Last month, BU School of Visual Arts graduate students were celebrated in a series of MFA thesis exhibitions. Now, the 33 graduating seniors in the College of Fine Arts Class of 2024 have a chance to showcase their work.
This year’s two BFA thesis exhibitions comprise student work from four undergrad programs: painting, sculpture, printmaking, and graphic design. On view at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery are works by painting, sculpture, and printmaking students, while graphic design theses are across the street at the 808 Gallery.
It’s a big year for CFA: the college is celebrating its 70th birthday—founded as the School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1954—and last month, the School of Visual Arts celebrated its first graduating classes in the new visual narrative and print media and photography master’s programs. This year, there’s also an all-new undergrad program that will see its first cohort of students walk at this year’s Commencement: the BA program in art.
The BFA thesis exhibitions are free and open to the public. As with the 2024 MFA thesis shows, we’ve compiled a sneak peek of works from each program for a preview of what’s in store for visitors. The captivating artworks, revealing both the depth and diversity of the talent at work in the undergraduate programs, are on view through May 11.
BA Program in Art
Launched in fall 2021, this program combines traditional studio arts curricula with a special focus on liberal arts research—with an eye to galleries, libraries, archives, and museums as rich repositories of information. Four students graduate this year.
The BA Program in Art capstone projects are at Gallery 5, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, May 11. Hours: weekdays from 7 am to 8:30 pm and weekends from 9 am to 8:30 pm.
Painting
Grounded in rigorous studio practice, the School of Visual Arts undergrad painting program sets high expectations for its BFA students. After completing the school’s interdisciplinary Foundation Program, where students from all majors concentrate on the fundamentals of drawing, painting, sculpture, and art history, student-painters are encouraged to explore their individual passions in media from oils to woodwork to bookmaking.
This year’s nine BFA painting seniors represent a mélange of artistic styles and scope—works range from traditional portraiture to fish-eyed trompe l’oeil to stylized cartoonism and beyond.
Consider the highly composed works by Mason Burns (CFA’24): perfectly arranged still lifes featuring objects—shells, feathers, pine cones, dried sea urchins—gifted to the artist by his photographer grandmother. His practice is inspired by hers—centering on the natural world, freezing it in time, his paintings serving as a visual diary.
Ryan Dempsey (CFA’24) also trains his focus on the natural world, but chooses to use natural landscapes—and, more specifically, natural light—as a juxtaposition to the harsh “blue light” of digital devices we’ve all become accustomed to. The result, a combination of printmaking and painting, evokes the lingering afterimages caused by flashes of violent light.
For her acrylic and colored pencil works, Hannan Roderick (CFA’25) uses an intuitive approach. Inspired by her own emotions and the workings of her subconsciousness, her paintings read like snatches of awareness (a glance, a reflection in a spoon, fish in a fish tank) that return, distorted and uncanny, in dreams.
The BFA Painting Thesis Exhibition is at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, May 11. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.
Sculpture
Undergrads in the sculpture program meet in intimate groups, allowing them to work more closely with faculty and one another, as well as with visiting artists. The curriculum focuses equally on technique, experimentation, and developing a unique visual language and point of view for each artist.
This year, Bader Baroudy (CAS’24, CFA’24) is the sole graduating sculpture major. His method is directly influenced by a musician’s process of creation, derived from “a variety of musical artists’ lyrical world-buildings and sound palettes, dressed in a plethora of symbolic references emerging from mythological, theological, and biological sources,” he writes in his thesis statement.
Baroudy’s installations are perhaps more directly reminiscent of films, given his use of evocative, cinematic set elements like pink LEDs, a repurposed hobbyhorse, and stark, weatherbeaten wood. And in fact, many of his sculptures incorporate short films.
The BFA Sculpture Thesis Exhibition is at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, May 11. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.
Printmaking
From etching to woodcut to silkscreen to cyanotype, there are endless ways for contemporary printmakers to express themselves, and the BFA printmaking program offers a variety of media for undergraduate students to explore. Conscious of opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary practice, the curriculum offers young artists the freedom to incorporate digital art, painting, sculpture, and more into their work.
The two students in this year’s graduating BFA printmaking program capture the breadth of technical disciplines that the art form is known for, all while also showcasing their foundational talents in painting and drawing.
Dowon Suh (CFA’24) views her art as something of an alchemical process that allows her to transform internal turmoil and self-criticism into moments of hope. The fantastical creatures she creates and manipulates through etching and monotype are manifestations of these strong emotions.
Angela Pistilli (CFA’24), a double major in printmaking and painting, is also fascinated with characterization, but her focus is tightly trained on the female form. Much of her work is a reflection of her passion for weightlifting. Pistilli’s women are gender-defying, muscle-bound nudes engaged in traditionally masculine pastimes like chopping wood and hunting, each confronting the viewer with a confident swagger. “In this carefully constructed world,” she writes in her thesis statement, “women always win.”
The BFA Printmaking Thesis Exhibition is at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, May 11. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.
Graphic Design
Graphic design undergraduates concentrate their work in four key areas: design for social impact, community-focused design, the portrayal and exploration of social phenomena, and the intersection of technology and graphic design.
“Our shared passion for the transformative potential of graphic design binds our individual explorations together,” writes Mary Yang, a CFA assistant professor of art, graphic design, and thesis advisor for the 21 graduating students in the BFA graphic design program. “While our design approaches differ, we find convergence in our shared experience of design as a lens for critique, culture, and connection.”
Artist Drew Demeterio (CFA’24) uses her graphic design practice to probe the inconsistency between her Filipino background and American upbringing. Perceiving a dearth of Asian, and particularly Filipino, practices in contemporary design, Demeterio founded Kabilin, a Filipino arts collective, as part of her thesis. As with many of her designs, the logo melds Filipino visual influences with her own aesthetic ideals.
Sophie Jurion (CFA’24, COM’24) was inspired by the book Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, by former Microsoft graphic designer Kat Holmes, to create a thesis that explores life with one of the world’s most common disabilities: vision impairment. Incorporating elements like Braille, alternative text, and screen readers into her work, Jurion alters the interactive relationship between the work and the viewer, and prods the experience of seeing in playful and unexpected ways.
Vincent Liu (CFA’24) moved from China to New Jersey as a child, but writes in his thesis statement that he didn’t feel comfortable with his cultural identity until college. His thesis, incorporating typography and graphic prints, is a candid look at his motivations for “caring about my culture after a long period of neglect,” he writes. “My projects utilize a methodology…[derived from] the traditional Chinese mind-set of building something new rooted in the past.”
The BFA Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, May 11. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.
Opening receptions will be held at the 808 Gallery and the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery on Friday, May 3, from 6 to 8 pm.
