Arts and Humanities Commons^™

In This Time And Place, Christy Aggens

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

I seek out and spend time in relatively wild outdoor locations and create art based on my observations. The resulting work explores time and place, while the creation of the work increases my engagement with the environment. This process serves as a reminder that time is relative and life itself is continuous.

I start by finding time in locations where nature has been given a chance to thrive and where the sound of human activity is at a minimum. During these retreats, I use my senses to absorb information and document the experience by journaling, making recordings, taking photographs, drawing, …

A Natural History (Built To Be Seen), Austin Cullen, Austin Wray Cullen

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

A Natural History (Built to be Seen) is a series of photographic observations of the spectacular and absurd ways the western natural world is presented in museums. The subjects of the photographs include displays from both the front-facing, visitor side of the museum, and the back, research-focused side of the museum. As someone who grew up visiting natural history museums, I've always been fascinated by the extravagant ways they framed the American landscape. Dramatic dioramas, interactive virtual experiences, and miniaturized landscapes all act as windows into the natural world. While this framing provides a guide for reading and understanding nature, …

When The World Went Quiet, Megan E. Mcleay

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

The basis of my work is a consciousness of the presence of the soul and the choices that compose our reality. I use light to illuminate space and manipulate human emotion. The landscapes are mirror images of my mind, dreams both light and dark, of beauty and brutality, the expression of my invisible world. My practice uses destructive drawing actions to produce creation and suggest emotional trials. My images represent this deeper bond when all emotions are felt and experienced together. The figures are not saints, but are meant to generate the idea of divinity within the restraints of the …

Basic Space, Sean P. Morrissey

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

The American suburban landscape and lifestyle incites my investigation of land use, development and consumerism. Our cultural obsession with the “dream home” and the act of displaying a social identity through popular architectural enhancements is what attracts me to this landscape. In my work I emphasize banal architecture and ornamentation to accentuate issues of sameness and draw attention to the loss of individuality. The information is distilled into a visual language inspired by my personal histories with zoning, geography, and land use, borrowing from the flatness and simplicity of cartographic design, informational graphics and architectural illustration. In my own work …