A Note From our Faculty Advisor

It brings me great pleasure to introduce the work of the 2023-2024 graduating MFA cohort in Art and Art History at San José State University.

I met Laamsha Young in the art office one morning while photocopying. We exchanged thoughts on the art history program, which she was once a part of. Months later she tried to resurrect the Art History Association with my complete support, accepting, at last minute, the passed-down role of president. Laamsha and I continued to intersect, mostly in gallery shows. She is the first artist I know to make bonnets and hang them in an exhibition. She danced and performed in Mark Porter Fisher’s Mime video piece, a small but vastly meaningful and hilarious contribution to a friend’s work. Laamsha is well-known for her fierce belief in the importance of the work of her fellow MFA colleagues. It was her and Craig Sanborn who asked me to be the faculty advisor of this exhibition.

Craig Sandborn is hard to miss, partly because he towers over everybody, but also partly because he is, like Laamsha, everywhere at once. I ran into Craig countless times in gallery shows, the hallway, and at the last department picnic where he unflinchingly talked to me about art while I ate barbeque with my fingers. I got sick the next day and he calmly reassured me it had nothing to do with eating with my hands. I sat in Craig’s studio one afternoon and was struck by his precise lines and strong compositions. We talked about Anni Albers---knots was a common theme between them both. Craig is a powerful advocate for the arts and has steadfastly led the development of this exhibition in a profoundly humble way.

Brian Anderson and Liwen (Julia) Peng took my speculative design course. For Brian, this made sense. His work speculated a lot, particularly about the implications of media, TV and the internet. Both skeptical of cults and the occult but also curious about their inner workings, Brian embraced a kind of obsessiveness with documentation that spectacularized fantasies, induced by media. He took his approach to art everywhere; creating a wildly bizarre and humorous YouTube video in which he read Yayoi Kusama’s work as a new kind of capitalist formalism or something like that. Everybody loved it. Julia, you could count on to always be present, physically and in terms of attention. She makes careful art and thoughtful statements. She is tuned in but somehow manages to stay out of the limelight. Making art is something Julia, I think, will always do, and probably did since birth.

Roston Johnson, like Mark Porter Fisher, I encounter in stairwells: they move through the building, mingling in all events. Both participated in the Critical Art Salons, which Carla Schwarz Fisher and I jumpstarted in fall 2023. Roston also teaches. Mark presides as Treasurer of the Dirty Brushes painting club. Both painters are soft spoken in person but massively bold on canvas. Neither hold back and it’s because they care about their work and have found their groove. In talking with Roston and Mark in their gallery thesis shows over the past year, I promptly realized there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

Larissa Usich and Cynthia Gonzalez shared studios next to one another. It always makes my day to walk into their studios. They are art installations of the highest order, filled with idiosyncratic materials and visual culture on the walls, floor, and what felt like the ceiling (emphasis on felt). Cynthia does art all the time. She brings her projects to lectures and meetings. She is surrounded by colorful fibers and engrossed in crafting techniques all the time but never fails to participate in conversation. Larissa is the Judy Chicago of the art program: feminist social engagement is what she does and what she embodies. She will ultimately push it to a new level by asking different questions relevant to the 2020s and 2030s. Pants will definitely be involved.

Samuel Crookston Herschlag is someone who I have not spent a lot of time with, but he has a wickedly cool name. I suspect him of being a quiet and passionate champion of his colleagues’ art practices and other work; he expressed his appreciation to them many times over our exhibition planning zoom meetings.

This exhibition represents the culmination of their work over a sustained period of study in the program. It conveys the ways the group has developed together and as individuals. We could not be more pleased.

Dr. Sarah Mills
Assistant Professor, Art History & Visual Culture
SJSU MFA Exhibition Faculty Advisor
San Jose State University | College of Humanities and the Arts

Credits

• Exhibition Curated by Karen Kienzle
• Exhibition Hosted by Works / San José Works
• Catalogue Design by Jessica Yu, BFA Graphic Design, Design Department at San José State University
• Web Design by Rhonda Holberton, Associate Professor, Department of Art & Art History at San José State University