The 2023 Stephen D. Paine Scholarship Exhibition
Juror: Jessica Roscio, Danforth Art Museum at Framingham State University
Recipients:
ALEXIS MORRIS | CASEY FISHER | DANIELA GONZALEZ | CASEY PARK | IZAIAH RHODES | GRACE SINCLAIR
AWARD RECIPIENTS, Left to right: Grace Sinclair, Izaiah Rhodes, Daniela Gonzalez, Casey Fisher and Alexis Morris with recipient Casey Park's work in background.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS: Excerpt from Boston Globe feature article
Gonzalez, 21, is from the Dominican Republic and Miami and is completing a BFA with a design concentration at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her artistic journey began with photography in high school and now incorporates video and design.
“My work mainly focuses on the themes of communication and connection specifically dealing with the way in which technology-mediated conversations alter our interactions and ways of being,” she said. Gonzalez said she is inspired by Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta’s performance art and photography. “She works a lot with her own body and testing the limits of it.” The scholarship will fund her thesis project, “a series of eight accordion books that focus on manifesting the extensiveness of the digital world.”
Grace Sinclair (left), one of the Stephen D. Paine Scholarship recipients. “15th of August 2022” by Grace Sinclair (right). JENNIFER SINCLAIR, GRACE SINCLAIR
Sinclair, 21, is a mixed-media artistfrom Easthampton and a film/video major at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She said her work is “very much connected with the natural world.
I’m very interested in art environmentalism and the healing power of nature,” she explained.
She works with video art, photography, painting, and scanography — using a flatbed photo scanner to capture images of objects. She previously exhibited work at the Emily Dickinson Museum, in the MassArt Auction, and at Art on the Marquee. She is inspired by Georgia O Keeffe’s paintings, finding them to be “meditative.” She will show her scanographic piece “15th of August 2022″ as well as two videos at the exhibition.
Fisher is a 22-year-old from Sussex County, Delaware, and a fine arts major at Lesley University. She started creating oil paintings and charcoal drawings during high school and now mostly works with printmaking, which is how her thesis focus and scholarship funds will be allocated.
“I think my work is a reflection of our symbiotic relationship with the natural world,” she said. “I see us as one part of a whole, and my work is depicting the post-industrial landscapes and the age of Anthropocene as a dominant influence.”
Rhodes, 22, is a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, focused on woodworking, printmaking, and jewelry. They were born in Boston, but lived in Vermont before returning to the area for college.
They said they focus on concepts, rather than media when approaching their art. “I have a tool belt, so that when a certain image or project comes into my mind, I have many options to materialize into the real world,” they said. Rhodes said their work deals with “parsing out my own identity as a Black person in the United States.” They said they are inspired by Kerry James Marshall and “his uncompromising blackness. His figures are made in pure black paint because he’s always been denied the usage, people telling him that black is not a beautiful color.”
Casey Park
Park is a 22-year-old student from South Carolina at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her work is about “nostalgia, connection, reminiscing on the past” and understanding her American identity. Park will be exhibiting her photograph “Saudade” and two artist books. “Saudade” looks back on the past, while her books are about her growing up as a Korean-American woman as she works to “reconnect with [her] identity” and deals with looking at culture from afar.
Morris is a 23-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y., and an illustration major at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She works mostly with pen and ink illustration, painting, photography, and installation. She describes her work “as a little bit gritty, mainly topics of chronic illness, particularly type one diabetes, and exploring that from a combination of innocence and the death of innocence.” Morris is inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work and said it is an “exploration of very childlike experiments and being very open-minded.” She will be exhibit a cyanotype titled “Matriarch” and two digital illustrations.