MEDIA CONTACT: Stacia Smith
561-297-2971, ssmith@fau.edu

Master of Fine Arts Art Exhibition at FAU

BOCA RATON, FL (April 20, 2004) -- Florida Atlantic University's Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters presents the 2004 Master of Fine Arts art exhibition, featuring the works of Elaine Carlson and Kimberley Maxwell, graduates of the Department of Visual Art and Art History MFA program in painting. The exhibition runs Friday, April 23 through Friday, May 28 in the Schmidt Center Gallery on FAU's Boca Raton campus, 777 Glades Road. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held Thursday, April 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. The reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.

Carlson is an abstract painter whose work for this MFA thesis exhibition is made on sheets of plastic over 25 feet tall. Carlson pours, drips and manipulates plastic-based paints onto these gigantic pieces of transparent plastic and also adds other transparent plastic elements such as Tupperware lids and plastic tubing. The artist is motivated by an interest in the prevalence of plastic in our world and how it relates to our physical being.

Carlson, a South Florida native who now lives in Boca Raton, earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from FAU in 2001. Since becoming a graduate student at FAU she has served as a graduate assistant and has also taught undergraduate courses in art. Carlson has received numerous student awards for her work, including a scholarship from the Art Lovers' Society of Delray Beach. Carlson also exhibited in the Boca Raton Museum of Art's "All Florida Show."
Maxwell's paintings, collectively titled "Harmony of My Obsessions," demonstrate her use of patterns achieved through the repetition of obsessive and cumulative marks made over and over again. The artist is interested in discovering patterns through a random process of painting and in the use of transparent layers of paint.

Maxwell, who lives in Ft. Lauderdale, earned an Associate of Arts degree from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale where she has been teaching since 2000. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from FAU. In 2002, she had her first solo exhibition at the Mark K. Wheeler Gallery in Ft. Lauderdale and she was recently named a winner of the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium's Visual and Media Artists fellowship, an annual award given to the region's most inventive and accomplished artists.

The Ritter Gallery is free and open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m. Group tours are encouraged and can be arranged at alternative hours. The 2004 Master of Fine Arts art exhibition is a collaborative effort of the University Galleries and the Department of Visual Arts and Art History, School of the Arts, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. For further information, call the University Galleries at 561-297-2966 or visit www.fau.edu/galleries.

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