Opening Reception for Americana Obscura MFA Thesis Exhibition by Amanda Pfister and Nick Ramey

Mad Art Gallery proudly presents Americana Obscura, an MFA Thesis Exhibition by Amanda Pfister and Nick Ramey. This exhibit opens on Friday, April 16, 2010, with a free opening reception from 7:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m.

Amanda Pfister is a third-year graduate student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville completing her Master of Fine Arts in studio art with an emphasis in photography. She received her Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Kansas. Her current work is a continuation of her exploration into the transition of urban buildings from places of economic activity to symbols of economic collapse. She has received the Irvin Schankman Memorial Photography First Place Award, the Thomas Gipe Graduate Award, three Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Student Success Art Competition Purchase Awards and a SIUE Research Graduate for Graduate Students. Her work has been published in the River Bluff Review and she has exhibited extensively in the St. Louis area.

Nick Ramey is a ceramic artist and sculptor in the process of completing an MFA degree at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He grew up as an only child in the small town of Aurora, Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio River. While studying Art at Indiana University Nick found an interest in clay as a material and more particularly in making functional pottery. After receiving a BFA he traveled to China for a study abroad program focused on ceramics followed by a year as a special student at West Virginia University. During graduate school, Nick developed an interest in using representational imagery which eventually led to a switch in focus from functional pottery to figurative sculpture. His current work is a series of self portraits. It is the journey of life and the process of growing up that most influences this work. Nick uses clay as the primary medium in this work but also includes many mixed media elements, including found objects, which he believes will hopefully trigger a memory or a sense of the past within the individual viewer. Most importantly, Nick wants his sculptures to tell a story, one that might be different for each viewer, depending on their own personal history and life experiences.