A Step Away: Artists from the MFA Program at UC San Diego

A Step Away: Artists from the MFA Program at UC San Diego showcases work by eleven graduating artists in the Master of Fine Arts program at UC San Diego. Seen together, the works in this show represent a wide range of interests, from investigations in material, surface, and form, to concerns with of memory, labor, and the body.

The exhibition’s title is adapted from the 1956 poem by Frank O’Hara, A Step Away from Them. In one of his earliest Lunch Poems, O’Hara steps out into New York City for lunch—using his casual observations and experiences to write his intensely personal poetry. Bringing the everyday into his art, O’Hara’s work emphasizes being in the world, describing his walk through the streets, and points to the various ways of experiencing the city. This exhibition presents work by artists on the cusp of completing graduate study, a step away from the university campus and into the Museum galleries.

The artists in this exhibition are brought together through their time at UC San Diego and their work represents an exciting diversity of concerns and practices. A Step Away presents works made separately but alongside one another in the studios on campus, as a sort of landscape, offering surprising interactions and points of connection among a grouping of works—and peer artists—that are at once familiar and strange.

This year's exhibition features artists Trevor Amery, Michael Ano, Seth Ferris, Saúl Hernández-Vargas, Audrey Hope, Morgan Mandalay, Erick Msumanje, Amy Reid, Joshua Saunders, Patrick Shields, and Patricia Zambrano.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.