Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Reading The Room: Memory, Dwelling, And The Everyday, Sara R. Hardin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In any space, there is a residue that coats the present with a patina of memory. Creating layered imagery in dream-like paintings and prints, I use the domestic realm as a metaphor for the internal world of the mind, memories, and private thoughts, including them in compositions with symbols like the boundaries of windows, doors, and gates. These metaphorical structures also portray outward identities, which guard inner emotions. The conceptual aspects of these compositional elements weave together memories of the past and places of the present into a unified whole.

I began graduate school at the beginning of the COVID-19 …

An Exploration Of Bengali Identity With Material And Visual Artifacts Through Painting, Farah Billah

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Painting is and always has been, at its root, an exploration of identity for me. My current collection of work explores the stripping of Eurocentric beauty standards and presentation of the divine of the Brown Body to reveal my version of the human spirit. My drawings, paintings, and a hand-tufted rug all made with a surreal, colorful representation of the coming together of body and mind.

Picturing Things, Matthew J. Bivalacqua

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My creative process is a ritual I use to examine my personal narrative. Digital photography is a way for me to mine an object or environment with an obsessive emphasis, and extract an image that signifies something relatable. By employing tropes derived from my personal narrative, and filtering them through image manipulation software; I am able to dramatize aspects of perspective and scale. With an automatic mark guided by printed images and projections of digital panoramic images, the surface and resulting picture comes into focus. This is a way for me to move past my experiences. Achieving this level of …

Ripple, Tyler P. Haney

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work leverages the dynamic processes the brain uses to compute visual stimuli to influence how viewers experience my work. My aim is to create a ripple effect as the brain processes the visual information I provide.

My process begins with a camera. Focusing on the face, I see how much contextual information I can remove while still capturing the emotional expression of the subject. Before long, a photograph ends up next to a canvas where I will rebuild the image from the photograph using a myriad of expressionistic marks and colors to amplify the emotion.

Recognizing human emotion is …

Perspective, Karie D. Cooper

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As an artist, I am interested in understanding how and why humans interact with the natural world. I examine my own individual behaviors and practices and research impacts made on nature by humans as a whole. I am drawn to nature for a multitude of reasons, including aesthetic beauty, psychological wellness, unraveling the mysteries of the universe and trying to understand the origins of life. As an artist I explore the dialectic relationship between everything we perceive outside of ourselves as the environment, and the way we think of ourselves in relation to that environment. I believe in the interconnectedness …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Everyday Rituals, Chen Gu

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis traces the trajectory of Chen Gu’s work over a three year period, looking at major influences such as Bustos and Saville, on her painting and film projects. She explores the concept of childhood, memory, and portraiture.