Kaitlyn Hunter, a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree in the West Virginia University School of Art and Design, will present her MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Creative Arts Center’s Paul Mesaros Gallery, March 14-28.
There will be a reception for the exhibition Monday, March 28, at 5 p.m. at the gallery. All events are free and open to the public. The gallery will be closed during WVU Spring Break, March 19-27.
Hunter has a penchant for exploring the boundary between beauty and the grotesque in her sculptures. Monsters, the human form, and performative sculpture are a few of her specialties.
Her thesis show will involve performative sculpture and a new theme of “monster mythology.” She is currently silk-screening monsters on fabric and sewing the shapes into plush, pillow-like objects. She plans to incorporate the monsters into an accumulative installation of monster plushies.
One of the first pieces she created as a student in the WVU MFA program—essentially a 3-D quilted blob eating a piece of furniture—was selected to be featured in the October 2014 issue of Sculpture Magazine. The sculpture was then on display at Grounds for Sculpture, an indoor/outdoor sculpture gallery in New Jersey before becoming part of a traveling exhibition that moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in November 2015 for the 25th International Sculpture Conference.
A native of Lisbon Falls, Maine, Hunter was named a 2014 Outstanding Student in Sculpture by the International Sculpture Center. In February 2015, she traveled to New York City for the 2015 New Media Caucus, an affiliate of the College Art Association, where she sat on a panel discussing the intersection between bodies, genders, race, sex and different systems contributing to how people are visually perceived by society.
Hunter discussed a sculpture she made, called “Cacomorphobia,” which is defined as the fear of obese people. Built around one of Hunter’s old winter coats, the wearable piece—a giant pink monstrous fat suit—is one of her performative sculptures. Using her body as a sculptural element is something she has begun to explore more through her work, with the goal of making people think and sparking conversation.
For more information, see Hunter’s website: http://kaitlynhunter.weebly.com.
The Mesaros Galleries at the CAC are open Monday through Saturday, from noon to 9:30 p.m. The galleries are closed on Sundays and University holidays.
For more information on the event, contact Robert Bridges, curator of the Mesaros Galleries at 304-293-2312.
-WVU-
03/08/2016
CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu
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