Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Hope Chest: A Memoir Of Home, Marriage, And Objects, Emilie L. Duck

Theses and Dissertations

As a child, Emilie often imagined what her future home would look like. As she wandered through flea markets with her mother, she would envision the pieces she found there in a home of her own, building spacious libraries, comfortable bedrooms, and well-appointed kitchens in her imagination with the same passion that other children built models out of Legos. Although the houses always changed, there was an underlying certainty that she would eventually have one house—a certainty that could not be realized once she got married, and committed to living wherever the Army stationed her husband. In this memoir, Emilie …

We Eat This Gold, Christopher Drew

Theses and Dissertations

We Eat This Gold is a novel set in a small coal mining community in southwestern Indiana. Centered around a son's return to his father's house after a failed music career in Nashville, the novel explores the subtle social structures of rural America, the slow decline of modern coal communities, and the often oversimplified beliefs, worries, and biases found in small towns. It also seeks to provide a realistic portrayal of the inner workings and broader culture of an active underground coal mine, as well as explore the ramifications, both economic and psychological, of serious workplace injuries sustained in such …

(Untitled), Christine Navin

Theses and Dissertations

For millennia humanity’s preoccupation with time and its own mortality has proven to be elemental in what makes a civilization tick. This concern has been a focal point of philosophy, science, and religion. The measuring system of time asserts itself daily through the Danse Macabre, daily motions and memento mori — the things at every corner of civilization.

Four Seasons, Morgan Pearse

Theses and Dissertations

FOUR SEASONS By Morgan Pearse, MFA. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Major Director: Matt King, Assistant professor, Sculpture + Extended Media. Fantasy functions in a mental space. Cyberspace is a fantasy world. Cyberspace is a mental space mediated by the individual, but also through/into itself. What does an internal thought mean when it is directed towards strangers via online avatar? The Internet exists. Your body exists. There is something in between. There is no singular …

Insert Title, R. Abram Deslauriers

Theses and Dissertations

It is a gestural sensibility forever suspended in the material as it cools. With each movement to and fro, I become fully immersed and given over to the activity of glassworking, where the simplest impressions whisper of fantastic melodies. I remain open to it: conducting a collision: a symphony of riffs, vamps and arpeggios. Constructing the chorus in disjunctive phases as if it forms out of its own directive. The polyphonic rhythm of decisions converge into a new composition, now completely obscured from the intro—existing in reference only to itself and you

Standoff, Omri Zin

Theses and Dissertations

This Paper is about the intertwining and swiveling narratives that made up the conceptual building blocks of my work process during the production of the piece: Standoff. This is not a description of the physical tasks that were undertaken in the production process, nor is it a recipe for extracting the ingredients that form the intricate relationships within the sculpture, but rather it is a collection of stories that are told through a zigzagged structure in an attempt to mirror the distorted hierarchies between fantasy and fact, history and imagination, truth and speculation.

Painting As In A Journey, Kristin Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

PAINTING AS IN A JOURNEY The experiences, processes, and artistic influences are described in this paper supporting the student’s MFA painting exhibit. A variety of influences from Max Beckmann to Alice Neel, as well as the oil medium itself, helped build the collective knowledge that was used in the development of this student’s work.

Psychic Fax On Vibrate, Received On Phantom Limbo, Jake Borndal

Theses and Dissertations

I offer a cloud of observations about language and art. I will prioritize my questions about how language operates in art, the way it functions within my own studio practice, and locate aesthetic interstices throughout. There will be insights gleaned from the various orderers of order (Lacan, Saussure) and orderers of disorder (Derrida, Agamben), walks in terra-incognita, and even some poetry on my part. I will take this chance to orient myself among different structures and deconstructions that have piledup around language, aesthetics and art.

Potential Energy And The Three Odalisques, Yamins Roxanne

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this paper is to examine some ways in which BEHAVIOR, POTENTIAL ENERGY, and EMPATHY are critical components in my thinking and work. The impetus for my work is an investigation of how these three components can be manifested in visually expressive and powerful states. My masters thesis, The Three Odalisques, is an attempt at making a space and world which privileges these components and the potential for art to express these ideas. This paper is divided into two parts. The first section is a formal analysis of the pieces in my work from my MFA thesis show. …

Threshold, Marisa Finos

Theses and Dissertations

Are the threshold experiences encountered between waking and sleeping similar to the liminal space between life and death? The sights, sounds, and bodily sensations experienced in the unconscious void blur the lines between the unknown and our conscious existence. Using the figure, I portray how the body might exist in these transitional moments. Through my investigations into sleep paralysis, dream states, and notions of an afterlife and the soul, I explore how we perceive the self in these altered states of consciousness.

Erratic Boulders, Julie Malen

Theses and Dissertations

Exploring how the material environment affects human knowledge of the world is an ongoing investigation in my studio. With this tactile exploration I am also looking to discover how histories and cultures overlap constantly and in close proximity within my daily experience. By collaging natural fragments and cultural debris in my installations, I seek to exaggerate this overlap and create the dizzying feeling of moving through many places at once. Cultural and historical overlapping also occurs in the phenomena of erratic boulders, which refers to the depositing of boulders, rocks, sediments and other materials that receding glaciers leave behind. This …

Inhale. Exhale., Jared Cru Smith

Theses and Dissertations

I did not become a farmer or railroader like generations of my family before me–but I continue to rely on my hands and physical labor. The use of my hands as tools to construct through woodworking and metal fabrication techniques becomes a musing action. Using wood and metal as materials, I develop structures in an exploratory way to frame the endless process of making. When I lose myself in this progression of forms, I allow myself to breathe.

Artificial Dissemination, Brian Fleetwood

Theses and Dissertations

This writing is an experiment in combining the two most important frameworks through which I understand the world, the storytelling traditions of my people, the Mvskoke(Creek), and the rational tradition that began with European Enlightenment era thinking. By weaving allegorical narrative (much of it personal) into theoretical speculation, I draw connections between recollection, truth, and the act of making. This examination of the gaps and connections between seemingly disparate worldviews, runs in parallel to the purpose of my work, wherein I construct fictive symbiotic and parasitic relationships between jewelry and wearer. This work takes advantage of the wearer as environment, …

Unification, Agency, Systemization, Intuition: My Art Making Process And Ideas, Zachary Duer

Theses and Dissertations

This essay is an attempt to describe my ideas about my work, my process, and my philosophy of art by examining five of the major pieces I created during the pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts degree at Virginia Commonwealth University. I will discuss the pieces in chronological order, first providing a description of the works’ salient characteristics, then delving into both my specific thoughts about the work as well as the background ideas that were pertinent to me during my process of creation.

Queeranimal Imaginary: An Intra-Active Investigation Of Ecology, Performance, And Sound, Caryn Brissey

Theses and Dissertations

Through interrelated experiments in writing, video, sound, and movement, this research investigates the intersections of intimacy, ecology, and performance. Integrating an autoethnographic approach to gender and sexuality with creative practice and theoretical inquiry, this layered investigation offers implications that are both deeply personal and widely accessible. I am using my own experiences growing up as a queer child to generative corporeal and experience-based material, while also incorporating the ideas of current queer and gender theorists to frame my own research within the larger context of feminist studies. This research culminated into an evening length performance at Dogtown Dance Theatre on …

Necessary Movements, Janelle Proulx

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis follows the trajectory of my artistic practice over the past two years which has led me to the creation of the installation REVERB. While incorporating performance, installation, and video into my modes of creation, I’ve likewise expanded my conceptual research regarding the influential capabilities of touch, gesture, and environment. By focusing on the relationship of REVERB to a broader discussion regarding these themes, I hope to situate the work among its art, cultural, and scientific referents.

Camping Out, Mike Linskie

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores my personal mythology, and its relation to all things found not only in my studio practice but the work itself. Biographical anecdotes are shared as well as ideas on drawing, home décor, collecting, craft, art history, storytelling, and camp. Camp provides the space in which all aspects of my practice and work reside.

Untitled, Adriane Connerton

Theses and Dissertations

This text is an exploration of the ideas and work that I made in 2014.

The Devil Can’T Find You If You Hum: Post-Environmental Conductivity, Thomas Burkett

Theses and Dissertations

What would a repositioned concept of environmentalism look like, one that is specifically determined by the geography and the human rights at stake within the environmental politics of a place? I am interested in determining how performative engagements act as an art form that counters dispossessing industrial, political and environmental regimes. Within this discussion of environmental dispossession I will discuss ways I have used drawing as a conceptual space to explore resistance, redefine cultural capital and challenge archeological structures of knowledge, through my presence and protest.

Child As Other: The Crisis Of Representing Childhood, Cynthia Henebry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores my own work in the context of historical and contemporary representations of children. Because the child’s experience is essentially unknowable to the adult, issues of control that are always at play between photographer and subject are highlighted when an adult is the photographer and a child is the subject. This is evident when we examine and compare the photographs of children that have so far existed as well as the contexts in which they were made. While I believe that complete resolution of these issues is all but impossible, my work and research is motivated by a …

Anti-Heroics, Modesty, And Bad Taste, Philip Hinge

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis work revolves around investigating painting’s relationship with “bad taste” and heroism. By comparing my paintings to illustrative depictions of “heroism”, artists who turn bad art good, ideas concerning modesty, humor, and invention I will contextualize my stance towards “heroism” and bad taste. By establishing my relationship to the aforementioned examples I will trace the growth of my work over the past few years and discuss how its role within contemporary painting has changed as well as how it interacts with various cultural references.

Waveform Analogy, Experimentation, And Optimism, Aaron Storck

Theses and Dissertations

This paper offers a contextualization of my art practice, within particular trends in contemporary art and its discourse. It traces an expressed interest in networked objects, and the indeterminacy of meaning in art; from researched examples and texts, through specific expressions of these ideas in my thesis art exhibition. The paper then outlines key areas of practical interest to the experimental viability of my art practice. The paper goes on to explore the relationships between indeterminacy, experimentation, and creativity in the arts; within the context of an original thought experiment that draws an analogy between topics in physics and the …

Untitled, Michael Hunter

Theses and Dissertations

The following is an exploration of ideas and themes related to my studio work, past and present, concrete and aspirational. I approach painting as an experience of pleasure and as a mode of resistance and critique. I will discuss how my work is aligned with many of the themes found in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s. I will also identify alliances that my work has with DIY, networks, and the contemporary art scene as discussed in Lane Relyea’s "Your Everyday Art World". I describe my mode of working in the context of "workable resistance," which Jan Verwoert …

In The Right Mirror: We Are All Gods, Aaron Koehn

Theses and Dissertations

I look to the common and mundane as sources for inspiration and imagination. In an attempt to evolve a veneer away from representing a coveted material, I have taken phenomenological events from my own personal experience and have searched for commonalities with them to create a new idea for veneering. My exploratory use of Google as a grammar-less machine deciphers the very nature of naming and its ambiguous attachment to an image. I am interested in the multiplicity of personal associations that become attached to images, and the subjectivity thus involved in the naming of an image.

Firefly Song, Lasantha Rodrigo

Theses and Dissertations

Chethiya is a brown, gay, disabled (ultimately), abused young man from Sri Lanka, who comes to the U.S. on a full scholarship. His dream is to be a Broadway star, but after coming out of his first relationship with an emotionally abusive, alcoholic man, he is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic, degenerative neurological disease that results in demyelination, causing progressive debilitation. The story is divided into six chapters that narrate his life under various marginalizations he is subjected to, culminating in traumatization. The story, however, ends on a positive note of redemption with the narrator looking forward to his …

Studies Of The Middle Class, Scott S. Stanard

Theses and Dissertations

I create oil paintings and drypoints that bring attention to scenes of American middle class life. I present crowds of people engaged in community activities and festivals. This enables me to depict a cross section of the residents of a given region. I also create a counterpoint to these peopled gatherings by painting and drawing the exteriors of middle class homes. In my work, I attempt to imbue a sense of intrigue and pathos.

I work from candid photos that I take of people and their living spaces. In these photos, I modify and delete elements to optimize narrative and …

Transformational Directing: An Analysis On How Leadership Affects The Creative Process, James Clayton Winters

Theses and Dissertations

Leadership is often ascribed as a quality one either possess or doesn’t. We often hear phrases like “She is born leader” or “All eyes are on you”, these are thrown around without discretion in the classroom, conference rooms, social gatherings, and business meetings. This work contends that leadership and in particular leadership that grows and transforms its participants is less an inherent character trait, than an outlook and set of core principles that lead to transformation. Through the application of current and developing business leadership theory and its effect on creativity and a cross analysis of “Best in Class” theatre …

Fred Kabotie, Elizabeth Willis Dehuff, And The Genesis Of The Santa Fe Style, Jessica W. Welton

Theses and Dissertations

Those scholars who have overlooked the relevance of Fred Kabotie and the Santa Fe Style he developed have missed an important historical segment of early Native American painting. This dissertation underscores the convergence of diverse intellectual, artistic and cultural backgrounds, especially those of Kabotie and Elizabeth Willis DeHuff, his first art teacher, which led to the formation of the Santa Fe Style in 1918. This style was formative for Dorothy Dunn’s later Studio School at the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School.

This first generation of the Santa Fe Style of watercolor painting was empowered by highly educated men and women, …