Family Mugs is a Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences in candidacy for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. Family Mugs by Erin Zellefrow is a formal documentation of artwork, conceptual thought process, and technical skills used to facilitate the creation of MFA thesis work and its successive gallery installation. It additionally reviews the artist\u27s personal background, and artist influences that informed and drove the final body of work. Depicted in Family Mugs is the artist\u27s deeply personal process of examining fleeting memories of childhood and departed loved ones. Zellefrow struggles to reclaim these lost faces and places through acrylic portraits, iron cast busts, and glass cast busts taken from the likenesses of strangers. The resulting invented family unit was arranged in a household environment installation. Family Mugs explores and recounts the struggle to reclaim and rebuild faded memories and lost loves ones. It embraces the beautiful, fragile, awkward and fleeting states that are the result of these efforts
