Western Conn. State University Announces MFA Thesis Exhibit at Blue Mountain Art Gallery

The Department of Art at Western Connecticut State University is pleased to announce the 2017 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition. It will take place in the Blue Mountain Gallery located at 530 West 25th Street, 4th Floor, New York City. The exhibition will run from June 20th through July 8th. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 22nd. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. The gallery will be open for viewing from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The Master of Fine Arts is the terminal degree for practicing, professional artists. The MFA Thesis Exhibition is the capstone experience of the graduate program, demonstrating a personal direction and mastery in the work of the artists. Seven graduate students will present their work this year:

Christine Armold is from Newtown, CT and works primarily in oils and watercolor, Christine is interested in the elements of still life combined with landscape and the duality between interior and exterior spaces.

Tricia Currie is from North Haven, CT, and works primarily in mixed media on paper, and often large-scale. Tricia creates fluid and expressive works that emphasize figural interaction.

Kirsten Koromilas was born in Staten Island, NY and currently works on paper, layering wet and dry media to create space and movement. Using various mixed media in a greyscale palette, she explores the impact of memory, experience, travel and ancestral influence.

Joey Loos resides in Meriden, Connecticut, and works primarily as an abstract, mixed media artist, she creates works that are largely non-representational. They reflect on ideas of femininity, memories, and transience, rooted in ephemerality and exploration.

Ellie Nazari emigrated to the U.S. in 2007, and began painting in her mid-thirties Ellie expresses herself through the use of bold color in acrylic and oil in recent figurative works which are more minimal in tone and detail in order to exaggerate the emotional impact of form and movement.

Sara Ruiz immigrated to the U.S. from Peru to continue her education. Ruiz engages in the inexorable connection between society, identity and environment as source material. She uses soft brushes and a firm palette knife to explore color, combining muted and vibrant tones that connect to her homeland.

Janet Warner resides in New Haven, CT. Her landscape paintings are often painted on site in New Haven at East Rock. Warner recently started to break from the idea of what it looks like in real-life, to adding her own interpretation of the city. This allows her to investigate a combination of the real and the imagined worlds.

Additional information about the artists and artwork is at www.bluemountaingallery.org/wcsu-2017/

For more information, contact Blue Mountain Gallery at (646)486-4730 or the Department of Art at (203) 837-8403 or the Office of University Relations at (203) 837-8486