“This is the most involved and thought-out piece of art I’ve ever made,” Clore said. “I’ve spent about a year planning and working on this project. Most of my pieces before were conceived and finished in a month or two. This one took a lot my time. It’s the culmination of all our experiences in grad school in one show.”

Clore’s sculpture will be displayed in the Kresge Art Museum as part of MSU’s Department of Art and Art History Master of Fine Arts Exhibition running from Saturday to April 2. Three other master’s candidates, painters Andrew Rieder, Grant Whipple and Andrea Wicklund, also are displaying their final work, a type of visual dissertation, in the exhibit. The master of fine arts, the terminal degree in art, is a three-year program that emphasizes individual creative exploration.

To begin the exhibition, a reception will be held from 7-9 p.m. Friday. The night will include a chance to meet with the artists, speeches by various members of the Kresge Art Museum and the Department of Art and Art History, and refreshments. The event, which is free and open to the public, usually attracts about 200-250 people.

Michelle Word, a teaching specialist in the Department of Art and Art History, is working with the graduate students to build the exhibit.

“(The exhibit) is important, because as artists, that’s the venue we work in,” Word said. “There’s this vision of the artist working alone in their studio — these hermits. Ultimately, we are making our work for the public — something that contributes to culture and issues we want to engage the public in and make the viewers think about. It’s part of what makes an artist an artist, is sharing that work.”

Even though Clore technically is a ceramics student, the final result was a mammoth wood sculpture with three sections, each nearly 10 feet tall, containing elements of mixed media such as clay and ceramics.

“It might be better to categorize me as an artist rather than pigeonhole me into one discipline or another,” Clore said.

“The reason I chose to do mixed media for this piece was it best expressed this idea of how things are sometimes uncertain. You think of your home as being a very certain place, but sometimes things, like a flood or a death in the family, can really shake things.”

Since the sculpture is so large, Clore built each of the three sections in several smaller pieces that fit together at the end. He built each piece individually and didn’t have much of a concept of how the completed work would look put together.

“Each one of the three sections is made up of modular components that are smaller, and they kind of come together with wooden hooks,” Clore said. “So it all comes apart like building blocks. I think it’s really a successful piece.”

Although Clore has had other pieces displayed in galleries in the U.S. and internationally, he said this exhibit is special because it is the pinnacle of his education.

One of Clore’s ceramics professors and graduate committee members, Jae Won Lee, said Clore has learned a lot at MSU and is ready to move forward in the art world.

“He has come a long way from the start about three years ago. (He) started as a ceramic artist and he has started adding mixed media, so his outcome manifests how he has thought, developed, processed, progressed. The way he works in the woodshop is fascinating — he’s quite logical, but (his) outcome also displays how emotional it is to our minds and heart.”

Clore still is undecided about his plans after graduation. He is looking into teaching positions at universities and residencies, which would be an opportunity to work in a studio. His sculpture reflects this uncertainty in addition to the flooding of his hometown.

“There’s a lot of different meanings behind the work,” Clore said. “(My hometown) got flooded really bad … and I went back home and a lot of the houses were being torn down. So it’s a lot of fragmented elements of architecture. It’s a lot about rebuilding. It’s also about my life. I’m not sure where I’m headed after here.”

Word said that no matter what Clore or the other graduating master of fine arts student pursue, they can be successful.

“They’ve gained teaching experience, they’re artists who’ve spent an extreme amount of time in the studio, and I think in their future artistic endeavors they will do very well,” Word said. “Some of them will go on to teach … some residencies. I think all of them have great future prospects.”