Digital Commons Network^™

Slick And Lumpy : Heavy Cream, Emma Fague

Masters Theses

A conversation with myself. A look inside my mind, process, and feelings. Slick and Lumpy. Creamy, oozing, leaking, dripping. Poured, molded, and sewn. Not a body, but my body, big and bursting and spilling out. Two things placed next to each other and observed. Lots of dessert, frosting, squishing, covering. A conversation with a painting, with a building technique. Fetish and healing, leather, vinyl, latex. Private and public space. Identity, imposter syndrome, digital fabrication. Combining and subtracting and stuffing. Is it appealing, sexy, charming, or revolting, ugly and gross?

Erik Degiorgi, Erik Degiorgi

Masters Theses

Where I started two years ago is a very different place from where I am today. At the outset of my time at RISD I knew very little about what it meant to be a designer. I lacked confidence, yet still entered this program with strict ideas about the nature and outcome of my work.

Over the course of four traditional semesters and two winter sessions, I gradually moved away from my original, self-imposed fears and constraints. Not coincidentally, my work expanded into areas I had not conceived of previously. It has been an illuminating journey, and while I am …

Internal Resonance, Xiangyu Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the interaction between my inside and outside worlds. It includes my discussion towards Zen methodology, homeostasis, nature, antiquity, inner order and the concept of Qi. It can also be seen as a process that scrutinizes my daily life and looks deep into those things which slowly echo in my body and push me to make my own response.

You Are Trapped., Will Chouinard

Masters Theses

YOU’RE TRAPPED. YOU CAN SEE THE EXIT BUT YOU CAN’T GET TO IT. EVERY TIME YOU MOVE, YOU RISK CUTTING YOURSELF ON THE SHARP EDGES OF THE TRANSLUCENT WALLS, SO YOU DON’T. YOU’RE STARTING TO SWEAT. NOT MOVING MAKES YOU INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE. YOU’RE BREATHING HEAVILY. YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE ABOUT TO PASS OUT, BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE IF YOU DO YOU KNOW THAT IT’S ALL OVER. SO YOU FORCE YOURSELF TO STAY AWAKE. THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN ON YOU. YOU HAVE TO MAKE A MOVE. TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH. IN AN UNHUMAN EFFORT, YOU REACH UP TO THE …

The Line, Hannah Oatman

Masters Theses

The Line is a series of exaggerated contemporary jewelry “products” that engage the audience through collecting, marketing, and nostalgia. It grew from a dissatisfaction with the world of “contemporary jewelry,” or “art jewelry,” or “author jewelry,” or whatever people are calling the field now (assuming they’re calling it anything).

The Line pushes against the rarely questioned conventions of contemporary jewelry by playing along with them (sometimes even playing a little rough).

This work intentionally walks on the lines between jewelry and art, and between art and product: lines that exist whether we want them to or not, but which can …

Re: Ornament, Aleks Dawson

Masters Theses

Re:Ornament calls for a rethinking of ornament within the history and practice of design, urging a broad reconsideration of ornament’s value and a complete reimagining of ornament’s future potential. Charting the arc of ornament in the Western tradition, this thesis reexamines the impact of modernism’s rejection of ornament—and, with it, its embedded culture, history, knowledge and craft.

Studying ornament’s structure as a language, I make the case for ornament’s inherent beauty and excess and speculate on how ornament could apply to thinking and making beyond design. Through graphic form, material exploration and pattern thinking, I …

A Material Cooperation Over Time, Diana Marcela Gallo

Masters Theses

The use of materials like clay, concrete and biomaterials have given a meaning and identity to the outcomes we produce through time. Materials absorb and release energy that passes through them. Transformation processes in materials can be revealed when they get in touch with a phenomenon like infiltration of water. Changing stages in materials and weathering, should not be considered as a negative condition but as a new opportunity to feel and perceive the same surface differently.

The illusion of permanence should be replaced by a more fluid idea that nothing lasts or keeps the same condition forever. Since all …

About Intimacy, Jiamin Lin

Masters Theses

Imagine that there is a person who goes everywhere carrying a chair. From the moment she places her chair down on the ground, this action defines a space around her. The shape of this invisible entity keeps changing. However, I still feel a specific way of “closure”. My thesis started from this moment, about defining intimacy.

Time may be translated into measures of movement and occupancies of space. Film and architecture both mobilize spatial and temporal modes of perception. My exploration of spatial intimacy started from filming the interaction between human being and larger entities. It exploits the filmic capacity …

Hain't, Jarrett Key

Masters Theses

Jarrett Key’s thesis book examines their journey towards understanding their freedom through three lenses: Survival, Transformation and Celebration. Through pointed excavation of the oral histories and lost stories of their upbringing in rural Alabama, their work presents critiques of the historical conditions that sowed the seeds of their contemporary personhood, while simultaneously creating spaces to celebrate beauty, joy, and survival. The objects Key builds perform their freedom and are crafted from materials that reference pieces of their own personal narrative. Highlighting works from Leaving the City (oil paintings on cement), the Hot Comb (forged black steel sculptures), and Slave Ship/ESP …