THE MOON IS RUSTING AND WE DON’T KNOW WHY
2024 Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship Exhibition
April 29 - June 1, 2024
Opening and reception:
Saturday, May 4th, 11am-1pm (immediately following graduation in Fine Arts Center lobby)
Featuring
Ali Brooks, Painting & Drawing, 2025
Magan Marks, Graphic Design, 2024
Brooks and Marks are the current recipients of the Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship in the UTC Department of Art. Each academic year the Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship is awarded to two outstanding Art majors, one studying at the upper division and one at the lower division. Named after the late Mrs. Feinstein, who was a noted sculptor in this region, this award is voted on by the faculty of the Art Department and, as such, is indicative of the highest level of performance in studio production in the department.
Exhibition Statements
We are suspended in the unknown. Its thick, viscous substance holds us in hands of monumental size. In their grasp we map their palms, scale their skin, and test their properties. Even when we measure their every inch, the question of their existence still remains. And how do we rationalize the unknown in our day to day, the gaps in our understanding? Myth absorbs these gaps with dreamy pixelations, fragments of reality that glimmer alongside the interpreted concrete. In the space between the known and unknown we find projections of ourselves, tucked away in the corners of folklore and interwoven in the pillars of science. The enigmatic can only make reality more intelligible. Even in the rust on the surface of the moon.
-Ali Brooks
I will never touch the moon. But in its gossamer-thin atmosphere there is rust, the same iron and oxygen exposed beneath the peeling paint on the hood of my car. The things that exist the furthest beyond our grasp are the things that fracture our sense of control the most. We are left to fill in the gaps, to find semblances of the known within the unfamiliar. To forget what you know and step guideless out into this world is an act of utmost trust in your intuition. It is a pure belief in self, made vital on the cusp of a new frontier.
-Magan Marks
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
ALI BROOKS
Brooks is an oil painter working towards her BFA in painting and drawing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Brooks explores the language of drawing within painting, and confronts ideas relating to adolescence, the unknown, the collective, and the ontologies of being. Her latest body of work explores the contemporary attitude towards myth and its manifestations in the modern world. While she mainly works in oil paint, she has been experimenting with components of sculpture to explore the marks of humanity and subversions of everyday objects.
MAGAN MARKS
Marks is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working in print, illustration, video, and sculpture and is currently completing her BFA in Graphic Design at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Marks merges the physical with the digital in her work and is informed by an interest in geography and space, reworking the visuals of our landscape in pursuit of finding the common ground of human experience. She believes in trusting intuition as a guiding force in navigating our absurd world.