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MFA artists will play in Peoria

Current and former  WVU School of Art & Design students will join forces for an exhibition in Peoria, Illinois.

Jacob Guzan WorkWork by recent Master of Fine Arts graduate and sculptor Kaitlin Hunter and current MFA student and printmaker Jacob Guzan will be featured at Project 1612, an experimental art space curated by Alexander Martin, who earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from WVU in 2014. The show will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, June 12.

Martin is currently pursuing an MFA at Bradley University in Peoria. He and Jessica Bingham, a fellow student at Bradley, joined forces to launch a Kickstarter campaign to create Project 1612, an artist-run project space located in Bingham’s garage.

“Before we opened the space and had our first artist, we put out a call for artists to apply for shows using platforms such as Chicago Artists Resources,” Martin said. “We also try to keep a very active social media presence, so we shared it via various platforms like Facebook and Instagram.”

Kaitlyn Hunter Work

He met Hunter, of Lisbon Falls, Maine, during his undergraduate studies at WVU. “We all loved her work and asked her to be our artist for June,” he said.

Guzan, of Spring Grove, Illinois, is a Bradley alum. Hunter expressed an interest in a joint show with her WVU classmate.

“We’re very excited to host them next month and can’t wait to see what they make,” Martin said.

Guzan is excited to share studio space with Hunter.

“Kaitlyn’s and my work could scarcely be more different, but therein lies the interest of doing an exhibition together,” Guzan said. “She makes colorful, ‘uncomfortably-lumpy’ soft sculptures and wearable sculptural forms, and I make monochrome etchings of infrastructure objects.”

On the surface, the work has no connection, “but both bodies of work endeavor to show things that people ignore, objects and people that exist unapologetically,” Guzan added.

Hunter and Guzan are also featured in the summer exhibition, “Surroundings,” at WVU’s Laura Mesaros Gallery in the Creative Arts Center.

For more on Project 1612, visit  project1612.com.