Finding Merit and Meaning: A Review of the WSU Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibit

The WSU Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition displayed five students’ artwork, their theses after two years of hard work in the MFA program. As a thesis presentation, this exhibit presumably showed these experienced students’ best pieces, produced through the mindset of one who has had years of practice developing their talents, while simultaneously studying art history, technique, and art theory. Assuming these students held an experienced level of artistic talent and understanding, I entered the exhibit anticipating highly aesthetic and meaningful pieces that would be able to speak to me artistically. Although it was perhaps an unfair expectation to put on the artists, I left the exhibit feeling that the artists differed in their ability to convey this message to me as an audience member—in particular, Heather Losey McGreachy and Brad Dissmore.
Of the five artists, I felt that Heather Losey McGreachy showcased her talent well in her utilization of medium to speak to her viewers. Using digital painting, her nature scenes came to life through the blending of rich colors and texture. Diessa Lowlands (2009) highlighted the beautiful effects of a warm sunset hitting a hilltop and the reflection of that image in the placid water below. One could almost feel the warmth of the sun through the orange glow flowing over the hill. Lions Arch (2008), on the other hand, showed a layering of color and penciled texture that harmonized into curves and ridges of the mountains and lake below, giving a sense of the imperfection and unique qualities that every landscape holds. All her techniques expressed how diverse nature can be in setting and topography but how tied together it ultimately is through the common element of color. As a viewer, I was impressed with her ability to convey feelings through her art while maintaining obvious skill.
On the other side of the spectrum, I walked out of the exhibit very dissatisfied with the collection by Brad Dinsmore. Overall, his pieces gave a feeling of confusion, both in his intention and literally in his art technique. Pieces like People and Proverbs (2009) and Combining Knowledge (2009) contained a jumbled, scribbled mess that, unlike the captivating quality a Pollock splatter produces, gave a confused sense of an unfinished, unintentional mess. A video of a hand casually, almost disinterestedly, flipping the pages of a notebook seemed almost to be mocking the viewer for trying to find its purpose. But perhaps most frustratingly, the lack of artistic ingenuity that Dinsmore’s pieces displayed was directly countered by certain elements in his works, like the hands in Learning to See (2009), whose detail was so skillfully penciled that they might as well be real. Clearly then, Dinsmore had artistic merit, and the self-portraits and cut-out phrases surrounded by lines were so awkward and juvenile that one must assume he had a purpose for creating them that way. However, ultimately I was never able to grasp Dinsmore’s artistic intention with his collection, and it left me confused and disappointed.
One might argue that a piece perhaps does not have to have a discernible “meaning,” and that Dinsmore should not have to provide an accompanying explanation to prove his piece is valid and meaningful art. However, one might also ask if art can be so if its meaning overshadows its aesthetic and baffles its audience. Although neither of these questions has a true right answer, it is my opinion that good artwork has a balance of a talented use of aesthetic techniques and discernible meaning that can provoke a feeling in the viewer. The disparity in quality of the artwork by McGreachy and Dinsmore helped me walk out of the thesis exhibition with a better knowledge and expectation of what good art is to me.