Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Esprit De Corps, Shalbey L. Workman

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

UCARE Funding Application

Studio Assistant

Shalbey Workman

As a transfer student with an Associate’s Degree in photography from Metropolitan Community College, I am continuing my education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by emphasizing in Photography while earning my BFA in Studio Arts.

I am currently taking a lighting class with Photography Professor Walker Pickering, whose enthusiasm and strict guidelines are beneficial to my artistic career. Professor Pickering knows the ins and outs of being a professional photographer from a business standpoint, as well as the conceptual side of fine art. He has solo exhibitions in New York, Texas, Ohio, and …

Ripple, Surge, Release, Meryl E. Engler

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

There is something primal and instinctual about living through the physicality of one’s body. The body reacts to the world through feel, ruled not by logic and rational thought, but rather energy, movement and impulse. While this might seem mindless, focusing on the physical for me leads to a state of mindfulness, where every action serves a purpose and I seek to reach clarity through repeated exertion. In art, I seek to slip into this mindful state so each layer of carving, printing, and paper comes from the decisive awareness of my movements and energy.

Growing up playing among the …

Representing Propaganda: Anti-Tyrannical Art Of The Greek, Roman, And French Populist Agendas, Katherine Norgard

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

History is often shaped to fit certain agendas. Regular, flawed individuals become heroes and martyrs. The truth is often more complicated, as proven by the fact that Harmodios and Aristogeiton gained their fame by publicly slaughtering a well-liked ruler for encroaching on their pederastic relationship, Brutus gained his fame by murdering Julius Caesar for getting too close to his mother (and sister), and Jean-Paul Marat was exalted and worshiped for violence-inciting journalism.

Harmodios, Brutus, and Jean Paul Marat all serve as symbols of equalitarianism. Their public portrayals were crafted to be symbols that fit the [needs of] revolutionary agendas. As …

When The Wind Stops, Qwist Joseph

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

The sculpture I make exemplifies my interest in objects, their creation and our tendency to covet them. Humans have developed elaborate and diverse systems to categorize and dictate the value of things. As a culture we elevate and protect Art and its display is a platform in which this object obsession is exaggerated. Through the podium of art exhibition, I explore the idea of object-ness. I question the parameters around what defines something as an object, and more specifically what’s necessary to transform that thing into Art. Further, I wonder where the line is drawn between Art and the ordinary; …

Until It Doesn't, Kendall Johnson

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

And I said to my body, softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath. And replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’

--Nayyirah Waheed

My artistic explorations of self are fueled by my experiences as a person who has struggled in the past to acknowledge a facet of my identity. Consumed by questions and doubts I’ve rarely wanted to accept the different truths of who I am. I often feel in conflict with myself and sometimes I feel it might always be this way. The struggle is always there until it’s not but …

Insight: An Invitation, Joyce Bingeman

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

My abstractions originate in my relationships to my mother, father, and self. Visual entry points of whiteness, flatness, and organic shapes become a language and form of communication that speak to my connections with my family. They begin as quiet and contemplative works with minimal use of color and imagery that oscillate around an ovular organic form and shift to more colorful pure abstractions.

Working consecutively with a similar shape in size and appearance came naturally to me as I began putting paintbrush to paper. My impetus was to complete a form and reveal its edges with gesso – lines …

Tangled Knot Tied, Shalya Marsh

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

I make formal studies in layering that use abstraction and visual symbols as a metaphor for the complex relationship we as individuals have with language, interpretation, and human interaction. My current work explores ideas of connection through representations of knots and tangles. While knots can signify protection and strength, tangles allude to anxiety.

I rely heavily on format and structure as a means of conveying content. Repetition, contrast, and layering of elements suggest the complexity of relationships. The work is composed of a series of tied knots or tangles, single knot forms in multiple variations, or a combination of multiple …

Maybe The Gate Could Be A Fan, Erin L. Schoenbeck

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

I notice with quiet thrill an individual object or shape such as a railing, an odd pattern in the cement, a handle that does not match the rest, or a surprisingly decorative form intended only for a useful purpose. Choosing a form for its potential function, strange shape or particular color, I filter it through my aesthetic. My mental repetition of the day’s stresses is changed into lighthearted wondering. Maybe that gate I passed could become a beautiful fanned shape, its silhouette in gold and pale green. It could be so tiny its functional life outdoors is transformed into delicate …

Zero Street, Keith Graham

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

“It becomes oppressive when important events, important changes, can’t break through to the surface of life and are continually unable to fulfill themselves. The still invisible and uncrystallized fact that is to be realized in the future is already growing, swelling, beginning to push through into a preexisting reality, which, however, doesn’t want to yield. It gets tighter and tighter, and therefore more and more suffocating. The lack of air increases our feeling of helplessness. We watch the gathering of the clouds and wait for a voice to speak from them, reading us the inexorable verdict of fate.” -Ryszard Kapúscínski …

Don't Worry, Patricia L. Davis

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

When I was really young something at the core of my being whispered to me, “she won’t live very long.” At the time I didn’t know where that voice was coming from, but I knew it was true. It was unsettling. Over the years I realized that I was being prepared for the eventuality of my mother’s death and that I wouldn’t know when or how it would happen. When it did occur, suddenly I knew there was nothing between death and me but time. This thought has haunted me to the point that I have developed a fear of …

Land/People, Amanda R. Breitbach

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

Through my project, Land/People, I investigate the decline of family farming and the emotional and spiritual issues that underly the human relationship to land. The exhibition combines aerial and large-scale panoramic photographs of my family’s farmland in eastern Montana with more intimate images of family members and domestic spaces. Through the use of multiple images, visual grids, and a repeated motif of windows, I tell a complicated story about history and land use, as well as the changing face of American agriculture. The installation is meant to be immersive, inviting viewers to experience this landscape for themselves and to …