Digital Commons Network^™

Pop-A-Washington, Sam Posso

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This paper discuses the idea generation that lead to the MFA exhibition: Pop-A-Washington. The visual aspects and multi-sensory interactive installations mimic the coin operated automatons, video and sound displays, and wearable costume components of an obsolete roadside attraction. While new directions for the myths of George Washington are created based on believable lies, the concept of manmade time and the repetitive action associated with what we understand as mechanized time works against an age where the audience expects to experience all aspects of the exhibition as briefly as possible.

Growing Process, Mengjiao Wang

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

My MFA thesis exhibition, “growing process” is inspired by many occurrences in my life, and is especially influenced by my childhood memories. The artworks represent my loneliness and how I face and solve problems, which helped me mature as an adult. This monograph explores the shift and thought process in different life stages.

I join a long tradition of ceramic production in China by using clay as a meaningful material. Clay may contain soil, carcasses and leaves, which decompose in the earth. There is a saying in China that “fallen leaves return to the roots,” which suggests a return to …

Remembering Virtual Worlds: Painting And Video Games, Nathaniel M. St. Amour

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Video games create the feeling of great achievement and place the player into a role that turns them into a great hero. These experiences feel significant because they require great time and emotional investment. The monumentality of these experiences, however, are at odds with the transience of the electrical virtual worlds. The medium of oil painting helps overcome the sense of transience because of oil painting’s durable permanent way of image making and stillness. Painting’s inherent nod to history also creates a dissonance between the newness of the video game medium and the antiquity of painting, a contrast exacerbated by …

Material Poetics, Ellen G. Reid

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

quench: /kwen(t)SH/

a : put out, extinguish

b : to put out the light or fire

c : to cool suddenly by immersion

d : to cause to lose heat or warmth

e : to bring to an end typically by satisfying, damping, cooling, or

decreasing

f : to relieve or satisfy with liquid

This is often how projects begin, a haunting idea, word, or experience inundates my consciousness and sub-consciousness. How could the body directly relate to an experience of quenching? This provoked the idea of the extreme sport: freediving. To adequately depict the definition of quenching, any …

Hard Times; Hard Duties; Hard Hearts; The Volksgemeinschaft As An Indicator Of Identity Shift, Kaitlin Hampshire

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

How can one nation define an ideal community? The Reich’s Propaganda Ministry of Nazi Germany knew. No cultivation of community, or Volksgemeinschaft in the case of Nazi Germany, is complete without the use of propaganda. Nazi propaganda posters played several different roles in the formation of the community, such as maintaining the military, as well as labor forces not in the military, perpetuating anti-Soviet and anti-Jew feelings, creating the Führer myth, and gaining the support of Germany’s youth. All of the messages displayed in the posters identified the values of the members of the ‘National Community’ or Volksgemeinschaft.

Propaganda posters …

The Effects Of Differentiated Instruction On Student Engagement, Student Satisfaction, And Quality Of Student Artwork In The High School Art Classroom, Lindsey R. Perrault

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This study investigates the effects of differentiated instruction on student engagement, student satisfaction, and students’ perceived quality of artwork in the high school art classroom. In order to determine its effectiveness, students were presented a control and test lesson. The control lesson utilized limited differentiation, and students completed similar notes, projects and critiques. The Test Lesson incorporated multiple differentiated practices, including strategic grouping based on learning profile and interest. The test lesson also offered choices for student projects based on interest and readiness, and choices for a critique, based on interest and learning profile. Students completed a self assessment after …

Tried It With Glasses Off Too; Sometimes., Nolan John Fedorow

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

I use a small wedge of wood as a tool to pick out food scraps that find themselves lodged between my teeth. I also use a small wedge of wood as a tool to keep a straight door from swinging freely on a crooked house. The small wedge of wood I stuff in between the floor and door as a tool is a controlling apparatus, much like landowners who use fencing to keep people from walking repeatedly through their land and inadvertently creating a path where they shouldn’t. A wooden door stopper will come to adorn a perpendicular-patterned patina across …

Creativity In The Elementary Art Classroom: Incorporating Strategies For Encouraging Creativity, Hannah Kim Sions

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Virginia art educators base their lesson plans on the Visual Arts Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools. Although creativity is implied in these standards, they are not directly mentioned; it is possible that lessons are not encouraging student creativity. Through a review of literature, this study explored the role of creativity in the elementary classroom, the role of creativity in the art education classroom, and strategies to encourage creativity in students. Findings suggest that creativity can be incorporated into lessons through a variety of strategies. Creativity is a lifelong process, and strategies that are incorporated into lesson plans, will …

Learning To See, Jade Webber

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Learning to See is a written document accompanying the culmination of my three years painting at a graduate level. Through an exploration of line, color, shape, light and bears I traverse the wandering heart of painting. This document is an exploration of the place in which people become bears and bears become mountains.

Where Feet Are As Light As Feathers (A World Of Things), Katie Zickefoose

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Where feet are as light as feathers (a world of things) is a combination of 2D work including painting, drawing, and prints, in conjunction with a written monograph that supports and gives insight into the work. Through a series of short stories, both fictional and nonfictional, fleeting thoughts, as well as research in critical theory and art history, I make connections between my art, my process, and my own earthly living.

Visual Art Assessment For Middle School Students, Kathryn Batlle

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This research study was designed by a middle school art teacher to fulfill the new teacher evaluation requirements in Virginia. The study was implemented in a sixth grade art classroom of sixteen students in the 2012 fall semester. This research study investigated the use of an authentic assessment tool to document student growth in a middle school art classroom. This performance assessment tool, evaluating student artwork, used detailed criterion-referenced rubrics to score student achievement in units focused on drawing and painting. The design included a pre- and post-instruction artwork that was assessed with the created rubrics. Student artwork was organized …

Art From The Outpost, Field Notes, New Territory, And The Invisible Hamster, Dymphna De Wild

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The outpost installations I create reveal my choice to be inventive with mostly found materials that I discover on my walks. Calling myself an artist-archeologist, I write down field notes as I collect my art-bound specimens and make a descriptive inventory for each of the works. I often surprise my viewers (and myself) by creating something fabulously strange and compelling with things that were cast aside. I hope to increase my viewers’ abilities to find beauty in these forgotten and trashed items and to generate an innovative dialogue and an outside-of-the-box way of thinking.

"By Reason Of Birth", Cheyenne Kody Crawford

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This written monograph is intended to parallel my MFA thesis show, “by reason of birth”. These written accounts from my childhood are specific occurrences in my life that influenced the creation of this work. Through the combination of written and made work, I recall an ambiguous past that allows the viewer to infer his or her own personal histories alongside mine.

Fixing Belief: Artificial Preservatives, James Walker Tufts Iv

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Research opened with inquiries into the state space of the self and various modalities of the construction of the self. Flawed research design led towards a loss of original focus, spaces opened accordingly. Early sculptural work looked towards a semantic flattening through flushing out and digitally manipulated photographic and video work investigated avenues of ocular-centric landscape construction. Photoshop CS5 and its Content Aware Fill tool were engaged as collaborator and animations ensued. Hesitant time-based sketches were developed to suggest work incomplete and instead took their place. Space-based sketches followed, using the multiple to thwart focus on parts and draw it …