Finished at Parsons the New School for Design. Thesis advisor Ted Byfield
"The New School: a situation" applies the concept of the Mise en Abyme, the act of “placing into infinity.” The clearest visual form of this concept occurs when two mirrors face each other in infinite reflection. The phenomenon appears in literature, film, and across the arts — most famously in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet," when a play is performed within a play. "The New School: a situation" takes discarded materials found within the self-documenting spaces of the university— computer labs, workspaces, studios — and reproduces them in the form of ten books, a re-imagined school within a school. These discarded yet important documents are supplemented with an inquiry into the school’s history, which continues throughout each volume in the form of quotations by two pivotal (and controversial) figures in Parsons’ history: William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. A debate between the two painters saw Chase forced out of the school he founded and marked a shift toward a more progressive and modern art school, which eventually became Parsons the New School for Design. “The New School: a situation” makes clear that, in the words of William Merritt Chase: “Subject is not important. Anything can be made attractive…”
