The Art Academy of Cincinnati is pleased to present the first of six senior thesis exhibitions. "Ology" will feature the work of Sara Cox, Anthony Elech, Evan Hand, Daniel Lansdown, Brendon Miller and Avril Thurman. The exhibition will include a variety of works in a range of media: acrylic and oil paintings, ink drawings, installation, digital photographs, pyrographs and screenprints. Each senior will receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in May 2011.

Anthony Elech is a Columbus-born artist, raised and nourished by the city of Cincinnati. He will graduate with a BFA in Painting. Capable of working across several media of expression, Elech's thesis exhibition will focus explicitly on his fascination with oil. His most recent work explores his past, his psyche and his impressions of the natural world through storm imagery. His paintings describe a natural event the artist believes to be analogous to his own experiences. The clash of sky and earth serve to communicate the adversity the artist feels towards his personal baggage.

 Evan Hand will graduate with a BFA in Photography. He also enjoys drawing, painting, sculpting, printmaking, filming, animating and playing musical instruments. His current work deals with the human body as a landscape and frontier of the modern world, which is shifting away from the human scale. He creates dramatically lit landscapes with miniature people exploring and interacting with the landscape of the body, recalling childhood years of playing with action figures and transforming them and everything around them into a world of its own. The way the texture of the skin, along with the structure of the underlying bones and the hair interact with the miniatures is playful and fascinating.

 Daniel Lansdown born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, is a pyrographer and sculptor currently residing in Cincinnati. He will receive a BFA in Drawing with a minor in Sculpture. Combining his passions for woodworking and psychology, he currently creates visual interpretations of the mind as a landscape, with the intention of mapping the unconscious. Lansdown has shown works locally at OTRists, Semantics and Creative Gallery, as well as the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati.

Brendon Miller, a self-proclaimed maker of marks, was born in Indiana and will graduate with a BFA in Drawing. His work centers on a nearly automatic process of mark-making in which individual marks contend in a cataclysmic torrent of information where structures rise and fall due to the chaotic process of working.

Avril Thurman was born in a log cabin in Brown County, Indiana. She lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio and has lived in San Francisco, California. Having spent the Spring of 2010 in the New York Studio Residency Program, she lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. A poet as well as a visual artist, Thurman's thesis work utilizes the pliability of language and its potential for fissure and rupture. She explores breakdowns in meaning and comprehension through drawing, print and installation. Thurman has shown locally at CS13, Semantics and U.Turn Art Space. Her poems have been published in Brighton Approach and Incliner, the Art Academy's online journal of visual and literary arts. She will receive a BFA in Printmaking.

Sara Cox will graduate with a BFA in Painting in May of 2011. Her work is process-based and is created by personal environmental influences in her surroundings, which change continually, thereby transforming her work. This expression presents a challenge to the viewer to experience the mystery of intangible spaces.

Exhibition Dates: March 21 - 25, 2011
Closing Reception: Final Friday, March 25, 5:00 - 8:00 pm
Gallery Talks: March 21 & March 23 @ 12:30 pm

GENERAL INFORMATION
The Pearlman Gallery is on the first level of the North Building at 1212 Jackson Street across from the Gateway Parking Garage. The Convergys Gallery is on the first level of the South Building, and the Chidlaw Gallery is on the lower level of the North Building. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. Senior Thesis Show Hours are 9-9 Monday through Friday. 513.562.6262.