Each year the terminal creative projects from our MFA candidates elevate and activate discourse and pleasure in the Art Department and across the College of Design with an ethos of fearless possibility. Their creative research of nThis year marks the 100-year anniversary of the University of Oregon Department of Art’s MFA degree program, making it the second-oldest MFA program in the country. To commemorate this significant moment in our program’s history, the 2023 Terminal Project Exhibition returns to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art to be celebrated on the UO campus. The five artists showcased in this exhibition represent a diverse range of media and practices, spanning eco-feminism and social practice, to speculative fiction, fundamental joy, and ideas about representation through the materiality of painting.
For each of these artists, this exhibition is the culmination of three years of intensive study, including academic research and creative studio output, as well as an immersion in the Department of Art as instructors in undergraduate courses and labs. Through continuous mentorship from the faculty, as well as many guest artists, critics and curators, the grads in our program are given a high bar for their creative output. It’s a rigorous period even when the world is stable, but it should be noted that this MFA cohort spent their entire first year in COVID lockdown, attending and teaching their classes remotely, while developing their studio practices with online critiques. Their perseverance and ability to overcome these extraordinary circumstances and produce the fully realized work seen in this exhibition is a remarkable achievement. This catalog and exhibition represent not only a punctuating moment of the past three years, but also a departure point for these five artists, as we look forward to following their creative endeavors in the years to come.
RON JUDE
DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES