By Danica Li
Any long-suffering graduate student will tell you that assembling a thesis out of thin air is something that requires a lot of time, a lot of love, and just a pinch of lunacy. The Department of Art at San Francisco State University (SFSU) is graduating artists from its three-year MFA program this month, and work by eight of them will be on display at the university studio through May 13. The contributions run the gamut: there are photography pieces, sculptures, paintings, samples of performance art, and installations.
Tom Griscom, Beale Street, 2008, 8 inches by 36 inches, digital pigment print
Rosie Sesler, Penis of the Quomerticus fere, mixed media, 6″ by 4″ by 4″
Clare Szydlowski, Untitled, gum biochromate, 28 inches by 70 inches
Seriously? The exhibition is nothing if not a prime chance for the keen-eyed art fanatic to come and rub his hands over bottled fallopian tubes and black and white photos of urban corrosion. Some highlights include Clare Szydlowski’s “The Obvious Unseen: Landscapes of Efficiency and Decay,” Tom Griscom’s landscape photography, and Rosie Sesler’s sculptures, which in the past have taken on the form of exotic, self-created animal species alien to this world and the next.