Digital Commons Network^™

Points Of Contact, Giancarlo Venturini

Theses and Dissertations

The work in Points of Contact arises from engaging love as it relates to distance, desire, and longing. This paper will analyze my painting practice and its evolution from the explicit to implicit. Specifically I am going to talk about my utilization of landscape painting to consider another way of expressing sexuality and queerness. I will explain how objects and landscapes are conduits for feelings that can intrinsically hold allegorical representations. This show is about searching through vast spaces to find points of connection in the natural world. I will talk about portals and the varied degrees of accessible windows …

Preexisting Conditionings: Painting, Gaming And Narrative Play, Pia Bakala

Theses and Dissertations

My work incorporates play, fantasy, and self-actualization through painting, sculpture, and video. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which my studio practice intersects with topics across fields of visual arts and in conjunction their theoretical frameworks. I will discuss the culminating body of work, tentatively titled Preexisting Conditionings, that my academic experience at VCU has fostered and trace its development across specific precursive works, as well as the cultural and intellectual touchstones influencing its creative impetus. In Preexisting Conditionings, I work primarily use oil painting, creating mostly representational figurative tableaus that correspond to narratives and characters I’m …

Politics Of Being A Lover: In Art, (Space) And Kink, Rabeeha Adnan

Theses and Dissertations

Politics of being a lover: in art, (space) and kink explores my relationship with my practice through observations and stories that draw parallels with romance and kink. Narrated as love affairs turned into complex commitment, it shuffles through logics of structural power, control, and communication in the context of praxis and art institutions.

Troy Thomas, Poussin’S Women: Sex And Gender In The Artist’S Works, James R. Jewitt

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Art Inquries Vol Xviii No 4 2023 Front Matter, Mysoon Rizk

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Images Of Maps And Connotative Tendencies In Early Republican America, Kerr Houston

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Art Inquiries Vol Xviii No 4 2023 Full Issue, Mysoon Rizk

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Our Magnitude And Bond: An Ethics Of Care For Art Museum Education, Dana Carlisle Kletchka

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This work responds to contemporary concerns about the future of art museum education and public practice and art museums more broadly in the wake of a global pandemic that has, at present, killed more than a million people in the United States and sickened millions more. I respond to questions posed by the board of the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education in relation to the theme of Inclusion Invasion, expand upon the relations between art museums and communities posited by a post-critical, socially responsive museological framework, and explore the potential for a feminist philosophical Ethics of Care …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

To, From: Of Time, Of Distance, Of Body And Mind, Fanxi Sun

Theses and Dissertations

This paper introduces the concepts, theories, and techniques associated with my thesis project “To, From.” The paper consists of three parts: Time as Structure, Distance as Premise, and Body and Mind. Each chapter is written in a mixture of personal narration and a general introduction to materials that are directly or implicatively relevant and important to the creation of my project. In this experimental narrative comprises film screening and live performance with multi-channel sound, I tell a story of non-story. Words and the exchange of words, movements and non- movements, objects that are being handled and subjects that are handling... …

Rooted In Between, Manavi Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Rooted in Between is a personal project that explores the complexities of belonging and the emotions that come with navigating between spaces that we call home. This written thesis is in support of the carefully curated video based and photographic work presented at an exhibition of the same title. The project's primary objective is to delve into the physical and emotional baggage that we carry with us as we move from one place to another. The project highlights the coping mechanisms adopted by the different generations in my family while struggling to find a place where we truly belong.

It Takes A Muscle: Wholes, Holes, And Other Voids, Saar Shemesh

Theses and Dissertations

IT TAKES A MUSCLE¹

In the BELLY of the BEAST, the HUMAN

in the deep end of a SWIMMING POOL

in a GRAVE, looking up/out from within

at the base of a CRATER, ABYSS, PIT

the room as a CRADLE, INCUBATOR

architecture as MOTHER MOULD.²

____________________________

¹ Title is borrowed and abbreviated: Spectral Display, “It Takes A Muscle To Fall In Love,” 1982.

² For what American-English delineates as ‘mold,’ British-English uses ‘mould’ and is more specific in its technicality. The former doesn’t distinguish in spelling between mold (fungus) and mold (mould). I’m not particularly a fan of …

Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen

Theses and Dissertations

Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …

Misled Youth, Mark Tan

Theses and Dissertations

I’m a first-generation Canadian who was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario by Asian immigrants. I have migrated to the United States and lived here for 7 years. Through my work, I express the emotional value of preconceived notions, disconnectedness, and longing in search of finding place and acceptance within a community. Drawing from memory, personal narrative, emotion, and perception, I manipulate data into lines, forms, and materials through a subjective human experience from the lens of a non-citizen. By projecting the migration movement of my family lineage from China and the Philippines to Canada as well as my path …

Objectified: Forced Marriages And Bitter Reality Of Violence Against Women In India, Anurag Wallace

Theses and Dissertations

Domestic violence against women is an ongoing problem in India. With cases rising ever higher, the time has come to talk openly about the uncomfortable truths behind arranged marriages, which foster injustice and often lead to violence against women. The wedding dress is a symbol of purity in traditional Indian weddings, but in the case of marriages that turn abusive, it can become a symbol of oppression and patriarchy. During the research phase of this investigation, women once stuck in abusive marriages—treated as objects—talked about the objects that made them feel trapped and explained how these everyday objects became silent …

Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines an alternative processing mechanism surrounding the act of healing after traumatic experiences in life. Using a methodology of iterative patterning and tool-pathing, a collection of inflatable garments and wooden mannequins analyzes defense mechanisms learned in early childhood development. This work highlights an essential body of recent scholarship that takes cuteification seriously to restore a childlike approach to mastering fear. This paper will review the definitions of cuteness and childlike humor and then describe how visual culture has implemented these components to subvert established power.

Salt At Dawn, Salt In My Veins, Cecilia Hankyeol Kim

Theses and Dissertations

A contemplation on expanded time, over generations along my maternal lineage;

on being on the borders, embodying homeland;

on inheritance and shared labor;

occupying a void that is dense;

looking towards dawn.

Heavy Hold: A Physical Score, Alexandra Velozo

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of essays, stories, and fictional interviews that are in conversation with my performance, teaching, and sculpture practice. My research and work considers chronic illness, disability, the historic cultural connection between swamplands and illness, the medical industrial complex, medical theater, the medical gaze, disabled performers, metatactile space, sensory learning, and access.

Hamburger Helper Recipes, John Alex Goss

Theses and Dissertations

Hamburger Helper Recipes is a collection of essays and public addresses that aim to recuperate castoff and misfit material surrounding industries and tools which produce science-fiction fantasies, specifically videogames and television shows. The following essays confront the normative violence of capitalism, whiteness, and hetero-patriarchy that socially and technologically haunt these imaginary worlds and build hegemonic idealogy into their audiences. This collection takes industrial materials and software from their intended commercial purposes of production and “success” into places of abjection and quiet breakdown. The author’s own proximity to masculine and often toxic "work cultures'' within industrial spaces of coding and manufacturing …

Reanimator/Reflection: 
Creating Mirrors Through Time 
With Ai, Sound, Video And Live-Generated Art In The Dark Age Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Eric Millikin

Theses and Dissertations

For my MFA thesis exhibition entitled Reanimator/Reflection, I used artificial intelligence to create three new works of sound and live-generated video art, each based on mirror reflections and 100-year-old racist post-pandemic horror literature by early 20th century American author H. P. Lovecraft. The themes of these writings mirror the issues of our current time. The primary works of Lovecraft that I referenced in the exhibition are “Herbert West: Reanimator,” (1922) a serialized tale about graduate school experiments which attempted to return the dead to life during a plague, and “Nyarlathotep,” (1920) a prose poem that suggests even our dreams …

Pissing In The Pleasure Garden, Ellen Hanson

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I will discuss self-representation and how my paintings refer to self-sexualization on the internet and depictions of muses in art history, allowing me to occupy the joint role of artist and muse through the repetition of my own image. My thesis exhibition, Pissing in the Pleasure Garden, uses freestanding canvases to imitate the form of a Hortus Conclusus. I use the closed garden to contend with the contradictions of control, eroticism, and voyeurism. Similar to the landscape of the early internet created by blogs and camgirl sites, the closed garden is both public and private.

Cloaca Palace, Connor Marie Stankard

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I trace the compulsive fear of holes, known as trypophobia, from an uncontrollable obsession to a pleasurable preoccupation. The body’s physical porousness makes us receptive to our surroundings, allowing external matter in and destabilizing the boundaries of self and other. Matter invades us, encoding itself into our DNA and transforming humans into chimeric creatures.

Through paintings and multi-media installations, I encourage viewers to reflect on their own bodies as a series of holes, vulnerable receptors to the world. I use the figure of a woman to personify a human hole which has been infected by the outside, …

Prosthetic Ontology Into Pedagogy: Applying Garoian’S Theory To The Performing Arts, Elise Lael Kieffer

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

Prosthetic pedagogy, as developed by Charles Garoian, provides a framework for using artificial-real worlds created by the arts to influence and impact teaching practice. The prosthetic space is artificial, separate, from the artist and audience, yet it is felt authentically, as if it were part of their being. Garoian explored prosthetic pedagogy through visual arts and museum experiences. This research further examines prosthetic pedagogy by applying it the Theatre. The art of theatre builds worlds onstage and through performance that allow performers to be and exist apart from their physical selves in the realm of prosthetic reality. The artist and …

...And Yet The Devil Exists, John Hee Taek Chae

Theses and Dissertations

...And Yet the Devil Exists is a project that explores the ways in which ideology determines reality. It is an installation that plots and connects the historical and personal narratives that have defined my sense of identity–narratives in which perceptions of reality shatter, mutate, or hybridize when confronted with power, opportunity, or coercion. The installation component of the project consists of three parts. The first is an infrastructure made of wooden beams upon which paintings and images are installed; I call this the lantern. In the center of this is a round table on top of which is a nonsensical …

Martian Mother, Elizabeth Mcgrady

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between humans and land, through the lens of the scientific and religious, bridging the physical realm with the spiritual. It acts as accompanying material to the project titled Martian Mother, supplementary information to the visual work, and an extension of the proposal, the center of the work. The proposal exists to send myself, or a like-minded individual, to Mars with artificial insemination equipment to give birth to the first Martian, becoming the first Martian Mother. This work is rooted firmly in speculative fiction, creating a nonlinear future framework for a new society and space exploration.

How Many Licks, Ashley Goodwin

Theses and Dissertations

Arts communities are currently reevaluating and restructuring power dynamics within their systems to accommodate a broader range of experience and subjectivity. However, the forces of control are still largely dictated by a broader patriarchal culture. This complicated, tangled dynamic is the focus of my research. Female artists who make work about men or about patriarchy more generally, are consistently subjected to its influence as the dominant cultural experience—the invisible “truth” that everything either is, or acts in reaction to its position. In reality, patriarchy is no longer gender specific. I will be addressing my relationship to it as well as …

Parakupa Vena - Fall From The Highest Point, Mariana Parisca Englert

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of the ideas and research that drive my artistic practice. My research focuses on investigating the power structures, historical roots, and existential implications of the current Venezuelan economic crisis, one of the most drastic economic collapses of modern times. The ideological rifts created in the Cold War era created a deep anti-socialist sentiment that inhibits our ability to responsibly acknowledge global interdependence. I visualize collective belief systems that gain power from their proposed neutrality. I point to the existence of value beyond the parameters and measures of global capitalism that encourage dependence. I see the …

A Story About A Girl With Snakes For Hair, Kate M. Turner

Theses and Dissertations

My work is autobiographical. I use various art making processes to create a visual archive of my life. By abstracting these memories and experiences, I can examine how culture works surrounding issues of identity. This is my story.

Public School Art Teacher Autonomy In A Segregated City: Affordances And Contradictions, Albert Stabler, Jorge R. Lucero

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Over the past two decades, the Chicago Public Schools have seen a lot of change. First there was the opening of magnet schools, and other gestures at reform, followed by school closures and the flourishing of charter schools. In this essay, two former Chicago art teachers, one who taught in a prominent college prep magnet high school on the north side, and one who taught in an under-resourced neighborhood high school on the south side, examine the commonalities of their otherwise divergent experiences, particularly with regard to the freedom allotted to both them and their students by the administrative affordances …

(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner

Theses and Dissertations

(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.