‘Holler,’ ‘Safe Space’ among MFA exhibits

For students pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree, the art in their exhibitions becomes very intimate and emotional. Starting on Feb. 17, the Tipton Gallery will start displaying the work of these MFA candidates.

One of these exhibits includes the work of Ashley Gregg, a long-time East Tennessee resident. Her “Holler” exhibit is centered around her experiences with education and childhood from the perspective of her small hometown of Parrottsville, Tennessee.

“My art practice is motivated by the desire to question the ‘single norm’ and to explore the nuances of growing up in rural East Tennessee or elsewhere,” Gregg said. “I am interested in keeping up a conversation about the way place, people, culture and language shape us.”

Her exhibit will include gathered materials such as old family photos, mementos and journal entries.

“The first grouping of barbed wire I gathered, my dad had cut down on our family land,” Gregg said. “My great-grandmother actually put up all of the fencing. The bed sheets were my grandmother’s. Rather than treating them in a nostalgic way, trying to re-contextualize them or bring them into this kind of contemporary awareness and not just doing a reiteration of it.”

Another exhibit explores the shadow archetype.

“The part of the human mind that is repressed, part of the brain that is usually held away from public view,” said ETSU student Lawrence Reid.

Reid’s “Safe Space” exhibit features mixed media and video performance art. He has been furthering this idea for his exhibit since the start of his journey as a graduate student.

“It was always moving in this direction,” Reid said. “I started out with these drawings and paintings. The work has always been in this direction; it is just taken a different form. These were two-dimensional. I branched away from these and did some of the video work and then eventually came full circle, and now they have turned into three-dimensional works that I consider to be of the same body of this work. It is just kind of an evolution of that.”

Reid hopes that his own work will encourage others to see themselves differently.

“If anything, I think it would be good if people could look at this stuff and almost use it as a mirror reflection and be able to recognize their own shadow within, their own parts of themselves that they may repress or do not want to acknowledge,” Reid said. “I think at the end of the day, when this is acknowledged, it makes a person a more whole human being. It helps to realize your own identity.”

As for Jonathan Byrd, his exhibit “A Catalyst for Conversation” was inspired by his own journey as a veteran.

He served as a member of the National Guard for eight years, one of those years doing route clearance in Afghanistan. Byrd hopes that his interactive exhibit will shed life on why veterans sometimes have a hard time re-entering into civilian life.

“I think a lot of people know veterans,” Byrd said. “If you knew them before they went in and when they came back, a lot of people wonder why they are different, but they are not sure how to ask or how to talk about their experiences or why.”

Receptions will be held every first Friday an exhibit is shown. For more information about all the MFA artists and schedules, visit etsu.edu/cas/art/galleries/bfa-mfa.php.