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Urban Illusions, Haley R. Hatfield Jan 2017

Urban Illusions, Haley R. Hatfield

LSU Master's Theses

Urban Illusions is an immersive and interactive documentary experience that curates moments of reality in virtual environments to educate and expose viewers to a string of social and political issues that have been exposed in Baton Rouge. These moments also reflect a transformative time across the United States. The research and exhibition experiments with 360-degree videos and virtual reality to document issues occurring from racial tension stemming from prejudicial police violence and residual segregation that is still present in Baton Rouge. The intent of this work is to establish a methodology benefiting from modern technology in order to document real …


After;Life, Morgan Lynn Anderson Jan 2017

After;Life, Morgan Lynn Anderson

LSU Master's Theses

After;life is an exploration of the time and space between life and death. The installation, created from dozens of woodcut prints, creates this imaginary place, and encompasses viewers through sight, smell, sound, and touch. All elements of this installation are heavily influenced by Southern Louisiana culture and wildlife, and are meant to be familiar enough to provoke personal memory and experience. A set of rituals in the form of three poems, corresponding to three different spirit guides: The Black Dog, The Alligator, and The Opossum, lead the reader through the space from life, through liminal, into death.


Lines, Tina Korani Jan 2017

Lines, Tina Korani

LSU Master's Theses

Sometimes one is unaware of one thing: a rule, a boundary, a difference — all of which we cannot see with our eyes, but learning certainly present. When one rcognizes the reality of it, decisions are made. Those decisions shape the world as we know it. “Beyond the Lines” is an exploratory project that aims to increase one’s awareness and reveal that humans are whole beings that can surpass barriers that life places in front of them. This thesis explores human connections and separations, by using the concept of dots and lines, in ways both literally and metaphorical. Through visual …


Damon Hill, Elizabeth Welch Jan 2017

Damon Hill, Elizabeth Welch

LSU Master's Theses

“Damon Hill” acts as a physical record of the family folklore of a group of people formed by landscape and kinship. As a member of this group, I have translated my family’s stories into a visual narrative as a way to process my own identity in relation to our shared identity. The focus of “Damon Hill” rests primarily on the lives of my female predecessors, as a way for me to contribute their unique voice to the overarching feminine narrative. I incorporate the visual representation of traditionally feminine handicrafts in order to relay their stories through the primary means of …


Chronicle & Character, Taryn Moller Nicoll Jan 2017

Chronicle & Character, Taryn Moller Nicoll

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis paper, I argue that the works in the exhibition 'Chronicle & Character' aim to demonstrate artistic citizenship and can contribute positively to society by provoking conversation about universally applicable (but often uncomfortable) topics. Experts such as David J. Elliot state that being an artistic citizen means that one’s concerns as an artist must shift from issues constrained to the artist alone to those of the artist’s surrounding community. The exhibition 'Chronicle & Character' contains works that serve as detailed chronicles of the medical or physiological experiences of my loved ones. This body of work presents how three …


Trace, Naomi Katy Louise Clement Jan 2017

Trace, Naomi Katy Louise Clement

LSU Master's Theses

The pots in the exhibition Trace speak both to my desire to belong, to connect to my beginnings, and yet to still trace my own path forward; they are about making connections and missing connections. Through these pots I ask questions of myself and the world around me in an attempt to negotiate the edges of my life. How do I feel connected and present in my own life and relationships? How do I feel connected to my family and my roots, while still finding my own path? What does it mean to belong in a family that is divided …


Gotta Catch 'Em All, Jennifer Lynn Lombardi Jan 2016

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 …


Truss Damage, Hira Tariq Jan 2016

Truss Damage, Hira Tariq

LSU Master's Theses

Truss Damage examines negative cultural restrictions are imposed on family structures. It is an exploration of experimental and interactive narratives formed within virtual and real spaces. My research and implementation includes creating multisensory experiences through immersive technologies. With the use of devices such as Microsoft's Kinect controller, large LCD panels, and framed digital prints I am to bringing forth fragments of my past in order to create an interactive experience through movement and discovery of symbolic features.


Momentary Eddies, Leah Marie Hamel Jan 2016

Momentary Eddies, Leah Marie Hamel

LSU Master's Theses

Our lives are in a constant state of change, from the most intimate scale physically and emotionally to the world surrounding us externally. The relationships we build with ourselves, others, and the world surrounding us are important structures we carry with us throughout life. Momentary Eddies is a visual poem about the interconnectedness of our inner and outer landscapes. I have created a hauntingly dreamlike space that explores a landscape of emotions that are an entangled part of personal intimate relationships and how the emotional and physical topographies of these relationships connect to the environment surrounding us. These paper sculptures …


This Is Only Temporary, Melanie Robyn Wall Jan 2016

This Is Only Temporary, Melanie Robyn Wall

LSU Master's Theses

This is only Temporary examines my personal history of homes as reimagined spaces. The series of prints in the exhibition depicts reconstructed memories of houses. These visual narratives give context to the installation constructed from handmade paper and raw materials. The framework is reminiscent of housing plans that converge into a labyrinth. Participants actively engage the space, navigating the confined structure. A playful nature runs throughout the prints and installation reflecting upon reinterpreted memories within transitional spaces.


Intimate Immensities, Jonathan Walker Wright Jan 2016

Intimate Immensities, Jonathan Walker Wright

LSU Master's Theses

The works in the “Intimate Immensities” series of landscape paintings function as “aporia,” or irresolvable contradictions. Using two aspects of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic designations of the sign: the “icon” and “index,” these paintings function as both iconographic representations of mankind’s spiritual connection with nature and indexical relics of the creative process as ritual. The foundational view out of which the work emerges is grounded in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. This thesis correlates Vajrayana Buddhism, ritual and the creative process, by explaining the parallels between ritual and the cognition that occurs during the creative process. To do …


Co-Ward: Records Of A Fugitive Heart, Melodie Serena Reay Jan 2016

Co-Ward: Records Of A Fugitive Heart, Melodie Serena Reay

LSU Master's Theses

Co-ward: Records of a Fugitive Heart is a collection of objects that are themselves collections of events both internal and external. Each object, hand-made and/or un-made, is a record of a moment of vulnerability, in regards to moving away from, or towards, another.


Conversation, Tajreen Akter Jan 2016

Conversation, Tajreen Akter

LSU Master's Theses

My goal is to catch the moment in my paintings, whether it is an event from my busy everyday life or a slow formal arrangement of objects, that studies composition, light, color and movement. The drastic change in my life, traveling from Bangladesh to the United States, inspired me to render important small, quiet, little moments of my daily life by painting them. The intimacy of this connection is very important to me.


A Crow And A Hanger, Kelsey Ann-Morgan Livingston Jan 2016

A Crow And A Hanger, Kelsey Ann-Morgan Livingston

LSU Master's Theses

A Crow and A Hanger is a body of work that explores and illustrates the nature of life and death through the use of mixed-media drawing and printmaking techniques. My intention for this work, and this thesis paper, is to explain my thought process and how the imagery came to be. For me it is not at all important for every viewer to fully understand each image and the thoughts that went into the body as a whole. I let the images and their titles lead the viewer in a general direction and allow for their personal history and biases …


The Veil, Eric Richard Euler Jan 2015

The Veil, Eric Richard Euler

LSU Master's Theses

The Veil is a print media exhibition exploring the politics surrounding internet and internet related technologies and how they shape our identity. All of the works shift within a satirical and enigmatic visual language which accumulates to form a critique of our online habits and rituals. My work is driven by questions surrounding digital identity, privacy, data mining, narcissism, and commodity fetishism. How is the internet changing us as people and consumers? What are the repercussions of frivolously sharing private information online? And how are new government bills affecting our freedom online? Gallery visitors will encounter the hand-pulled print in …


Between-Space: Bungalows And Shadows Of Spanish Town, Anna Carey Aldridge Jan 2015

Between-Space: Bungalows And Shadows Of Spanish Town, Anna Carey Aldridge

LSU Master's Theses

In Spanish Town, the fabrics of the patterned streets are cross-stitched with roots of mature trees providing an airy canopy to the neighborhood below. I live in a space on the second floor of a cubed structure situated only a few steps between a small one-way street and a row of unkempt brush imitating a flowerbed. With its relationship to the street, the house seems to stand above the surrounding pitched roofs of one-story rectangles. Behind the house, you will find a light blue-gray staircase ascending to a small porch floor mounted in the trees. There is something warm and …


A Charming Re(A)D, Chelsea Ramirez Jan 2015

A Charming Re(A)D, Chelsea Ramirez

LSU Master's Theses

A Charming Re(a)d is an MFA Thesis Exhibition portraying the domestic still life surrounding the human emotional attachments to objects. A residual memory surfaces within a specific gathering of things: a moment that resonates over time becoming peculiarly precious in the daily routine. A Charming Re(a)d combines poetry with experimental collages with paint and a ceramic sculptural sound installation all rooted in drawing. Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons and pieces of the artist’s own written text appear as descriptive, abstract prose that define mundane objects with substance. These elements come together to further commemorate the domestic home. The written portion is …


She Pricked Her Finger, Veronica Kay Hallock Jan 2015

She Pricked Her Finger, Veronica Kay Hallock

LSU Master's Theses

She Pricked Her Finger transports the viewer into a landscape of the bucolic and the macabre. Large scale sculptures and drawings create a panorama-environment which explores ideas of familial and geographical identity through themes of mortality and loss. Her work utilizes a self-generated folktale as a vehicle for expressing her experiences with new landscapes and many family deaths. Ultimately Veronica’s work reconciles the transition of home; the journey we take from our childhood home to the new homes we build.


Facing Reality, Mitchell Patrick Hobbs Jan 2015

Facing Reality, Mitchell Patrick Hobbs

LSU Master's Theses

Facing Reality is a show of landscape paintings and drawings of Baton Rouge, executed mostly through direct observation. Working this way has allowed me to slow down and specifically engage my surroundings and the physical locations that are compelling to me. I am interested in being open to the possibilities provided by experience, and using what I find to create meaningful, honest, and visually poetic pictures.


A Peculiar Paradigm Of Perpetual Parallax, Randi Marie Willett Jan 2015

A Peculiar Paradigm Of Perpetual Parallax, Randi Marie Willett

LSU Master's Theses

Reality estranges as an encumbrance, a cage that traps with its clipped wings, layered veils, and stiff blankets. This hold subsists as an immovable vessel potted but never earthbound—mounted in a strained compartment, like jars with tight lids, lacking: in air, in breath, in imaginary attributes. Finally, with a last breath, an emergence blooms upon that which contextualizes momentary “reality” or rather that which defines a metaphorical escape from… actuality. My singular endeavor is to escape. My momentary escape is found in the illusory. My illusion is a perception of reality and with this perception I find my singular endeavor... …


Nature's Geometry, Lin Feng Jan 2015

Nature's Geometry, Lin Feng

LSU Master's Theses

The beauty of the natural world, from the literal to the abstract: color, texture, shape, sounds, plant structure and anatomy, has continuously been the source of inspiration for artists and graphic designers. Our natural environment provides a readily available resource as a basis of visual study and exploration to develop a unique visual language and construct compelling work. Therefore, the aim of my thesis investigation is to create a new visual language and communication based on the inherent beauty within nature and geometric forms found in nature. I began my investigation by developing a family of symbols based on natural …


This Is My Attempt To Hold On, Kimberly Reneé Jones Jan 2015

This Is My Attempt To Hold On, Kimberly Reneé Jones

LSU Master's Theses

I am an identical twin. The connection I share with my twin sister is intense and immediate. But now, we live over 800 miles apart. This Is My Attempt To Hold On serves as a visual metaphor for the longing for the undiluted rapport we have when we are together, and the frustrations of communicating with her through a digital device. I am constantly dissatisfied with my attempts to connect with her. I watch myself, my words, and my thoughts become diffused through the pixels. The work exists as composites of various mediums, creating a dialogue between photography, printmaking, sculpture, …


Layered Recollections, Jennifer Elizabeth Hager Jan 2014

Layered Recollections, Jennifer Elizabeth Hager

LSU Master's Theses

Layered Recollections is an installation of functional pottery that evokes feelings of nostalgia and longing associated with the home environment. I am interested in creating memories through the use of pottery. It is my intention to make work that creates happiness in the user’s lives and brings joy to everyday routines through floral imagery. Each installation in the exhibition references an area in the home.


Built To Play, Forrest Sincoff Gard Jan 2014

Built To Play, Forrest Sincoff Gard

LSU Master's Theses

Built to Play is an interactive art exhibition featuring four participatory installations. Each installation transforms non-playful objects and activities into handmade porcelain replicas used for exciting gallery made games. Focusing on the carry over from child’s play to adult play the exhibition emphasizes the importance of play in our adult lives. As gallery visitors risk breaking handmade ceramic objects for a moment of fun and a chance to win art as a prize, their interaction completes the exhibition.


Wonderland, Jeremy Joseph Grassman Jan 2014

Wonderland, Jeremy Joseph Grassman

LSU Master's Theses

Wonderland is a film about a fictitious, alternate dark society, free of original thought and action. The people toil day to day in a mechanized fashion. All characters are predictable and unquestioning except for our protagonist. He seems to think something is not quite right, and possibly he discovers it too late. Wonderland is a world in which the people work, sleep and repeat this procedure daily with no end until retirement. The story takes place on the last day before our hero’s retirement. What is the next adventure to come? It must be better than the past comprised of …


Playschool, James S. Nord Jan 2014

Playschool, James S. Nord

LSU Master's Theses

Playschool is heavily influenced by my tactile way of learning. Each sculpture is a visual way of communicating my story. Traditionally, words are the primary tools used in learning and communication. However, from a very early age I discovered that my auditory processing disability and dyslexia made expressing ideas through words and the written language very difficult. It was a challenge for me to understand how words fit together to make compete sentences, and I struggled throughout my education to find a successful means of communicating my thoughts and ideas about the world around me. What came naturally to me …


A Meal Denied, Sarah Kolac Jan 2014

A Meal Denied, Sarah Kolac

LSU Master's Theses

The photographs in the series A Meal Denied offer a unique portrait into the lives of individuals currently serving as Texas Death Row inmates. In 2011, due to an extravagant meal request by an inmate, Senator John Whitmire sought to put an end to the last meal requests in Texas. Whitmire stated, "It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege." However, I disagree with Whitmire; every inmate on Death Row should not be denied one of the only choices they will perhaps ever have during their incarceration in prison due to one particular inmates' …


Urban Monuments, David V. Contreras Jan 2014

Urban Monuments, David V. Contreras

LSU Master's Theses

Surviving in poverty in an urban environment is hard work. Fear of not having basic needs creates desperation, and not being able to improve upon these conditions can test ones patience and faith in others. The simple routine of daily life can be monumental. Small achievements can be huge moments for some and irrelevant to others. One learns to appreciate and hate what one has. Urban Monuments comes from a struggle to understand what painting is to me and the relationship it has with this idea. Working hard to better ones self or ones situation is a noble cause but …


Drugged Paranoia And Warlust, Nathan Pietrykowski Jan 2014

Drugged Paranoia And Warlust, Nathan Pietrykowski

LSU Master's Theses

Drugged Paranoia and Warlust are stories of human depravity and violence that happened on an abandoned U.S. military base in the rural world of Indiana. These tales are told through a series of prints, drawings, animation and a comic. Scenes of bombings, mass graves, and drug overdoses are presented as humorous cartoons in playful colors to subvert the viewer into exploring imagery that discusses serious and somewhat bleak issues. The work in this exhibition is both satire of absurd events and trying to find meaning amongst madness.


Identifying Ways Of Effective Communication Focused On Public Campaign Design, Ki Ho Park Jan 2014

Identifying Ways Of Effective Communication Focused On Public Campaign Design, Ki Ho Park

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to identify the most effective way of communication in cause-related campaign design. The fundraising campaign selected for this study focused on children’s leukemia, “Draw a Message of Hope.” The five types of public campaign design were developed utilizing different elements and techniques of visual communication: (1) image plus text, (2) infographics, (3) motion graphics, (4) typography, and (5) description only. Each type of public campaign design was assessed in terms of (1) the extent to which audiences understand about the campaign and (2) the extent to which the materials encouraged the audience to participate …