CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — This weekend, graduate students in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois will present work that is the culmination of their education in studio art and design at the Master of Fine Arts Exhibition at Krannert Art Museum.
The exhibition, featuring the work of 15 MFA candidates, opens April 8 with a public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and remains at the museum through April 22. The exhibition includes the work of students in industrial design, graphic design, metals and studio art (painting, sculpture and new media).
Karen Spiering is studying studio art. Her work looks at the idea of place and the tension between the physical landscape and how people experience that place. She has been taking daily walks since mid-February through places with varied land use in the Hillcrest area of Champaign, near Neil Street and Windsor Road.
Her artwork for the exhibition includes found materials from these excursions, as well as written narratives, some of them observational and some recounting the stories from the people she met on her walks, and landscape sketches.
Her project is “getting to the heart of what people experience and whether they interact with the land or earth in a way that’s intentional,” she said.
A Wyoming native who’s also lived in the Washington, D.C., area, Spiering said she was surprised by the lack of natural areas in Champaign-Urbana. “I’ve grown to appreciate the slight topography here, and the remnants of prairie and the big open sky,” she said.
Industrial design student Austin Chen designed an office chair cushion with sensors that will alert the users when they are sitting with poor posture.
Austin Chen is an industrial designer with an interest in the human body and how technology can help solve problems that will lead to better health and wellness. He works with the U. of I.’s Human Dynamics and Controls Lab.
Chen designed a seat cushion that will alert office workers to poor posture and make them more aware of how they are sitting.
“Our brains are not doing a very good job of alerting on what posture we are holding when we are so focused on our work,” he said.
The cushion uses sensors to monitor where the pressure is on the seat cushion when a person is sitting on it and to show when the person shifts out of a good posture zone. If the person holds a position of poor posture for a certain amount of time, the cushion vibrates to prompt him or her to change position. He said the product could help alleviate back pain for office workers who sit all day and have poor posture.
The Master of Fine Arts exhibition is an important showcase for these students, who may go on to teach studio arts or design after graduation.
Editor’s note: For more information about the Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, contact Julia Kelly at jkell@illinois.edu or go to the exhibition website at http://kam.illinois.edu/exhibitions/current/mfa.html.
