UC Berkeley Art Practice
Advanced Studio and Critique Program Spring 2026
Each semester, nine undergraduate Art Practice seniors are given their own dedicated studios with 24-hour access through the Advanced Studio and Critique Program to strengthen their studio practice and independent projects with an end of semester gallery exhibition at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery. I was selected into the program for Spring 2026 where I attended evening weekly critique sessions with rotating guest faculty.
"Worth Ryder Art Gallery and the Department of Art Practice are pleased to present Rage Against the Dying Light, a group exhibition featuring artworks by students in the Spring 2026 Advanced Studio Critique Program. The works in this exhibition examine the persistent efforts required to maintain identity, memory, and community in environments of change and neglect through mediums of painting, sculpture, and installation. Through the steady, tactile acts of making through materials like hair, doilies, porcelain, and found objects, these 9 artists are using a variety of materials to represent the body, land, and its multitude of transformations."
Rage Against The Dying Light ASCP Spring 2026 Exhibiton Poster
Macyn Metten's Moth Headed Sisters (2026) ASCP Installation
Rage Against the Dying Light: Spring 2026 Advanced Studio Critique Program Exhibition
Moth Headed Sisters reconstructs the children my sister and I once were. Moths, soft-bodied, nocturnal, and easily damaged, replace our faces to embody the fragility and vulnerability of early identity. Our moth-headed figures mirror each other, protecting each other, and carry unspoken experiences together. By merging together the domestic familiarity of a family portrait with the surreal and uncanny, the drawing confronts memory, transformation, and the delicacy of childhood before we could even understand it.
The work questions how the fragile children we once were continue to live beneath the surface of who we have become and who we are becoming.​​​​
Moth Headed Sisters, 2026. Graphite drawing on paper, 48" x 36".
Untitled (split tree), 2026. Diptych graphite drawing on paper, 70" x 21" (each).
Untitled (split tree) is a diptych drawing that functions as an underlying structure. Its branches resemble limbs, veins, and nerves. This bodily tree explores the tension between growth and fragmentation. The tree, which is typically a symbol of continuity, is split into two parts, disrupting its natural unity. It exists in a state where growth continues despite interruption, and somewhere that wholeness is implied but never achieved. It is contrasted by the split papers of Moth Headed Sisters and reflects a shared condition where identity feels unresolved and as something always in flux.
Advanced Studio and Critique Program Spring 2026 Cohort