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A Chair In The Woods, Victoria Dolloff

Theses and Dissertations

Victoria Dolloff's MFA Thesis considers traces of play and perception in the development of her artwork, exploring the idea of reorientation through subtleties of the absurd. Her installation Untitled (Landscape) questions object as place and place as memory utilizing fragmentation as reconstruction.

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space, Jan Descartes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. …

Restoration, Shannon M. Slaight-Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The marks I make in clay have different characteristics, and the physical mark of one’s fingertips or visual record of the hand is personal and intimate. This visible activity is the evidence of my constant presence and control within each object. Its repetitive meditation produces a private relief from my persistent anxieties. This exploration for me is not only visual, but also physical. This is the start of my infatuation with the idea of pattern. It has its own discrete visual language and modes of communication; and through my research I am developing a method of intercommunication.

Fear And Nostalgia In Immigration, Daniel A. Matthews

Theses and Dissertations

Fear and Nostalgia in Immigration is a project that uses re-occuring memory and experiential memory to help us understand our common histories. The projects asks individuals to first share a re-occuring memory by writing it on a chalkboard. The next step is to then write an experiential memory about immigration, this can be a story you might have heard or it could be something from your own family history. These two tasks are done on a communal table where several individuals are engage in the same task at the same time. This aim of this exercise is to have something …

On Coming And Going, Quintin Teszeri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier and the accompanying exhibition On Coming and Going (presented at the Artlab Gallery in January 2017) constitute my MFA in Visual Arts thesis. The first chapter of this dossier is a Comprehensive Artist Statement in which I reflect on how my art, thinking, and life engage different meanings of coming and going in different ways. The statement approaches a deeply subjective and aggregate philosophy, or perhaps an attitude, or perhaps most appropriately if also most cliché, a way of being, in the face of relentless transience. The second chapter is a review of Michel de Broin’s 2016 Castles …

A Step Of Two Or The Pas De Deux, Molly A. Hoisington

Masters Theses

The second part of a two-part MFA Thesis presentation, this paper distills the content from the preceding exhibition A Step of Two or The Pas de Deux: an installation of paintings, drawings and projected video. It touches on various themes that surround [well researched] ideas about perception, dissociation, the gaze, and relationships. Most of all, this paper and the body of work it describes is about the visual representation of a sensual understanding of the world.

A Space Without Memory: Time And The Sublime In The Work Of Janet Cardiff And George Bures Miller, Margherita N. Papadatos

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The central question of my investigation is: how do artists present the unpresentable when presentation itself is impossible? Concentrating solely on Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s artworks Opera For a Small Room (2005) and The Killing Machine (2007), I redevelop Jean François Lyotard’s concept of the sublime as put forth in his The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, in order to ask how Cardiff and Miller give shape to the unpresentable in their work. Opera and Killing are works that dynamically problematize and play with ideas of presentation, subjectivity, memory, and time. Thus, I explore my central question of …

Turning To See Otherwise, Jennifer L. Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier, in combination with an exhibition at the McIntosh Gallery, considers whether an archival collection can generate an alternative narrative other than that which may already exist in the original film and photographic documents. Rather than represent a singular truth, I seek to articulate the transformative realities of collective memory by re-orienting the material for broader viewer identification. I have mined photographic and filmic materials from a personal family archive to focus fragments that specifically record the gesture of the turning face—the turning towards the observer. This “turn” then includes both the turn towards the initial film-maker embedded …

The War That Does Not Leave Us: Memory Of The American Civil War And The Photographs Of Alexander Gardner, Katie Janae White

Theses and Dissertations

In July of 1863 the photographs A Harvest of Death, Field Where General Reynolds Fell, A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep, and The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter were taken after the battle at Gettysburg by a team of photographers led by Alexander Gardner. In the decades that followed these images of the dead of the battlefield became some of the most iconic representations of the American Civil War. Today, Gardner's Gettysburg photographs can be found in almost every contemporary history text, documentary, or collection of images from the war, yet their journey to this iconic status has been little discussed. The …

Submersion, Hannah M. Harper Ms.

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The artist discusses the influence, concept, and process behind creating a cohesive body of work and accompanying show, Submersion, for the completion of her Bachelor of Arts degree and undergraduate research for the Fine and Performing Art Scholars branch of East Tennessee State University's Honors College. The show is to be held May 1st through May 7th of 2014 with its reception on May 3rd in the Submarine Gallery located on ETSU campus. The artist explored themes of the unknown, subconscious, and memory, using water as a reoccurring symbol. The works include five large portraits and two small to medium …

All Animals Will Get Along In Heaven, Camila Nagata

Theses and Dissertations

My final thesis exhibition is directed towards children and parents. My goal is to create a connection between parent and child, and their past, present, and future through memory. Such a connection is accomplished through the implementation of these three different ideas in the artwork: 1) creating different layers of understanding, 2) producing everlasting memories, 3) connecting adult viewers to their past. In addition, I use principles as the foundation for each piece, such as the principles of kindness and learning. These principles are presented to the viewer through parables of current social and political issues, illustrated through my own …

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 …

Travis Novak, Travis Novak

CGU MFA Theses

Flawed memory is a tool that allows an altered reality to exist in the disconnect between a past reality and a present fiction. My work starts with scenarios that evolve into things bigger than themselves, going beyond nostalgia to become celebrations, landmarks, or memorials. Exaggeration, embellishment, adornment, stylization, modification, and customization are methods I use to move through these scenarios and often arrive at a transformative shift...

This preservation process begins the moment a thing dies. Its optimum resides in the past allowing the function of the memory to operate as a preserver. This is the human longing for greater …

"Untitled", Janet Rose Engel-Julian

All Student Theses

The emotions from memories and the passing of time can be an intriguing thing. The more time that passes the more difficult it can be to remember details thus changing the memory. The more people who share a specific memory,the more memories may exist,yet each person’s recognition of the event may vary. When family members recall a childhood event, they can have a plethora of viewpoints and interpretations all depending on the time passed and roles played along with previous life experiences.

For centuries,history was recorded orally through ceremony and storytelling, and some cultures also involved the sharing of food. …

Confabulation: Photographs, Memory, And Painting, Erin Cunningham

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is in regards to paintings created by Erin Cunningham for the completion of her MFA in Visual Arts at Boise State University in the spring of 2011. She primarily discusses the tenuous connection between photography and memory. Examining ideas developed by Roland Barthes, she set out to prove that while there is a distinct difference between the factual language of photography and the fictive language of memory, that the two have a type of symbiotic relationship. Particularly in regards to familial photography, the paintings she has developed from this concept examine the construction of memoir using images that …

The Memory Of Forgotten Things, Brittany Metz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates my lack of childhood memories and documents how my artwork stands in as a substitute for that lost memory. The first part of the thesis analyzes my early life and influences; the second part analyzes my art making and process. The narrative style of writing is intentionally autobiographical to mimic the narrative style and structure of the thesis installation. My upbringing, interests, creative process, access to materials, and inspiration are fully explored. The impact my early life has on my current work is evident. Real memory is combined with created memory in the thesis multi-media installation. I …

The Door In The Threshold., Ani Kristine Volkan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is the supporting document for the Master of Fine Arts exhibition, The Door in the Threshold, held in the Slocumb Galleries at East Tennessee State University from March 15-19, 2010. The exhibition contains twelve pieces of artwork, mounted on the wall. The paper expands upon such themes as memory and family as explored by the work in the gallery. The title of both the paper and show reference the impact of my Armenian heritage on my creative process. Doors in Armenian folklore were sacred places containing the threshold to the spiritual. Thus, my pieces are meant to …

Taken Of The Land., Charlesey Lee Charlton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis supports the Master of Fine Arts exhibition at the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University from April 28-June 25, 2009. The exhibition is comprised of 19 monotype prints on paper. The exhibition presents the artist's investigation using natural materials combined with traditional printmaking techniques. Subjects discussed include ideas, methods, influences, and process of integrating natural materials that evoke a sense of place, earth, and memory.

Inside, Outside, In-Between., Aurora Maria Pope

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Inside, Outside, In-Between, held at the Carroll Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, from February 26 through March 13, 2008. The works included in this exhibition are a collection of paintings that employ the use of traditional and non-traditional materials to explore the connections between place and memory.

These pieces are investigations into materiality and process, combining local beeswax, sticks, garden soil, charcoal, and ashes together with oil, shellac, oil pastel, pencil, and other traditional artist's materials.

Ideas discussed include materiality, process, composition, …