Nest, Camillia Elci

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The major themes in this body of work are time and layers. These themes are linked by the materiality of the work. Intentional destruction and recreation, perpetually. The work is constantly being made, destroyed, and remade. It is always partly past and partly future. Nest is a self portrait displaying objects acquired and made over the past several years.

Adhocracy, Sara Denney

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Adhocracy Sara Denney The Situationists of the 1960’s were cultural revolutionaries critical of passive consumerism and encouraged the reawakening of everyday life. In the spirit of the Situationists, and operating as an “ad-hocing” machine, this project proposes a machine to repurpose objects of everyday life -- reimagining what things might become and transcending limits of their inherent definitions. Why can’t a stroller be a shower head? Categories by default create opposing forces within a situation. Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet who influenced situationist thought, coined the quote “Il faut changer la vie”, “we must change life”. By freeing things from …

Pop-A-Washington, Sam Posso

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This paper discuses the idea generation that lead to the MFA exhibition: Pop-A-Washington. The visual aspects and multi-sensory interactive installations mimic the coin operated automatons, video and sound displays, and wearable costume components of an obsolete roadside attraction. While new directions for the myths of George Washington are created based on believable lies, the concept of manmade time and the repetitive action associated with what we understand as mechanized time works against an age where the audience expects to experience all aspects of the exhibition as briefly as possible.

Tried It With Glasses Off Too; Sometimes., Nolan John Fedorow

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

I use a small wedge of wood as a tool to pick out food scraps that find themselves lodged between my teeth. I also use a small wedge of wood as a tool to keep a straight door from swinging freely on a crooked house. The small wedge of wood I stuff in between the floor and door as a tool is a controlling apparatus, much like landowners who use fencing to keep people from walking repeatedly through their land and inadvertently creating a path where they shouldn’t. A wooden door stopper will come to adorn a perpendicular-patterned patina across …

Art From The Outpost, Field Notes, New Territory, And The Invisible Hamster, Dymphna De Wild

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The outpost installations I create reveal my choice to be inventive with mostly found materials that I discover on my walks. Calling myself an artist-archeologist, I write down field notes as I collect my art-bound specimens and make a descriptive inventory for each of the works. I often surprise my viewers (and myself) by creating something fabulously strange and compelling with things that were cast aside. I hope to increase my viewers’ abilities to find beauty in these forgotten and trashed items and to generate an innovative dialogue and an outside-of-the-box way of thinking.

Fixing Belief: Artificial Preservatives, James Walker Tufts Iv

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Research opened with inquiries into the state space of the self and various modalities of the construction of the self. Flawed research design led towards a loss of original focus, spaces opened accordingly. Early sculptural work looked towards a semantic flattening through flushing out and digitally manipulated photographic and video work investigated avenues of ocular-centric landscape construction. Photoshop CS5 and its Content Aware Fill tool were engaged as collaborator and animations ensued. Hesitant time-based sketches were developed to suggest work incomplete and instead took their place. Space-based sketches followed, using the multiple to thwart focus on parts and draw it …