Digital Commons Network^™

Arabesque, Zafirah Ahmed

CGU MFA Theses

This paper talks about my MFA Thesis Exhibition : Arabesque. It discusses my usage of pattern and how I am exploring pattern in its historical context, against the repetition of societal patterns in various spaces. Through the use of created symbols in paintings, and installation work.

Rhythms Of Light, Jessica R. Csanky

CGU MFA Theses

My works are visual expressions of a true love for movement, rhythm, and saturated color. In making art, I present lived experiences that are rendered abstract. These formal representations originate from an energetic space or sensory association and express a connection to places I have been, whether physically or emotionally.

Integral to my practice is the uninhibited exploration of materials and tools. I am committed to deepening my understanding of what paint can do when combined with drawing and installation techniques.

My compositions address architecture, landscape, memory, as well as psychological and physical spaces that we move through during our …

Artist Statement, Chaoyi Wu

CGU MFA Theses

I make my work to create an experience for the viewer, so that they can have their own experience of their world. Their bodies interact with my pieces to re-recognize themselves and their lives. In this experience their body is independent of everything else but their awareness. Their sense of movement, their vision and their tactile sensations come together into my artwork for them to have their own experience. This is what I call self-body awareness.

I Promise, Maya Luque

CGU MFA Theses

This exhibition is about Chinese burial sites and the practices that accompany the loss of a loved one. The Chinese have a practice where they build large earthen mounds as burial sites; they then visit the sites of their ancestors once a year. I have made my own burial site out of beeswax-dipped paper, which I have then stitched together, like a quilt, to form a hollow version of this mound. In traditional Western home economics quilt making is important; in my installation I use the stitch work to represent a home. In this installation my aim is for the …

Leveraging Sound, Space And Visual Art In An Installation, Ryan Karle

CMC Senior Theses

Because of my distrust for self-expression through verbal language, my pursuit thus far in art has been to discover a satisfactory means of self-expression. In study of the work I’ve created across all mediums, through poetry, music and visual art, this desire for a satisfactory outlet of self-expression has resulted in a drive to create meaning through combining mediums. Throughout this semester, my interest in mixed mediums has resulted largely in experimentation with the combination of music and visual art, as well as exploring the standalone merit of each. This also entails a study of their overlaps, cooperative influence, and …

Vida En Sombras, Tommy Canales Burns

CGU MFA Theses

Verisimilitude. What is reality? Subconsciously we are acting out and absorbing information collating data and in turn responding with instincts. Learning processes to view and shape this world. I think of the Hermann Hesse’s doppelganger, the idea of a shadow self. Group identities can also have strange shadow selves. It is bizarre to look back at history and see the changing context of social norms, fashions, traditions, scientific, philosophical, and political thought. Art is a sign of the times, creating space for the inner dialogue of collective consciousness to be purged and hashed out.

When I'M With You, Jenny Ziomek

CGU MFA Theses

Everything I make is related to books. My artwork functions as visual storyboards or is used directly in books. Props and videos are inspiration for drawings. My paintings are meant to feel like pages from a larger narrative. Often, the formats through which stories are told are as important as the stories themselves.

Kimono, Elizabeth D. Hoffman

CGU MFA Theses

Globalization opens up opportunities for the international community to push for freedom of expression. It is precisely because the history of kimonos is a multi-cultural one, invented by the Chinese, then adapted and adopted by the Japanese, then altered by Western colonialists and changed as it permutated from the aristocracy to the middle class and to laborers, that I felt that it was relevant to today and the cross-cultural influences of globalization. This summer, I purchased two authentic Japanese kimonos, (one an everyday cotton one to use as a model for my drawings, and the second, an elaborate silk one …

Unreliable Narrators, Rebekah Manikowski

Scripps Senior Theses

Unreliable Narrators is a record of the process to create a mixed media installation about how and why we tell stories, and how we as an audience discern the truth of those stories. The installation tells three different perspectives of the same story. Part documentary and part detective search, this project has viewers following the subject as she pieces together her story and ultimately has them deciding for themselves what to believe.

Temporary Shelter, Renae Barnard

CGU MFA Theses

My work considers the ways in which gender performance, desire and objectification are inter-related through power structures. I’m interested in indulging in the pleasure and tactility of making while exploring the network of interactions between perception, time and the inadequacy of language.

Many of my sculptures are worked within inches of collapse and reflect my attraction to the imperfect and the aged. These folded, twisted, and sewn objects are both destroyed by and reinforced with the repetitive gestures by which they are made. These works wrestle with demonstrations of femininity and normative methods of valuation while investigating concerns like anxiety, …

Cribbed, Alice Marie Perreault

CGU MFA Theses

This installation consists of a dozen works of art in mixed and multi media. Materials include stainless, paper, plastic, wood, papier maché, wire, rubber, latex, baby teeth, acrylic paint, glass paint, oil paint, dyes, watercolor, light and video.

The space is divided much like the individual pieces of art in a symmetrical compartmentalized format. Spot lighting provides a vignette experience. Light from the video flickers in the far corner, but the screen is not visible from the entrance. Audio from the video is apparent.

CRIBBED

I chose CRIBBED for the title of the show for its multiple meanings. It is …

Three Squares A Day, Suzanne U. Gibbs

CGU MFA Theses

Link to thesis on-line: http://suzannegibbs.com/portfolio/mfa-thesis-three-squares-a-day-2

Isolated Infinite, Kelsey M. Kimmel

CGU MFA Theses

I explore the relationship between human borders and digital space. The porous borders between these entities shape contemporary culture and identity. Amid the digital current, I find myself over-stimulated, fighting to stay afloat through multitasking, immediacy and cramming. My sculptural installations investigate how I see, experience, interact with and react to digital space.

Verdurous, Adrian R. Culverson

CGU MFA Theses

Adrian Culverson is a painter and sculptor who uses mixed media to create installations that focus on splices of real and imagined worlds.

Gmo, Scott M. Jamieson

CGU MFA Theses

My work revolves around various interactions that occur when disparate media occupy the same space. This interplay begins in the making of the individual pieces. Whether it is ceramics, sculpture, or painting, I first consider the basic materials involved and their physical attributes. Then, I either accentuate these elements by building them up or bring them to some kind of breaking point by increasing the stress upon them. It is in this process of forming that I make decisions on how the work will interact within the space it occupies. Moving between the media's materiality and the space the works …

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 …

Working Title, Nathanael Thomas Little

CGU MFA Theses

(Working Title) is an exploration into the interaction of the idea spaces of installation art and the theme park, through Nate Little's narrative environment of Arboria. Plush Characters populate an environment that fills the gallery space.

Lumen Essence, Brian Thomas Jones

CGU MFA Theses

I am intrigued by power relationships among the physical, psychological and political realms of experience. The various ways we respond to both the voluntary and involuntary restrictions of power ignite the ideas behind my investigations. The examination of power dynamics utilizing scale, spectacle and theatricality is what excites my process.

By providing an environment for immersive visceral participation, I invite the visitor to collaborate in the process of art-making through their human interaction with the formal constructions of the exhibition. Engaging the visitor in an activated, sensate experience is the artistic objective. The visitor's willingness to slow down the art …

Adenine Uracil Guanine: An Exploration Of Certainty In Science, Alicia M. Hendrix

Scripps Senior Theses

Collaboration and communication between conventionally diverse fields can allow for deeper understanding and clearer analysis of the concepts within each. Two fields traditionally seen as dichotomous are those of art and science. Historically they approach problems in opposite ways. However, I would argue that they in fact investigate very similar questions, hoping to discover the ways that the world works. It makes sense, then, that historically these fields have sometimes been able to interact. Artists have engaged with science by creating work through scientific processes including crossbreeding flowers, genetically modifying organisms, and sequencing nucleotides. Others have referenced scientific ideas, like …

Andre Goeritz Mfa Thesis Statement, Andre M. Goeritz

CGU MFA Theses

I strive to make objects of no complicity--arranging smaller parts to create larger forms, or allowing the combination of parts to allude to narratives without linearity, foreshadowing, point of entry, point of attack, conflict, context, or catharsis; a state of sustained stillness until equilibrium is no longer a desired result, at which point the parts of the whole can be dismantled, reconfigured, made anew. I think about words, rhythm, inflection, resonance or timbre, vocal dissonance, dismembered disjointed utterances, and repetition--somatic impulses guided by intent. Intention translates into action--an act of will, a willful act, an act of willful intent--a marker …

Stories Of Loss And Gain, Amy L. Huynh

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about the inevitability of change and the concomitant longing for stability. It explores various manifestations of loss – death, physical distance, erasure – and the desire to hold tight to something that is already passing. The videos in this body of work convey intensely personal narratives about cultural assimilation, sexual orientation, and departure, in hopes that my own vulnerability can reveal something that is not identity-specific but human. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Jane Gillespie Pryor Mfa Thesis Statement, Jane Gillespie Pryor

CGU MFA Theses

Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.