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The Alchemy Of The Everyday, Nanda Soderberg
The Alchemy Of The Everyday, Nanda Soderberg
Theses and Dissertations
Everyday objects inspire and inform what I do. The personal histories and associations we may have with ordinary things are of great personal interest to me. Often times, these items reflect the social class, education, and background of the owners. I am drawn to these objects and the possibility of elevating them in a way that transcends their implied meanings (their worth, importance, and status). The transformation of the mundane is a method of working that allows associations to remain intact while bringing new meaning and perspective to the object. My method of working becomes an alchemic process aimed at …
This Art Is For The Birds, Shawn Earl Heller
This Art Is For The Birds, Shawn Earl Heller
Theses and Dissertations
I use bright colors to portray birds. Typically, the birds are modeled after herons, peacocks, woodpeckers, and roadrunners. I am interested in the curvilinear forms or colorful plumage of these birds. Why birds? I wonder that myself. The rational part of me wants to know why I use bird imagery, while the intuitive side of me likes the fact that if is unknown, I haven't been able to answer that burning question. In my sculpture, wire connectors, kitchen funnels, electrical tape, caps, marker parts, cleaning bottles, and watering cans are just some of the many plastic items I use. In …
Reunion: A Journey Through History, Symbolism, And Fear, Vanessa Laure Fassie
Reunion: A Journey Through History, Symbolism, And Fear, Vanessa Laure Fassie
Theses and Dissertations
The contents here in examine the artistic process undertaken by Vanessa Fassie to create the mixed media work, reunion. The subjects of fear, archetypal symbolism, personal and collective histories were examined through research, archival evidence, video, sound, movement, and installation. reunion, examines not only the powers of personal and collective histories through the symbolic language of archetypes, but also how fear manifests and evolves through time. The culmination of this work was the creation of an installation within the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University. This Thesis was created through the use of Microsoft Word 2004.
Lucidity, Sarah Rebekah Byrd Mizer
Lucidity, Sarah Rebekah Byrd Mizer
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis focuses on space, the in-between-ness that exists amidst mental and physical experience. Pith explains personal attachments and rooting systems. The thesis continues with Blessing, narrating love then loss, and finishes with a recipe for making a tomato sandwich. Blessing is followed by Materialize, a collective view of cyclical learning and meandering paths. Finally, the paper concludes with a quirky Women and Swarovski encrusted skulls, which matter-of-factly lists artists (all of whom happen to be women) whose works I find particularly compelling; and also notes on general trends in art I find interesting in a much less obvious manner. …
Intervals, Knox Garvin Iii
Intervals, Knox Garvin Iii
Theses and Dissertations
I prefer to make my work specifically for an exhibition about a place. I'll spend days, sometimes months, exploring this place without preconceptions - walking the roads or trails or fields, falling in love with aspects of the landscape, considering questions the place suggests before I begin to contemplate how to make them into images. The actual making of images helps me to refine thought that is often elusive, contradictory, or enigmatic. Each pinhole photograph, painting, sketchbook, found object, sculpture, or drawing provides its own tools for reflection. Over time, these processes form hundreds of images. Some will begin to …
Creative Matrix, Bonnie Gay Mcginn
Creative Matrix, Bonnie Gay Mcginn
Theses and Dissertations
My personal life experiences are reflected in my art. I use symbolic and expressive marks in developing my abstract imagery, which acts as a visual language. The combining of my past and current art work, fused together, has become what I call a creative matrix. I see my images as choreographed compositions using a mixed media approach. The open-ended interpretation of my art have expanded the never ending possibilities of creation.
In Search Of The Ooey Gooey Good, Lauren Ashley Clay
In Search Of The Ooey Gooey Good, Lauren Ashley Clay
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores ideas of everydayness, the mundane, and the repetitive emptiness of consumer culture. It looks at the malaise that plagues everyday life and examines several attempts throughout history to break from its grips which revolve around a search for a more ideal state. This research includes utopias of modernism, the transcendental, the communal living of Shakers and Early Christians, ascetic monks and The Desert Fathers. These ideas have shaped my studio practice as I construct installations based on worlds which allude to the eternal, the otherworldly, and the fragility of our physical world when compared to more eternal …
Toward A New Kinship Constellation, Nellie Helen Frances Appleby
Toward A New Kinship Constellation, Nellie Helen Frances Appleby
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis attempts to elaborate on my artwork during my graduate studies, while contextualizing it within the framework of the art world and the works of other artists. A main project during this time was to minimize the singular interpretation and framing of a fine art photographic print, while expanding its possibilities of meaning through the addition of important ephemera and objects such as plants, drawings, moving imagery, conversation and the unknown.