The Only Way Out Is Through: The 2025 IMDA MFA Thesis Exhibition

Please mark your calendar for these additional events associated with the exhibition and note that some programs occur *after* the close of the exhibition.

RTKL Lecture: Alexi Scheiber
April 15, 12:30-1:30 pm

The gallery will remain open until 5 pm following the lecture.

The CADVC gallery is also the site of the annual “RTKL Lecture,” a fellowship lecture made possible through the generosity of RTKL (Rogers Taliaferro, Kostritsky, & Lamb) Associates Incorporated. The goal of this merit-based award is to support an emerging artist of creative and scholarly excellence who has demonstrated a promise to make an impact on the field. This year’s recipient of the RTKL fellowship is Alexi Scheiber.

Audience members are respectfully requested to wear a mask during this event, so the speaker may remove her mask for optimal audibility and communication. CADVC realizes masking is a personal decision and ultimately lies with each individual.

Live Improvised Musical Performance
April 4, 1-1:30 pm

As part of “The Dead, The Living, and The Injured,” musicians Patrick Crossland, Ida Dierker, Brandon, Gouin, Jeremy Keaton, and Josh Weber join McCoy Chance for a collaborative performance exploring the lifespan of discarded electronics. They will engage with the screens and media works in the exhibition through live improvisation. The performance begins promptly at 1:00 pm on Friday, April 4, 2025, and will conclude in the Fine Arts Amphitheater immediately outside the gallery,—rain or shine—by 1:30 PM. The gallery remains open to the public from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.

For more information and the full list of associated events, including MFA thesis defense times and additional hours of operation, please visit our website at cadvc.umbc.edu/mfa-2025.

Images: From the top “Conflux: Variation” video still, 2025, Shannon Collis & Liz Donadio, courtesy of the artists.(Description of audio, authored by the artists: a deeply resonant audio landscape builds momentum, merging field recordings of industrial machinery, trains, water, and wind with digital and analog synthesis. Layered low-frequency tones shift between foreground and background, aligning with the visuals. The soundscape evokes the essence of the visited sites and the interplay of natural and industrial elements.)

Alexi Scheiber, “Artifacts from the Dreaming World – Tailoring & Fibers Workshop” (detail), 2024, Gouache on black paper, photo: courtesy of the artist (A navy blue building with stars painted on the facade. Sewing projects are demonstrated in the warm light of the window. A tulip wind turbine is installed on the green roof, the yard is dominated by daisies, and yellow passionflowers climb the front porch.)

Highly abstracted and layered images include several glowing blue TV monitors. On the left is a window looking out to an urban skyline silhouetted against a blue sky. Wires scatter across the hardwood floor in the foreground, and translucent figures of seated musicians are superimposed upon the middle of the interior studio space.

Visitor Information

Our exhibitions and events are free and open to the public for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University’s nondiscrimination policy.

If you need specific accommodations at one of our events, whether in person or online, or to experience an exhibition, please contact CADVC at cadvc@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188 as soon as possible.

About the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC)

CADVC is a College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences research center and art gallery that produces scholarship, publications, and experimental engagements in the fields of art, design, and visual culture.

The CADVC is located on the first floor of UMBC’s Fine Arts Building. Admission to the gallery and public programs is free. Daytime metered parking is available in several nearby visitor parking areas. Please visit here for additional information.

Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, UMBC
1000 Hilltop Circle, Fine Arts Building 105, Baltimore, MD 21250

Gallery Hours:

Sun-Mon, closed

Tues-Wed, 12-5 pm

Thurs-Sat, 10-5 pm

cadvc@umbc.edu | (410) 455-3188

Intermedia and Digital Arts Masters of Fine Art Welcome Event
When: October 30th, 2024, 12-1:30pm
Where: CADVC

Please join the Visual Arts Department in welcoming our new Intermedia and Digital Arts (IMDA) Graduate Students to UMBC. On Thursday, October 30th from 12:00-1:30 pm, we will host a fun and engaging round of micro-talks at the CADVC, with a mixer afterwards. Our new grads will give short presentations about their research and art practice. Stop by to say hello and meet the IMDA class of 2027! Refreshments will be provided!

Mary Ryan Budnitz is a 2D animator & illustrator born and based in Baltimore, MD. Mary uses the monstrous and fantasy in relation to body positivity, exploring romance and inclusion through digital animation and illustration.

Jaslyn Tabourne is a multimedia artist primarily creating animated and painted works. Jaslyn is passionate about storytelling and creating art that can be inspirational, relatable or shift the perspective of her audience. During her time in the IMDA program, Jaslyn hopes to create narrative pieces that explore her experiences and revelations as a Christian woman.

Brittney Barbour is a filmmaker, film programmer, and video artist from Washington DC. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Intermedia Digital Arts to incorporate multimedia form into her filmmaking process and presentation.

María Sánchez is a filmmaker, designer, and multimedia artist from Caracas, Venezuela. Using multiple mediums such as digital video, performance, and installation, she creates narratives about self, place, belonging, and transformation in conjunction with feminist film theory.

Rokhsareh Alvandi works in drawing, painting, illustration, and video animation to create contemporary stories of women, religion, and politics that reflect her Iranian Negargari ancestry.

The Intermedia and Digital Art (IMDA) MFA program provides participants with access to eminent faculty, visiting artists, critics, and curators, studio space and state-of-the-art facilities.

Recent graduate students have pursued issues of food justice, surveillance, place, language, economics, and technology, resulting in projects that use a range of traditional gallery-based art media as well as experimental modalities, like street interventions, distributed networks, physical computing, games, and community-based projects. Financial support, including tuition remission and stipends, is available.

IMDA is committed to making its events accessible to everyone. Please send your request for specific accommodations to imda@umbc.edu.

Home Bodies is the graduate thesis exhibition for the seven artists of the 2021 UMBC Intermedia + Digital Art MFA class: Amelia Voos, Danielle Damico, Elijah Davis, Lindsay D’Andelet, Maks Prykhodko, Rahne Alexander, and Safiyah Cheatam.

The exhibit runs from April 13 – May 7, 2021 at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) on the UMBC campus. The CADVC is open to the public via free, ticketed admission: Tues. - Sat. 10 am - 5pm.

The show title, Home Bodies, speaks to the challenges of artmaking in the throes of a global pandemic, and addresses themes common to the artists, including nature and embodiment, surveillance and medical intervention, and connections and displacement.

More information on the artists and their exhibit: homebodies.work.

UMBC’s INTERMEDIA AND DIGITAL ARTS (IMDA) Masters Program presents “The Only Way Out Is Through,” the 2025 IMDA MFA Thesis Exhibition.

Artists' Reception