Sculpture Commons^™

Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

My thesis begins with a primer of the historical concept of “black(ness)” and the roots of its racialization. Intertwined throughout my discussion in Section I, I will highlight a few of my research findings and discuss some of the installation images that I created as I studied the work of contemporary artists who use lexical and literal figurative “blackness” in their work—in particular, the oeuvre of Kerry James Marshall as featured in his retrospective exhibition Mastry. My discourse unfolds with a brief etymological review of both the English word “black” and its precedent conceptual forms in Section II ...

Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Sarah Louise Ferguson

LSU Master's Theses

Darkness on the Edge of Town focuses on a series of dioramas I created accompanied by audio and video. This thesis exhibition is based on a series of interviews I conducted with a friend who is a recovering opioid addict who has spent the majority of his life incarcerated for drug offenses. The American opioid epidemic currently looms large mostly because of the influx of drug abuse in middle class white communities. My subject is of Puerto Rican descent and represents the much harsher treatment of minority addicts by the criminal justice system. His personal story represents a deep yearning ...

Soheila Azadi Interview, Jillian Bridgeman

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Soheila Azadi is an interdisciplinary visual artist and lecturer based in Chicago and Iran. Born in the capital of Islamic cities, Esfahan, Azadi absorbed story-telling skills through Persian miniature drawings since she was nine. Azadi’s inspirations come from her experiences of being a woman while living under Theocracy. Now residing in the U.S. Azadi is dedicated to transnational feminism with a passionate devotion to the ways in which race, religion, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity intersect. Azadi uses performance art and performative installations as methods to both materialize and narrate stories about women’s everyday struggle in ...

Jeffrey Augustine Songco Interview, Yara Cruz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Jeffrey Augustine Songco (b. 1983) is a multi-media artist. Born and raised in New Jersey to devout Catholic Filipino immigrants, his artistic identity developed at a young age with training in classical ballet, voice, and musical theater. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the USA including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids. In 2017, he was featured in the publication Queering Contemporary Asian American Art, and he was the Installation Category ...

Dearest, Grace Tessein

LSU Master's Theses

Dearest is the examination of what remains of a person, looking to the objects they cherished most while contemplating the inevitability of their certain absence. The work questions the futility of preservation in the measure of time, the failure of memories held in fragile containers, and the decay of the physical body. The materials that compose Dearest are chosen for their innate longevity and their ability to evoke remembrance.

Layered Histories, Interpretive Desires, Rachelle Dang

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

I aim to excavate source material from the past and reinterpret its significance in the present through art. I merge history with the contemporary through acts of appropriation and material exploration, creating conditions for the viewer to grapple with colonial legacies in an affective space of visual experience.

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Ruin Runes, Justin Cloud

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

My work probes masculine fetishization around vehicles, competition, and survivalism through sculptural intervention of industrial material. I address the implication of market driven lifestyles specifically pertaining to gendered notions of the male ego. Vehicles, sneakers, sculptural arrangements and survival gear all function as manifestations of masculine forms reconstructed and reassessed.

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

Observance | A Passage, Charis Schneider Norell

Graduate School of Art Theses

My art practice consists of drawing with fibers within handcrafted frame looms. I position these drawings as expanded, three-dimensional “drawing spaces,” creating medium-scale installations. I wish to expand drawing’s definition beyond its traditional material limits to simply be the process of leaving marks. Fiber is my medium, and the space within the frame loom’s warp and weft becomes my support. I see the drawing process to be the gestural residue of thought, and call these works my “fiber drawings.” While I use traditional weaving methods and materials as I work, I do not call myself a weaver. I ...

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own ...

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the ...

Primal Matter, Lucas Allen Bush

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

Primal Matter is a physical representation of the intuitive process, through two and three dimensional forms. The pieces convey motion and tension while telling the story of their own creation. Working instinctively has always fascinated me, in the way of allowing our subconscious mind to make decisions in the place of preconceived planning. My work is heavily influenced by Intuition and the transformation of energy. I am constantly searching for the underlying image or object through scraps of wood and pieces of charcoal, and this body of work is the visible evidence. It explores the curiosity of our unknown ...

Are You Still Recording?, Rachel Wright

Art Practices MFA Theses

Are You Still Recording? Is an experimental video installation that re-contextualizes an archive of home movies, including 16mm film, 8mm film, Super 8, video and sound recordings, as well as voicemail messages from my father and other natural and instrumental sounds. I am investigating the ways in which personal narrative can underscore the collective narrative through the format of experimental video, installation, and writing. I reference and examine ideas relating to memory, time, nature, recording, and notions of the collective. I am also interested in themes and relationships between home movie and ethnography, as well as notions of identity, materiality ...

Betwixt And Between: An Exploration Of Dream Imagery As A Means To Self-Discovery, Anastasia Netrebine

Graduate Theses

This body of work is an investigation of the memories and experiences of displacement. As a foreigner, I often find myself in a strange space between the familiar and the unfamiliar. I use various three-dimensional media to explore and depict these experiences, as well as dreams and memories related to Jungian archetypes, especially as they relate to my personal history. I overlap these dreams and memories, varying the media and shifting scale, so that the line between reality and dreams gets blurred and one becomes both a viewer and a part of the installation simultaneously. Through my manipulation of different ...

Things That Don't Work: An Exploration In Sculpture And Installation, Mark Tyler Frasier

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement will explore connections between my work and contemporary artists and its references to art movements including Minimalism, Dada and Surrealism, and Installation art. My thesis work explores the metaphors of current social and political constructs that seem to operate properly, but in reality, do not. My intention is to juxtapose constructed and found fragments of mixed media in such a way as to subvert their traditional associations in order to encourage viewers to question reality. My relationship to the materials and interest in the process are as important to me as the final product. No single piece ...

The Detriments Of Factory Farming, Carrie Williams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the detrimental effects that industrialized farming practices have on public health, animal welfare, and ecological systems and includes factual support. It also provides practical application of this information as well as possible solutions and a detailed description of a related art exhibition.

Sculpting Fantasy Realism Creatures Of The Desert, Peter Eisenbrey

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Creature design and sculpture is about representing life with three dimensions. To begin designing a creature, the process begins by looking at real life. Studies of existing wildlife and anatomy reference provided the foundation for the creation process. The goal of this project was to study creature design and attempt creating feasible results. The background and location origin of these creatures are based on the environmental location of Arizona. The goal was creating and rendering four creatures with the attempt of achieving fantasy realism.

Progressive Commemoration: Public Statues Of Historical Women In Urban American Cities, Melanie D. Chin

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Women who made notable accomplishments are underrepresented in commemoration. Some American cities have brought women to the forefront of becoming visible through commemoration in statues. This thesis compares the commemoration of historical women in four different American cities. Stakeholders hold the key to implementing and changing public policy to increase the visibility of women and people of color in public monuments. Cities which lack representation of women and people of color may learn from and follow the efforts of a leading city to achieve lasting and effective change in representing those who historically been underrepresented.

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.