Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Specimen X1-2020 Behind The Cover, Clayton Ehman

The STEAM Journal

No abstract provided.

Stretch, Weight, Relaxed, Proud, Twisted, Jesse W. Standlea

The STEAM Journal

I created “Stretch, Weight, Relaxed, Proud, Twisted for the show “Perceive Me”. For this show, 48 artists collaborated to create representations with and of the artist Kristine Schomaker. In her artwork, Kristine confronts and deals with body image as related to her struggles with an eating disorder she suffers from.

Nurture, Lauren Taylor League

Graduate Theses

Nurture is a series of sculptural and performative works created to explore the emotional and psychological effects of objects as they relate to familial memory and the various processes one uses to nurture and express love. These moments incapsulate the need for comfort and connection, the need to be nourished, the need for protection, and the need to remember. The filmed interactions with each individual sculpture evoke the natural relationship of emotional release to the processes of remembering and healing.

By using sculpture as a residue of performance and creating work that serves as a memory of interaction and experience, …

Dust And Shadow, Anna Grant Dean

Graduate Theses

Dust and Shadow is an investigation into systems of order and chaos that exist within the natural and manmade worlds. Human constructs (such as grids) and manmade systems (such as social media) abide in a space that is tangential to the structures and systems that choreograph the functions of the natural world. Exploring how these two very different worlds weave in and out of human existence allows me to examine my relationship to the complex facets of this twenty-first century experience.

My research into chaos and entropy serves as a catalyst for this body of work. Examining the parallels between …

Maladaptive, Megan Thomas

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This ceramics MFA thesis presents themes of environmental and emotional transition through metaphorical bird imagery. The artist juxtaposes humans and ravens, who are capable of adapting to changing environments, with songbirds, who are less capable of surviving change. The artist asks viewers to consider the loss of ways of existing in the world that goes hand in hand with loss of biodiversity. Works include sculpture, sculptural and functional vessels, and drawings.

Equilibrist, In Detroit, David Versluis

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

De La Nature Au Processus D’Artification. Matière [Forme/Objet] Sens, Alexandre Melay

The Goose

Les progrès technologiques modifient radicalement ce qui nous était autrefois familier. Ce sentiment troublant venu de l’ère Anthropocène met en lumière l’impact humain sur la nature. Mais la perte d’un monde naturel nous oblige à gérer notre environnement en tant qu’environnement artificiel. Face à cette mutation profonde du concept même de nature, l’art opère un processus d’artification, renouvelant la nature dans de nouvelles formes néoarchéologiques et de nouvelles esthétiques, par le « passage du non-art en art ».

Surface Levels, Keisha Brathwaite

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Surface Levels are depictions of unobserved and imperceptible realities of many phytoplankton exteriors. The exhibition explores various structures, textures, and repetitious forms from microscopic surfaces of objects that cannot be seen with unaided eyes. Electron microscopy is used to perceive and analyze these otherwise unseeable surfaces in depth. Magnifications provide a reference in creating three- and two-dimensional works that are minimalistic and abstract at a visible level. This abstract 3D/2D image collection is translated into material expressions using acrylic sheets, acrylic ink, and wood as the main media for construction of individual works. Collectively, they serve to make the invisible …

Gut Feeling, Shelby Fleming

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Through curated space and abstracted sculptures that reference the viewer’s body, Gut Feeling, acknowledges the viewer’s experience as the focal point of the exhibition. I designed the whole gallery as an art object using both positive and negative space. The sculptures act as one unified system that guides the viewer through the exhibition in a counterclockwise rotation inward. The viewer follows the forms as they puncture through the walls of the gallery, while considering their own body’s relationship to the forms being seen. The viewer directly engages with the scale of the forms, sculptural placement, and sensory experience; these elements …

Cornucopia, Patrick Hargraves

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

I navigate the uncertain times we live in by creating positive, playful sculptures because focusing on joy is not only possible in times of hardship, I believe it is necessary in order to thrive. I go through life with a watchful reverence, finding beauty and hope in the abundance of life in the natural world. Using this inspiration, I reinvent and intentionally exaggerate landscapes and plant forms in clay with a freeing sense of whimsy. My fantasized pieces are an invitation to extend imagination to the joyous moments in the world around us, and to return to an innocent sense …

Entropy's Child, Brandon Reed Boulton

Theses and Dissertations

Art, process, and materials offer me an escape from the sometimes-crushing realities of my personal struggle with chronic mental illness. Escape is often my primary motivator for making art. However, personal meaning and understanding sometimes come while I'm working in the studio. Sometimes the meanings of the work only become clear years later. Personal experience and experimenting with materials and processes have led me to an appreciation and awareness of entropy--the second law of thermodynamics. My sculptures use spontaneity, abstraction, and process to dialogue with entropy.

In The Garden, Clare Samani

LSU Master's Theses

My work has focused largely on identity and self-expression, primarily through clothing, pattern, and color as a symbolic content. Having heavily investigated historical costume and clothing from various periods, my attention is drawn to the highly sculptural and ornamented garments of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the rococo, and the baroque. In these colorful and puffed garments, I am attracted to the similarities that I see in nature. How we adorn ourselves mimics various flowers, plants and animals in the pursuit of desire and procreation. Focusing on fabric manipulation, printmaking and sculpture, In the Garden coalesces into ambiguous sculptures that …

Yours Always, Always Yours, Emery Kate Tillman

LSU Master's Theses

The body of artwork discussed in this paper deals with the navigational process of the actualization of my own desires and needs in an intimate capacity specifically relating to my own queer identity. In this paper I will address the use of certain forms throughout the work as well as color and material choices. Yours Always, Always Yours is a thesis project produced as the final requirement of Louisiana State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art program.

Tension In The Curve, S.K. O'Brien

Masters Theses

This artist’s book is a meditative narrative on my making and exploration of materiality.

It’s the best way to allow you entry and understanding into how I see.

Finding the tension in the curve and the lines and shadow and light that are created,

These new forms that appear when stress occurs help me understand…

Recycle Bin (Trashure), Eunhyung Chung

Masters Theses

I am inspired by painful and exhausting situations, fragile or impermanent things that break easily and do not last long, so most of my works are installation or performance which changes as time goes by. I think a lot about the sense of loss and there are two kinds of loss in my work. One is the loss of precious moments and emotions of the past. Since I have so many blissful memories of my childhood related to art, they are the driving force of my artwork and they form the core of my identity. The loss of direction and …

Watermarks : The Catalogue For Home Enthusiasts, Susana Oliveros Amaya

Masters Theses

Not just when tricks are revealed as tricks, but also when they become something else and materials still push one direction but then take a different turn. The wardrobe does not quite fit in your Ford Ka, the shelves are not exactly straight, the bed does not fit the mattress and the cabinets do not line up. The tension between ideals and use opens a space for re-appropriation, one that can reveal and turn its socioeconomic codes against themselves. Perhaps these are precisely the moments of friction when these ideological watermarks can be disrupted.

Hain't, Jarrett Key

Masters Theses

Jarrett Key’s thesis book examines their journey towards understanding their freedom through three lenses: Survival, Transformation and Celebration. Through pointed excavation of the oral histories and lost stories of their upbringing in rural Alabama, their work presents critiques of the historical conditions that sowed the seeds of their contemporary personhood, while simultaneously creating spaces to celebrate beauty, joy, and survival. The objects Key builds perform their freedom and are crafted from materials that reference pieces of their own personal narrative. Highlighting works from Leaving the City (oil paintings on cement), the Hot Comb (forged black steel sculptures), and Slave Ship/ESP …

Wrung From Grave Architectures, Megan Solis

Masters Theses

Found or imagined findings... notes, diary entries, texts, prayers and poems

Disasters are avenues to gain intimacy glory is the constant

What is the skeleton made of, if not to be filled with meat to be piled and molded to bring back life.

pain and memory to be grave architectures, the stuctures that fall,

a plea for humanity: “Am I just a phantom waiting to be ripped from shady ground?”

desperate melancholy we realize that she is

I am

you are

tragic.

guilt to perform, to retraumatize is a punishment and is masochistic. to violently reenact, like haunted ghosts, to …

I - 0, Sanghyun Koh

Masters Theses

This pack of cards is a provisional collection of encyclopedic thoughts and knowledge selectively hoarded for the artist’s comprehension of the world. These cumulative writings, packaged in a distributive form for intellectual play, cover the artist’s past workings, current studies and dormant plans, amassed in the responsible attitude of selection as well as in the irresponsible method of organization. The content of this 144-card deck is basically oriented to the oscillating status of a self seeking the ‘Grasping Totality’ as a human desire and of the ‘Improbability of Reach’ as a human limitation, whether true or false, proven or unproven, …

Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around using a specialized blend of art, design, and craft to interpret political narratives through fabricated products. These objects weave contemporary commentary and consumer indulgences into sculptural cultures. Each product is designed to mimic its own marketed culture—offering an enticingly tactile, interactive experience that is equal parts confusing, concerning, and delightful. The products are accompanied by investment opportunities in the form of popular, limited released merchandized objects, such as hats and patches. Using humor and subtlety, my gamelike installations explore arenas such as agency, autonomy, intimacy, and dueling realities in a time of ecological collapse and cultural …

Tenacity, Order & Disorder, Lucy Manalo

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about empowerment. The idea of using metal comes from my past experience as a welder/machinist in the Air Force. Metal is a tough medium and I believe it conveys the themes of strength and tenacity through it’s materiality.

Some Way In Between, Noah D. Stitt

Theses and Dissertations

Merging the subjective and objective through paintings and small objects, my work uses humor, subtlety, and suspension to create specifically ambiguous images that encourage a narrative reading.

Beyond The Threshold, Kathleen Granados

Theses and Dissertations

Crossing through spaces of memory, generational dialogues, and the domestic psyche, Beyond the Threshold investigates the precarious nature of home. Spanning installation, sculpture, and sound, these explorations underscore patterns and materializations of the ever-present past.

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

In Service Of My Body In Motion: Material Exploration And The Inevitable Vocabulary Of Sustained Making, Kaitlin Elizabeth Shulman

Theses - ALL

My legs, fingers and arms activate and build my working material. The sculptures and installations I create are the result of the repetitive actions I engage to make. My work is both a result and symbol of my body’s motion. My dedication to material exploration and the processes I develop and discover through this sustained work allows me to see, describe, and affect my surroundings. Placing, stuffing, wrapping and covering are all potential applications of my material of choice, used bed sheets. I recognize the direct result of the involvement of my body in motion. I construct work that is …

The Cadillac Of Hot Glue Guns: On Replicating Objects For Still Life Using The 3d Pen And 3d Printer, Charles Hickey

Theses - ALL

The act of reproduction results in two objects with similar visual qualities, but points to the method of fabrication for both objects: the original and the reproduction. Creating abstract shapes or representations of objects may show a similarity in the ideas of a linear visual record of movement, but reproduction innately pulls the fabrication method of the original into comparison with the fabrication method of the reproduction. To explore the dynamic between object and reproduction, I align my process to the genre of still life painting. Although my objects are three-dimensional, still life painting is my frame of reference for …

Do You Wanna Go Dancing?, Anthony Kascak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transdisciplinary art work within Do you wanna go dancing? unpacks the experience and perception of my interpersonal relationships, as well as the role that touch and introspection has in my visual arts practice and everyday life. I am interested in pairing the act of looking with the sensation of touching through specific installation and arrangement of intimate imagery, ceramic fragments and frames, and manual or digitally fabricated surfaces. The negotiation of these installations orient the viewer to consider their positionality within space, as well as the extent in which distance, intimacy, and vulnerability fluctuate inside these psychological spaces.

The …

Second Chances, Michael Bingham

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

"Second Chances"

"Making the most out of whatever Life gives you".

For decades I have been making art out of things that other people have abandoned, discarded, sent to thrift stores or sold in garage sales. Since my youth I have possessed the ability to find value, usefulness and even see beauty in objects that most others would label as trash.

This is both a curse and a blessing. It requires patience and space to save, appreciate and tolerate the chaos accompanying objects that have not yet found their useful place in the world. Most of the art, including my …

Modeling Disability: Softly Making The Invisible Visible, Libby Evan

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

“I am not asking for pity. I am telling you about my disability.” -Eli Clare

In the following Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis statement, you will not find someone overcoming their disability. You will not find a tale of inspiration. You will not find a cure for ableism. You simply will find an individual's experience of disability— my experience of disability.

My invisible disability puts the medical model and social model of disability in constant tension as I navigate everyday life living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and severe arthritis. Both models seek to find blame for disability, whether in searching …

I Poked You Where We Were Connected, Sophia Ruppert

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

Life leaves behind physical and mental residue. Some of these remnants are precious while others are tragic. Regardless of its origin, this residue can be made beautiful. Remnants of the objects that surround us chronicle our history as complex individuals. My sculptures investigate my own physical and mental residue to dissect and examine my personal history.
I unravel experiences that are residually prominent in my memories. Of particular importance are events and objects that have shaped my perception of self.
stories told by my grandmothers
a dysfunctional family dynamic
objects that provide visual touchstones to my childhood
These fragments are …