Jake McNulty is 21 years old and lives in New York City.

MOSSLESS: Your mentor was Richard Renaldi. How was your experience with him?
JAKE McNULTY: Richard was really great. I felt like I was in an interesting position with him as my mentor because I used to do work similar to his, grounded in environmental portraiture, but in the past year I’ve moved away from that into a more conceptual way of working. I think that working this way, with feedback from someone who worked very differently was very beneficial. It allowed me to see the project from differing points of view.

ML: Can you tell me something about how you exhibited your work?
JM: The work I am exhibiting is a mixture between photography and installation work.  There are 6 photographs paired with two multimedia pieces. One multimedia piece features a photograph of myself wrapped in red fabric, the print framed at the bottom of a clear plexiglass box of water. The other is a rose and semen encased in a plexiglass box.  The photographs are traditional c-prints, printed and framed  by myself.

The work originally stemmed from a feeling of frustration with another project that was not going so well.  I was unhappy with my own inability to express my ideas, and in further investigation of this feeling felt that this inability to express certain ideas was directly reflective of my inability to easily express my thoughs and feelings in a direct verbal way, which drives me to create art in the first place.

ML: What has your most memorable moment been at SVA?
JM: I don’t know if anything stands out as a most memorable moment, but I have met a lot of great people and had a lot of fun in my time here.

ML: What are you going to be doing this summer and onward?
JM: I graduate this spring so I am out of school for the first time, which I am looking forward to. I hope to be able to find a full time job soon. I’m working on a website update with lots of new work, hopefully for early summer. I would also like to put together a book this summer, I have been wanting to do that for a while and I just began a project that I think would lend itself nicely to book format. I want to work harder at getting my work out into the world for more people to see. I would also like to try to save up some money to travel a bit in the near future.