American Art and Architecture Commons^™

Dirty Pictures—Not For Sale: Re-Reading Bellocq’S Storyville Portraits, Mollie S. Le Veque

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, I examine E.J. Bellocq's "Storyville Portraits" within art historical and feminist historiographies. One of the most infamously alluring parts of New Orleans at the turn of the century, the Storyville red light district is hardly part of contemporary American consciousness today. Part of my work involves an evaluation of what a lack of archival resources does to perceptions of Storyville and more broadly, the stereotypical late Victorian “fallen women” that has been read into history - both by historians and popular culture. However, my focal point is indeed the portraits and how they might be re-read and …

Korbel Sawmill Research Notes, Susie Van Kirk

Susie Van Kirk Papers

No abstract provided.

Everyday Arrangements, Rachel Janette Compart

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

These set of works are an arrangement of forms. I am interested in making a simplified version of my subject by limiting the amount of information that is present while still suggesting a space. My subject matter began as a pile of dirty clothes that were lying on my bathroom floor. I first noticed the contrast between the organic clumps of fabric against the vertical lines of the white panel wall. I then realized that this subject matter was much deeper and said a lot about my domestic life as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend and a …

Precious Commodities, Colin John Klimesh

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My process mimics the production of goods and commodities in the industrial and commercial sector. It begins with the conception of a design, which I translate to the fabrication of a matrix, a means for replication and reproduction. I find the aesthetics of systematic production visually appealing. Store shelves speak of repetition and duplication, a society of productivity, efficiency and economy, industrialization and commercialism. Though I despise the underlying values that consumerism promotes, I love the clean, geometric, organized and modular aesthetic that it conveys. I often work between ceramics and print media, letting one process inform the other. Ceramic …

This Is Not Where You Are, Wesley James Hill

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

A mobile art gallery show that is comprised of stop motion videos and prints relating to out unnoticed conveniences and our ability to take our subconsciously forgotten surroundings for granted.

Mythology Of Control, Allison Ann Roberts

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Mythology of Control is a personal, visual account of reacting to the turmoil of life and relationships, recognizing the inherent fragility often disguised by a façade of strength. Layering and obscuring imagery creates a metaphor for coping- constantly redefining perceptions, plans, and expectations. The printed imagery evokes a vague recognition or familiarity, alluding to unassembled schematics that are fictional but suggest credibility, rather than specific, identifiable forms. Cloth, in the form of blankets or quilts handed down within families, absorbs history and memory, becoming a material archive. My link between personal history and impermanent states is supported by senses of …

The Elements Of A Creative Environment: Was The Roycroft Campus Of 1900 - 1915 A Hothouse?, Katherine Somerville

The Exposition

Ancient Athens, Renaissance-era Florence, and Germany’s Bauhaus community that practiced between the two World Wars are all examples of what Barton Kunstler refers to as a hothouse. He defines a hothouse as an area where creativity flourishes wildly and magnificently, producing results that neither nature nor the usual round of human activity could ever anticipate. Out of each of Kunstler’s notable hothouse communities came extraordinary achievements and he theorizes that a hothouse is created out of a relatively rare confluence of forces – 36 factors within four dimensions, to be exact. In this essay I will show how the creative …

Prelude To A Master Plan: Ware, Massachusetts, Belen Alfaro, Bruno Carneiro, Margaret Engesser, Kathryn E. Fox, Evadne R. Friedman, Timothy Inacio, Anita Lockesmith, Christina Mills, Stephanie Molden, Meagen Mulherin, Russell Pandres, Vinicius Pereira, Brian Reid, Pedro Soto, Jennifer Stromsten

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Prelude to a Master Plan offers ideas, recommendations, and a toolkit to help the town chart its own path towards that future. While the teams and individual students worked to ‘drill down’ into specific topic areas, the Studio defined three basic areas in order to think about how the various assets, challenges and ideas undermine or reinforce one another. The report is loosely organized in those terms: addressing the outlying rural areas and issues specific to these places, considering one of the key growth areas that has extended from town and the conflicts that arise from the many uses occurring …

Relational Viewing: Affect, Trauma And The Viewer In Contemporary Autobiographical Art, Matthew Ryan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the communicative relationship between contemporary autobiographical art and the viewer. By analyzing the work of six artists, Richard Billingham, Jaret Belliveau, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lisa Steele and Bas Jan Ader, I maintain that lived experience and personal history condition the way viewers respond to autobiographical art. I turn to literary theory as a critical methodology to argue that autobiographical art operates as a catalyst for identification, memory and self-discovery. I use affect and trauma theory to demonstrate how artwork produces meaning and discourse through the viewer’s feelings, emotions and bodily sensations. Consequently, I survey the importance …

'Not Unworthy Of His Hand': Crossing Borders In Benjamin West's A Drayman Drinking, Lauren K. Lessing, Terri Sabatos

Faculty Scholarship

In May 1797, Benjamin West—President of the Royal Academy, Historical Painter to the Court of King George III, and Surveyor of the King's Pictures—exhibited a small genre painting titled A Drayman Drinking at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy in London. It was one of seven paintings West exhibited that year, and the only one overlooked by the reviewer for the Times. The critic's oversight may have stemmed from the unprecedented number of paintings on view (nearly twelve hundred, four hundred more than were hung the previous year) and the resulting overcrowding of the principle exhibition room. Through his …

From Ruhlmann To Rohde: How French Art Deco Became American, Lily K. Meehan '14

Summer Research Program

The American art deco designers of the 1930s were truly innovators, inventors and artists. They were not, however, the only ones creating “a modern world” during this time. In fact, America was one of the last countries to embrace the art deco style which was thriving in Germany, Austria, and France. There was a strong connection between the French art décoratifs movement and early 20th century American industrial designs. This paper investigates how the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts held in Paris in 1925 heavily influenced the start of the American art deco movement.

Framing Cultural Capitalism: William Wilson Corcoran And Alice Walton As Patrons Of The American Art Museum, Kelsey E. Tyler

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

In 2011, Alice Walton opened what is now considered to be among the most important American art collections in the country, in a museum called Crystal Bridges, in Bentonville, Arkansas. What is remarkable is not only the exorbitant amount of money spent to open the museum - over $800 million dollars - but also that she was the primary financier. William Wilson Corcoran, a mid-nineteenth-century banker, in many ways is a better comparison than Morgan or Gardner, as like Walton he intended to found a museum dedicated specifically to American art. His museum, which he hoped would become a national …

Narrative Brought To Life: The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Stefani Klaric

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the motivations for creating fictive, immersive environments. These can be defined as spaces that generate new physical environments or worlds that engage our senses. The theme park is the experiential space where entertainment, fantasy, and commodity consumption come together. By including recognizable objects, narratives, characters, and the like, taken directly from the Harry Potter books and films, audiences and participants are brought into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in a way that immerses them in the space and allows them to experience the narrative by participating in a journey …

Religion And Architecture In Downtown Orlando, Djordje Jovanović

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Since the onset of Western civilization, religion has continuously influenced architectural and urban forms. These material echoes of religion are often unrecognized in the modern city. This work identifies, analyzes and classifies such influences, and illustrates their manifestation with the example of downtown Orlando. Religious influences can be observed in the locations of the cities, in their urban planning, and in many constructive and architectural elements and styles developed for religious purposes. One principal group of architectural elements that that carries a religious connotation is the elements of classical antiquity, which reflect their pagan origins. The other group is the …

By My Side: Charles E. Burchfield's Letters To Bertha K. Burchfield From 1923 To 1963, Alana Ryder

History Theses

Over the past 80 years, research on American artist Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967) has often placed little emphasis on the people and events that were essential for his artistic freedom and the success of his career. This paper, based on the contents of forty years of letters between Burchfield and his wife Bertha Kenreich (1886-1973), challenges the artist’s mythology, which includes misconceptions of his isolation, lack of influences, dislocation from art history and the insignificance of human connections and activities.

New dimensions of Burchfield's identity are examined, significantly his positions as a husband, father, friend to other artists represented by …

An Inspired Romance: An Exploration Of The Lives And Work Of Artists Alfred Stieglitz And Georgia O’Keeffe, Dana Janell Lindsay

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Statement Question: How did the evolution of the artists’ relationship affect their individual work?

• With an emphasis the couple’s public and private persona, and its development over time.

The work begins with a brief biography of both artists, Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe; providing an overview of their childhoods, education, and work, during the development of Modernism in the first half of the twentieth century. The work emphasizes the process by which Stieglitz facilitated the transition from pictorialism to modernism, his development of the period’s ideal female artist, and the opening of his famed avant-garde galleries. The work will also …

Latino/Latin American Muralism And Social Change: A Reflection On The Social Significance Of The Cold Spring Mural, Shannon Mcevoy

Art Student Work

No abstract provided.

Judy Chicago: Visions For Feminist Art, Francesca Debiaso

Student Publications

Controversy, awe, and revelation distinguish Judy Chicago's now 40 year career in the art world. Chicago's large body of work is inseparable from her ideologies pertaining to women's crippling exclusion from male dominated disciplines within art, history, and society overall. Her work is characterized by a desire to establish feminine iconography ("central-core imagery") and create a feminist lexicon applicable to the arts as to validate and celebrate women's experience. Viewing her artwork as a tool for social change and dialogue, Chicago has incorporated collaboration and consciousness-raising into her art making process. Thus, her collaborators gain not only the participation of …

Richard Upjohn And Richard Morris Hunt: The Evolution Of Newport Domestic Architecture, Caroline L. Peck

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Evolving Role Of The Exhibition And Its Impact On Art And Culture, Anna C. Cline

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.