Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Interface Of Glass And Topology, Travis Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Interface of Glass and Topology is a supportive statement for a collection of blown glass sculptures that employ principles of continuous surface topology along with line and color applications to create a perceptual visual experience. These forms address issues of balance and continuity as well as space relationships of both inside to outside and object to self. This supportive statement will discuss topology as a basis for composition and larger questions of interconnectivity with our environment that serves as a guiding theme of my work.

Evolving Collections, Nathan Thomas Williams

Theses and Dissertations

My art practice begins with the collecting, processing, and organizing of materials. Through experimentation, I have developed processes centered around a commitment of time and devotion to the plainest beauty of these found materials, their inherent properties, and related systems, making the resulting objects of order possible. Through my application of these personal ordering systems, I strive to bring intrigue and focus to the common and discarded. The process of finding and organizing common surplus materials has given me an understanding of myself, seeing things that may never have occurred were it not for these experiences. This practice has taken …

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …

Lessons, Kathryn K. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

I am learning through these lessons.

The following document includes my convoluted musings about my work, making process, and body leading up to my thesis exhibition, Avoidance Kitchen. My struggle with my reflected image comes from my struggle with my self-perceived physical image.

What does it mean for a piece to disappear, only to find the reflection of someone else's work or body in its place? Is my craft rendered obsolete if all you want to do is take a funny selfie? Is my work unacknowledged if all you see is the sculpture across the room, in reverse? What happens …

Intertidal, Alta Buden

Theses and Dissertations

Master of Fine Arts Thesis by Alta Buden. This paper details her process and research leading up to a body of work focused on our relationship to water, as she creates a series of sculptures about the waterways surrounding New York City beginning with the Superfund site Newtown Creek.

Branching Topology: The Aesthetics And Symbolism Of Glass Trees, Michael Lyn Tracy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses my glass artwork which I make to help me understand the world. Trees, specifically bonsai trees, are used as inspirational imagery. The work explores the physical and symbolic aspects of the trees and the relationships that develop between the maker, the object, and the viewer. The series of work split into two distinct styles and the relationships of the styles as they relate to aspects of my personality are explored.

So Much Apparent Nothing, Emily Mcbride

Theses and Dissertations

This document contains reflections on motivations behind selected works leading up to and including my thesis exhibition so much apparent nothing. Through journal excerpts and analysis of my own psychology, I attempt to put into words my thoughts concurrent to my making, indirect as they may be. The following text shares my personal conflicts and ideologies surrounding art-making, the permanence of objects, and the acceptance of an identity in flux.

Insert Title, R. Abram Deslauriers

Theses and Dissertations

It is a gestural sensibility forever suspended in the material as it cools. With each movement to and fro, I become fully immersed and given over to the activity of glassworking, where the simplest impressions whisper of fantastic melodies. I remain open to it: conducting a collision: a symphony of riffs, vamps and arpeggios. Constructing the chorus in disjunctive phases as if it forms out of its own directive. The polyphonic rhythm of decisions converge into a new composition, now completely obscured from the intro—existing in reference only to itself and you

Reflections Of Self, Melissa Athey

Theses and Dissertations

I vacillate between all extremes, beauty vs. ugly, internal vs. external, micro vs. macro. It is these disparate notions that inspire what I make. We cannot ever see ourselves objectively, but does that mean we shouldn’t try? This thesis is my attempt to dissect what I created in my 2 years at Virginia Commonwealth University, my exploration of the illness within and the psychological nature of how we go about hiding our insecurities.

A Subversive Socialist Craftsperson In The Post-Post Modern World (The Conspiratorial Ranting Of Kristoff Kamrath), Kristoffer Kamrath

Theses and Dissertations

My research in this thesis delves into the corruption of American culture and my personal experience with the academic institution of art school. I delineate my symbolic representation of a social agenda through images and objects that reference the absurdity of institutionalized art and the decay of socialist idealism in the realm of crafts and contemporary culture at large.

Duality And The Parallel Lives, Hiromi Takizawa

Theses and Dissertations

My engagement with making is a metaphor that contains the interior landscapes of my mind. I continue to explore it by comparing and contrasting exterior and interior, investigating surface and depth, covering and exposing, and taking apart and putting together. I work to translate my individual experiences and emotions into a tangible form. The visual dialogues that I engage in with my work explore a range of aspects that are inherent and specific to my Japanese cultural heritage. It often springs from my daily encounters with the subtle nuances and observable oddities of living in the “West”. These experiences have …

Beyond Edifice, Keith Mendak

Theses and Dissertations

Seeing one’s self in another requires empathy and compassion. A person must be willing to look beyond their immediate self and feel what is not readily perceptible. Difference is merely an edifice constructed by our faith in perception. By transfiguring what is familiar an alternative now is made available to the mind and reveals an underlying essence common in all people and things. We realize physical separation is an illusion of the material world and that everything exists from one sacred source.

Objects: Entropy And Temporality, Anthony Cioe

Theses and Dissertations

The transparent qualities of glass lend to the creation of elements that suggest presence and absence. I often use glass as a surrogate for lost time or space in an object, comparable to the human prosthetic and the notion of a phantom limb. Recent objects of exploration have included broken bottles, fallen tree limbs, and a human skull. The practical knowledge I gained while working in a conservation lab has directly influenced the methodology for treating these objects of disrepair. My primary impetus is a desire to construct what has been lost during an objects existence and reveal sublime qualities. …

The Alchemy Of The Everyday, Nanda Soderberg

Theses and Dissertations

Everyday objects inspire and inform what I do. The personal histories and associations we may have with ordinary things are of great personal interest to me. Often times, these items reflect the social class, education, and background of the owners. I am drawn to these objects and the possibility of elevating them in a way that transcends their implied meanings (their worth, importance, and status). The transformation of the mundane is a method of working that allows associations to remain intact while bringing new meaning and perspective to the object. My method of working becomes an alchemic process aimed at …

Lucidity, Sarah Rebekah Byrd Mizer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on space, the in-between-ness that exists amidst mental and physical experience. Pith explains personal attachments and rooting systems. The thesis continues with Blessing, narrating love then loss, and finishes with a recipe for making a tomato sandwich. Blessing is followed by Materialize, a collective view of cyclical learning and meandering paths. Finally, the paper concludes with a quirky Women and Swarovski encrusted skulls, which matter-of-factly lists artists (all of whom happen to be women) whose works I find particularly compelling; and also notes on general trends in art I find interesting in a much less obvious manner. …

One Is Concerned Because One Is A Human Being, Sayaka Suzuki

Theses and Dissertations

I am a nomad. I have not had a place to call home in almost two decades. I wander around the world searching for a place to belong, only to discover the forgotten lives and silenced voices. I have come to realize that to find a "home," I need to first create a world in which to belong to. My recent works are investigations of possibilities for another world, a world of compassion, through a critique of our current society. I create as I rediscover the forgotten histories and lives. My work captures my process of remembering and celebrating while …

Conversations With The Self: An Artist's Visual & Written Wanderings, Elizabeth W. Perkins

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis is made up of episodes in which I am in dialogue with myself, sometimes in dialogue with the work, and yet other times I am speaking directly to the reader/viewer. The tense also sways from past to present as frequently as the visual language does. The following episodes are a selection of writings from my final year at graduate school. The episodes express my influences, inspirations, theories, and philosophies as a person and a maker. I think of these things as what allows me to wander and then wander somewhere else completely different within the same landscape. I …