn to photographing portraits through windows and really began exploring it about three years ago,” he said. “As I kept shooting in this style, I began to hone in on what it was that I was seeing and trying to understand through the images.”
Reid said the expectations she had about the project were broken down as she worked through the photographs. As she set out to capture the barriers of perception and self-perception, she said she learned from her subjects’ unfettered transparency in being a part of her project.
“There was a sense of vulnerability and openness from the trust and willingness of the individuals that I photographed,” she said. “The project taught me a lot about perception, and much of what I set out to find was different than I originally anticipated. I was surprised by the willingness of my subjects. To be honest, the project is still teaching me.”
The show will run in all three galleries from Tuesday, April 9 to Saturday, April 13, and work in the Colvard Student Union Gallery will hang through the end of April.
Funderburk said though the show will only be exhibited for a brief time, the students intend for their work to stick with attendees.
“Sure we can reproduce these images and put them on the website, but you carry these things with you as experiences,” he said. “We’re hoping that people five months from now will be humming these songs in their mind and the meaning will start to emerge.”

Gallery • 1 Photos