I am a 2025 MFA (grad/studio art) from ArtCenter College of Design. To help others here, I would like to share my 2023 SOP and Q&A's that got me into ArtCenter.
Written Essays
a) Artist’s Statement
An Artist’s Statement (750 words or less) that provides key insights into your artistic practice and influences. Your statement should also discuss the artists and the types of art that have had the biggest impact on your thinking about art. These need not be visual artists, but if not, give us some idea of how their influence is manifested in your work.
My art practice is dynamic, incorporating all types of approaches ranging from painting to photography, which is the basis for most of my artworks, to sculpture to video artworks. Themes which I have explored within my undergraduate years have included the following: historical and economic archives, glitches in artificial intelligence and speculative themes as related to spiritual identities, surveillance, post-language relating to science fiction, capitalist machinery, and the architectonics and commodification of sociopolitical violence via technology and social media. Some of the wide gamut of topics I have looked at within my studio practice encompass the following: the Capitol insurrection, the semiotics of the self-reflexive mythology behind Kanye West and his ego, the politics of color theory involved in the connection between view camera photography and Orientalism, and the interwoven relationship between commodification of garments and the fashion photograph through an anti-fashion conceptual collaboration with Patrick Winfield Vogel called HAZE MAT. The diversity amongst all of these and other series revolve around a creative analysis of multiple systems of power and epistemology within a sociopolitical context; my art practice tends to be research intensive even though my studio practice balances out both aesthetic and conceptual concerns within the final praxis.
The largest impact on my visual and thematic content and language have been rooted in conceptual art ranging across multiple media such as traditional paintings to cutting-edge installations. As a working artist, I make sure to take breaks from the research laboratory or studio to spend as much time as I can within museums and galleries, such as the Broad Art Center to Blum & Poe, and expose myself to as many different types of art across various media as I can. I feel that my undergraduate education has been too limited in terms of the diversity of contemporary art education; as a photography major, I did not get any exposure to other types of art such as painting (I minored in Sculpture Intermedia). So I ended up doing art residencies such as the School of Visual Arts and outside projects and collectives such as Paradice Palase in order to train myself to engage my art practice beyond just the merely expected photographic prints. Often my practice will incorporate multiple approaches within the same project; for example, my Honors photobook involved a section where I combined 3D printing technology with traditional studio photography with a medium format digital Fuji camera.
Providing a full list of artists which have influenced my own works would be nigh impossible. I can summarize some of my key guides here. For example, in terms of being a conceptual artist, some of the artists include Lawrence Weiner, Hans Haacke, Cady Noland, Josephine Meckseper, and David Hammons. Apart from cues in visual and historical forms, this group of artists have impacted me in terms of a broad range of sociopolitical concerns as well as a drive towards premeditated and elegant conceptual structures that deconstruct power relationships from a new perspective. For example, my Honors photobook focused on the topic of the Capitol insurrection using 3D modeling, a historical analysis of the connection between postmodern fascism and Nazi aesthetics, and the collision between the personal and public fallout of my ex-friend turning towards white supremacy during the past decade. Often I research every aspect ranging from the materials to the content from multiple disciplines in order to elucidate previously unseen patterns of knowledge and connections amongst political or sociological bodies. As a photography major, some of my inspirations in that field include Taryn Simon, Hank Willis Thomas, Henry Fox Talbot, Anna Atkins, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Wendy Red Star, and so on. Also I have a wide gamut of non-photographic interests including painters such as Tomma Abts, Robert Rauschenberg, Mike Kelley, Byron Kim, Stanley Whitney, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, etc. as well as sculptors and installation artists such Robert Gober, Eva Hesse, Fred Wilson, etc. Being sensitive to such a wide range of media has inspired me to pursue more exploratory paths within my own art practice even if they are not purely photographic. Examples include my execution of recent mixed media drawings combined with photo transfers which analyzed the surveillance archives of the Stasi.
b) Short Essay Questions: Educational goals
Provide short responses to the following questions:
(i) Why have you decided to pursue a graduate degree in art? Why have you chosen to apply to ArtCenter’s Graduate Art MFA program?
I would like to pursue the MFA degree since I would like to explore innovative paths within my art practice after I complete my undergraduate degree; I would also like to expand my circle of art world colleagues from just the Salt Lake City area towards the Los Angeles area. I am strongly interested in the ArtCenter program due to its strong faculty such as Stan Douglas, Laura Owens, Diana Thater, etc. as well as challenging and open-ended culture that fosters the growth for an emerging artist such as myself.
(ii) What kind of artist do you want to be, and how would you like the Graduate Art faculty to help you to achieve this aspiration?
I aspire to become a conceptual artist who works within various media ranging from paintings to video art; I hope to extend my themes which I have been exploring within my undergraduate program to include other practices such as fashion and architecture in further depth. Working in close conjunction with the faculty at ArtCenter will provide direction and inspiration for my own explorations in new directions for visual and thematic languages and content within my future artworks. I never had a formal studio practice while I attended the University of Utah, so development of a regular studio routine becomes more crucial as I work towards becoming a professional artist within the contemporary art world. Finally, I look forward to taking a diverse set of classes from the faculty about relevant issues within the art program as well as experimenting with new media such as painting which I have not had a chance to work extensively during my undergraduate years.
(iii) What knowledge do you have of the program’s faculty and alumni and how has this affected your decision to apply to the program?
My experience with the program’s faculty and alumni with ArtCenter has been vicarious so far apart from a campus and MFA studio visit in person during the early summer of 2022. Locally, I know of Jane Christensen’s work from the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) but I have not met her in person. Regarding faculty, I know of some of the faculty’s works via monographs and art magazines such as Artforum. The strong faculty as a collective as well as my cursory visit to the ArtCenter facilities in Pasadena created a positive impression for me to apply to this school.
