Date of Award

Spring 5-11-2026

Author's School

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Author's Department

Graduate School of Art

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

This thesis examines the uncanny, bodily, grotesque, and metamorphic states of beings that exist between human and non-human forms. In my sculptural practice, I approach the body not as a fixed or self-contained object, but as a fluid, unstable, and continuously transforming condition. Working primarily with wool, foam, silicone, wax, latex, and metal, I use material interaction, fleshy quality, gravity, and open-ended processes to generate forms that appear unresolved, bodily, and in the middle of becoming. These sculptures often suggest skin, organs, wounds, hair, membranes, or other bodily elements, yet they resist clear identification and remain suspended between attraction and discomfort, vulnerability and grotesqueness, abstraction and embodiment.

The thesis argues that material and process do not simply depict the body but produce bodily conditions. Through layering, dripping, swelling, sagging, and support, the work stages embodiment as porous, contingent, and unfinished. Drawing on theories of abjection, process and anti-form, and abstraction, I analyze how bodily boundaries in my work become unstable, troubling distinctions between inside and outside, self and other, and human and non-human. At the same time, abstraction allows the body to remain open rather than fixed, creating forms that are affectively charged but not fully legible. Ultimately, this thesis proposes sculpture as a way of reimagining the body not as a stable figure, but as an unfinished and constantly changing state of becoming.

Language

English

Program Chair

Tiffany Calvert

Thesis Text Advisor

Arnold Nalder

Thesis Text Advisor

Meghan Kirkwood

Faculty Mentor

Arnold Nalder

Committee Member

Arnold Nalder

Committee Member

Heather Brennett

Committee Member

Amy Hauft

Committee Member

Jack Risley

Artist's Statement

My sculptures explore ambiguous bodily forms that exist between human and non-human, object and organism, formation and dissolution. Rather than creating clearly defined or recognizable figures, I am interested in bodies not as solid, stable entities, but as forms in a state of metamorphosis—fluid and continuously transforming. I want these humanoid forms to resist fixed interpretation and remain open to multiple states of being.

Through my use of wool, silicone, foam, and latex, I create hybrid presences that evoke skin, flesh, organs, and strange life-forms that blur the internal and external. My process contributes to the sense of becoming in my work. I begin with a quick, rough, immediate sketch and maintain this tempo throughout the shaping of the work. 

 These seemingly “random” abstract shapes further emphasize the sense of process. I seek to create a soft, visceral, and intimate quality. Through material and process, I create forms that feel simultaneously tender and grotesque, familiar and uncanny.

Color is significant. Pink appears again and again in my sculptures. It is a color that holds a strong duality, evoking softness, intimacy, and sweetness, while also suggesting discomfort. These fleshy tones make my creatures appear like unfinished humans or newly emerging beings. What I am describing here is not a narrative, but a condition of existence—an uncertain state of life suspended between categories.

Instead of presenting the body as stable and self-contained, I question what happens when forms slump, lean, collapse, or require support. This allows the sculptures to exist as vulnerable, incomplete, and shifting presences rather than fixed objects. In these forms, I blur the boundary between inanimate matter and living presence, allowing static structures to appear strangely animate, as if they are caught in the middle of becoming.

My work rethinks what a body can be, where its boundaries begin and end, and, ultimately, how identity might exist beyond fixed human-centered definitions. Through soft, grotesque, and metamorphic forms, I imagine new states of being that are unfinished, undefinable, and constantly becoming.

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