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Out Of Body, Alessandra Lee Michelle Torres Jan 2006

Out Of Body, Alessandra Lee Michelle Torres

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the evolution of Alessandra Torres's work, from her early performances and installations, to her latest work with surrogate bodies, as she challenges the relationship between artist and their creation, body and object, and audience and art. Examining the work of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Rebecca Horn and Marina Abramovic, Torres explores the transformative capabilities of interactive sculpture and live performance. Join Ms. Torres as she transforms herself into everything from a paintbrush to a serpent, in her ongoing exploration of the body's ability to adapt and evolve.


Forging Space, Chance Burdick Liscomb Jan 2006

Forging Space, Chance Burdick Liscomb

Theses and Dissertations

I naturally like sculpture. My artistic medium of choice is sculpture because it occupies physical space commands attention and thought. The expressive qualities found in steel are numerous as they are in manipulation of found materials. Both materials involve a process of discovery on an evolving road towards any sculpture's ultimate conclusion. My primary goal is that my sculpture should be personal and capture the viewer's eye, stir his or her subconscious, and serve as a form of communication.


The Other Side Of The Fence, Benjamin S. Jones Jan 2006

The Other Side Of The Fence, Benjamin S. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

I pull from what I see in my urban surroundings. There is always a sense of dread fused with optimism that prevails. Is it beautiful? Fragments of low-riders and tricked-out cars become symbols of desire and the glowing red lens of a stop light becomes a Cyclops poised to defend his garden. Candy-coated, blooming, dripping and seductively slick confronts you with the obvious warning: STOP! You could be next… …The grass really is greener on The Other Side of the Fence. At least until winter comes.


Terra Incognita, Miriam Ellen Ewers Jan 2006

Terra Incognita, Miriam Ellen Ewers

Theses and Dissertations

Process Art: A Dialectic Between Intention Versus AccidentThe Art Studio as an Experimental LaboratoryThe Artist's UnknownImagined ArchitectureSubterranean Architecture: Natural and Man-MadePirenesi's Carceri PrintsGaudi's Architectural ModelsSelf-Reflexion and the Subconscious in Art-MakingArt and Ecstasy


Working Space, Timothy D. Devoe Jan 2005

Working Space, Timothy D. Devoe

Theses and Dissertations

By altering the outward appearance of the gallery walls, I address the hidden inner temperaments and characteristics of these seemingly benign facades. Architectural rubble impacts with the gallery space in imagined collisions, exposing and distorting its hidden inner workings and structures. Sometimes my walls grow so fat that they need immediate and temporary structural solutions. They may even slump over in a pathetic heap under their own perceived mass.Using everyday wall building materials like 2x4s and drywall, or even harvesting the material directly from the gallery, I anthropomorphize the surface of the space. Rather than the architecture receding into the …


Codes Of Interaction, Timothy Michael Martin Jan 2005

Codes Of Interaction, Timothy Michael Martin

Theses and Dissertations

The ideas within this thesis are meant to clarify my explorations, research and painting practice during my studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. I expand on my general statements about being fascinated by advancing technologies and concerned about the after effects of these advancements. The writing explores my curiosity about the internal, skeletal structure of things and how they operate. I explain how the paintings are idiosyncratic hybrids that evoke animation, imaginary scientific propositions, blueprints, maps, and advancing technologies. The work combines these interests with my observations of day-to-day experiences. Isolated events provide found compositions which I then manipulate: a seemingly …


We Believe In Nothing, Sarah Bednarek Jan 2005

We Believe In Nothing, Sarah Bednarek

Theses and Dissertations

A discussion of the important aspects informing my work, including, ideology, and feminism among other issues.


Magic Mountain, Diana Al-Hadid Jan 2005

Magic Mountain, Diana Al-Hadid

Theses and Dissertations

My installations are propositions for an imaginary world that relies on its own internal logic, a world of believability without recognition. While the work references landscape it also emphasizes its contrivance, as it is automatically estranged in an "unnatural" gallery setting. I subvert or de-familiarize the materials and processes that I use in the service of creating a fictitious environment. My places are impossible places. They are irregular, illogical, and unstable. Our imagination can be one of most dangerous things to psychological stability as it is an inventory of all things possible, no matter how irrational or improbable. The irrational …


Perpetual Novelty, Brian Caverly Jan 2004

Perpetual Novelty, Brian Caverly

Theses and Dissertations

Within this thesis is a mapping out of the processes, concepts, and influences, behind the sculptural practice of Brian Caverly. From Complex Adaptive Systems to the world of order of Michel Foucault to the reexamination of the Modernist movement by Yve Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, a rhizomatic path of connections and lines form and cross over, weaving together into a swarming mayhem of over population. Out of this chaos and order grow complex installations and constructions that are inherently bound by the system of their making, yet attempt at every turn to escape conformity.


The History Of The World, Ruby Wescoat Jan 2004

The History Of The World, Ruby Wescoat

Theses and Dissertations

This Thesis is my effort to understand what subjects I find interesting and why. In the processes of writing and making sculpture, I discovered that my underlying fascination is in history. I am interested in places and objects for their individual qualities, but I also want to know how they relate to the world. If I am drawn to an ancient place or object, I want to examine how it fits into the contemporary world, and visa versa. The complexity of these relationships is increased by the vast number of histories (or stories) that are intertwined in the world. Over …


The Transformation Of Electricity In My Brain, Claire Watkins Jan 2004

The Transformation Of Electricity In My Brain, Claire Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exciting and enthralling story about the history of the world as seen through the eyes of Claire Watkins. The story takes place in the dusty corners of her art studio in the old confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. Ms. Watkins leads her audience through such unsuspecting places as her brain, the life of an African Dung Beetle, the center of an atom and the dark reaches of outer space. The story is inspirational and thought provoking. It will force you to see the world as an interconnected web that weaves your life together with the cosmos. A …


From Writing To Sculpting, Orhan Tekin Jan 1999

From Writing To Sculpting, Orhan Tekin

Theses and Dissertations

I subscribe to the notion that art is the process of capturing a moment in life, by way of projection on to an artist's senses, and a subsequent filtering through his mind, and ultimately a materialization through his hands and instruments. However, that is just the beginning. To take a life of its own, the work of art should further find its way into the minds of its viewers or listeners again through a series of projections and filtering. The excitement of the moment that impinges upon the senses of the artist can be very powerful at times, so powerful …


The Effect Of Man On The Landscape And The Effect Of Land On The Manscape: Or Contingent Plans For Knowing A Mountain, Taylor Scott Baldwin Jan 1988

The Effect Of Man On The Landscape And The Effect Of Land On The Manscape: Or Contingent Plans For Knowing A Mountain, Taylor Scott Baldwin

Theses and Dissertations

In my artistic practice, I emphasize personal and pan-cultural anxieties regarding civilization and the environment as an impetus for work in sculpture, video, and drawing. By locating marginal microcosmic subject matter that tellingly exhibits macrocosmic global dread, I seek to capture and distill our overwhelming eco-socio-political anxiety into a portrait of a society at a point in its history when the specter of nameless impending disaster weighs pressingly on the collective psyche. This thesis is supplementary to my work of sculpture in the Graduate School of the Arts Thesis Exhibition at the Anderson Gallery opening on April 27th, 2007. The …