Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Delicate Balance, Lily Taylor

Masters Theses

There's a silver key from Lowe’s for the front door and a smaller unmarked gold key for the back door. There are two identical RISD keys–studio and storage closet. There’s the key to my mom’s apartment and another to the gallery where I used to work on Saturdays. There’s the key to the bike lock that I’ve kept on the ring even though my bike was stolen. I tried splitting up all the keys and creating two different sets–daily keys and occasional keys–but I never had the occasional keys when I needed them.

I have been making paintings of the …

The Day The Door Flew Open, Clara Delgado

Masters Theses

A journey is a chance to better oneself, to go and come back anew. This kind of pilgrimage does not only happen in the spectacular realm of far-off travels. Often it happens where the soles of one’s feet comprehend the curvature of the land. Then, without forewarning, time opens a sliding door that appears on the recognized ground. Stepping in, the world is realized in a new way.

The writings that strike my tongue with ravishing bittersweet flavors are fictional narratives, with voyages that sail through day and night, disguised as lovely prose while critically probing the world. This written …

The Fuller The Bucket Is, The Harder It Is To Fly, Jacob Littlejohn

Theses and Dissertations

My abstract paintings are informed by the momentary sublime rooted in the vastness of the natural world. Based on imagined and real landscapes, the work evokes minutia and phenomena that affect our perceptions of reality, and signifies a longing to reconnect with the natural world.

Exploring Narrative Strengths In Animated Storytelling, Amelia Kretzer

Honors Theses

This thesis explores tactics for effective narrative development for animation through the analyses of key works of strong animated films synthesized with literature discussing narrative frameworks. This research resulted in a shortlist of animated storytelling best practices—six principles to reflect on in the creation of effective stories for animation. Additionally, an original 2D animated short film was created utilizing the principles on the shortlist in its development as an outpouring of this research.

Where The Under And The Over Meet And Disappear, Louisa Owen

Theses and Dissertations

Vignettes of light: light disappearing, light contrasting, light directing, light wandering, and light uncovering.

Narratives In Ink: A Journey Through Lineage And Land, Natasha Sethia

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the convergence of personal heritage and artistic expression through a series of pen-and-ink portraits, deeply rooted in the familial stories and cultural tapestry of Rajasthan. The project, initially envisioned as a broader exploration of underrepresented narratives, evolves into a more intimate journey of self-discovery and cultural reclamation, guided by ethical considerations and feedback from peers and professors. Drawing theoretical inspiration from figures like Richard Meyer and Edward Said the work delves into themes of cultural representation, appropriation, and the power dynamics of artistic creation. The shift towards personal narratives allows for a respectful, authentic portrayal of my …

Contact Sheet, Jiwoong Jang

Theses and Dissertations

Jiwoong’s thesis paper is a field guide to how he navigates his curiosity with photography, sound, sculpture, ceramic, and installation. Connecting fragments through narrative vignettes, he underscores how chance, walking, light, time, and uncertainty inform his art.

Café Con Mucha Leche: The Pasts, Presents, And Futures Of Puertoricanness And Puerto Ricanhood, Anthony Rosado

Masters Theses

The central theme of this text is self-governed naming. I am implementing Black feminist storytelling procedures to write and paint without the “white,” the “male” or the “elitist gaze.” I’m writing an anti-colonial historical narrative about the making of the Puerto Rican people. I am providing to the field of American Studies an Afrocentric narrative–and series of paintings–through an interdisciplinary study of the presence of the African in the Americas. Although many colonial narratives center Spain in histories of Puerto Rico and of Puerto Ricans. I’m rewriting my Afro Puertorriqueño ancestors’ abolition story and collecting my family’s oral histories. I …

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

Saga Beyond The Gate: Chapter One, The Coming Of The Gate Ghost, Tristan B. Miller

MSU Graduate Theses

“Saga Beyond the Gate: Chapter One, the Coming of the Gate Ghost” explores performance sculpture used as religious ritual. My work emphasizes ritual, creation myths, relics, physical manifestations of lived religion, and the power of narrative belief. One often turns to religion, science, or spirituality, to seek answers to questions about being a conscious entity, and one’s journey to the end. This saga uses scripts from all three of these schools of thought, placing the world of the Gate Ghost into tangible reality, as a play on a stage. Artefacts represent objects of power and mystery. Characters embody morality tales, …

Orbiting Forward (Thoughts On The Nature Of Conflict - Sighs On The Struggles Of Change), Bushra A. Alsughayer

Theses and Dissertations

Today’s world is a wide open hyper-connected sphere where human societies worldwide exist in a complex crossroads of historical conditions, ideologies, and power structures. A pool of constant confrontations, minor or major, between the traditional and the progressive, the local and the international, the materialistic and the transcendent, the pragmatic and the idealistic, and countless layers of meaning. For an individual who exists in such an intense moment of history, it seems almost inescapable to be exposed to, affected by, or even involved in a major conflict. A situation that makes individuals always in a critical position where every role …

Plausible Expositions With Possible Expeditions, Nikolaus D. James

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by video games and cinema, in this body of work, Plausible Expositions with Possible Expeditions, I use objects to create scenarios that suggest a narrative. The scenes are then photographed and displayed through cathode-ray tube televisions and viewers use their own knowledge and ideas about the objects to create that narrative. Each of these objects has is own data set, and the most common have a universal data set—information surrounding the object that is widely recognized, much like how a crowbar is commonly associated with crime. Similar to playing a video game, an algorithm is used when viewing my …

My Sight's Shadow, Lili Jamail

Theses and Dissertations

The story in the photographs I am showing is not about a person, but about the span of experience and emotion presented through time. I am looking into things that stand alone, and things that stand together — the idea of sharing space and experience with something or someone or being by yourself. One thing that draws me to photography as a medium is the way that photographs are able to tell a story or explain something without words. Photographs offer a unique perspective which, by their nature, alters reality. There is always some amount of truth that lies in …

North American Data, Joseph A. Burwell

Theses and Dissertations

North American Data fractures and reconfigures pre-existing narratives into new, unauthorized forms of storytelling. Core samples extracted from various narrative sources are reassigned new roles according to their proximity to each other. This paper functions as an introduction to the essential actors and their dramatic inclinations within fluctuating scenarios.

Making Sounds, Patrick Costello

Theses and Dissertations

Using collaboration and performance as tools, I situate my personal story, my body, and my skills and interests within a contemporary landscape that is intersectional, full of partialities, and rooted in evolving ecologies.

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.

The Truth About Your Monsters, Cassidy Creek

LSU Master's Theses

The Truth About Your Monsters is an immersive and dialogical exhibition formatted as a walk-through storybook environment. Viewers are transported into a child’s make believe world through hands-on stations. By building on the skeleton of an archetypal narrative, audience members are encouraged to tap into their own experience as they contribute imagery and action to the narrative. I call on audience members to discuss personal or universal fears by prompting them to draw images of monsters that represent their fear.

Cruelty: Aesthetics, Narrative, And Invented Worlds, Sarah Slappey

Theses and Dissertations

Sarah Slappey investigates ideas of cruelty and beauty through the lense of narrative, aesthetics, and invented worlds.

Momentary Eddies, Leah Marie Hamel

LSU Master's Theses

Our lives are in a constant state of change, from the most intimate scale physically and emotionally to the world surrounding us externally. The relationships we build with ourselves, others, and the world surrounding us are important structures we carry with us throughout life. Momentary Eddies is a visual poem about the interconnectedness of our inner and outer landscapes. I have created a hauntingly dreamlike space that explores a landscape of emotions that are an entangled part of personal intimate relationships and how the emotional and physical topographies of these relationships connect to the environment surrounding us. These paper sculptures …

: : Poof : :, Caleb Nelson

Graduate Masters Theses

Storytellers have an interdependent relationship with their narratives. If you have ever told a lie, you understand. Stories take on a life of their own, as you consider the potential ramifications of each contingent piece. Definite sets of things happen as results of specific other things. If you throw an ax at me, only a few things can immediately happen, and our relationship will be forever changed. Events evolve. When we create or discover a narrative, we live by its logic. Upon consideration, a moment compels a series of moments modulated by a voice, a single perspective, a personal narrative, …

Snip, Snap, Snout: This Tale Is Told Out, Crista A. Ames

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mythology has shaped human thought and experience since before recorded history. Passed from one generation to the next, myths elevate and aggrandize realities that are difficult, complex or horrifying. This is what makes us human, an inspiring capacity toward metaphor and the ability to make beauty, lyricism and splendor—order from the chaos. Within mythology, the cause and effect of both misery and joy may be explored in their wholeness. In this act of imaginative translation, we may come to understand how misery and joy are naturally coexisting.

In my thesis exhibition this tale is told out, I use the layering …

A Storied Surface, Courtney Wilburn Marse

LSU Master's Theses

A Storied Surface is an exploration of narrative based graphic design engineered for textile surfaces. Beginning with an experiment involving the characters of the novel Matilda, I developed a design system. My process involves creating narratives and illustrating the characters. Then the illustration is abstracted. The abstraction is used to create prints. Finally, all of the elements including the original illustration, abstraction, and print are used to create engineered designs for three-dimensional surfaces. Advances in digital textile printing and the increasing implementation of graphic textiles in the fashion industry led me to experiment with applying my own design to textiles …

Less Class, More Sass!, Amanda Lee James

LSU Master's Theses

Less Class, More Sass! is a visual soundtrack to the crass jokes, hairy faces and smelly wardrobes of my disorderly, and politically incorrect friends. These young men and women have mutated into a ragged crew of personified sasquatches to tell a collection of stories about coming of age in the American punk and metal music subcultures.

In this series of prints the characters grow from aimlessly rebellious youths into hopeless but happy young adults, ashamed of their desires for a nice neighborhood and a steady job. While thrashing through a sea of self-destructive tendencies, each character slowly finds their inner …

Given: F(A Great Love + A Missing Body), Emily Anne Barnes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Given: f(A great love + A missing body) is a collection of poems in four sections that takes love and mathematics at its core. The lyric and narrative poems navigate an affair between a female narrator and her lover. The math is positioned with the verse in the way an ekphrastic poem might be positioned next to the art upon which it is based. The connection and alienation of the form fractures the poem, but it also serves as a metaphor for the competing forces of two people in love. And the goal of each is pursuit of the sublime. …

A Matter Of Taste., Charles E. Haskins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper supports the Master of Fine Arts exhibition at the Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, from March 14th through March 18th, 2011. The exhibit is composed of nine oil paintings depicting an invented story about two characters who create a soup for a cooking competition. The show A Matter of Taste chronicles an allegory concerning the evaluation of creative works. Through Gaudie and Baudie's "odd" recipe this work illustrates the ways in artists and art audiences interact and determine artistic value. The work is inspired by techniques in distortion and narrative painting. The following expands on the …

Al Cuerpo Lo Que Pida, Lucia Sanchez-Llorente

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Al cuerpo lo que pida, is a novel that addresses the old topic of disloyalty in contemporary Mexico City society. It narrates in first person the inner-conflict of the protagonist, Mercedes Santamaria, who tries to lead a double life. On one hand she is in love with her husband, Fernando, and on the other hand, she is incapable of stopping her impulses with other men, which puts her marriage in jeopardy. She turns to her late grandmother, as an alter ego, for advice.

Recollections Of Paradise Lost, Japheth Alan Storlie

LSU Master's Theses

Recollections of Paradise Lost is both a memoir and a fictitious account. While the images in this series are based on actual people and events from my childhood, they are nonetheless implied narratives. Through the employment of universal symbols of childhood nostalgia such as tricycles, tire swings, toys, etc., these photographs are intended to implore the viewer to make connections with their own pasts. These narratives are meant to captivate and enchant and at the same time, disturb and haunt. Ultimately, the objective is for the audience to reconsider and re-experience the joys, fears, losses and traumas associated with childhood …

A Shared Silence, Jessica Alice Mowers

LSU Master's Theses

I took a journey home to Western New York and turned the camera’s lens on both my family and myself. 

 This thesis is a story about my family and me. I photographed my family to confront the tragic car accident that took my brother’s life and my mom’s sanity. I also acknowledged the present state of my family with these photographs by exploring the root of many of my fears and anxieties that stem from the tense and stressful atmosphere within my home as a result of this car accident.

Strange Yarns, Matthew Thomas Bourgeois

LSU Master's Theses

I leave a good portion of my art up to chance or my unconscious self, this shows me how closely my prints and drawings relate to the dream world. In dreams most of the physical laws are abandoned, reason and mind are not the dictators of the dream. Dreams have their own logic and are a perfect place to explore a narrative that leaves itself open for the viewer to put any number of meanings into.

Persona, Joanna Norcross Coke

LSU Master's Theses

The narrative oil paintings in this show illustrate one or two female characters set in domestic interior spaces. The scenes bring with them allusions to suggest that something unusual has just happened or is about to happen by heightening the psychological emotional moments. The subject matter is intimate and painted on small supports to reinforce these feelings. The images go beyond the observed visual aesthetic or representation by shifting the picture plane and using dramatic color palettes and lighting to create deeper interior spaces, adding to the tension.