kierstin

Just heard from PennDesign. Interview next week!

Doing a Skype interview with UT Austin on Friday. I'm nervous. It's a relief to see that other sculpture programs seem not to have started sending out interview requests just yet. Unless, of course, none of us are really star applicants. I often wonder if there is some categorical difference between MFA applicants who visit/contribute to gradcafe and those who do not. Is there a personality type which is more likely to spend time on message boards? Is that type conducive to gaining admission to a top program? I dunno. Hope so.

Got one last week. The subject line of the email was something like "invited to Rutgers," which had me pretty excited for about 8 seconds....until I realized it was just another form to fill out.

Just invited to do a Skype interview with UT Austin. It seems that they do all their interviews that way, so I'm not at a disadvantage for not flying down there. Anyone else applying there this year?

Thanks! I will check out those articles.

Thanks for the feed back! I really view the painting and drawing stuff as just for fun, not bearing any of the conceptual weight that I place on the sculpture. I think about what it means to reproduce a photo, and my own limits in that project, but I'm not nearly as invested in that problem as I am in others dealt with in the sculptures. I do enjoy Tuymans, but I'm just not familiar enough with painting discourse to claim any real relation. I think your advice is good, and I'll disconnect that page before admission committees see any of my mindless 2d work. Should I feel guilty for thinking of my painting this way? I thoroughly enjoy it as a hobby, and don't view it as part of my practice. I feel like painters are often touchy about this subject -- they believe that the act of painting has a sort of intrinsic spiritual quality, and to copy photos (without a relevant argument) is sacrilegious. Anyone feel this way?

Thanks Kafralal, I appreciate you taking the time to read and respond. I agree that I need to be more clear... I often have this problem with my writing. I am going to re-address the places you pointed out and further elaborate on other aspects of the work. best of luck!

I'm not a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell, but he gave a talk at Google which addresses this very dillema. Essentialy he says that class rank is a much greater indicator of your future success than the reputation of the school you attend, and that statistically, the top of the class at a mediocre school will do better than those in the middle of the pack at an elite school. I found it thought provoking. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UEwbRWFZVc

Due dates are approaching really quickly and I'm rushing to get everything together. I was hoping you friendly people might offer some constructive criticism of my portfolio and statement as they exist right now. I'm applying to sculpture programs at SAIC, UT Austin, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, VCU, Mason Gross, and possibly UCLA. I've been out of school (Tyler) since 2012 and this is my first time applying. I have no idea of my chances. You can see my work here: kierstinsiegl.com Statement It is helpful for me to think of my sculptural practice as the construction of a piece of literature, striking some balance between poetry, fiction, formula and history. This framework allows for problems of language, meaning and value to be confronted through the symbolic system within which they are embedded. There is very little text present in my work, but each object and physical process maintains linguistic qualities which overlap to create a larger linguistic structure. My fascination with the way symbols shift and evolve in a given culture comes primarily from a deep interest in the way meaning is established and conveyed -- how information is internalized, ideas grow, and belief is cultivated. In practice, this problem is fleshed out through references to the Old Testament and the aesthetics of bridges and architecture, and draws from writings by Barthes, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, and Sontag. Through the use of models and replicas, the sculptures play on a shifting sense of scale. Like a schematic drawing which superimposes detailed description onto a general description of the whole, the vast and the mundane are compressed onto one plane. Found objects are assembled alongside those I have fabricated by hand, imbuing the objects with questions of originality and value. The work is about its own making, and aspires to embody larger systems of communication and interpretation as their methodology is negotiated through seemingly opposite characteristics: romanticism in contrast to utility, style to content, figuration to literalism, and symbolic to real. The work poses these qualities against each other in a way that emphasizes the inherent ambiguities of signification and understanding. My hope for the work is to create opportunities for the viewer to process information gathered elsewhere -- to explore the complexities of connotation and implication, and develop new connections and ideas. I see my project as what Barthes describes as "...a mode of thought (or a 'poetics') which seeks less to assign completed meanings to the objects it discovers than to know how meaning is possible, at what cost and by what means."

Hey everyone, This may be a really dumb question, but when schools request 16 or 20 images of work, do they expect to see that many separate pieces? Because most of my work (assemblage-ish sculpture) is hard to document in a single photograph I need to include detail shots, but I'm afraid that it will come off as though I don't have a large body of work to present. The way I see it, I have three options: submit 20 different pieces, with one photo representing each work. Risk not describing the sculptures well enough. submit 8-10 pieces, each with a detail or two. Risk looking unprepared. submit composite images, with details photoshopped into the same jpg.... allowing me to submit the maximum number of pieces while still giving detail info. Risk looking unprofessional. I asked a few undergrad professors what they thought I should do, but didn't get a clear answer. Maybe other undergrad programs do a better job of preparing people for this process. In any case, let me know what you think! kierstin