Date of Award
Spring 5-7-2025
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art
Degree Type
Thesis
Abstract
I have always been a crier. I have always felt deeply and intensely. Goodbyes, heartbreak, joy, and empathy—I’m grateful to feel it all, even when it hurts. My artwork often investigates vulnerable topics through making the personal public using self archival and diaristic elements. Inspired by my familial and romantic relationships, I explore my connections to other people and how I memorialize and honor them. My painted works often depict ephemeral objects, establishing their value through the use of oil paints while my sculptures are often exaggerated, oversize forms, emphasizing the passage of time.
From January 1st to December 31st of 2024, I kept a record of every time I cried in a spreadsheet. My thesis explores the emotional release and absurdity of crying through the unpredictability of ceramics. Tracking emotions through cold, hard data negates the gravity of those feelings while contrasting them with bulbous, illustrative images of tears brings back the human touch. The subtle themes of grief—of people, relationships, and time itself—highlight the ways repressed emotions find their way out. The physicality of my thesis work specifically demands attention from the viewer by entering their space physically, screaming for someone to recognize the absurdity of such a display. I hope to inspire embracing vulnerability and appreciation of tears as a necessary bodily function required for emotional release as opposed to an embarrassment.
Language
English
Program Chair
Tiffany Calvert
Thesis Text Advisor
Meghan Kirkwood
Thesis Text Advisor
Monika Weiss
Faculty Mentor
Joe deVera
Committee Member
Arny Nadler
Committee Member
Jamie Adams
Recommended Citation
Ryder, Grace C., "Go Cry About It!" (2025). MFA in Visual Art. 29.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_visual_art/29
Artist's Statement
My artwork often investigates vulnerable topics through making the personal public using self archival and diaristic elements. Inspired by my familial and romantic relationships, I explore my connections to other people and how I memorialize and honor them. Creating a record of my life through my art makes it so I cannot forget. Diaristic work, similarly, helps me track the passage of time when it feels like it keeps slipping through my fingers. Creating works based on love letters, voicemails or a diary of tears memorializes my life and those around me.
My painted works often depict ephemeral objects, establishing their value through the use of oil paints while my sculptures are often absurd, oversize forms, emphasizing the passage of time. By putting myself out there within my work, I hope to connect to viewers through my vulnerability and hope that they can see a piece of themselves within it.
Physical reminders of experiences and relationships can be scarce in this constantly evolving digital age. Tickets, photographs, letters, receipts and more are all concrete manifestations of our memories. The physical nature of these objects makes them different from their digital counterparts, which can be deleted, lost, or forgotten. Hal Foster described the habit of “The Archival Impulse,” that I embody in my everyday life by holding onto everything in an attempt to retain physical reminders of often ephemeral experiences. I’m similarly interested in how others engage in the practice of keeping an archive of the self. By creating manifestations of memory in painting and sculpture, I concretize and memorialize these things into permanent objects while tracking the passage of time.