M.F.A. (2017)

Hello, everyone. Hello. Thank you for coming out to celebrate this journey that is culminating into today for these fine young people. The M.F.A. visual arts class of 2016. It is my great pleasure to introduce you to a student who has gone on no less than a transformation these last few years. Soon to be master of fine arts, Noelle Posero. Knock them dead.

Why art? One of my earliest memories, I was painting a sunflower with my watercolors, and somewhere in my little-kid brain I knew that this perfect sunflower would shrivel up and die one day. But I had the power to preserve it, to immortalize the beauty around me... to save it from the brutality of life. Leonardo da Vinci said, "Every painter should begin with a wash of black on their canvas, because everything in nature is dark except for where it's exposed by light." Perhaps we are conditioned to begin on a white canvas. But maybe what we need right now is to see the water turning murky, to see the petals falling. Maybe it's through art that we come face to face with our own darkness and that's the only way we can change. M.F.A. class of 2016, I urge you... aim not to preserve the beauty, but to expose the truth. Dare to make the world uncomfortable with your honesty no matter what the consequence is, because the world will be better for it. You will be better for it. Thank you. Thank you.