Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Material And Making: An Exploration Of Georgia Wild Clays, Nina Samuels

Honors College Theses

Wild clay is an abundant and diverse material that has a long history with both utilitarian and decorative uses. Since the industrial revolution, processed and manufactured clay bodies have become commonplace. However, there has been a recent resurgence in the use of wild clays in contemporary ceramic practices for the purposes of material connection, accessibility, and sustainability.

This thesis explores the abundant wild clays of Georgia including the sourcing, processing, testing, of these materials. It also shows examples of the portfolio of work that was created with this research.

How I Came To Jam With The Angels Of The Dirty South: A Journey Into Art And Art Education, Miki Skak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper dives into my personal journey from a far-left activist youth into becoming an artist. It explains how a poet saw artistic potential within me, introduced me to the world of art and eventually art education. I reflect on the art education I have received from several different art schools and how they try to adapt to the demands of the contemporary art world that has been in a constant condition of reshaping itself since Marcel Duchamp’s readymade. As an artist who is less focused on the techniques of traditional artistic mediums, I investigate how the state of art …

Green + White = Pink, Dora Chen

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to explore the unknown forces that are constantly shaping our lives. I am intrigued by the intangible connections that link people, objects, and places together, and how they manifest across space and time. As a ceramicist emphasizing both interiority and tactility, my work will dissect layered ideas of closeness and disruption in order to reveal a nuanced understanding of how we exist in perpetuity with what can’t be seen. I wish to explore this topic through carefully directed installations that emphasize intimacy and engagement among audience members. Through inspiration from my past experience, childhood memories, as well …

Nepantla: The Space In-Between, Samantha Shamard

All Theses

The word Nepantla is from the Mesoamerican Nahuatl language and is used by theorist Gloria Anzaldúa to describe a space of mixed, and borderland identity. Nepantla: the space in-between creates a physical manifestation of my experience as a mixed Latina woman raised in American suburban culture. This series is made up of ceramic objects on wall-mounted altars made of wood panels adorned with wallpaper and paint. The surfaces utilize visual references and color schemes from 90s girls’ bedrooms and Mexican pop-culture. Ceramic bones and cacti mounted onto the altar forms are all made through molded ceramic processes, which for me …

Crying At Nothing But Colors, Maryalice Carroll

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

crying at nothing but colors is an installation of ceramic works that explores the abstraction of feelings, both physical and emotional. The installation itself is a house made out of tension cables that stretch wall to wall in the gallery space. Inside the house are 7 ceramic objects placed on wooden pedestals paired with tufted rugs.

Throughout this essay, I will describe the abstract ceramic objects as Beings. They are colorful and have textured glaze on the surface with a gloopy opalescent glaze oozing out of holes that cover each piece. They are an extension of myself. They are the …

Echoes Of Home, Hanna Traynham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Echoes of Home, held at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee on display March 15 through April 8, 2022. The author provides insight into concepts and influences relating to the creation of the exhibition with perspective on her intimate connection with place and memory.

The exhibit features five installations addressing home, elusive memory, and the change and continuity of cultural traditions over time. The works consist of a series of large-scale wild clay vessels, gestural clay bookends, a wall installation of cups with a line drawing, suspended porcelain slabs, …

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

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

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

Abundance, Lana Berry

Art and Art History Honors Projects

My Studio Art honors project identifies a parallel between the standards of ceramic beauty and human beauty. Symmetry, a smooth surface, perfect curves, weightlessness and clear functionality all contribute to the “perfect” ceramic vessel and similarly the “ideal” human form. Abundance is a rebellion against these standards. I investigate how ceramic forms can appear heavy and drooping under gravity, and how bumpy textures and speckled glazes intensify forms’ deviation from the standard. Alluding to fatness, my project took the final form of semi-figurative wall-hanging ceramic protrusions, which serve to disrupt the flat, smooth, white gallery wall with overflowing color, texture …

In The Landscape Of Her Life, Susan M. Sinitiere

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To reconcile perceptions of female expectations in light of realistic outcomes, the idealized domestic space where formality and dilapidation coexist with botanicals is the aesthetic of the autobiographical context of Seeds Once Sown. The ‘home’ melds together an acknowledgement of matriarchal influence that formed my identity as a homemaker and mother, but also serves as a place of independent contemplation on a mid-life passage through a seasonal change of life, now separate from domestic adherences.

Thank You For Tody, Britton Thorp

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to describe my current projects and research within my studio practice. First, this thesis illustrates my personal journey from addiction to recovery and therefore sets the tone of gratitude for the rest of the paper. Next, the paper discusses my methodology and processes within the ceramics medium. Then, the thesis goes on to draw conceptual parallels between fine art and the culinary arts, leading the reader back to core concepts within recovery and art making. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing core values discovered throughout my tenure as a maker and reaffirms why …

Thank You For Tody, Britton Thorp

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to describe my current projects and research within my studio practice. First, this thesis illustrates my personal journey from addiction to recovery and therefore sets the tone of gratitude for the rest of the paper. Next, the paper discusses my methodology and processes within the ceramics medium. Then, the thesis goes on to draw conceptual parallels between fine art and the culinary arts, leading the reader back to core concepts within recovery and art making. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing core values discovered throughout my tenure as a maker and reaffirms why …

What's Going On Here, Joanna R. Pike

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is an installation depicting shirts and pants in various degrees of Recognizability. The Components vary from somewhat Unrecognizable to entirely Unrecognizable; Bumps and Blocks are interspersed and interrupt the Semi-logic of What’s going on here while adding repetitive elements to clarify the existence of the Semi-logic. The arrangement of the Components in the installation makes the Unrecognizable forms surrounded by the In-between Space into somewhat Recognizable versions of shirts and pants. The viewer does not fully recognize all the Components, but instead understands the implied Recognition given their existence within the installation. The ideas of Lists, Patterns, Systems, …

Beauty And Decay, Chiung-Ling Jyan Siebert

Theses and Dissertations

The intention of the project is to create an environment where the viewer can explore and form a personal narrative in the process of organic interaction with the work. At first glance, the scale of the installation will attract the viewer to the exhibition, however, upon close investigation he will discover there is deterioration, decay, and mutation. The ideas of time, beauty, decay, mortality, and interdependence will be discussed in this paper. The visitors are invited to interact with the work. I hope through spontaneous interaction the arrangements from the viewer will result in evolution of the work. The balance …

Combat Artist, Delvin Goode

Master's Theses

The integral bond that unites the American citizen with the selfless men and women of the Armed Forces will be strengthened through my juxtaposition of uncommonly complementary crafts. “Combat Artist”, featuring high-quality ceramic mugs, unique packaging, pristine painted panels, and kindred graphics will bridge a gap that enhances relationships between these two worlds through a shared love of country and shared culture. The resultant works create fantastic windows into my military life communicating messages full of humor, patriotism, and love. I aspire to masterfully unite ceramic techniques with proven principles of design distributed across all mediums within my work, culminating …

Present In Presence, Lyndsey A. Frantz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My ceramics are made to entice the viewer to live in their present moment by altering their perception and familiarity of utilitarian objects through means of natural processes found out in nature. I want the user to be fully engaged with thoughts about time, nature, and being present during their lives. Life in not just about daily responsibilities and sometimes we as humans can get so caught up in everything around us that we simply forget to enjoy everything we have worked hard to achieve. By experiencing something new, we can get out of our comfort zones and being present …

Entropy's Child, Brandon Reed Boulton

Theses and Dissertations

Art, process, and materials offer me an escape from the sometimes-crushing realities of my personal struggle with chronic mental illness. Escape is often my primary motivator for making art. However, personal meaning and understanding sometimes come while I'm working in the studio. Sometimes the meanings of the work only become clear years later. Personal experience and experimenting with materials and processes have led me to an appreciation and awareness of entropy--the second law of thermodynamics. My sculptures use spontaneity, abstraction, and process to dialogue with entropy.

I Think You Were In My Dream Last Night, Josie Cotton

Senior Projects Spring 2020

I Think You Were In My Dream Last Night

I have always worked by creating opportunities for mistakes and then fixing them. I’ve taken inspiration from the things I pick up every day: cups, necklaces, coat hangers, tables, chairs. I’ve taken inspiration from my dreams. They are always based in reality but twisted into a shape I’ve never seen before, and I wonder where these ideas come from. When I wake up, the people or the places I dreamt about are changed forever by a new perspective, out of my control. That is an idea I wanted to sift through …

Accumulation, Erin Mccarty

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This written Thesis is the supporting documentation for Accumulation, a Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at West Virginia University. This exhibition creates an environment in which a viewer can enter. This installation environment is created based on formal elements combined with fantastical elements from the imagination of the artist. The formal choices in the work provoke a positive otherworldly and whimsical response in the viewer. The environment is designed to provide relief from problems in the everyday world through patterns, forms, colors and surfaces. These elements are harvested from the natural world and recombined in a fantastical way. …

Between And Beyond, Noah F. Heil

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Between and Beyond is a series of handbuilt and wheel-thrown ceramic objects which explore intimate queer relationships through the human figure. I assemble slabs of clay to create openings and negative spaces within the sculptures, implying the ways in which the human form also acts as a vessel. The sculptures as well as the figures themselves remain open and vulnerable, literally and metaphorically. The body is depicted through fragmented sections, alluding to the ways in which society and culture break up gender and sexuality into limiting binaries. These intimate, private moments are meant to conjure an imagined future free of …

This Is Just To Say, Iren Tete

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

My memories are marked by the desire to evade logic. At a young age I became a proficient player of the “What If” game.

What if I could hold light in my hands?

What if shadows had form that could be touched?

What if I could see through structures?

These mental exercises affected my relationship with reason and validity. Aware of the threat of the ordinary, I embraced the inherent magic in the notion of possibility. I understand possibility as the limitless potential of object, thought, or scenario. This potential extends beyond the apparent and prompts more questions than it …

Entangled, Katherine Cox

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

I create objects to incite wonder through their exuberance, inviting one to explore the beauty found in the strange and offering the viewer a way to interact with the discomfort of the unknown. Mysculptures are an assembly of engaging surfaces and forms revealing varying texturesandvibrant colors referencing natural and fabricated worlds. Each sculpture is entangled within its own environment or narrative and each is adorned for its own role, finding a balance between discord and harmony, captivation and repulsion.

Each is an individual exploration of the distinct qualities inherent within each object. They are precious in scale and stimulate …

Dress Up, Ye'ela B. Wilschanski

Theses and Dissertations

Dress Up (Performance, 40 minutes) is a dress that functions as a floor, blanket, tablecloth, book and walls. It tells a visual story about domestic care giving rituals, referencing different times and places.

And A Garden In Between, Celia Fay Heithecker Brubaker

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Poteus, Jimmy Snowden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Proteus is an exhibition that consists of seven sculptures, three woodcut prints, and an installation comprised of steel and ceramics. The seven sculptures vary in size and are fabricated from steel, wood, plastic, and foam. The woodcut prints are hand carved and large in scale from a printmaking standpoint. The purpose of Proteus is to explore ideas of balance as it pertains to: life, death, love, resentment, adventure, responsibility, the subconscious, and the physical world. The methods employed while producing this body of work range from traditional to experimental, and the results of the endeavor are mainly obtained through …

Xx Openings, Jackson Siegal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

XX Openings represents my dual sculpture and photography practice. The title comes from a 70’s domestic frame, with 20 openings of varying sizes for family pictures. Half of the slots were filled with stock pictures of smiling family scenes, while the others just had measurements for the openings themselves. The object struck me as alienating, and oppressive. I didn’t see any scene within those openings I felt connected to.

The frame came to symbolize varying perspectives, ways of seeing, and ways of being. As my sculpture practice has weighed more heavily on my work as a photographer, I feel tensions …

Strange Rarities, Cori Crumrine

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

‘Strange Rarities’ is a compelling and odd coupling of words, and similar to this body of work, this phrase both masks and reveals its references. ‘Strange’ defines something unfamiliar or extraordinary; ‘Rarity’ describes something that is uncommon, or the quality of being rare. Paired together, a ‘strange rarity’ refers to an object, a feeling, or a something, which discourages familiarity and excites wonder and awe.

"Collaborating With Chance", Alyse Gellis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Have you ever felt a desire to get lost on a journey much larger than yourself or experience the thrill of the unknown? Think about a time you intentionally swam further out in a lake or the sea than you have before, or drove down a road without knowing where it would take you, or wandered around a new city without a map. Think about how you made the decision to push those boundaries. Remember how taking that risk in pursuit of an unknown made you feel, because it is that thrill that drives my artistic practice. Through my thesis …

Transplantar : Los Frutos De Sus Labores Transplant : Fruit Of Their Labor., Marie-Elena Ottman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will describe my body of work both formally and conceptually and accompanies my thesis exhibition. In the Introduction section, I will discuss my influences and the forms that I am exploring in creating this body of work and the experience that provided me with first-hand knowledge that pertains to immigrants. In Methods and Materials, I will discuss the materials that I used, glass, ceramics and metal. I will separate the glass and ceramics in two categories as each material was handled differently. I will also touch on the metal frame that is utilized to suspend the forms. …

Archetypes In Clay, Kaylea N. Williams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The artist discusses the background, ideas, and work entitled Archetypes in Clay, for the completion of her Bachelor of Arts Degree and undergraduate research for the Fine and Performing Arts Scholar program at East Tennessee State University. The artist used this development of work to explore personality types, and how they can be portrayed through clay vessels. In particular, the artist shows her work, how she created the vessels, the testing involved, and the struggles she faced. Archetypes is the focus behind the concept of this project. Her work includes four ceramic vessels, created with clay and finished with glaze. …

Ephemeral Permanence, Emily Reason

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

Traditional pottery forms and images of flora, fauna and rural architecture in Ephemeral Permanence awaken memory through the sensations and associations they suggest. These works are memorials to beauty, craft, culture and nature. I capture what is fleeting, make it tangible and endow it with longevity. Graceful movement paired with an element of danger reveals the complicated nature of beauty, waning culture is depicted with meticulous stability to conjure nostalgia, and form and surface celebrate craft and beauty. Icons of nature and culture in this work play a metaphoric role and serve to ignite memories.

I am fascinated with the …