June 2009 Graduates

Big Congratulations to all my artist friends at The Art Institute of Boston for this June 2009 residency especially the new graduates. I went up to Boston to see the new work of the incoming students and listen to the thesis artists talks given by the June graduating class. As always the artist talks were riveting and the new work from incoming students amazing. I'll start posting some of the wonderful art I saw.

First two of the fifteen June 2009 MFA Graduates

Lynda Schlosberg's large acrylic paintings 55"x110" were mind blowing.These huge intricate lovely paintings conceptually asks the question, is space really empty? She visually explores what space might look like if all the energy surrounding us collapsed into one plane of reality.

Lynda Schlosberg

I loved being close to these large paintings as they read totally different from viewing them from afar. The color changes were spectacular up close, we are looking at the upper right corner in this detail. I know for a fact, she worked for months on this one painting.

Melissa Kulig knocked my socks off with her drawings as she seeks to confront the notion of a woman's appropriate behavior in society and how those boundaries have shifted since the 19th century. The emotional connection to the dark side makes her drawings compelling. Shown here is her thesis drawing, a large pencil drawing showing a raging woman. Look closely at what the dress is made of. Melissa was also the recipient of the scholarship award my graduating class left as our legacy at The Art Institute of Boston. Double congrats to Melissa.

More new work and images to follow, stay tuned!

Melissa Kulig

Glass Flowers of Harvard

The Harvard Museum of Natural History in Boston has an amazing collection of glass flowers that were painstakingly hand made by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka between 1886 and 1936. These models were made because the founder of Harvard's Botanical Museum wanted life-like representatives of the plant kingdom for teaching botany.

The Blaschkas' studio was located in Hosterwitz, near Dresden, Germany. Just imagining these fragile works crossing the Atlantic ocean and arriving intact in Boston was awe inspiring and a feat in and of itself for that time.


I photographed the collection of these gorgeous biological specimens with fellow artist Heather Horton-Flynn who is a glass artist. She explained how incredibly difficult it was to create fine hair-like structures and get accurate coloring in glass. We marveled at the skill and time it must have taken to make these life-like objects.

Life-like but with no life. As beautiful as these forms are, they had a dullness and seemed to lack a vibrant life energy that the real thing has. This came as a surprise, as I expected them to be like the bright shocking hues of flowers we see in the grocery store.

Glass Pitcher Plant

I am always inspired by natural forms and particularly enjoyed the cross sections and magnifications of the flowers reproductive organs. How like a mandala a transverse cross section of a flowers ovaries are.

It's hip to be square

Of the 500 or so images I've created during my MFA program, 80% are in done in a square format. Of the many critiques I've participated in, I've been ready with a thoughtful answer to the question..."so why are you painting in a square composition?"

Yet, no one in the past two years ever asked me or challenged me on why I was painting in a square format. The first problem an artist needs to address before beginning a work, is what size and shape the work will be. The shape of the frame an artist chooses influences the final image and reveals something about that piece of art work.

I consciously choose a square format as I think of the square as a unit, a part of a whole, that has the same properties whole as it does in its parts. It makes up a grid and is considered emblematic of modernism. Square compositions can be both complete and incompleted, as you can always add another square to an already existing one.

A square format does not favor the dynamic vertical or calm horizontal plane, it is stable and supports the image in equanimity. The equal sides allow the image to be, without too much input from the frame. It is a simple, regular and familiar geometry. In Socrate's Meno, doubling the square, he says "This knowledge will not come from teaching, but from questioning, he will recover it for himself." Guess there are some questions you just ask yourself.

Thesis Idea...after the fact

All last fall I was wracking my brain to come up with an original, cool, mind blowing presentation for my thesis show. My thesis show was in January, so the time for it has past. Not so with my brain still under the directive of come up with an awesome idea for a thesis show!

I was frankly so busy writing and creating art work that I didn't have extra energy for "what if's" and "wonder what that would look like" thinking, that is until now...

With the pressure off, the floodgates of ideas run rampant! What do you think of this idea? A body of work consisting of static pieces of 2-d work hung on a wall (ie a painting, photograph or illustration) and at the four edges of the frame, seamlessly projecting video imagery related to and dynamically extending the 2-d work. Going beyond the frame into movement and time. I envision painting and video of painted imagery together because that's my medium, other media could work.

What it would take to get those two media working together? In my mind, it looks pretty great, perfect for a thesis show or maybe not... physical reality might not bear me out.

Devoted to Fine Art

After giving it quite a bit of thought and wrestling with code, links and flash photo galleries that don't work (see below), I have finally decided to have a separate Fine Art web site devoted to my work as an artist.

I didn't actually create it from scratch like I usually do, instead I've used a web based site for artists called icompedium.com. I must say how delighted I am to not have to build a new site from scratch and that its design is what I would have eventually come up with after weeks of designing and re-designing or maybe not at all. It doesn't matter, check out the spotless information design that allows my work to shine through. www.rebeccajmoran.com

After this shamless plug, I can get back to painting...

Artist Presentation

I have been getting many requests to see my latest work. Click the link below to watch a slide show of my artist presentation posted on Flickr. Many of my newest works can be seen in this presentation and will give you a good idea of the themes and media I've been been working in. Slide show link. This artist talk was created as part of a thesis presentation for my MFA at The Art Institute of Boston, posted below as a QuickTime movie.

The Slater Museum

One of my thesis panels Water Makes Rock II has been accepted into The Slater Museum 66th Annual Connecticut Artists Exhibition.

Artist Ron Cruzan juried the show which features paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculpture, graphics and photography by resident artists of Connecticut.

It's a wonderful show with artists from all over Connecticut. You are invited to attend the opening reception and awards ceremony on Sunday, February 22, 2009 from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m at The Slater Museum in Norwich Connecticut. See you there.

Detail of Water Makes Rocks II