Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Creative Writing/Fiction

With[in]out is an artistic experimentation and liberation of hybrid stories that mirror thought processes and memory through an array of characters from an array of genres. Each piece utilizes form, genre, diction, white space, and style to best exhibit the inner worlds of characters on the page as well as the worlds the characters themselves inhabit. With[in]out creates a space for characters to go on a complex, internal journey involving difficult decisions, mental illness, trauma, isolation, and recovery. The collection asserts that memory is but a collage of images and sensory experiences and asks the reader to consider this tenet, as well as the stylistic choices within each piece, to gain a deeper understanding of how each character operates, to viscerally immerse oneself beyond prose conventions.

Committee: Lawrence Coates Ph. D. (Advisor); Abigail Cloud Ph. D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Environmental Philosophy; Ethics; Experiments; Families and Family Life; Individual and Family Studies; Language; Mental Health; Personal Relationships; Psychology

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Creative Writing/Poetry

The speaker in this collection is a continually evolving entity which is both aware of, connected to, and separate from the previous versions of themselves. In the first section, the speaker still needs to explore and spends a great deal of time wondering about what they are. The speaker eventually realizes that they are not the same as the members of their family, or possibly not even humanity as a whole. By the second section, the speaker has become aware of themselves, but still feels the need to explain or describe themselves to the reader, and sometimes even to the previous versions of themselves referred to as “she” and “you,” with “she” being the oldest or original version of the speaker. The speaker does not have much compassion for the lack of enlightenment in their previous counterparts in this section, but that begins to change by the third and final section. In the last section, the speaker has become fully aware of themselves and has developed a more mature and confident voice. Their wondering has disappeared, as has any lingering bitterness toward their previous selves. Instead, the speaker, while still viewing themselves as separate from the “she” and the “you,” speaks more directly to them in a more tender and understanding tone, as the speaker knows what it is they will have or have gone through to become the “I.” The collection as a whole deals with themes of birth, metamorphosis, the self, and what it means to be entirely other, however one might interpret the idea of otherness.

Committee: Larissa Szporluk (Advisor); Sharona Muir (Committee Member); Abigail Cloud (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

MFA, Kent State University, 2009, College of the Arts / School of Art

I spent the decade preceding graduate school working a corporate job, all the while denying myself the creative life that I wanted. I chose “hambre del alma,” a phrase taken from scholar Clarissa Pinkola Estes which means “soul famine,” as part of my title to describe that past. This recent series of work represents breaking free of that cycle and coming into my own. For my thesis show, I decided to explore the relationship between my love for narrative and my sculpture. A universal dilemma in storytelling—where to begin and where to end—is the same problem faced by the writer and the visual artist. The creation of the four massive heads that comprise this exhibition, and treating their surfaces as canvasses for words and images, allowed me to document my thoughts as I worked. This permitted the incorporation of autobiographical elements into the sculptures in ways that I had not anticipated.

Committee: Kirk Mangus MFA (Committee Chair); Janice Lessman-Moss MFA (Committee Member); Brinsley Tyrrell MFA (Committee Member); Fred Smith PHD (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts