Student peer interview with Kristina Centore

Amy: I noticed that much of your work entails figural concepts. Is this a theme in most of your work? Is it a current theme that you're sort of investigating and exploring?

Kristina: I guess I feel like it's um… more of a theme that I've always had, so I just decided to like, commit to it and start doing like, mostly figural work, since it's sort of at a point in class where we get to choose what we want to do. But, I don't know, now I feel like these days I'm starting to be more influenced by like, shapes. From being in Gary's class it's kind of like, very about formal objects.

Amy: Formal design.

Kristina: Yeah. So I feel like I'm starting to be influenced by that too. So, I'm going through a variety of ideas right now. But my main project is to build this life-sized figure.

Amy: What propelled you into the field of visual arts? Did you take art as a high school student? Did you always have sculpture as your field of study, in mind, when you came to Mason Gross?

Kristina: Well, I guess I've always done art, ever since I was a kid. I just liked drawing, and I liked playing with clay a lot. I've always like, I don't know, when I was a kind I liked to make like, claymation movies and stuff like that. I would just like, always like to do it. So then, when I came to school… I didn't go to Mason Gross right away, I just started taking art classes as a Rutgers student and then eventually applied for my B.A. And I just took like, mostly every kind of art class until I took sculpture and decided I liked the process of making things with my hands.

Amy: You talked about claymation movies that you did as a kid. Do you find that you like using video in your mature work?

Kristina: Yeah. Um, I'll show you later, there's a movie I made as like, a collaborative video project. I really like multimedia.

Amy: What do you find is your greatest challenge this senior year with your thesis work?

Kristina: Well I guess I just wish I could spend all of my time in my studio, but I can't. And also just narrowing down all of my interests to produce one really important project, is something that I know like, everyone has to do and something that I'll always have to do, but it's kind of hard to cut some things out just to work on other things.

Amy: Yeah. Yeah, I feel that too. Um, trying to think of another question… Do you see yourself, when you graduate school next year, working towards being a working artist, or are you looking to use these skills that you've developed over the past four years to teaching art? Where do you plan to go with the techniques and skills you've learned at Mason Gross?

Kristina: I think I'm just gonna try to be more of a working artist. My plan is that I… don't really have a plan, except to try and provide space to do art and try to get it into shows, and just be involved in it as much as I can. And I'll probably just have to work some stupid job. And I'll just see where it takes me, at least for a few years. And if it doesn't take me anywhere then maybe I'll go for an MFA or something like that.

Amy: Sounds like a good plan. Hold off on the MFA for a while. Your work sounds very ambitious. I really enjoyed last semester watching the building up of your projects. […] I really enjoyed watching the tape over the wire armature piece develop over time. Just watching the whole process of it growing was neat, and seeing how light plays with the shapes… your in-the-round work, your three-dimensional work is really gripping and it's got a punctum that kind of holds me to it, […] that grabs my eye and holds my gaze, which I've seen in your work and I really appreciate. I find that we're sort of pidgeonholed at Mason Gross to develop art that is avante-garde, or more art and less craft, and you took materials that I wouldn't have expected to turn out that way, and they turned into something really interesting. I never would have thought, in a million years, masking tape, and to build it up and then to glaze the outside, and it becomes something that's this amazing, three-dimensional sort of ghostly translucent figure. So I really liked that.

Kristina: Cool!

Amy: I was stuck on that for a long time. And the repetitive motion had to be sort of cathartic or soothing in a way. Taking little pieces and little pieces, and ripping it.

Kristina: Yeah. I really enjoyed doing that project. Just 'cause, it's kind of like working with clay where you have to keep bulking it up and eventually the surface has a certain texture that you can just leave and it'll show that something weird happened when you were building it. It wasn't just like, perfectly smooth.

Amy: And it wasn't necessarily planned, it seems. You had this armature and you just kind of went with it.

Kristina: Yeah, it was like, sort of planned to look sort of like, human but… when I built the armature I like, I had that in my mind that I wanted it to be sort of anthropomorphic but it didn't look like it, so when I started putting tape on it I kind of figured it out as I was going but… it ended up looking kind of like I thought it would. But yeah… the resin on it is kind of weird. It's like, shiny… I don't know if I like that it's shiny.

Amy: I can see how in some way it might distract somebody because the light hitting the different surfaces removes my eye from the detail of the tape initially but I also kinda like it 'cause I think anything with a shine kind of adds to it's idea of special… even if you don't look at it right away your eye catches the glimmer and that kind of brings you to it. So I really like that. I guess that's probably it. Those are my questions.