Digital Commons Network^™

Graphic Content Warning; Personal And Political Traumas, Emily K. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of …

Mind In Hand, Anna Olson

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This thesis explores the intersection of art and psychology as it manifests in my art practice, particularly in the medium of weaving. The contemporary frameworks of memory and archive provide the basis of this discussion, as well as findings from the field of Art Therapy. Difficult emotions like loss and grief often show up in my work, and I will discuss how artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Sophie Calle also utilize these concepts. In weaving, I capture my internal mental states, memories, and perceptions of the future in a variety of found and gifted objects. Guided by the precedents set …

In Search Of Communication, Usman O. Oladeinde

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the work included in Usman Oladeinde’s MFA thesis exhibition. The goal of this thesis paper is to explore major themes such as communication, identity, change, centeredness, landscapes, and language. These paintings present Arabic letter forms transformed into illegible shapes which are painted on landscape backgrounds, often depicting an aesthetic of textual elements receding into space. All these works are inspired by the Qibla, which is represented in the abstract and painted using acrylic media. Occasionally image transfers are mounted on the painted surface.

Visual representations like mine are communicative without forcing the viewer to one specific idea. …

The Twilight Zone: The Confluence Of Childhood Scenes And Future Anxiety, Jongwon Bae

Theses and Dissertations

Jongwon Bae’s paintings reflect his childhood memories as an archive that is to be repressed until it manifests itself in uncertain ways as it becomes confluent with the anxiety about the future.

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. …

The Tapestry Of Memory, Kathryn M. Lawson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Rationality points to the complete annihilation and end of a life when the body perishes, and yet when a loved one dies we continue to experience that person in a myriad of ways. The focus of this thesis will be a phenomenological exploration of the earthly afterlife of those we have loved and lost. By positing the subject as always intersubjective and as temporal in nature, this thesis will investigate how we continue to create and interact with the deceased upon the earth. In the introduction, this work will be placed in the context of the phenomenological tradition. The first …

The Unaccustomed Vanishing Point, Procheta Olson

Masters Theses

The Unaccustomed Vanishing Point is an exhibition of miniature paintings and installations that explore the irregular and fluid terrains of multicultural exchanges in India. Although drawing heavily from Mughal and Persian painting traditions, the paintings are rife with allegories of the postcolonial history, politics, and visual and material culture of contemporary India in the age of globalization. The installations, on the other hand, navigate the intersection of sensory experience and memory while simultaneously examining the dynamics of transnational experiences. Together they map the overlapping boundaries of the personal and social to probe into the complex interplay of cultural hybridity, class, …

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.

"Perhaps," She Said, "Looking Itself Could Be An Antidote.", Sarah Moore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

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 …

Gotta Catch 'Em All, Jennifer Lynn Lombardi

LSU Master's Theses

The ability to imagine is essential to shaping who we are, and is an important part of our humanity. Children have the ability to use aspects of their environment as their playthings, becoming the characters in their world through their sense of imagination. We lose this ability as we grow, leaving us with only memories and sentimentality. I have come to realize that my art is an expression of the longing and search to regain that ability to become fused with my imagination and my environment. I allow myself to become lost in a world of fantasy once more, and …

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.

Nowhere, Danielle N. Winger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, Nowhere, held at the Tipton Gallery located in downtown Johnson City from March 30 through April 9, 2015. The works included in the exhibition consist of a collection of oil paintings on both canvas and panel, and a series of mixed media collage paintings that explore how time and memory affect her personal connection to spaces she has inhabited.

Ideas discussed include painting, process, cropping, memory, selective memory, forged memory, false memory, fragmenting, dreams, childhood, mnemic image, time, simulacra, simulation, home, beds, bedrooms, bathrooms, abstracting imagery, landscape, Freud, Lacan, Gaston Bachelard, …

Confabulation, Ruth Lakhani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I create work that is an investigation of memory- individual memories from a single location over a span of time. Over time, these individual memories are layered on top of each other to become remembered as one. When the boundaries between the original and successive memories become unstable and unreliable false memories are produced.

My sculptures are non-literal representations of selected interior details from my memories of a place that I visited regularly throughout my life. This place that I am inspired by has undergone several different stages of repair, from when the house was first constructed up to the …

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 …

Memoric Form: Poem As Memory, Lawrence V. Eby

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Machinist in the Snow is a narrative long poem, much like a novel in verse that deals with the loss of memory and environmental rebirth. In the book, the narrator exiles himself into a frozen nature and attempts to return the frozen wasteland into its former, flourishing environment. The poems take on the memoric form of memory in a wide range of poetic forms from the traditional sonnet, haiku, or villanelle, to a scattered projective verse. In the center of these poems is an attempt to mimic the mind in the way that it shifts, in its moments of clarity, …

Fare Thee Well, Georgia L. Godwin

LSU Master's Theses

The common thread in all my work is time—its passage, effects, and remembrance. I have created a series of works that are meditations on time, the ephemeral quality of memory and the effects of aging, profession, and life decisions on our bodies, especially faces. The physical materials and my treatment of them reinforce these themes, showing the erosive qualities of earth, and drawing inspiration from natural features that signify the passage of time such as desert hoodoos, desert varnish, old wood, erosion and chemical oxidation, and from man-­‐made features such as old documents that have been written, erased, and rewritten. …

Memory, Memorial, James Kimura-Green

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis exhibition investigates concepts of memory and memorial. These are fueled by feelings of yearning, longing, and nostalgia. We allow memories to linger. I believe we try to strengthen these memories, encase them and tuck them away deep in our minds. These memories create in our psyche psychological memorials. Like physical memorials, our memories too deteriorate and crumble over time. We fill in the gaps to the point where it is unknown just how true these memories are. At times I think that mine are now idealized and idyllic then they really were. The paintings in my exhibit are …

Echoes And Artifacts, Molly Elizabeth Miller

LSU Master's Theses

Architecture has many different contexts and meanings, but regardless of time and place, buildings act as a physical container of memory. This body of work explores the use of large facades as residue of a personal memory and uses physical deterioration to parallel the distortion of memory as a result of time and emotion. The work makes use of warping and tearing of materials and is created through the combination of large-scale relief prints, drawing, sewing, and the cutting away of materials. The exhibition includes an installation of fabric-based prints, a series of wall-based altered paper prints, and several artist …

Shadowlands, Kimberly Riner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shadowlands is a reflection on loss. By focusing on those who are left behind after a loss, I am able to explore the range of reactions associated with grief. The artwork displayed in Shadowlands is an intuitive response to these experiences. It has been informed by research of cultural norms associated with mourning. By investigating specific ceremonies, rituals and interactions, I construct objects and installations that bridge the line between memory and memorial.

Traces Of Earthly Things, Kristin Frost

CGU MFA Theses

My strongest memories are visual. I feel connected to the moments of my life that have left imprints in my mind, traces of events that are still thick with color, energy, and purpose. I make paintings, collages, and installations that are visual combinations of events, land forms, and places from the present and the past. Through the repeated reworking of images and ideas in each piece, I reform my own concepts of space and time. Each aspect of my multi-step process changes not only the physical features of a piece, but also the original recollection that generated it. Through this …

Your Loss, Lauren Jean Hegge

LSU Master's Theses

Your Loss is an exhibition of drawings, photographs, intaglio prints, found objects and prose. Drawn from personal and anonymous archives, the works in the exhibition acknowledge various forms of breakdown, exploring individual reactions and attempts to rebuild from the fragments of loss. Inherent in the work are discussions of remembering and forgetting, finding and losing, building and destroying, growth and decay. This work is both recognition of the desire to hold on too tightly and an effort to learn to let go.

Interiors Imagined And Remembered, Andrew Brown

LSU Master's Theses

My paintings are about the concept of home and how this notion constantly evolves with each successive experience, changing how I perceive and experience interior spaces. The imagery in my work is limited to common forms such as cardboard boxes and shelving, as these are elements that are easily related to, and that speak to everyday experiences. Color, space and form are manipulated to work within and at times subvert the implied narrative of each painting. Although memory remains an active part of my process, imagination and the exploration of paint’s physical and expressive possibilities have risen to the fore. …

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 …

Up Like Weeds, Danielle Burns

LSU Master's Theses

A child playing with matches is forgivable. Kids are curious. They want to explore adult activities through play. Does it stay innocent when that child experiments with the effects of firecrackers in frogs and gasoline on animals? What happens when they light the match? The grey area between childhood innocence and realization of wrong intrigues me and I find it fascinating how adult perspectives of such malicious deeds often vary. Up Like Weeds questions these responses using a collection of narrative prints and freestanding woodcut figures. They visually tell five tales of children in a rural environment acting out in …

Based On A True Story, Mary Elkins

Theses and Dissertations

Trying to remember is a form of forgetting. Memory fades, changes meaning, and disappears over time. While trying to find other ways to preserve stories about my family, it occurred to me that I could recreate what I remember in clay. I am creating collections of physical mementos of the memories that fill my head, focusing mainly on my childhood. Remembering is in itself an act of forgetting, and thus this is my memory preservation kit. I am recording memories of my family for posterity in clay before I have a chance to forget.

Rewrite, Jamie Lawyer

Theses and Dissertations

“Rewrite” is a photographic project that utilizes the domesstic space as a stage for emotional projection of a traumatic memory. The work considers the relationship that exists between an individual and the rooms and objects within a home space in an attempt at understanding an individual’s mental state. “Rewrite” explores the ways in which we exist through our home and how a juxtaposition of objects and materials can create meaning. The photographs are a visual interpretation of the emotions surrounding sexual abuse/assault/rape as they have related to my own personal history and conversations I have had with women close to …

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 …

Voice On The Skin, Sarah Turner

Theses and Dissertations

“The body can write on the skin from the inside—the soul, the mind, and the passions rise to the surface in boils, blushes, and rashes, and the invisible inside speaks by writing from the other side of the page”. -James Elkins Skin not only covers but reveals what is behind it. I utilize its language as indicator of flaws and pathologies. I depict and manipulate this, not just as it already exists with the human body, but as projections of my psychological states onto inanimate objects. Proposing that sight is a kind of touch, we touch with our minds, through …