Arts and Humanities Commons^™

In This Time And Place, Christy Aggens

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I seek out and spend time in relatively wild outdoor locations and create art based on my observations. The resulting work explores time and place, while the creation of the work increases my engagement with the environment. This process serves as a reminder that time is relative and life itself is continuous.

I start by finding time in locations where nature has been given a chance to thrive and where the sound of human activity is at a minimum. During these retreats, I use my senses to absorb information and document the experience by journaling, making recordings, taking photographs, drawing, …

Attitudes Of Experiential Designers Across Design Disciplines, Danielle Degarmo

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

The expanded use of the term scenography is widening its understanding of the word to encompass many experiential design disciplines beyond its origin in theatre. At its essence, scenography is the culmination of a designer’s collaborative efforts to take a prompt, whether it be a client program, a script, or other, and produce a holistic assemblage of experiential design elements to spatially engage an end user. Many experts in across design fields have acknowledged that there is disciplinary cross over among those practicing in experiential design fields in terms of design output or intention. By means of designer surveys and …

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Death Of A Salesman: A Treatise On Technical Direction Practices, Stephanie Schlosser

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The Nebraska Repertory Theatre, in partnership with the Johnny Carson School of Theatre, Film, and Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, chose to produce Death of a Salesman, directed by Jacqueline Thompson, for the second show of their 2022-2023 season. Death of a Salesman was produced on the Howell Stage, a 300-seat proscenium theatre located in the Temple building on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. The graduate faculty assigned the role of Technical Director to me in May 2022. As technical director I was responsible for budgeting materials and labor, drafting and engineering scenery, managing personnel, maintaining …

Magic Mirrors, Jamie Ho

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

When a beam of bright light hits the convex and polished surface, an image is reflected back onto the wall. This is a description of a magic mirror, an object from the Han Dynasty (206 BC -24 AD), that embodies how Euro-America views China: both technically advanced and shrouded in mystery. The magic mirror also points to the history of photography, as this term was often used in the Victorian era to describe a camera. The image created by a camera is a mimic of reality, both all too familiar and unfamiliar.^[1] Like magic mirrors, the GIFs I create …

Origami Club - A Gateway Into The Art Of Self Expression, Minjae Song, Noah Vincent Rachwitz

Honors Expanded Learning Clubs

The Nebraska Honors Program's Origami Club is an engaging platform for 3rd-5th graders that uses the fascinating Japanese art of origami to create a rich, interactive learning environment. Under the guidance of experienced instructors Minjae Song and Noah Rachwitz, and supplemented with YouTube tutorials, the club facilitates a captivating journey from simple projects to complex designs, skillfully developing each student's creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving capabilities. Each session is planned meticulously to ensure an immersive experience, starting with anticipation-building project reveals and culminating in the production of personal origami masterpieces. As a hands-on club, students are encouraged to question, explore, assist …

Me Tengo Que Ir, Eddy Leonel Aldana

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In Spanish, me tengo que ir means “I have to go.” “I have to go” as in go home, or back to one’s home country. As in leaving home for the unforeseeable future, hang up the phone, or pass away. me tengo que ir is also the name of a song by Adolescent’s Orquesta — a song about love, loss, and heartbreak over time that was always played at family parties when I was growing up.

In me tengo que ir, I use world history and personal memory to examine my family’s place within the Guatemalan diaspora. Diaspora is …

I Want To Go Home, Amber Boris

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The significance of a home lies within the memories of the space. I Want to Go Home is a body of work that explores this idea through a collection of sculptures and drawings depicting my childhood home. This house holds meaning to me not only because it is where I grew up, but because it was also my mother’s childhood home. Six generations of our family have passed through the house, creating a long history of associated stories, memories, and emotions.

I have constructed scaled down sculptures of rooms for these memories to live in. The spaces are left empty, …

Salt In Our Bones, Hannah Demma

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In my studio I lead a rich fantasy life. I am excited and enchanted by the interplay of color, pattern, and texture in a variety of mediums — but always involving paper, most often, paper I’ve handmade. I look to the natural world for inspiration in my work. Approaching the work as a scientist or naturalist might, I observe, hypothesize, and run experiments. Then I interpret and process my findings. I consider creative play and intuitive investigation into materials hallmarks of my practice.

When I watch documentaries about sea life, or read about the discoveries of marine scientists, I feel …

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

The Woman Behind The Whitney, Breanna Epp

Honors Theses

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as a prominent sculptor and patron to artists in the early 1900s. Her art collection was the largest of American art at the time, and she led the nation into an appreciation of its own native art. Native in this context specifically means any art that was made in America, not strictly art made by the indigenous people of the Americas. Tackling her entire life, from growing up in the Vanderbilt family to her death, I provide an overview of her interactions with the art …

A Documentation Of A Year As An Artistic Director For Unl, Philip Crawford

Honors Theses

The goal of this project was to document a year of being an Artistic Director for UNL’s student run theatre company Theatrix. Through this documentation, I will be able to reflect upon and learn from my experiences as a leader, director, and theatre maker.

This thesis will be broken up into eight different parts to outline the eight different stages I experienced as Artistic Director this year: season selection, the 24-hour Play Festival, The Revolutionists, The Thanksgiving Play, Clown Bar, season changes, Based on a Totally True Story, and Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. Through these eight stages, I will …

A Midsummer Night’S Dream: A Proficiency/Perspicacity In Technical Direction, Austin Elledge

Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts: Student Research, Performance, and Creative Activity

The Nebraska Repertory theatre, in partnership with the Johnny Carson school of Theatre, Film, and Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln choose to produce A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Christina Kirk, for the first show of their 2021-2022 season. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was produced on the Howell stage, a 300 seat proscenium theatre located in the Temple building on the campus of University of Nebraska – Lincoln and originating performance space and alma mater of Johnny Carson. I was assigned the role as Technical Director by the department in March 2019. As technical …

A Midsummer Night’S Dream – A Scenic Design, Grace Trudeau

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, production photographs, and other materials which document the scenic design for the Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. This thesis contains the following: research images indicating thematic ideas for Athens and the Forest, weather patterns for Athens and Woodland, environmental textures and colors, shapes, and forms; preliminary sketches and photographs of the ¼” scale model; a full set of drafting plates and paint samples, a set dressing reference book; paperwork generated during the rehearsal process; and additional information. Archival production photographs are available …

Bright Star - A Scenic Design, Marty Wolff

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, production photographs, and other materials that document the scenic design for Midland University’s production of the 2014 musical Bright Star, written and composed by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. This thesis contains the following: the effects of COVID 19 on the production selection process; a conceptual analysis, scenic breakdown, charting and diagrams to organize the show, preliminary modeling and plotting imagery; research images of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachia, mountain cabins from the early 1900s, and various rustic landscapes; an examination of the design evolution from conception to …

Tomorrow Is The Worst Day Since Yesterday, Matthew Carlson

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Susan Sontag wrote: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other space”.

This work addresses aspects of that citizenship. I used my experiences as a person living with a disability and as a parent to a son with Autism to explore the dichotomy of this dual citizenship. The …

The Weight Of It All, Amythest Warrington

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The impetus for this exhibition is to visualize the weight of loss and to focus attention on the need to recognize the inherent dichotomy between life’s beauty and loss. My mobile upbringing taught me that details may differ from group to group, but the core experiences of loss, empathy and belonging are a universal language that connects us. I utilize clay’s unique physical properties of malleability, recyclability and permanence once fired, to explore the dichotomy between strength and frailty associated with these universal connectors. The meticulously crafted beautiful objects draw one into serious and often taboo subjects. The work comforts …

The Use Of Egyptian Blue In Funerary Paintings From Roman Egypt, Margaret Sather

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This paper explores the use of the synthesized pigment Egyptian blue in the encaustic and tempera funerary portraits of Graeco-Roman ruled Egypt in the 1st-3rd centuries CE. Recent developments in non-destructive imaging analysis technology have aided research institutions and museums in detecting the presence of this pigment. New questions have arisen based on these findings of Egyptian blue in the depiction of flesh and hair of these subjects, particularly because blue is so rarely used as a standalone pigment in works of this category. These analyses have challenged assumptions that Egyptian blue was a rare and valuable pigment during the …

Prejudiced Commodities: Understanding Knowledge Transfer From India To Britain Through Printed And Painted Calicoes, 1720-1780, Aditi Khare

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The eighteenth-century trade in calico between Europe and India was a function of global textile manufacture, exchange, and consumption on multiple levels. This trade had several political, cultural, and economic consequences— the most important of which, I suggest, was the transfer of useful knowledge from artisanal oral textile traditions in India to the receptive, commercial, and nascent cotton printing industry in Europe.

This paper explores the contribution of Indian cotton printing knowledge towards the development of Europe’s cotton industry and, consequently, its dissemination through European knowledge networks. In particular, the largely overlooked chemical knowledge pertaining to dyes and mordants responsible …

Colcha Circle: A Stitch In Northern New Mexico Culture, Olimpia Newman, Rebecca Abrams

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Colcha embroidery is folk art, characteristic of northern New Mexico history, traditions, and a form of cultural expression that has not been researched and documented sufficiently. It has been practiced in private homes and small circles as a result of commissions or economic development programs, as has also been the case in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. Despite the exposure offered by local markets and demonstrations during events in New Mexico, the embroidery is in many ways an unknown technique, even to the next generation.

This video captures a candid discussion among eleven colcha artists, some of whom are entering …

Hidden Stories/Human Lives: Proceedings Of The Textile Society Of America 17th Biennial Symposium, October 15-17, 2020--Full Program With Abstracts & Bios

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The theme Hidden Stories/Human Lives presents opportunities to reveal complex and hidden stories of global textile making and coincides with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Yet, just as the voices of women of color, marginalized by the suffrage movement, are only now being recognized, the stories of the many human lives that have contributed—directly and indirectly—to textile making, including enslaved people, immigrant entrepreneurs, and industrial laborers, remain untold. With this symposium, we hope to get “behind the curtain” to explore the wider human network engaged in textile production, bringing to light hidden stories …

Freedom Quilt: Collective Patchwork In Post-Communist Hungary, Christalena Hughmanick

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The paper investigates the democratic and social values of patchwork quilting through its culture of open-source pattern sharing and communal group work – using The Freedom Quilt Hungary project as a primary example. I facilitated a social engagement artwork, developed in 2019 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the end of Socialist rule in Hungary in 1989. This change resulted in new laws, allowing for the formation of the Hungarian Patchwork Guild (HPG), with whom I worked closely to create the work. It provided members of this group and the public with a platform to define individual notions …

Glitched Metaphors: Dysfunction In Hand-Woven Digital Jacquard, Gabe Duggan

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This presentation demonstrates various ways in which the TC1 has supported my work’s exploration of tension, balance, and precarity. By embracing and pushing expectations of traditional fiber work, these weavings question inequalities within contemporary performances of gender and exhibitions of power. My work on the TC1/TC2 digital jacquard loom has been primarily tethered to one specific machine with which I have shared a personal past and future for just over a decade. Through this technology I have built and negated tension, challenging a broad range of power dynamics. My work with this TC1 seeks to exploit and balance this technology …

Schoolgirl Embroideries & Black Girlhood In Antebellum Philadelphia, Kelli Racine Coles

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Embroideries stitched by girls at schools for Black children in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are rare finds in the antiques world. The few embroideries likely stitched by Black schoolgirls that do survive often offer historical evidence in the form of the names of their makers’ schools stitched onto their embroideries. Yet there is little scholarship on these embroideries or the education these schoolgirls were pursuing while creating their samplers. In scholarship using material culture as primary evidence, these embroideries provide valuable clues about the lives of Black girls in northern cities during the antebellum period. My work examines the …

A Tale Of Two Sisters: Invisibility, Marginalization And Renown In A 20th Century Textile Arts Revitalization Movement In New Mexico, Suzanne P. Macaulay

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

While this presentation does not address oppression in the global textile industry and injustices to leagues of anonymous enslaved women workers, it does raise questions about the vicissitudes of fame and obscurity of two women relative to artistic creation and textile arts revitalization efforts. This is the story of two Varos sisters, who married two Graves brothers, and lived in Carson, New Mexico. In the early 1930s Frances and Sophie Graves with their extended families repaired Spanish colonial textiles for the Santa Fe market. At some point they began to recreate traditional Spanish colonial-type colcha embroideries from recycled materials salvaged …

Signed In Silk And Silver: Examining An Eighteenth-Century Torah Ark Curtain And Its Maker, Genevieve Cortinovis, Miriam Murphy

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Around 1755, Simhah Viterbo (c. 1739-1779) completed a luxurious Torah ark curtain, or parokhet, in Ancona, an important port city on Italy’s Adriatic coast. The base fabric, a bright blue silk satin, is appliqued with gold and silver guipure embroidery, vellum sections covered with metal-wrapped threads, spiral wound wires, and flattened strips of metal. Paillettes punctuate the Hebrew inscription, which runs across the curtain’s lower edge. The central grotesque composition, a series of stacked, diapered cartouches in the vein of Daniel Marot (1661-1752), fans out towards the enclosed borders. Florist flowers—blousy carnations, roses, and campanula—delicately embroidered in blush-colored silk threads, …

Shared Provenance: Investigating Safavid-Mughal Cultural Exchange Through Luxury Silks In The Sixteenth And Seventeenth Centuries, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

When examining silk textiles attributed to the early modern Persianate world, there is always some uncertainty as to whether they were produced in Safavid Iran or Mughal India. The confusion is warranted: the two courts share many of the same ideas, images, and even family connections, creating a broad cultural overlap. This becomes apparent in the arts from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, as politics and patronage prompted the migration of key Safavid artists, including weavers, from Iran to Mughal India. As Persian painting was developed in the royal atelier, luxury silks were also produced with Safavid techniques.

Examining these imported …

Plants In The Tapestry (Literally), Ann H. Peters, Adriana Soldi S.

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Among our studies of ancient Peruvian textiles created in tapestry technique, we have come across some surprising elements, both in the warp and the weft. Andean textiles created over the past 10,000 years have been preserved in certain locations along the Pacific desert coast. They are usually preserved in the cloth bundles that protect and adorn the dead, and composed of fibers from native cotton varieties of Amazonian ancestry, the hair of highland ancestors of today’s llama and alpaca, maguey leaves from the mid-valley canyons, and reeds from coastal marshes. Garment forms, techniques and imagery can indicate textiles produced in …

Kenyan Basketry (Ciondo) By Women From Central And Eastern Kenya, Mercy Wanduara

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Kenyan baskets commonly known as kiondo/kyondo (s)/ciondo (p) are made by women in different parts of Kenya mainly as utilitarian items for carrying goods around. The baskets are made using traditional/indigenous fibers that are readily available near where people live. The fibers may be from plant stems of shrubs, barks of trees, or banana fibers. The fibers are manually harvested, processed (spun), dyed, and woven into baskets. Dye stuffs are produced locally from natural sources such as mud (brown), leaves from specific plants (green), tree barks (red and brown), and charcoal (black), among other sources. Even though basketry is …