Seas and Skies Press

If you've got an eye for contemporary art and you want to catch a rising star, this is your chance. Master of fine arts candidates have thesis exhibitions up at local art schools this spring. These shows offer viewers a chance to see what fresh ideas are emerging and what new artists are worth keeping an eye on. We spoke with five promising graduates.

VIDEO INSTALLATION ARTIST | School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University

Step into the darkened gallery, and projections of water and sky surround you. Friedman’s big, gorgeous visions of the sea and heavens, videotaped separately, don’t quite fit together, with perspective shifts and images angling around moveable walls and a pillar. The artist taped many of them in Massachusetts; she captured the aurora borealis on a research trip to Alaska.

"I’d been looking at sky and water, and thinking about how they move around us continually," Friedman says. "Some of us pay more attention to them, and some don’t. But they don’t care about us, either. Katrina wrecked all these people’s lives.

"The aurora borealis was so amazing. They start off slow, just these green lines. Then one night they went crazy. I was so freaked out and excited, I couldn’t use the footage — it’s too jumpy. I had to go back the next night and keep the camera steady.

"The Atlantic is here, and the Pacific, local bays and harbors. Eighty percent is local skies, shot in the Southwest Corridor Park. . . . The moons were shot here, the stars and auroras are from Alaska. It’s like playing God — ‘I think I’ll put a little sky here.’ "

"SMFA Graduate Thesis Exhibition @ Tufts University," by Ben Sloat, Big, RED & Shiny, issue #81, April 27, 2008

Rounding out the exhibition is a stunning video installation by Georgie Friedman called "Seas and Skies." Recalling early landscape photographers like Gustave La Gray who composited the two aforementioned elements to present a certain aquatic ideal, Friedman introduces gentle skies on an artificial horizon with a churning ocean in one piece.

Projected onto a series of temporary walls and pedestals, the video drifts along the floor to walls placed different angles. As the projection stretches up to the 12 foot ceiling, it creates a wonderfully disorientating effect. So seldom is video work used so effectively in its pure visual sensation, immersing the viewer actively within an artificial locale.

Like watching a campfire, the water of the ocean moves in a spellbinding rhythm, soothing and repetitive, it continues. Sitting on a bench watching the waves roll and stir, the viewer is set adrift, and not reluctantly, like Robinson Crusoe.

Gallery Review | Seven SMFA graduate students present their best pieces at the Tufts University Art Gallery's Exhibit throughout April
Kyle Chayka

The Tufts University Art Gallery continues its series of MFA thesis exhibitions from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) this month. The show is a strong representation of the work of emerging artists and allows viewers a rare glance into the SMFA's studios.

The show, including seven different artists' work, leans more heavily toward installation pieces than more traditional wall-hangings. Upon entering the gallery, viewers are confronted by a disjointed video projection of ocean and sky onto fragmented walls placed throughout the room. This piece, "Seas and Skies" by Georgie Friedman, is the most visually striking and cohesive work in the show.

Though it is only one work, the ever-shifting ocean waves crisply juxtaposed against clouds coasting across blue skies are immediately engaging. Viewers are free to wander in and out of the pillars the video is projected onto, like crabs among so many piles of rock on the beach.