Half True - All Real

Authors

Matthew G. Blache, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

4-2013

Citation

Blache, Matthew. Half True - All Real. MFA Thesis, University of Nebraska, 2013.

Comments

A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Fine Art, Major: Art, Under the Supervision of Professor Mo Neal. Lincoln, Nebraska: April, 2013

Copyright (c) 2013 Matthew G. Blache

Abstract

I love making things up.

I am a fabricator of moments: a storyteller who relies on construction rather than incantation. As a child, making was labor, holding ladders, watching, and helping carry heavy equipment. It was a requirement, a rite. Making was also playful - stacking something on top of something to make something. That something could be anything. There was, I learned, a satisfaction in bringing an object into the world. It was a marker of my existence.

“Half True-All Real" is a convergence of my compulsion to make things and my desire to give form to my narrative, which would otherwise be verbal and temporary. It transforms stories into relics, and allows me to relive, recreate and rebuild my past.

I am drawn to typical items, to the stuff that fulfilled a strictly utilitarian purpose.

Nothing is simple or ordinary; these objects act as narrative beacons, seamlessly dovetailing with my memories. They are symbols embodying a time, place, mood or idea. How can these ordinary things be remade, manipulated and/or contorted to the point where it still has the implications of its original intended use, but lacks its original objectness? Where is the line when an object becomes a thing?

This is important because things and stories are similar. Both are limber, easily changed at the discretion of their creator. They can be pushed, pulled, exaggerated or erased for effect. A good story is honest, but it’s never completely true – and it shouldn’t be. If someone believes something they hear, it could’ve happened, even if it didn’t.

Telling a story is like tinkering – both require finding relationships between things that are loosely connected, but can somehow work together. Both are reconstructions; both change with time.

I love making things up.

Adviser: Mo Neal