Artist embraces the light and dark.

Tavarus Blackmon (M.F.A., art, ’18) has been making art his entire life. First comics as a kid, then experimental music, tattoos, video and film, short stories, poetry, painting, and now art that brings it all together. His work gives viewers a noisy, candy-colored, loop-the-loop ride that journeys to darker places, and tackles issues of poverty, labor, and violence.

Art by Bruce Nauman (M.F.A., studio art, 1966) is featured in a recent story in The New York Times about public art in New York.  “For years, I’ve stopped by this lobby (of the JP Morgan Chase) to see a small, blinking neon by Bruce Nauman, one of the most influential artists of the last half-century,” writes Randy Kennedy. “Mr. Nauman’s neons, which often juxtapose related words or phrases, can be funny, haunting and sometimes brutal (“Raw/War”; “Run From Fear/Fun From Rear.”) This one, which blinks the crossed words “Read” and “Reap” in garish greens, pinks, reds and yellows, is mild by comparison but still provocative for a corporate bank lobby, evoking wholesome thoughts of knowledge alongside slightly sinister connotations of the consequences of knowing." Nauman’s work is in museum collections around the world and the Museum of Modern Art in New York will mount a retrospective of his art in 2018.