Art Practice Commons^™

The Collector Psyche: Eli And Edythe Broad As Agents Of The Western European Art Market, Alexis Soohoo, Damon Willick

Honors Thesis

This paper explores the existing literature on contemporary art collectors and their corresponding private museums. This analysis specifically examines the relationship between late collectors and Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, one of his partner institutions LACMA, and a prominent artist in his collection, Jeff Koons.

Much of the published information about Broad appears in documentaries about LA, museum catalogs, magazine articles chronicling the philanthropist’s rise, and graduate theses and dissertations about the habits of mega-collectors. The range of literature is concentrated in short form analysis or press release style descriptions, a conspicuous difference from the documentation around other …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Redefining Anger For Sexual And Gender Minorities Using Art As A Visual Voice, Kirsten Ranheim

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Art therapy is an increasingly popular approach for addressing trauma and anger in clinical settings. This literature review explores the connections between art therapy, trauma, gender, and anger, drawing on a range of studies and theoretical perspectives. Background is provided on the history of anger within the context of societal institutions, interpersonal power dynamics, psychiatric nosology, and social justice movements. The review concludes that art therapy is ideally suited as a trauma-informed approach to addressing anger in the therapeutic setting. This is due to the unique opportunities that art making provides for helping individuals express and process their emotions nonverbally, …

Hailey's Hearing Aids, Hailey Marie Garcia

Whittier Scholars Program

Individuals from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are likely to experience more anxiety and depression due to defective cognitive, social, communicational, and emotional skills (Azizi et al., 2019). The word “disability” is embedded with historical negative connotations with phrases such as “deaf and dumb” because if they were deaf or mute then they were automatically labeled as inferior (Horovitz, 2007). Since the 18th century, the DHH community has been seen as incapable, even inhuman, hence the development of emotional deficiencies that bleed into one’s perception of society and their self esteem (Gallaudet, 1886).

How do you navigate a hearing world …

Artificial: A Study On The Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Art, Hayden Ernst

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

In the past three to five years there have been significant improvements made in AI due to improvements in computing capacity, the collection and use of big data, and an increase in public interest and funding for research. Programs such as ChatGPT, DALL•E, and Midjourney have also gained tremendous popularity in a relatively short amount of time. This led me to this project in which I aimed to gain a deeper understanding of these art generator AI and where they fit into art as a whole. My goal was to give recommendations to museums and exhibits in Omaha on what …

Visual Representation Of Black Individuals At The Forefront Of Underground Railroad Interpretation, Alison Spongr

Museum Studies Theses

This thesis is grounded in a reflection and analysis of the building of an institution whose foundation and visuals position the narratives of Black individuals at the forefront of Underground Railroad interpretation. In 2018, the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center opened to the public after decades in the making. Its permanent exhibition, One More River to Cross, set in motion a shift in power – of whose stories are represented and shared – generated by visual activism.

“Between the American Revolution in 1776 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, thousands of freedom seekers escaped slavery …

Inner Portraits, Bethany Salisbury

Graduate Theses

This paper investigates the many interconnected layers of women’s mental health through portraiture and how animal and plant symbolism can represent the way women's hormones and bodily health affect their mental health. I reveal how the artwork created presents these connections and inner mental health narratives to the viewer, creating a space of empathy, destigmatization, and self-reflection. This body of portraiture art connects five women through a series of both two-and three-dimensional portraits based on interviews using my own adaptation of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoots’ (1983) portrait methodology.

Women and non-binary individuals have always dealt with difficult interactions of bodily and mental …

Rethinking Graphic Design Pedagogy For The Cuny Academic Commons: On Process, Generosity, And Creative Collaboration In Mapping A Foundation Graphic Design Course For Faculty And Instructors, Suzanne Dell'orto

Publications and Research

The creation of an Open Education Resource with the CUNY Academic Commons for a foundation course in graphic communication at Bernard M. Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) is a natural extension of the generous visual and written communication that is at the heart of Graphic Design. Graphic designers are inherently collaborative, working through a shared visual and written language to communicate. This Open Educational Resource (OER) serves as a base template to be shared department-wide with all instructors at CUNY and beyond to provide a framework for instruction for this studio course that is taught as a …

Personal Equation, Nicholas Hobbs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The body of this paper is a formatted version of text which exists natively on the web and is accessible at www.personalequation.art. Its non-linear narrative is meant to accompany and mirror, not describe, the artwork in the exhibition. The following two paragraphs are copied from the exhibition statement accompanying Personal Equation, which is on view in the Reading Room at the Fayetteville Public Library from April 3 to June 30, 2023: A personal equation is one that attempts to account for the inevitable role of subjectivity in scientific observations. The term was coined by astronomers in the 18th century who, …

The Birds That Embrace Both Illusions: An Intersemiotic Translation Of All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace By Richard Brautigan, Veronika Yadukha

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay analyzes the influence of various worldviews on Richard Brautigan's poetry, which form his particular language. A combination of Zen Buddhism, Japanese aesthetics, American poetic tradition, and echoes of the philosophy of absurdism are some of the core themes that serve as mechanisms for Brautigan's poems.

For each chapter of the book All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, I make an intersemiotic translation transposing Brautigan's poems into ceramic tea bowls. By combining different art forms and translating from an abstract symbolic art – poetry – to a form of applied art that is much more physically …

Props, Bianca Walker

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In their artwork Bianca Walker takes a refreshing and historically engaging approach to the act of painting. After researching through photographic references of black people from the early 1900s the artist reimagines these photographs as painted portraits using a drip painting method purposely eliminating paint brushes from their practice. Incorporating more utilitarian materials such as drop cloth and palms, the artist’s relationship to the traditional act of paintings versus their current practice mirrors the current point of view placed upon and change of view that they would like to be seen in conversations around black working-class people from this period.

Ni De Aqui Ni De Alla..., Jc Santistevan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Ni de aqui ni de alla navigates the complexities of belonging to two cultures-Mexican

and American-while not fully identifying with either. By visualizing liminal spaces,

migratory patterns, and quotidian subject matter the work serves as a metaphor for

the Latinx experience in the United States-an experience defined by conflicts between

conformity and resistance, individuality and community, spirituality and secularism,

alienation and belonging. "Black and white are the colors of photography…..they

symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair," Robert Frank once said, and it is

through a nonlinear installation of black and white imagery that I seek to describe the

push …

Interweaving: Play, Craft, And Femininity, Glory Loflin

All Theses

My thesis Interweaving: Play, Craft, and Femininity pulls from the visual language of Craft materials and practices to generate large-scale, often colorful works that reflect on my current understanding of being a woman in America. Raised in the conservative South, this body of work arose out of an attempt to understand the American political climate with respect to women’s bodies and where my artistic voice is present in that conversation. My research for my thesis exhibition began with an investigation into the matriarchal history of craft-based fiber practices in my family. Soon thereafter, I actively wove traditional Craft processes in …

Reflections On The Heuristic Power Of Contemplative Art In Teaching And Research, Patricia Morgan

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In this article I discuss the heuristic power of combining contemplative and creative practices using different stages of my research into learning through contemplation. This began with a realisation I had, in my first meditation retreat, about the similarities between creative and contemplative consciousness. It initiated twenty-three years of applied and theoretical research that started with contemplative art workshops I ran in rehabilitation centres. In PhD research that followed I tested a hypothesis of learning through contemplation founded on the concept of an elemental ground of learning that contained an integrating force I termed the feeling nexus. In later …

Refigured: Separations In Portraiture, Caroline Myers

All Theses

Utilizing traditional painting techniques embedded with digital syntaxes, Refigured: Separations in Portraiture, serves as a catalog of my experiences with communication in a hyperconnected world. Processing illegible information caused by my hearing loss informs the process of imposing similar boundaries within my paintings. Like a technical glitch, these obstructions create an illegible visual experience, with evidence of my process remaining as a clue for the viewer’s understanding of the image.

Though personal in nature, I expand from my experience with auditory communication to employ pertinent explorations into the sustained unpredictability of today’s ever-expanding medium that is technology. My paintings …

Ritual And Digital Craftsmanship: Imprudent Practices, Mik Patrik Mcdonnell

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This essay explores the role of traditional and digital craftsmanship in my art practice as it relates to provocative imagery. I tackle the question of how my practice is influenced by my audience. My process and products both aim to agitate the ascetic individual. The argument opens on a poetic, personal note, before defining craft/craftsmanship and its social reception according to scholarship. I outline the intended audience for my work being those akin to my mother: christian, middle-aged, and leaning conservative. Because I employ devotional, virtuosic craftsmanship I argue my work is effective at provoking dialogue with these persons who …

Preparing Teachers For Integrating Visual Arts For Academic Success Of Elementary School Students, Jennifer Roux

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The majority of people agree that students’ education should provide them with the essential skills to be successful in the 21st-century workforce. Although these same sets of skills are commonly practiced through the process of making art, art education continues to hold an inferior status in schools. This disconnection raises the question, what has led to the devaluation of art in academics? This senior capstone will explore how teachers are prepared to integrate visual arts into the classroom. Through the use of a literature review, interviews with three in-service teachers, and a survey of students majoring in Liberal Studies at …

Magic Mirrors, Jamie Ho

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

When a beam of bright light hits the convex and polished surface, an image is reflected back onto the wall. This is a description of a magic mirror, an object from the Han Dynasty (206 BC -24 AD), that embodies how Euro-America views China: both technically advanced and shrouded in mystery. The magic mirror also points to the history of photography, as this term was often used in the Victorian era to describe a camera. The image created by a camera is a mimic of reality, both all too familiar and unfamiliar.^[1] Like magic mirrors, the GIFs I create …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

Second Nature: Impressions Of Place., Trish Korte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For my art practice, I grow and forage my art materials for eco printing, a direct contact printing method that reveals leaf shapes and hidden imagery through heat and pressure. I take specific cues from surrounding materials, objects, and environments. Tree systems and compelling textures of fungus are interpreted through ceramic and fiber. With an ongoing collaboration of natural materials and eco printing processes, my art speaks symbolically and metaphorically through imagery and materials. This thesis and accompanying exhibition present an examination of current work in context with an ongoing investigation of natural materials and eco printing.