ATC Offers Some Promising Previews of the MFA Candidates
By Erin Goodwin-Guerrero

What is ATC? Advancement to Candidacy is a week of exhibitions in the San Jose State Galleries that allow faculty, students and visitors to see current work by graduate students who want approval to proceed to their “theses” — the final body of work that comprises their exit exhibition. This year’s presentations were all over the map in terms of interesting art. At the worst, sometimes it was a one-liner, or boring and meaningless, amateur and poorly crafted, unfocused and/or overly sentimental. The good news is that this work still has time to turn around. And, on the up side of ATC, I found several fascinating shows that made the trip to San Jose State’s Galleries quite rewarding.

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Artifacts of Family and Roots
By Erin Goodwin-Guerrero

Ben Hunt’s MFA exhibition, The Grey Area, at San Jose State, is a knockout on the visual level. Indeed the entire space is dominated by the grey walls and an uncertainty between past and present. It is, conceptually, an enigma and an unsettled search for personal history.

Ghost House by Ben Hunt

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Love Art Laboratory
By Julia Bradshaw

Costume designer Katea Petro, bride Elizabeth Stephens, bride Annie Sprinkle, and corset designer, Ms. Antoinette conspire to design the green theme nuptials.

Collaborators, lovers and multiple-married couple Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle invited all to join in their wedding preparations in the new ICA print studio on Saturday 5th April. With the bride encouraging wedding-veil decorations of a pair of lovebirds, a green cocktail umbrella, peacock feathers, a hand-painted shell and multiple green beads – a no-holds-barred involvement in creating wedding clothes developed. Participants in the sewing-bee created a wedding-staff and leather waistcoat decorated with buttons, beads, feathers and shiny, green bric-a-brac for Bride Elizabeth Stephens. Others attached beads, abalone shells and hand-made paper beads by Carmela Rizzuto to Bride Annie Sprinkle’s wedding skirt. And Sprinkle modeled a magnificently constructed green corset created by Ms. Antoinette as she read poetry to the people in the gallery and spoke of her own love story. A feast of Green Food kept the energy levels up. As Elizabeth Stephens said “we couldn’t do this without the participation of the people who came today. Everyone has contributed to make this a fun, beautiful and sexy event.

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