Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sometimes Windows Break, Samantha Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

The sensation of detachment and reclusion frequently gives rise to an uncanny and dreamlike space. Enveloped within this dimension, the quirks of memory become a fragile lifeline to bygone, intangible ideas of reality. Fixated on this threshold, my artistic explorations in print, collage, and assemblage navigates these elusive realms, rendering fragmented and distant shapes and figures in stark contrast to elements that evoke an eerie sense of familiarity. In this manner, my work invites viewers to embrace the disconcerting and unsettling aspects of the in-between, all the while establishing an unsettling connection to reality through the lens of nostalgic objects …

A Loud Volume Landscape, Grace Buyers

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

It feels more like sounding it out than constructing it. Choosing and adapting images, concentrating on the auxiliary fragments (out-of-focus elements, the corner of the table, the reflection in the window, the highway median) and the backgrounds (the sky and its clouds, the gravel ground, the movement of the water, the horizons where these meet), I then breathe them together. The final products are primarily collages, and though they are originally constructed from printed media and found objects, their final forms are scanned and rematerialized. The content of these works focuses on the relationships between the chosen fragments and how …

Half In Dream: The Tangle In The Grid, Abbey L. Paccia

Masters Theses

Half in Dream: The Tangle in the Grid discusses the form and content of a physical art installation by the same name. The site-specific installation is a large three-dimensional collage of natural ephemera collected from the area around Amherst, Massachusetts, which interacts with natural lighting conditions to illuminate a gallery-facing image of ever-moving light and shadow. The written work elaborates some of the many details within the structure of the artwork, and reveals the philosophies, embodied practices, and methodologies that informed the visual work's creation. Woven throughout are reflections on phenomenology, walking practice, General Systems Theory, collective making, narrative arts, …

Scene By Scene, Katita Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Katita Miller’s paintings and drawings depict quotidian scenes through the filter of an overactive mind. Populated by spectral figures and swirling portals, her interiors and landscapes fluctuate between the mundane and the fantastical. This paper explores the parallels between painting and theater and the context and process behind five paintings.

Head, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes, Pol Morton

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores ideas of transness, chronic illness, and injury. Through assemblage and repetition, my larger-than-life paintings address the dissociation and fragility of a body that is unmapped by society. These autobiographical works attempt to locate the self when it is trapped, whether in a bed, in the home, or within the body itself.

Play Among The Shadows, Xiong Wei

Theses and Dissertations

This article elaborates Xiong Wei's inspiration and experience from different cultural, political, social systems and art environment as a Chinese artist living in the United States, and the logic and methodology of how he went from a social realist sculptor to a contemporary artist.

The Art Of Reconstruction, Kristina Starowitz

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to highlight my artistic process, current projects, and research strategies emerging from my studio practice. First, this thesis describes and elaborates my practice of "reconstruction," the reasons I find it effective, and the personal history behind it. I also discuss the goals of my work and how I intend to carry it forward into the future. Throughout my work I seek to tell a story that resonates with my personal history, communicating to audiences both the vulnerabilities and transitions of life experience. My work invites the viewer into a collective space where the …

The Art Of Reconstruction, Kristina Starowitz

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to highlight my artistic process, current projects, and research strategies emerging from my studio practice. First, this thesis describes and elaborates my practice of “reconstruction,” the reasons I find it effective, and the personal history behind it. I also discuss the goals of my work and how I intend to carry it forward into the future. Throughout my work I seek to tell a story that resonates with my personal history, communicating to audiences both the vulnerabilities and transitions of life experience. My work invites the viewer into a collective space where the …

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Optimistic And A Little Flawed, Christian Schultz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accompanying exhibition to this paper, Optimistic and Flawed is a body of drawings and objects that explores the liminal space between playful and intended actions. Inspired by the landscape of the yard and the actions that take place within, the goalless play of a child and the laborious maintenance of an adult. The value of play exists within labor and labor exists within play. The drawings observe this through the theoretical framework of telic and paratelic motivational states as they relate to drawing. Abstracted yards and landscapes provide a space for the labor of the hand. A history of …

Still, Unfolding, Ramolen Mencero Laruan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Together with my Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition, still, unfolding, at Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto, Ontario), this dossier constitutes the following accompanying components: a comprehensive artist statement, documented artwork, an interview with artist Erika DeFreitas, and a curriculum vitae. These components contextualize my subject-position, and outline theoretical research, motivations, and reflections that drive my work. I expand on the diasporic experience, politics of knowledge, and the autobiographical genre as they are linked methodologies in the retrieval of immigrant histories. The fusion of autobiography and fiction becomes a hopeful approach in challenging forgotten or omitted history and confronts the expectations …

Pedestrian, Marissa Albrecht

Theses and Dissertations

My feet are my transportation while living in the college town of Provo, Utah. When walking, I am drawn to designs found at construction sites and office workplaces, methods of labor that are executed sequentially. These designs lead me to think about laborious jobs that I have had and time performing mundane, repetitive tasks. Walking, photographing, gathering, and transporting used material to a workspace are the preliminary actions for my art practice. Creation emerges by relating material from varying environments through their inherent patterns, sizes, and shapes. I organize elements of the everyday in a new harmonious context with each …

"A Place For Us", Dillon M. Bryant

Honors Thesis

“A place for us” explores constructions of the home in relation to the LGBT+ experience through reappropriated and recontextualized found images sourced from articles of print culture such as newspapers, advertisements, publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, National Geographic, Time and others printed from the 1960’s onward. As of 2020, there are no federal laws that provide universal protections against housing or employment discrimination faced by LGBT+ people in the United States. LGBT+ youth and elders struggle with securing housing and this is compounded for LGBT+ people of color. Homelessness increases exposure to trauma, drug abuse, developmental …

Patterning A Home, Zoë Finkelstein

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

The question driving my constant impulse to create is this: how do the places in which we spend our time transform the four walls around us into this larger entity we call “home?” I begin to answer this question with an investigation into the use of repetition, time spent, and memory in my own body of work. In order for a space to become a home, one must build up a collection of experiences in that space over time. To show this, I explore the relationship in my work between repetitive mark making, pattern, intense labor, memory, comfort, and my …

Alfred Hitchcock As A Cinematic Architect Of Suspense, Hannah Both

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Film has the ability to evoke powerful emotional reactions from its audience through the emotional atmosphere it creates. This almost intangible quality is difficult to quantitatively describe. Architecture, to the learned few, has a similar ability to evoke emotional reactions to the spatial atmosphere it creates. Broadly, the goal of this research is to investigate the emotional influence of suspense in cinematic space and how it might quantitatively be described through a series of definable principals or space making strategies evident through an analysis of Rear Window. The medium of film allows space to be released from the physical …

Philosophical Archeology In Theoretical And Artistic Practice, Ido Govrin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of this thesis is to examine philosophical archeology and the feasibility of knowledge that derives from researching it simultaneously through theoretical and artistic practice.

Philosophical archeology essentially embodies one’s relation to history and historiographic research—a research methodology at the core of which lies a “historical a priori”, that which a priori conditions the historical development of a phenomenon. However, this research conceives of philosophical archeology more broadly, as a multifaceted term that traverses the discourse of the humanities at large.

By pursuing this doctoral research, my original contribution to knowledge is twofold: (1) I historicize philosophical archeology—a …

A Journey Into My Mind, Shen Chen Hsieh

MSU Graduate Theses

During my time as a student in the MFA in Visual Study Program, I have been interested in creating imagery that expresses my inner world that is based on my emotional experience. I believe my identity is influenced by my multi-cultural background, relationships, daily moments and my own introverted personality. I continue to experiment with various mediums and visual styles to communicate these feelings. Drawing, silk-screen printing, mixed media, and three-dimensional sculpture are the main mediums in my artwork. Exploring diverse mediums provides me opportunities to develop my self exploration in my images. I seek to express and understand the …

A Caprine Carnival: Goats At The Vālaikkāl Vāyil, Madhini Nirmal

Theses and Dissertations

Madhini Nirmal uses Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnival to imagine a goat-led subversion of political and social dogma in the context of the South Indian city of Chennai. She uses the mediums of monotype, painting and collage to create these artworks where the undoing of hierarchies is a result of the natural and bodily.

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 …

Augmentation Of Music, Kyle Lenzen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My main inspiration for my work is music. I convey the idea of music in a physical and conceptual way. The way I represent music in my work is through Collage, Silhouettes, and Abstract Shapes. The main elements that I use can be found in album art, musicians and musical notation. Music has been a huge influence on my life. I want to share that influence and bring people together through my work. Music creates connections with anybody and can bridge different cultures together.

One way to document music is using the staff. The basic staff uses five lines and …

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 …

Light On, Baby. No Future, Shane Dollinger

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This project is a realistic depiction of the circularity of experience. As Images of ourselves and our experiences become increasingly inescapable, the repetitive and nonlinear nature of those experiences is amplified. This issue is explored in looking at contemporary artists/filmmakers whose handling of inundation in representation and narrative distinctly embraces multiplicity. Queering structures of representation, the work holds a mirror to the way that we experience living, encountering images, narrative structures and memories.

Chronicle & Character, Taryn Moller Nicoll

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis paper, I argue that the works in the exhibition 'Chronicle & Character' aim to demonstrate artistic citizenship and can contribute positively to society by provoking conversation about universally applicable (but often uncomfortable) topics. Experts such as David J. Elliot state that being an artistic citizen means that one’s concerns as an artist must shift from issues constrained to the artist alone to those of the artist’s surrounding community. The exhibition 'Chronicle & Character' contains works that serve as detailed chronicles of the medical or physiological experiences of my loved ones. This body of work presents how three …

A Portrait Of The Artist As Sisyphus, Jared N. Crane

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis statement, contemporary artist Jared Nathan Crane uses the French philosopher Albert Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus as a framework for discussing meaningfulness in art and life, and reflects on how his own experimental creative process evolved during his graduate studies.

Lithic, Megan Nelle Moriarty

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The creative works of Lithic employ nature as a visual meeting place to investigate the connection of art objects to the human spirit, explore a balance between scientific naturalism and spiritual abstraction, and work to expand on the use and craftsmanship of consumer and post-consumer materials.

The goal of any art work is to connect with the viewer on a spiritual level and, as an artist, the search for that relationship always brings me back to nature. The natural world is a place for moments of shared ‘awe’ and wonder. It is in nature that questions of human origin and …

The Body As Border: El Cuerpo Como Frontera, Mayte Escobar

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Being First generation born Mexican American I am looking into the blend of the two cultures and the disparity between them. The border is the core of my investigation; by traveling across the border I have become conscious of the differences among both sides and duality within myself. My identity has developed from a synthesis of these two cultures, and my wok explores these two factions that cannot be one without the other. fusion is apparent in my self-portraits where I dress up with the colors from both sides of the border. But I also take a personal look into …

The Girl Who Didn’T Know She Wasn’T Singing, Rebecca M. Lothan

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

I am interested what is obscured by the mundane, diurnal nature of objects that surround us which uphold a comfortable rhythm that easily resists close observation. My thesis work examines states of flux, a body of work that is neither here nor there, but hovers in an in between area: in existing between painting and sculpture, in revealing transcendent qualities of the everyday, raising questions about value, and fundamental acts of seeing and considering artwork. context becomes key in framing the experience of the work, each piece is perceptually contingent on external factors; in viewership and the individual viewer experience …

The Value Of Everything Is Nothing, Jason Dawes

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Photography was my introduction into art. I gravitated toward portrait photography fairly quickly. I found the interaction between subject and photographer to be an intense moment in time. I began to push that intensity - through various non-traditional approaches, such as placing ads in the personals. It did not take long before I turned the camera on myself, creating self-portraits in the domestic setting. I began to play for the camera. I created various personas that placed myself in some gray area between masculinity and femininity. Shortly there after, I began working with collage. I found the formulas and rigidity …

Traces Of Earthly Things, Kristin Frost

CGU MFA Theses

My strongest memories are visual. I feel connected to the moments of my life that have left imprints in my mind, traces of events that are still thick with color, energy, and purpose. I make paintings, collages, and installations that are visual combinations of events, land forms, and places from the present and the past. Through the repeated reworking of images and ideas in each piece, I reform my own concepts of space and time. Each aspect of my multi-step process changes not only the physical features of a piece, but also the original recollection that generated it. Through this …

The Collaged Practice : (Un)Familiar, Raina Beth Wirta

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis exhibition is an installation of works including sculpture, video, paintings, a hand made book, sound, and drawings that emanated from a series of two-dimensional collages: self-contained forms that evoke the surreal, (un)familiar, and/or grotesque. Infused with a sort of mysterious being-hood and intended to inspire curiosity (at the least), they are unfamiliar in relation to a particular biological thing, but (mostly) recognizable in the autonomous bits and pieces. I seek to question where our physicality ends and the next form of biological life begins, and our responses to that physicality. With childlike inquisitiveness and wonder, and a healthy …