Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Feeling Blue, Katherine Ewald

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

“Feeling Blue” discusses the intersection between art and science as it relates to my thesis body of work entitled Bed/Room. I delve into the sensory world of art, diving into how our environment can have an effect on our neurological and emotional state of being. This is explored through different pathways, namely the color blue, seasonal affective disorder, and the senses. The artwork reflects these ideas, providing a multi sensory environment with the goal of promoting tranquility. Through my process of creating the piece, my intentions shifted to removing Bed/Room from the fine arts context and transferring it into the …

Skin, Bones + Bags: Investigating The Death Of Marine Ecosystems, Rylie Walter

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Plastic has become ubiquitous in the oceans. Although a convenient and cheap way to distribute goods around the world, plastic is also a leading cause for the death of many marine ecosystems. Walter explores her personal connection to the ocean, researches the relationship between plastic pollution and the ocean, and examines art as a means for inciting social change to protect and restore ocean environments. By using plastic as her main material for making art, Walter transforms the material from one that harms into one that can be calming and peaceful, while still representing the destruction it causes.

Deconstructing The Present || (Re)Constructing The Past, Hugh Hoagland

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Though we live only in the present, our every experience will eventually fade into the depths of memory. Deconstructing the Present || (Re)constructing the Past introduces my artist practice on a broad level, one that is preoccupied by the difference between present experience and its memory, as well as the ways we weave memory into the physical environments of architecture and material objects. This thesisestablishes a specific signal memory for the body of work, the memory of a structure that, for a brief time, was a sanctuary for myself and many others. The paper then follows the arc of …

One Country, Two Systems, Faith S. Pang

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

As Hong Kong approaches 2047—the year that China will formally commandeer the government—fear looms over our city. Since 2014—the emergence of the Umbrella Revolution—thousands of protests occur every year, as citizens continue to fight against the policy changes that China has imposed upon the city. Our freedom and our future hangs in a delicate balance; no one know what China will do next as the Communist government is too unpredictable. I left Hong Kong eight years ago but since these riots began, I have felt an urgency to understand the exact nature of Hong Kong’s identity, to tell our story …

Bodies Of Empathy, Eunyoung Rosa Jang

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Trauma is defined as the emotional and or psychological response to a deeply disturbing event. When looking at domestic, familial and generational trauma, however, it is not a singular event but a thread through a lifetime or even generations. When it accumulates and goes beyond one person or body, that trauma can embed itself deeply and go neglected and unaddressed. Despite this, trauma is not invisible, and it is not silent. It festers in the mind and surfaces on the body. In Bodies of Empathy, I discuss my body of work which attempts to come to terms with my …

A Document That Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction And Reality, Seth Lewis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In A Document that Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction and Reality, I first present a historical analysis of photography that complicates traditional assumptions of how photographs operate in the world. Rather than functioning as merely an objective record, the photograph takes on a dual status as both a document and an abstraction from reality. The photograph’s ability to selectively decontextualize the origins from which it came from and present itself as something other than what it simply records becomes the core of my artistic practice. This paper will also discuss my conceptual investigations into how we perceive photographs when they …

Tracing Patterns: Making Sense Of Experience, Isabelle Davis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my life, I have developed several practices in attempt to preserve my memories in a way that I can relive them, knowing exactly how I felt at the time. Two of these practices are the practice of frequently journaling, and the practice of keeping objects for their sentimental value. For my thesis, I used journal entries and sentimental objects as a starting point for creating a metaphor for how I process emotions in my life. I created a quilt out of 36 excerpts of journal entries from throughout college to symbolize the way it is comforting to me to …

Body; Broken Things, Seohyung Kay Lee

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Our bodies are the first of everything. They’re the first thing we encounter, and first space that we inhibit. Life ends when we leave the body behind. They’re our only means to reach with the world, with everything. From the beginning of time, we have strived to interpret the body and the its place in the world. However, the female body was never fully appreciated nor acknowledged. It is impossible to understand the body of women without considering the pain and violence they encounter, which is often easily overlooked.

In my body of work that I’ve produced this semester, Body; …

I'M Sorry For Everything, Hille Sennott

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My work is rooted in the fact that women are practically conditioned to apologize for everything, and tells the intimate story of my life. By recording my apologies for several months and deeply examining my behavior, I noticed themes and made work based on these — work that exposed my private moments. I noticed a disconnect between times I needed to apologize, and this compulsive need to take on the blame for every little thing. I examine the feminine battle of soft and strong, eventually coming to the conclusion that there are occasions calling for both. Women are taught to …

Mediated: An Investigation Of Print Media's Impact Of Self, Rachel Hertzman

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In the 21^st Century print media is often overlooked for the masses of images available at everyone’s fingertips on the internet. This thesis is an exploration of the ways in which those original forms of mass produced images, specifically fashion/ beauty magazines and newspapers, alter one’s sense of self. The magazines have a proven negative effect on women consumers who internalize the singular thin beauty ideal persisted in this media. A similar internalization happens with the constant viewing of news papers, creating a sense of shared cultural memory. The Artist takes an in depth look at how these ideas …

Invisible Territories, Lydia Seaman

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Layering geography, space and time, my work urges viewers to embrace the equivocal and create a desire for the impossible. To explore this notion, Invisible Territories is an analysis of my practice, examining how I mediate specific references into abstract and universal interpretations. My work employs subjects that document the world by analyzing the layers and simulacra that form our visual information; focusing on the intervals between “things” as the subject matter themselves. Looking to the words of Italo Calvino as a conceptual guide, this paper discusses the practice of mapping through drawing, etching and painting.

The Continuous Movement Of Water And Time, Ryan Brandt

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Water has a relationship with every living thing on earth, and represents a force that both gives life and can eliminate it. In my work, I use water, color, and the figure to explore the sublime, death and decay, the passage of time, and overwhelming emotions. I have looked at my work in relation to Marilyn Minter’s photography, Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, Julie Evans’ and Henri Matisse’s cut-out works, Sam Gilliam’s continuously changing canvas installations, and Ekaterina Smirnova’s investigation into the meaning of an individual’s place in the universe. By seeing the different ways in which these artists and …

The Bambi Portal, Zoe Grieze

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

An investigation into the multiplicity of Walt Disney’s 1943 film Bambi — including both the content generated as a result of the film and the way in the film exists ephemerally in mass memory — develops into an investigation into the film’s use of appeals to “nature” to reinforce the gender roles of the traditional American nuclear family. Through the creation of an interactive “portal” utilizing distorted video, these themes are pulled out from the usual world of the film and presented in an alternate format for critical consideration. However, a tension between this critique and genuine sensory enjoyment of …

In The Margins, Savannah Bustillo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A margin is defined relative to something else. A ruled line. A body of text on a page. The margins are the excess, outside of the value we can qualify or quantify. Our understandings of the habitability of the margins are too often framed as fundamental differences between those that inhabit value and the rest that do not. What would happen if we reframed the margins beyond a simple dichotomy? What could we gain if the margins were a habitable space around and between the things we prioritize in defining? By analyzing a body of my own art, I …

Chinese-American Landscape, Jessica Wen

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Cultural hybridity is an unwillingness to succumb to the notion of choosing sides when it comes to mixed heritage and culture. The approach taken to identity has a place in the artistic sphere as well. Through an investigation of my art practice in painting alongside a contemporary and historical context, the hybrid space between Chinese and Western landscape painting is explored and determined. The goals of nature depicted through distorted perspective, abstraction and simplification of objects, and emphasis on texture are techniques employed by both artistic spheres. By utilizing these goals and mixing materials of both Chinese and Western painting, …

The Memorial, Sihyun Max Shin

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

When people die from political movements, their deaths are used by other people, often painted and printed on the piquets aggressively held by angry protesters. Being the visible evidence of social suppression, the images of the deceased is capable of easily arousing people’s anger and hatred against the source of malice, which, in many cases, is the government. Indeed, their deaths can be the effective stimulators for public activism. People would justify their exploitation by saying that they are expressing their lamentation for deaths by attacking back what caused the tragedy in the first place.

In the following essay, I …

(Fear Of) (An Exploration Of Empathy), Caroline Schmidt

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

How much can you understand what another person is feeling? How much can they understand what you feel? This is the territory that my capstone investigates. Utilizing a mixture of informal and formal language and experimental footnotes, I describe the concepts and process behind my most recent body of work, the (Fear Of) series of animations, and its relationship to empathy. I follow this discussion with an explanation of my choice of fears and eyes as vehicles for this project, and end with an appendix featuring a sample of the interview-based monologues and my notes on which the project was …

Overlapping Entities: Visualizing The Space Between Nature And Culture, Zoie Brown

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my work I generate forms that occupy the space between our false conceptions of nature and culture. I subvert binaries–both between nature and culture and between women and men–through the physical conflation of microscopic and macroscopic spaces. Nature itself is a cultural concept; the notion that we are separate from nature at all is a fallacy. The body of work discussed uses ideas from Environmental Sociology and my definition of intersectional Ecofeminism to visualize the intersection of these cultural binaries within physical space. The pieces included utilize light responsive technology as a means of mediating our experiences with the …

Beauty Enthroned, Lian Giloth

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

For the longest time in Western culture beauty and art were inseparable from one another. However, within the last one hundred years, various cultural movements and phenomena have split Beauty into a series of dichotomies that exist independently from one another. These bifurcations have weakened Beauty’s power and influence and reduced its intellectual rigor. No longer taken seriously as a primary goal or characteristic of art, Beauty has been reduced to mere charm and superficiality. My body of work seeks to reunify Beauty, thereby giving back its agency and legitimacy in art.

Mind In Hand, Anna Olson

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This thesis explores the intersection of art and psychology as it manifests in my art practice, particularly in the medium of weaving. The contemporary frameworks of memory and archive provide the basis of this discussion, as well as findings from the field of Art Therapy. Difficult emotions like loss and grief often show up in my work, and I will discuss how artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Sophie Calle also utilize these concepts. In weaving, I capture my internal mental states, memories, and perceptions of the future in a variety of found and gifted objects. Guided by the precedents set …

Unmaking As Making, Viola Bordon

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Artist Viola Bordon examines the processes of touch, unmaking, and materially dictated aesthetics regarding her studio practice. The philosophical ideas of absence are used to establish a purpose for undoing, which is then explored as a learning process. This process is complicated by the sense of touch, resulting in formal aesthetics that are materially inspired.

Enter The Void: Visual And Other Pleasures, Serena Silver

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My research and art practice focus on the idea of power dynamics where the female is the passive object of the active male gaze. Through the influx of digital social media platforms, these power dynamics exist in many fluid forms which is what I believe to be the relationship between the masculine and the feminine- where the masculine is inevitably always alpha. In contemporary terms, this power dynamic exists and penetrates our daily consumption of visual culture. From the art world to the fashion industry and beyond- all are feeding into consumerism and capitalism. People have become brands, or as …

A New World Order, Yuwei Pan

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Through my work “A New World Order,” I question the extent to which the color Millennial Pink changes our perceptions of objects and even influences our unconscious decisions, by imagining what it would look like if on the institutional level pink’s “feminizing” power is put into good use – to reduce perceived violence for a kinder society –in a fictional feminist utopia/dystopia. In this paper, I will be contextualizing my art practice with the complex implications of pink in realms of psychology, pop culture, politics and participation art, and how social construction about the color pink affects gender performance. This …

Canonical Poses And The Gaze, Sarah Oakley

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My work deals with the nude female form and the various depictions that it has taken on. From the early oil paintings from masters like Ingres and Titian, through Playboy centerfolds of the 50s-70s, and continuing all the way up to the contemporary nude iPhone selfie, I explore questions of the gaze, ownership, and commodification of the female form. Starting with my painted Selfie Series and ending with my embroidered pillows, I touch on a variety of framing devices for the female nude and its representation of sexuality in modern culture.

Other-Ing: Creating A Three-Dimensional Asian American Perspective, Caroline Yoo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Through my thesis body of work “Other-ing,” my goal is to create a three-dimensional Asian American perspective. As a result of Western standards implemented as the norm, where colonialism is still prevalent and white still reigns supreme, the media has created an onslaught of fictional Asian characters to control this group. Representations, tropes, stereotypes have long shaped the Asian American community, so much so that it is often easier to understand these one-dimensional depictions rather than the complex reality of how an Asian American defines themselves. Not shying away from implicating myself in this systematic structure of racism, I become …

Not Fully Formed..., Elizabeth Adare Brown

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

An appraisal of the artist’s place and responsibility in the diluted, steaming [sic] timeline of show and tell as is now experienced daily by artist and audience alike. The predicaments and possibilities are posited, assessed and adjudicated sequentially. These actions are set against a backdrop of art history and emergent narrative methodologies in the arts. The judgements inform the studio practice.

Betwixt / Between: Hybridity In Asian American And Christian Identities, Sherry Xiao

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Hybridity is defined as the fusion of worlds that were once separate in one’s self. Both cultural and religious identity are sites of hybridity and dialogue with one another to shape conceptions of sacred and profane. My research explores historical accounts and anecdotes in which cultural understanding informs expressions of faith. My practice takes elements of Eastern and Western visual culture and art history and frames them within a Christian perspective through painting, printmaking, and installation. By participating in the legacy of religious art through a hybrid lens, I seek to adopt cultural ownership of Christianity.

Same Stuff, Just Packaged A Different Way (Maybe It's Not So Bad?), Kyle Strobel

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Who Would You Be? examines the interplay between person and persona, relationship building, and artist-sitter dynamics. By placing contemporary sitters in the context of historical portraiture conventions, it seeks to lead viewers to consider the issue of self-absorption and vanity in social media profiles from a different angle. Additionally, this project became a way to enhance the quality of my personal relationships with those involved through providing a space to interact and creating a link for them between myself and each other.

Queering The Material, Rachel Youn

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Queer is the disorienting of a subject in space and time. With this notion, this paper goes through various extensions of my practice, investigating how I queer objects and actions to destabilize normative expectations of function. I engage with the aesthetics of Minimalism, the everyday experience of Asian American identities, and the association of the domestic environment with comfort and stability. Employing queer theory crossed with object theory, I posit how deception and failure exist as alternative understandings of how objects and environments function. Through subverting what is expected to be true and real, the work points to the fluid …