College of Visual and Performing Arts

brilliant darkness: MFA art thesis exhibition
2025-04-01 12:00 - 2025-04-05 17:00 (America/New_York) | Greensboro Project Space, 111 E February 1 Pl, Greensboro, NC 27406, USA
BRILLIANT DARKNESS

MFA Thesis Exhibition

by Nill Smith

Exhibition: April 1 – 5, 2025

Reception: Friday, April 4th, 6-8p

I connect with water as a divine being. Vast bodies of water evoke a sublime experience akin to a connection to a god or goddess. Using this as a catalyst, I engage in different mediums to speak to different narratives around water. I construct work based on ideas of healing through purification. I take ‘snap shots’ of water through the use of cyanotypes and in turn, honor these moments as sacred objects. I paint with a vibrant, jewel toned, saturated palette that still holds restraint. I think about the gesture of the body as an act of storytelling. Through poses, I create narratives that dive into moments of suffering. These figures, hunched over in sorrow and grief, are in a state of limbo. They cover their faces in shame. Their eyes never meet your gaze. Intimate moments are put on display for the consumption of the viewer. I engage in mythologies both crafted and historically grounded. Histories such as the Middle Passage, the ‘Black Atlantic’, and The Door of No Return, amongst others, are interlaced into this series of work in addition to personal ambiguous narratives. Through these mythologies and histories, I search for healing, reinvention, and liberation.

More About Nill

Nill is an interdisciplinary artist, predominantly working in painting, ceramics, and printmaking, currently working out of North Carolina. Her work centers water as a conduit for purification and reinvention, while holding histories of violence. Nill’s work has been shown at The North Carolina Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum, The McColl Center, Prizm Art Fair, Main Street Arts, Shain Gallery, and VAE Raleigh, amongst others. She was the recipient of an Arts and Science Council grant, and judge for the National Scholastics Competition.

Learn more: @theartistnill | Website: Theartistnill.com

Greensboro Project Space Weekly Hours

Tuesday-Friday, 12-5p

Saturday, 2-5p

Where Things Land
2025-04-02 09:00 - 16:00, 2025-04-03 09:00 - 16:00, 2025-04-04 09:00 - 16:00, 2025-04-07 09:00 - 16:00, 2025-04-08 09:00 - 16:00, 2025-04-09 09:00 - 16:00 | Gatewood Studio Arts Center, 527 Highland Ave, Greensboro, NC 27412, USA, 527 Highland Ave, Greensboro, 27412, United States
Where Things Land – an exhibition by artist Nicole Santiago

Curated by School of Art Painting Professor, Michael Ananian.March 25 – April 21, 2025Closing Reception: April 21 from 4:00 – 6:00pm with the Artist Talk at 4:30.

Symphony Orchestra
2025-04-02 14:00 - 15:30 | Tew Recital Hall Atrium, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, North Carolina, 27412, United States
Program

Jungho Kim, conductorSteven Stusek, saxophone

BERNSTEIN Overture to Candide

DEBUSSY Rhapsodie, L.98

STRAVINSKY The Firebird Suite (1919 version)

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About the Soloist

Steven Stusek is Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he is a member of the Eastwind Quintette d’Anches and the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet. Originally from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, he received his Bachelor’s degree in saxophone performance from Indiana University. Before beginning a Master’s degree in saxophone and chamber music at Arizona State University, Steve spent a year in Paris studying at the Paris Conservatory (Conservatoire Nationale Superior de Musique de Paris) and the Conservatoire de le Région de Paris, where he was awarded the Prix d’Or à l’Unanimité in Saxophone Performance. After living in the Netherlands for almost eight years he returned to Indiana University and was awarded a DMA in Saxophone in 2001. He has served on the faculties of Ball State University, Middlebury College, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He has been on the UNCG faculty since 1999. As a soloist, Steve has appeared with the Eastern Music Festival and more recently with the University of South Carolina Wind Ensemble as part of the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial conference. He has been the principle saxophonist for the Eastern Music Festival and the Greensboro Symphony for the past ten years. In 2000, he won the prestigious Dutch Chamber Music Competition as part of the saxophone-accordion duo 2Track with accordion virtuoso Otine van Erp. Together they have performed throughout the Netherlands, the US and on Dutch radio. Steve teamed up with pianist Inara Zandmane and saxophonist Susan Fancher to produce the critically acclaimed recording Louder than Words – music for two saxophones and piano. Steve’s teachers have included Eugene Rousseau, Joseph Wytko, David Baker, Larry Teal, Daniel Deffayet, Jean-Yves Formeau, and Leroy Wolter. Steve is the Past-President of the North American Saxophone Alliance.

UNCG Orchestras
The vibrant UNCG Orchestra program has long been recognized for performance excellence, adventurous programming, and high artistic standards. A diversity of offerings allow students the opportunity to perform repertoire for ensembles ranging from the largest cornerstone and contemporary works for full orchestra, to intimate pieces for chamber orchestra, to string orchestra.

Students in the UNCG Orchestra program are dedicated to the performance, study and cultivation of orchestral music of the highest quality. The UNCG Orchestras offer outstanding performances throughout the year and enhance the institutional spirit and community of UNCG. We seek to promote music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by supporting secondary school orchestra programs and other organizations through our outreach activities and other annual events on campus.

Luke Childress, jazz trumpet & Calvin Richardson, jazz guitar
2025-04-02 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
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Present Continuous
2025-04-02 19:30 - 21:00 | Music 110, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States

Danielle Ong Min Lee, saxophone
2025-04-03 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Emma Smith, soprano
2025-04-03 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/1BB9euWeUYM?feature=share

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Cattleya String Quartet
2025-04-03 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/lci3iBhV_8A?feature=share

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Charles Tinling, trombone
2025-04-04 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Yizhe Li, horn
2025-04-04 19:30 - 21:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Westly Heflin, composer
2025-04-04 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/tv2XJZ8LoHY?feature=share

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Miranda Henry, saxophone
2025-04-05 11:30 - 13:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/s0Zqwgqom4E?feature=share

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Malik Winston, violin
2025-04-05 15:30 - 17:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/VjSw6j-70bw?feature=share

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Luke Shelton, baritone
2025-04-05 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/mba2ieYrwFM?feature=share

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Sophia Soler, soprano
2025-04-05 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/m1c2l9TMDpI?feature=share

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Elizabeth Chambers, soprano
2025-04-06 13:30 - 15:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/tG_g-Tc6ABU?feature=share

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Lauren Prestifilippo, soprano
2025-04-06 15:30 - 17:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/6yOEZcSRtUM?feature=share

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Samantha O'Hare, flute
2025-04-06 15:30 - 17:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Shitian Ye, flute
2025-04-06 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Nolan Fandino, drums
2025-04-06 19:30 - 21:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Saxophone Studio Recital
2025-04-07 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States

Percussion Ensemble
2025-04-07 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/drgaHEw9lTI?feature=share

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Constructed Discontent: MFA Art Thesis Exhibition
2025-04-08 12:00 - 2025-04-12 17:00 | Greensboro Project Space, 111 E February 1 Pl, Greensboro, NC 27406, USA
Constructed Discontent

MFA Thesis Exhibition

by Celena Amburgey

Exhibition: April 8-12, 2025

Reception: Friday, April 11th, 6-8p

Constructed Discontent explores the fragile yet forceful process of self-definition, interrogating the tension between inherited narratives and those we create for ourselves. Through layered materials, fragmented imagery, and reassembled histories, this body of work challenges the structures that shape personal and cultural identity, questioning the forces that confine, shape, and ultimately reshape our sense of self.

At the core of this exhibition is an exploration of disruption and reconstruction—both emotionally and materially. Found objects, repurposed textiles, and unconventional surfaces serve as stand-ins for history and memory, revealing how identity is constantly built, unmade, and remade. The work reflects on familial myths, cultural expectations, and the weight of external perceptions, exposing the internal struggle between belonging and individuality.

Amburgey’s process is deeply tied to time and labor—sewing, layering, embedding, and obscuring. This physical engagement mirrors the psychological work of undoing past narratives and constructing new understandings. Materials such as plastic bags, burlap, and personal artifacts underscore the tension between value and disposability, reflecting the artist’s ongoing interrogation of what is cherished and what is discarded—in material form and in personal history.

By confronting discontent as a catalyst for transformation, Constructed Discontent explores how discomfort can become a space for healing. Rather than seeking resolution, these works engage in the slow, layered process of re-examining, reconstructing, and reclaiming identity. Through these acts of making and unmaking, the exhibition offers a space where the past is not erased but actively reworked—suggesting that, like identity,—healing is a process of persistence, choice, and re-visioning

More About Celena

Through painting, collage, and layered materials, I explore identity’s fragile and fluid nature, a journey ignited by the seismic revelation of a DNA test in 2021. This discovery fractured the foundations of my carefully constructed self, shattering it into fragments. Art became my means of reassembly, transforming personal reckoning into a universal meditation on resilience and reinvention. Each work reflects the process of claiming agency over inherited narratives—truths and deceptions—to construct a more intentional identity shaped by acceptance, understanding, and choice.

At the heart of my practice is the act of layering, where paint, collage, and family photographic archives converge to reconstruct identity. I use paint as collage, merging fragments of memory with the past and present to reshape my understanding of self. Once static relics, these inherited photographs become dynamic surfaces where paint and collage obscure, alter, and reveal, collapsing time and reshaping personal history. While rooted in personal experience, this process extends beyond self-exploration, questioning how identity is shaped by familial memory, collective history, and materiality. The layering of images and textures mimics how identity is formed—through accumulation, erasure, and reinterpretation. Like identity, objects are never static; they carry the weight of time, labor, and memory, continuously reshaped by use and perception.

Materials like pennies, burlap, and bed sheets carry layered histories, their transformations mirroring the shifting nature of value and belonging. Tarnished pennies, once insignificant and easily overlooked, become markers of perseverance and worth, reflecting how meaning is shaped by perception and context. With its rugged texture and utilitarian past, burlap speaks to resilience—stitched, stretched, and painted upon, it becomes a foundation for deconstruction and renewal. Once bearing the weight of familiarity and comfort, bed sheets are repurposed as vessels for new narratives, their fibers holding the echoes of past lives while offering space for reinvention. By repurposing these materials, I explore how objects, like identities, are never static but continuously reshaped by time, labor, and memory.

My work is a quiet rebellion, where past and present collide, discarded things breathe again, and vulnerability holds weight like stone. Here, identity is not fixed but fluid, not given but claimed, not lost but waiting to be seen. Even the fragments—the forgotten, the fractured, the worn—hold infinite possibilities, if we dare to see anew.

Greensboro Project Space Open Public Hours

Tuesday-Friday, 12-5p

Saturday, 2-5p

Kai Summerlin, horn
2025-04-08 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/nDLpUbdAEZs?feature=share

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Emily Hartsoe, soprano
2025-04-09 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/v9X67TQTAT0?feature=share

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