Digital Commons Network^™

Dirty Talking Cracked Pots: Inferring Function And Use Of Decorated Ceramic Bowls At Fourmile Ruin, Az, Heather E. Bullock

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I discuss the function and use of decorated ceramic bowls at Fourmile Ruin, a Pueblo IV site located in east-central Arizona. My research focused on three wares dating to the Pueblo IV period of the American Southwest (AD 1275-1450): White Mountain Red Ware, Salado Polychrome, and Jeddito Yellow Ware. These wares represent the most abundant type of decorated ceramic bowls found at Fourmile Ruin. Ceramic wares and types are described, followed by a description of their physical and stylistic characteristics and functions, an analysis of how vessels were used, and, lastly, a discussion of the contexts within …

"Untitled", Janet Rose Engel-Julian

All Student Theses

The emotions from memories and the passing of time can be an intriguing thing. The more time that passes the more difficult it can be to remember details thus changing the memory. The more people who share a specific memory,the more memories may exist,yet each person’s recognition of the event may vary. When family members recall a childhood event, they can have a plethora of viewpoints and interpretations all depending on the time passed and roles played along with previous life experiences.

For centuries,history was recorded orally through ceremony and storytelling, and some cultures also involved the sharing of food. …

Current, Virginia Pfau

Theses

I am fascinated by the relationship of modern humans to the natural world, and the ways in which the technology we produce has both positive and negative impacts on it. I want to use my work to create a non-biased, beautiful environment in which others can also contemplate this subject. Clay is an important material not only for its elemental symbolism of earth, but also for its long ties to human craft and culture. Plastics are advanced synthetic materials with various ecologically constructive and destructive aspects in a field with increasing emphasis on environmental sustainability. The synthesis of these two …

Fleeting, Alysia Grummert

Theses

Fleeting, is a wall installation composed of individual slabs of porcelain inspired by the forms of the foliage that grew on the farm where I was raised. The seemingly wind-blown elements of this work are lightly textured and blushed with muted tints of color. This work celebrates a quiet, fragile beauty through the use of delicate, rhythmic forms. Some of the forms appear to take flight as they emerge from the wall. The mood of this piece expresses a season moving on. The arrangement of this wall piece captures a sense of migration as the eye is directed to follow …

Ceramic Resource Selection And Social Violence In The Gallina Area Of The American Southwest, Connie Constan

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines the relationship between social violence and ceramic resource procurement. Do people in middle-range societies alter resource use in response to conflict? Specifically, does social strife influence the distance to which potters in middle-range societies will travel to collect ceramic resources? Distance and quality are primary elements in clay selection. Clay is heavy, so for many potters distance is the determining factor in clay selection (Arnold 1985, 2000). Arnold (1985, 2000) estimated procurement thresholds using worldwide ethnographic data from 111 traditional societies. He found that for both clays and tempers, people prefer to travel only one kilometer, but …

A Voice From The Dust, Gian Pierotti

Theses and Dissertations

We shall not starve. We shall not lack shelter. We shall have a hearth. Awake self reliance! Our art is for feeding, warmth, protection. Ceramics– our temporal salvation. Clay– our material life-force. Transformed by fire we arise with the skills of the ancients! No longer will we live in obscurity. To the deskilled, your fate is at hand! You have chosen alienation, distraction, banality, and sloth. Embrace your digital false Gods and die or be reborn to the natural physical world. Now, together we complete our reason for being. We create a new world of kinship. A hope for the …

An Exploration Of The Earthen Feminine : The Vessel., Sharon Madison 1955-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Clay has been an integral part of my life from early childhood. The attempts of five-year-old hands to create vessels always ended up failures in my young eyes. Having had the blessings in my life to study under Richard Burns and the Master, Tom Marsh, I have learned to create, in permanency, the kinds of vessels my five-year-old heart yearned for. My exploration in the study of ceramics has been, and always will be, the center of my life in art. This exploration has brought me from the functional to an exaggeration of the functional. A way from the wheel, …

Catching Fire, Ian Robert Winsemius

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This support paper is intended to give both a technical and theoretical background for my thesis show. The primary exploration is wood firing and its ability to capture the flames movement in the kiln. This work is inspired by transient natural phenomena. I draw the comparison between the movement of the flame and as through the kiln, their ability to modify the surface of the vessels in the kiln, and the natural forces that shape geographic features in nature. The transient nature of flames can be captured and frozen on the surface of the works that I stack in the …

The Land Of Make-Believe, Lacey Bowman

Theses and Dissertations

My artwork represents the playful and imaginative phase of life I went through as a young child. My cluttered bedroom floor doubled as a castle courtyard for a princess and her ladies-in-waiting. The unused space in my parent’s garage operated as a gourmet restaurant open to serve the finest cuisine. The fancy skirts, jewelry, and shoes that filled my mother’s closet were the tools for creating my ultimate fantasyland, in which I was already a successful grown up. My work is meant to convey the make-believe mindset from my childhood. To this day, I am inspired by the fluttering excitement …

Day Jaw Boo, A Re-Collection, Rachel Vanwagoner

Theses and Dissertations

For my MFA thesis exhibition, I have collected ideas surrounding events that happened in the past and combined them with the ceramic work I have made in the three years of my master's program at Brigham Young University. I have grouped visual elements from Buck Rogers and other Futro (retro-future) pop-culture with ideas surrounding the Voyager Interstellar Mission and the compiling of the Golden Record. Combining these elements in an installation, will create an environment where people can reflect on things they have "already seen" and envision a brighter future. For that reason I playfully call the show Day Jaw …

Small Gatherings, Sean O'Connell

Theses

My proposed avenue of study involves a focused investigation of ornament on functional pottery. More specifically how the use of embellishment enhances utility and assists in the creation of a context for communal experiences: gatherings of a colloquial, informal, or casual nature. More specifically, this body of work explores the archetypal forms of tableware and how they manifest under the auspice of `small gatherings'. In addition to the apparent characteristics of `use' and `appearance' there are also numerous possibilities that may intersect with the ideas of utility and decoration. The content of this work is embedded in historical modes and …

As I Recall..., Megan Gulland

Theses

This body of work presents a visual memoir of my childhood. Told through these self-portraits, this work captures the essence of my memories. Though the sculptures portray my present age as storyteller, the content comes from my childhood. I am exploring the roots of my love of storytelling by joining my passion for clay with the events of my past. The process of making these portraits, for me, closely reflects the process of growing up. In a similar way, as I built, I learned the limits and possibilities of the clay. Now, even as an adult I reflect on my …

Enumerate / Construct, Andrew Gilliatt

LSU Master's Theses

I am fascinated how we define and personalize ourselves through the objects we own and accumulate. It is my goal to make a collection of utilitarian pottery forms that through the use of color, form, and pattern, are cohesive in their variety, and are accessible as objects for daily use.

Wiggle Veil (Or, Love Needs Objects), Adrienne Lynch

LSU Master's Theses

The six sculptural works that comprise my thesis exhibition emerged from a prolonged series of investigations into the intricately interconnected phenomenon of embodied experience in the world as we know it. These works explore the connections between mysteries in our inner and outer worlds, taking as inescapable fact the notion that our bodily vessels, in all their complexity and subtlety, are the vehicles through which we encounter the world. As such, this work posits embodiment as both frame and anchor for all knowledge and experience. These sculptures, made from ceramic materials and mixed media such as sugar, salt, string, and …