DANA CLANCY
Director, School of Visual ArtsI am pleased to introduce the Boston University School of Visual Arts Class of 2024 Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis catalog featuring work by 33 students graduating from BFA programs in Graphic Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking. The Class of 2024 have faced enormous cultural change during four years as undergraduate students. Due to the pandemic they have adapted to different ways of working together, but creating in the face of so much flux seems to have heightened these students’ attentiveness to manipulating images and materials in new ways. In these pages the students reflect on the importance of play and imagination in the studio, and a sense of experimentation is evident in their thesis work. The BFA Thesis branding team of fellow seniors reflects on the visual identity they designed as expressive of this group who ‘learned to go with the flow’ as they “entered school in a hybrid of digital and physical space,” such that “their ability to adjust mirrored the fluidity of water.”
Through their work this group of talented young artists and designers also invite us to become aware of how we engage with the flow of time. They dig into the past - working with archives, considering visual traditions from home countries, or making paintings of objects - including photographs - from their parents or grandparents’ lives. They also experiment with recent technology, exploring the impact of digital worlds on human experiences, utilizing AI, and speculating about the future through their experimental processes. The exhibitions in Stone and 808 Galleries at CFA create a sense of flow for the viewer between individual experience and larger social questions; we encounter a stream of sources from the world manipulated in unique ways by each student.
This is a very special group of students and faculty mentors who “transcended dimensions, flowed between learning spaces, and overcame obstacles in their new environment,” as the BFA Branding team writes. On behalf of SVA I give a truly heartfelt thank you to the talented thesis identity team: Eva Brown, Jessie Choi, Drew Demeterio, Vincent Liu, Sarah Nam, Campbell Morin, Tiffany Taw, Jimi Taiwo, and Wendy Tang. Thank you to Claire Bula for mentoring these students through her Branding course, along with important mentorship of BFA Graphic Design seniors by Assistant Professor Mary Yang and Assistant Professor James Grady in 2023-24. SVA is so grateful to the studio degree faculty who worked closely with seniors in BFA Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking on their thesis processes, including Associate Professor Lucy Kim, Lecturer E.E. Ikeler, Associate Professor and BFA Sculpture Chair Greg Gomez, Associate Professor and BFA Printmaking Chair Deborah Cornell, and Assistant Professor E. Tubergen. Thank you to BU Art Galleries Director Lissa Cramer for helping prepare our students professionally, along with Programming and Media Manager Nerissa Cooney for her mentorship of SVA’s thesis processes with important thesis support by Administrative Coordinator Andy Wilson and Technical Associates Gus Wheeler, Josh Brennan, and Jesse Finkelstein working with Operations Manager Logen Zimmerman. Thank you to Beth Zerega and Jessica Caccamo for their work with these students over four years. In my last year as SVA Director, I am grateful to have led growth - in addition to steering through much change - through collaboration with the wonderful faculty and staff of SVA along with resources from CFA. I am grateful to the Class of 2024 for their dedication and ability to invent (and flow) in the face of disruption.