Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Reading The Room: Memory, Dwelling, And The Everyday, Sara R. Hardin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In any space, there is a residue that coats the present with a patina of memory. Creating layered imagery in dream-like paintings and prints, I use the domestic realm as a metaphor for the internal world of the mind, memories, and private thoughts, including them in compositions with symbols like the boundaries of windows, doors, and gates. These metaphorical structures also portray outward identities, which guard inner emotions. The conceptual aspects of these compositional elements weave together memories of the past and places of the present into a unified whole.

I began graduate school at the beginning of the COVID-19 …

Rituals Of Belonging, Trecha G. Jheneall

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This ensemble is a (geo)autobiographical affirmation of the activities of water bodies, fiberboard drum barrel containers, and sound as well as their attendant rituals of belonging amongst People of Sub-Saharan African descent, particularly those belonging to the Caribbean diaspora.

Water as an ever-present life source serves as a dynamic metaphor for Caribbean people’s instinctive travel in and outside of the region’s soluble boundaries. The barrel container, often in transit analogizes the apprehension of displacement, congregation, arrival, or destination towards the desired feeling of security or place.

Elements of ritualistic practices located in migratory movement, music and labor are means of …

Symbolism Of The Body, Claire E. Ragland

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Using a variety of print mediums and mixed media processes, I create dynamic imagery derived from my own evolving mythology and symbolist language. These highly decorative pieces are rich with motifs and patterns that have emerged through my personal narratives as well as pop cultural movements. The iconic, androgenous figures in my compositions help me tell stories of queer relationality, connection with self and the natural world, and the complexities of my emotional landscape. Using different tactics to create doorways and openings around and within these pieces, I invite the viewer to step into these alternate realities to find layered …

The Art Of Heritage And Mortality, Barbara Johanna Mileto

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through my art I explore the formation of cultural and personal identity addressing the importance of heritage, ancestors, and religion in Latin-American culture, while I develop my unique deities and spiritual space, creating my own iconography. The pieces are strongly autobiographical, using my family members, and frequently lived experience as a subject. Furthermore, I am drawn to the circle of life and productive failures - beginnings, deaths, and transitions. - My work integrates two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums, ranging from photography and printmaking to assemblage and textiles, video and digital.

Chaos And Control, Hilary E. Dugas

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My anxiety, compulsions, and drive to control my surroundings inspires my work and at times hinders my process. I want to control every aspect of life, and the system of marks are symbolic of this. Printmaking permits me to express the area between control and lack of control, as the processes can be revised from beginning to end. My prints are composed of symbolic marks, which I create from objects that represent my compulsions and spiraling thoughts. The repetition of this indirect medium mimics my compulsive behaviors.

I convey repetitive motion, obsessive thoughts, and actions within my prints by overlapping …

Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around using a specialized blend of art, design, and craft to interpret political narratives through fabricated products. These objects weave contemporary commentary and consumer indulgences into sculptural cultures. Each product is designed to mimic its own marketed culture—offering an enticingly tactile, interactive experience that is equal parts confusing, concerning, and delightful. The products are accompanied by investment opportunities in the form of popular, limited released merchandized objects, such as hats and patches. Using humor and subtlety, my gamelike installations explore arenas such as agency, autonomy, intimacy, and dueling realities in a time of ecological collapse and cultural …

Presence / Absence, Porscha D. Banker

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Presence / Absence is a visual and conceptual l exploration of language and issues surrounding experiences of interpersonal relationships. In it I look at various approaches in which artists and writers have approached the subject of intimacy and coexistence as both a context and foundation for my own work addressing relationships. This body of work is specifically looks at experiences of the personally revolutionary presence of an other and the impact of their absence.

Worlds Inside Worlds Inside Drawings, E A. Marshall Mx

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I make drawings about memory and identity.

I make drawings about drawings.

I sew because I love sewing.

I paint because I have to.

I explore the parallel universes and realities that exist in me alongside reality.

I make marks intuitively and leave the analysis for later.

I wonder if magic is real.

I wonder if everyone has something like a religion that they cling to.

I like truth in my work.

I never want to trick anybody.

I like to say it simply.

Darwin Or Frankenstein?, Sylvia S. Santamaria

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through sculpture and drawing, I create my own versions of natural specimens primarily based upon the visual unity of disparate organisms. Invented specimens are composed using a variety of processes employing a mixture of atypical materials following the (20^th, 21^st century) Postmodern shift away from formalist and traditional uses of any singular medium. As well as a variety of art materials, the specimens are hybrids of organic and biomorphic elements, blurring boundaries between botanical, animal, fungal, metal, and mineral. Is my approach perhaps like Charles Darwin, observant and studious naturalist, or am I more like Dr. Frankenstein, …

Amalgamations, Brennan Probst

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I explore time, memory, and the artist’s ability to convey experience through autobiographical photographs and drawings. In my compositions, I provide an intimate look into my life, while making wider observations about how my mind processes the world. My work is concerned with circumventing the objective, static qualities of photography. I attempt to create images that convey how experiences feel, instead of how they look through the lens of an optical apparatus. With my work, I do not wish to take from the world around me, but rather to create from the world within me. By utilizing multiple exposures and …

Subculture And Queer Subjectivity, Natalie Woodlock

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work explores subculture as a form of cultural resistance to the dominant ideology. I'm concerned with the ambiguous relationship we occupy as subjects to the material produced by popular culture, and how this is digested and understood by female viewers and cultural outsiders. The specific temporality of the queer subject is a key theme in my work.

The Everyday Universe, Ashley W. Hope

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I take inspiration from ordinary objects and materials. Through photography, I attempt to transcend the familiar to discover complexity within the bits and pieces of my everyday life. Like other artistic representations, a photograph is a singular portrayal, not an actualization of physical reality. My artistic exploration of this involves incorporating elements of abstraction to point to the truth that all photographs are, by nature, an abstraction of our physical reality based on perspective. The resulting images often share a quality of impermanence, counterbalanced by the act of making a photographic document. By evoking this temporal quality of photography and …

Stray Cats, Christian P. Chesnut

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper details the making of Stray Cats, a University of New Orleans thesis film. It examines the process of creating the film in three parts. Part one will detail the pre-production, including the conceptualization, writing, and preparation for the project. Part two will cover the production, including the directing, production design, cinematography, and on-set operations. Part three will describe the post-production process, including the editing, color correction, sound design, and musical score. These three components will then be referenced in regards to the theme of the film, and will conclude by analyzing whether or not the final film …

Motive Through Automotive Compassionately Criticizing The Desires Of Car Culture, Erika R. Lehrmann

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My artwork represents my admiration and criticisms of car culture I have gathered throughout my personal experiences beginning at a very early age. The work exists in the form of drawings, paintings, prints, collage and sculpture. This work is created through the elements of personal narrative, desires, obsessions, and questions surrounding car culture and its influences. My intention to refurbish the icons of this culture has involved creating work that is both obsessive and critical for personal exploration and understanding of past memories.

From Beyond, Dana A. Denoux

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My artworks are informed by my experiences in the landscape at dusk. As the sun sets, the energy of the landscape shifts and a whole new world of the unseen arise. Through my artworks, I seek to encapsulate the emotions that the landscape evokes at this time. I explore my own desires of being immersed in the natural world, as well as my wonder and respect for its mysteries. Through darkness and light, my artworks investigate the unknown, or the idea of the unknown, beyond what the senses perceive.

Ripple, Tyler P. Haney

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work leverages the dynamic processes the brain uses to compute visual stimuli to influence how viewers experience my work. My aim is to create a ripple effect as the brain processes the visual information I provide.

My process begins with a camera. Focusing on the face, I see how much contextual information I can remove while still capturing the emotional expression of the subject. Before long, a photograph ends up next to a canvas where I will rebuild the image from the photograph using a myriad of expressionistic marks and colors to amplify the emotion.

Recognizing human emotion is …

Perspective, Karie D. Cooper

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As an artist, I am interested in understanding how and why humans interact with the natural world. I examine my own individual behaviors and practices and research impacts made on nature by humans as a whole. I am drawn to nature for a multitude of reasons, including aesthetic beauty, psychological wellness, unraveling the mysteries of the universe and trying to understand the origins of life. As an artist I explore the dialectic relationship between everything we perceive outside of ourselves as the environment, and the way we think of ourselves in relation to that environment. I believe in the interconnectedness …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Cultural Biases In The West And The Disadvantages Created For Eastern And Eastern-Influenced Art, Taylor Bowie

Senior Honors Theses

Culture has always had a substantial influence on how art is perceived and executed. Artists have, more often than not, let their own backgrounds and experiences influence the way their art is produced; those who merely view art form opinions about works through their own cultural understanding. What makes art and what their own backgrounds allow them to distinguish art as is often defined by cultural origins. My observation is that, in this new age, there are distinct cultural biases, particularly within the U.S., that create social pressures to produce certain types of art, and anyone who operates outside that …

Happy Trails, Elizabeth A. Derby

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work uses hair as both a subject depicted in drawings, paintings, and prints; as well as a medium for sculpture, installation, and video created with synthetic hair pieces and wigs. I am interested in deconstructing gendered codes of appearance, and visions of the ideal woman and man as objects. I remove all identifiable traits from my characters, apart from their hair which appears to be consuming or erasing them. In doing so, I force the people viewing my work to rely on cultural stereotypes associated with hair to identify my characters. My work is heavily influenced by Drag culture …

It's Always Better With A Good Dm, David Colannino

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

It’s Always Better With A Good DM is about our relationship with objects and maps as a vector for fantasy. Beginning from the premise that humans understand the world via narrative, I am concerned with the loss of imagination in adulthood in lieu of ideology, which is no more real than stories of future and fantastic places.

The Effects Of Politics And Media On America: Creating The Role Of Lainie Wells In Lee Blessing's Two Rooms, Arielle B. Brown, Arielle B. Brown

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Two Rooms, by Lee Blessings, was selected for performance at the University of New Orleans during the fall of 2015. I studied and portrayed the role of Lainie Wells as my thesis project. The purpose of my thesis was to research a character physically, psychologically, and emotionally as an actress and create a character through the eyes of Lainie Wells.

The following is a brief breakdown of the structure of my written thesis: biography of Lee Blessing, hostage families and their mental state as it relates to the Iranian hostage crisis, mass media effects on Syria, The Hunt for …

Landscape To Mindscape, Regina S. Scully

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In each of my paintings I try to create an individual micro-universe made up of elements that resonate between the familiar and the unknown. I carve up space and hybridize disparate elements, in an effort to excavate objects and spaces from our collective unconscious. By employing different perspectives, I try to encourage an experiential view of the landscape, like the one that exists for the viewer in the physical world, where sightlines are constantly shifting. These landscapes become a rhythmic labyrinth to enter and travel through, wherein the viewer experiences his or her own personal associations.

In this thesis, I …

Through The Eyes Of The Homeless, Aisha M. Soto

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

When reviewing the entire project from start to completion, I can honestly say, Through the Eyes of the Homeless is a play about ten women and their plight. It illustrates their dealings with everyday issues of hurt, disappointment, abuse, love, and hope. I believe the true impact of this play is the undeniable prayer for help and hope within each monologue. Despite the horrors that are unveiled and released through hidden secrets, the undertone of betterment is truly resonating. My own expectation for this play is simply to strike awareness and understanding in the eyes of the people. It is …

You Are A Weird Bird., Natalie H. Mclaurin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

How a person is treated because of their gender is potentially very frustrating. I use bird plumage patterns to illustrate humans as animals and idioms in language to illustrate these ideas.

The artworks by Natalie McLaurin mentioned in the paper are You didn’t see me, Untitled. Nancy Horne, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Wild Beast, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Man Beast, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Air Beast, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Domesticated Beast, Ballet Lessons, Throwing a Fit and Falling in it, Gravel Kick, Cocksure, Peckerhead …

Choose Your Own Oz, Tommy R. Jamerson Ii

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Modern Landscapes, Valerie Corradetti

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I explore nature in order to understand something that is becoming increasingly unfamiliar. I wonder about accelerated human transactions with nature: the control of animals, land, and resources for pleasure, consumption or survival; and how these actions manifest themselves visually in the modern world. Through images, I create new ideas about my surroundings. My questions about nature are documented through my work employing subtlety to narrate stories of contemporary environments.

The Adversity Pop Culture Has Posed, Darel Joseph

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I am a collage artist working with multiple mediums such as paint, photography, video, audio, and performance. As a New Orleans’ native, I have a unique history that is unflattering, for my history echoes that of America’s historical misdeeds. I make sociopolitical art because I am of a historically oppressed people. I make art that celebrates my diverse culture that is a collage of Native American, African, and New Orleans’ French Creole.

Tango In Solitude, Maria Hinterkoerner

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Screenplay

Keep It Up: The Things Within And Without, Vanessa R. Centeno

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art explores my attraction and repulsion to a commodity driven society. Paint Thing and Saint Thing are characters that I created to push my boundaries as a painter and question my process within painting. Working through my agitation, feeling of loss and confusion, I find that two parts need to be present: a belief in the process and the fear of it coming undone.

I use painting, sculpture and video to question the materiality of canvas and paint. I incorporate plastic objects, glittery materials, and things that have ephemeral qualities. I am attracted to synthetic forms and objects when …