The Art Galleries at TCU presents "Criss Cross Applesauce," the 2023 MFA Candidacy Exhibition, featuring the work of TCU’s second year Master of Fine Arts candidates Max Marshall and Lauren Walker. With playful intention, the work in this exhibition explores the power of constructed narratives and the spaces that act as their settings through mediums of sculpture, painting, and drawing.

Marshall received her BFA in Painting and Drawing with a second major in Art History, from The University of North Texas, in 2015. In her current body of work, she examines the origins and creators of popularized American folklore which historically cowboys as individualistic and stoic seekers of justice. By fabricating her tall tale of a species of giant Cowboys and setting this revised origin story within the guise of roadside museums and highway attractions, Marshall creates a stage on which the popular Cowboy archetype can be critiqued as similarly flawed or absurd. With tongue in cheek, the resulting work asks questions of how, "who constructed it and to what depth does it resound within our modern culture?"

Walker’s current body of work explores the dollhouse as it relates to her personal experiences with femininity, sexuality, shared domestic space and make-believe. Through painting and ceramics, the resulting work uses playful gestures to elicit a queer narrative, disrupting the notion of idealized space. She invites the viewer to approach the work with their personal experiences of the domestic in mind, with questions of scale, materiality, and color palette shaping this ongoing research. Lauren is a Fort Worth native and received her BFA in Painting from Stephen F. Austin State University.

Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on view through February 18.