Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Invisible Labor And The Preservation Of Dignity, Laken Bridges

All Theses

My art seeks to question the social value of labor. Throughout history, labor hierarchies influenced by social class and economic stigmas have informed how laborers are viewed in the United States. Physical jobs such as menial and domestic work are a common form of invisible labor that experience debasement and stereotyping. In my art, I use labor-based and ordinary objects as a metaphor for the worker, linking the value or disposability of the object to the societal value of labor. This critique of labor is enhanced by the manipulation of text, by the formal tools of scale and perspective, and …

Popular American News Media Explained Through Visual Arts: Using Drawing As A Tool For Humorous And Obligatory Cultural Critique, Joel Murray

All Theses

Through my drawings, I focus on jostling the passive American viewer out of her/his complacent acceptance of the images delivered by popular media outlets. Using humor as a multi-functional tool, I combine and reinterpret recognizable media artifacts to comment on the content that makes up American culture. This body of work is a cultural critique, pitting the ridiculous and superficial entertainment we (Americans) so easily ingest against current and crucial moments in time (i.e: political protests, violence, death, etc). Often times, the current media landscape is saturated with fast-cycling images and stories that do not promote careful contemplation. Instead, these …

The Land Scouts: Guide Book, Katie D. Ries

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

The Land Scouts promote modern land stewardship and are open to all. The Guide Book gives an overview of the scouts as well as information on getting started earning badges and hosting a troop.

Dweller, William Christensen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

William Christensen DWELLER What does it mean to become someone else? What does that mean for the identity of the person before they became this character? These questions have become a focal point for my work. I have been employing the self-portrait as a means of transforming myself into a different character. For this body of work I have written a short story, which is the basis for my artwork. This story is about the main character's grasp on reality slipping away from him and his shift from sanity to insanity. The different papers and styles come together as one …

The Biomorphic Grotesque In Modernist And Contemporary Painting, Audrey Howell

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper looks at the concepts of the biomorphic and grotesque in art from the start of the 20^th century to the present with a focus on painting and drawing. Included in the discussion of the grotesque throughout history are the works of Dadaist Otto Dix, painter Georg Baselitz, and feminist artists Judy Chicago, Hannah Wilke, and Ana Mendieta. Each used grotesque imagery to comment or react to a larger sociopolitical issue. Biomorphic artworks from the 20^th century are mentioned as well, with specific examples of work by Lee Krasner, Willem DeKooning, and Hans Bellmer. These artists together …

Square With The World, Dustin Andrew Young

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Memory influences everything in our lives. Massive amounts of information are stored from each experience and that data influences future thoughts and decisions. Included are the collective memories of daily headlines and images from pop-culture, as well as personal memories from my own history. Contemporary society is constantly inundated with emotionally charged imagery that aims to shock viewers by appealing to their sensibilities. By reworking the images to avoid shock and specificity, my artwork turns these depictions into mnemonic symbols that stir the mind with associations.

Advisor: Aaron Holz

A Language In Becoming, Camille C. Hawbaker

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Words as I have known them are evolving concepts in the landscape of human language, where the meanings of words are interwoven with layers of history and culture. The boundaries of language are defined by words, and around the edges are instinctive sounds that precede and exceed meaning. These sounds are an interrupting force that unsettles the linguistic structure. We often use them for expression in the form of sobs, grunts, moans, murmurs, chants, obscenities and exclamations. They appear in times of spontaneous emotion that words cannot convey. They can also be used purposely, poetically, “…to shatter [one’s] judging consciousness …

Exploring Distortion And Clarity In The Modern Printed Portrait, Karina M. Harper

Summer Research

My work has focused on two sides of the artistic process: inspiration and application. While studying abroad, I read, saw, and experienced modern France, living with a host family in Dijon. In the midst of this, I researched the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a French printmaker who utilized the lithographic process and pushed it forward as a modern and respected art practice. Lithography is a type of art involving changing the chemical nature of limestone to attract ink where an image is drawn with greasy pens. Returning to the Puget Sound campus and to one of the few lithograph …

Urban Monuments, David V. Contreras

LSU Master's Theses

Surviving in poverty in an urban environment is hard work. Fear of not having basic needs creates desperation, and not being able to improve upon these conditions can test ones patience and faith in others. The simple routine of daily life can be monumental. Small achievements can be huge moments for some and irrelevant to others. One learns to appreciate and hate what one has. Urban Monuments comes from a struggle to understand what painting is to me and the relationship it has with this idea. Working hard to better ones self or ones situation is a noble cause but …

All Things In All Ways, Amanda Nicole Crary

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis highlights our obliviousness to nonhuman nature and how this ignorance severs a great connection to the earth and our senses. My work explores this important connectedness. The natural world is filled with fleeting revelations that shatter habitual ways of seeing and experiencing; my paintings act as record of such moments. The exhibition was held at the Conkling Gallery in Nelson Hall from February 24th to March 5th, 2014. It consisted of twenty-two works including paintings, drawings, and prints. All works were produced during my time within the M.A. program, 2012-2014. Postcards and a brochure advertised the exhibition. The …

[Implied Depth]*, Hope Thier

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

While snooping through my great grandmother's belongings, I found late 19th and early 20th century photographs and stories of untold familial histories, from that of my own family and others. I have taken to adopting these families, and I am attracted to these almost forgotten narratives and developing these incomplete truths about past relatives into fictionalized characters and false histories. I strive to develop a chaotic but structured quality in my work. While doing so, I explore relationships. The relationships evolve between myself and the material, myself and the characters, and the characters and the material. By observing and learning …

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 …

Drugged Paranoia And Warlust, Nathan Pietrykowski

LSU Master's Theses

Drugged Paranoia and Warlust are stories of human depravity and violence that happened on an abandoned U.S. military base in the rural world of Indiana. These tales are told through a series of prints, drawings, animation and a comic. Scenes of bombings, mass graves, and drug overdoses are presented as humorous cartoons in playful colors to subvert the viewer into exploring imagery that discusses serious and somewhat bleak issues. The work in this exhibition is both satire of absurd events and trying to find meaning amongst madness.

Echoes And Artifacts, Molly Elizabeth Miller

LSU Master's Theses

Architecture has many different contexts and meanings, but regardless of time and place, buildings act as a physical container of memory. This body of work explores the use of large facades as residue of a personal memory and uses physical deterioration to parallel the distortion of memory as a result of time and emotion. The work makes use of warping and tearing of materials and is created through the combination of large-scale relief prints, drawing, sewing, and the cutting away of materials. The exhibition includes an installation of fabric-based prints, a series of wall-based altered paper prints, and several artist …