Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Inner Portraits, Bethany Salisbury

Graduate Theses

This paper investigates the many interconnected layers of women’s mental health through portraiture and how animal and plant symbolism can represent the way women's hormones and bodily health affect their mental health. I reveal how the artwork created presents these connections and inner mental health narratives to the viewer, creating a space of empathy, destigmatization, and self-reflection. This body of portraiture art connects five women through a series of both two-and three-dimensional portraits based on interviews using my own adaptation of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoots’ (1983) portrait methodology.

Women and non-binary individuals have always dealt with difficult interactions of bodily and mental …

See How Man Was Made, Lilian C. Smith

Senior Projects Spring 2023

First there was Chaos, the gaping abyss. From Chaos came the Earth and soon after darkness and Night, from which came Day and Light. To be her husband, Earth created Sky. They made many children together, the Nymphs of the hills, the Hekatonkheires, the Cyclops, and the Titans. When Earth and Sky’s youngest Titan son Cronus overthrew his father, he castrated him, sending bits of the sky into the sea where Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty was born. Cronus ruled until he himself was overthrown by his own youngest son, Zeus.

See How Man Is Made is a project …

Converting Horizontal Media For Vertical Platforms, Eric A. Hernandez

Graphic Communication

Today, most media is viewed on mobile phones and seen on a vertical screen. There are very few methods for converting horizontal media into vertical media for vertical platforms. This manual shows new ways to redesign horizontal content so that it looks better on vertical displays; I imagine watching things like the Super Bowl or the The Grammys on TikTok or Instagram with a new broadcast design that is more attractive.

Vitality, Bernadette K. Curl

Student Projects

Vitality is a study of life, joy, and motion. It is in response to the portraits of models in endless magazines made to look as though they mourn their own vitality, standing stock-still and vaguely bored. These images are also made as archival evidence that, as Phil Ochs said: “In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.”

These portraits were made under studio lighting on medium format, high speed, black and white negative film, and medium format, colour positive film. The materials are chosen for their ability to capture truth over fact.

I asked my subjects beforehand to …

Ghosts And Ethics In The Early Works Of James Joyce, Michael Menase

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last 20 years, critics have contributed new insights into the character development, overall messages, themes, and other literary aspects of James Joyce’s works by focusing on their ethical implications. By following an intertextual method and by performing close readings of Joyce’s texts, I try to fill a gap in the scholarly literature by adding a related focus on ghosts to the conversation about Joyce’s ethics and those of his characters. Focusing on Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I hope to show that the ghosts in Joyce’s corpus motivate characters and readers to …

Apotheosis, Kira L. Hansen

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Apotheosis invites the viewer to explore the both tensions and the joys of gender expression, love, sex and sexuality, the natural and the constructed worlds, and the body.

Indian Mughal Turban Boxes As Cultural Indicators: Civilizational And Artistic Study, Hamada Thabet

Journal of the General Union of Arab Archaeologists

(Ar)
صناديق حفظ العمامة في العصر المغولي الهندية كمؤشرات ثقافية دراسة حضارية فنية
تعبر التحف التطبيقية في عصر أباطرة مغول الهند عن حضارة المغول وإبداعتهم، وتعتبر صناديق حفظ العمامات مثالا رائعا لتلك التحف التي تعبر عن حضارة المغول، وتهدف الورقة البحثية لدراسة فنية لهذه الصناديق وكذلك ومسمي جعبة دستار وعلاقة المسمى بأداء الوظيفة التي من أجلها صنعت هذه الصناديق، ولقد كان لفلسة المغول بالهند سواء الأباطرة والأمراء في الاهتمام بالعمامة ومكانتها لديهم دور كبير في ظهور صناديق مخصصة للعمامة، وكانت العمامات تزين بالأحجار الكريمة والجواهر الغالية الامر الذي أدي أيضا إلى ظهور هذه الصناديق، وتعدد طرز صناديق حفظ العمامات في …

Real Life Description In Characterising Students’ Personage And Students’ Period In The World Literature, Nabiya Idrisovna Abdullayeva

Scientific reports of Bukhara State University

Introduction. The students have repeatedly acted as a real political force, participated in solving important social problems. It is obvious that university youth, who sometimes leave a significant mark in history, should become the object of comprehension in the works of literature. Real life is a phrase used originally in literature to distinguish between the real world and fictional or idealized worlds, and in acting to distinguish between performers and the characters they portray. The comparative study of the works of world figures analyzed in the article will have a positive impact on the development of our international literature and …

The Use Of Egyptian Blue In Funerary Paintings From Roman Egypt, Margaret Sather

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

This paper explores the use of the synthesized pigment Egyptian blue in the encaustic and tempera funerary portraits of Graeco-Roman ruled Egypt in the 1st-3rd centuries CE. Recent developments in non-destructive imaging analysis technology have aided research institutions and museums in detecting the presence of this pigment. New questions have arisen based on these findings of Egyptian blue in the depiction of flesh and hair of these subjects, particularly because blue is so rarely used as a standalone pigment in works of this category. These analyses have challenged assumptions that Egyptian blue was a rare and valuable pigment during the …

Facing Others: Ray Johnson’S Portrait Of A Curator As A Network, Miriam Kienle

Art and Visual Studies Faculty Publications

Deploying various forms of art world communication (commercial, bureaucratic, and interpersonal), Ray Johnson made a portrait of the curator Samuel J. Wagstaff during the mid-1960s that unworked the singular and unified image of his subject and emphasized identity as contingent upon a person’s position in their social network. Although many have noted the networked character of Johnson’s mail art practice—wherein participants were connected to each other with and through continually circulated collaged correspondence—few have explored it in relation to contemporary network theory and none have examined how it relates to portraiture of the period. By analyzing the remains of Johnson’s …

Judith Leyster: A Study Of Extraordinary Expression, Nicole J. Cardinale

Theses and Dissertations

Judith Leyster’s innovative application of expression in her Self Portrait serves as the focus, whereby she is shown to blend conventional painting categories, preserve a sense of innocence, and confidently flaunt her skills. In turn, Leyster challenged the male-centric art market and stood apart from her artistic predecessors and contemporaries.

Motherhood Story Project: Transforming Societal Perception Of Mothers Through Portraiture & Storytelling, Andrea Caresse Lewis

Masters Theses

In our modern western culture, there are two drastically different views of motherhood. Society often paints mothers as women who give up on their bodies and careers to pursue a life of seemingly purposeless identity. While the reality is that women devote their entire being to the growth and development of a new human, continuing the very concept of civilization as we know it. Because of this dichotomy and plurality of worlds, mothers often feel ostracized, alone, and completely unprepared for the new journey they have embraced. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the realities of motherhood and …

Thanks To You, I'M Alive, Antonio Scott Nichols

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Antonio Nichols

Artist Statement:

In this project I am using figurative painting to explore the meaning of relationships/emotion and my connection to the people I am painting. I question what this means and how each individual’s identity ties to mine and why it may or may not matter. “Thanks to You, I’m Alive,” the title of this project, encompasses the message I am sending not only to the individuals I painted but also to the viewer because there is a certain exclusivity in who I decided to paint.

I want the connection I have with these people to not only …

Displaying Legitimacy: Monjas Coronadas Portraits And The New Spanish Family, Kelsey Rozema

Theses and Dissertations

Monjas coronadas (crowned nun) portraits are a uniquely New Spanish genre of painting that depicts a young woman on the eve of her profession as a cloistered nun. Situating the sitter as a Bride of Christ, she is adorned in a number of ornate and symbolic religious trappings, the most important of which is a large floral crown. The portraits are highly formulaic and feature New Spanish iconography that amplified these sitters’ elite status as nuns. Modern scholars, when discussing this genre of portraiture, focus on how the iconography of the images reflected the budding Creole culture. However, scholarship has …

Palimpsest, Erin Ellis Gardner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Palimpsest explores the various ways in which the models, individuals who have gained and/or lost a large amount of weight, feel empowered and vulnerable. The skin is marked and each discoloration or indentation telling a story of loss, gain, and removal. The photographs mark these changes.

Lucian's Imagines: A Student Reader, And Pro Imaginibus: A Translation, Jesse Amar

Honors Scholar Theses

This student reader provides a complete Greek text of Lucian's Imagines (Eikones, or Portraits), with linguistic and literary commentary for the intermediate student of Ancient Greek. There follows a new translation of Lucian's Pro Imaginibus, the author's own take on his work.

It Can't Leave You The Way It Finds You, Kyle Nobles

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

There’s a beautiful innocence in childhood where, although the world is large and new, it feels as though your place in it and the roles that you play are stable and unchanging. In our youth, outside of extraordinary circumstances, we are unburdened by the awareness that everything and everyone is subject to radical change—including our own sense of self. As we grow older though, looking back it becomes clear that this was never the case. In a matter of years, you can change so dramatically that you did not even notice as you became an entirely new person. For me, …

Portraits Of Human Monsters In The Renaissance: Dwarves, Hirsutes, And Castrati As Idealized Anatomical Anomalies, Touba Ghadessi

Monsters, Prodigies, and Demons: Medieval and Early Modern Constructions of Alterity

At the center of this interdisciplinary study are court monsters - dwarves, hirsutes, and misshapen individuals - who, by their very presence, altered Renaissance ethics vis-à-vis anatomical difference, social virtues, and scientific knowledge. These monsters evolved from objects of curiosity, to scientific cases, to legally independent beings. Although many images of and writings about these individuals depict them as jokes of nature or indices of courtly wit, others transcend these categories, combining a vocabulary of courtly self-fashioning with close observations akin to dissections that humanize monsters, while simultaneously stressing their anatomical difference. More importantly, the works examined in this book …

James Rogers Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio, James Rogers

Senior Art Portfolios

This portfolio contains several graphic design illustrations and one package design all created by James Rogers

Sadie Jung Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio 2018, Sadie Jung

Senior Art Portfolios

Senior Art Show Exhibition Portfolio by Sadie Jung. This exhibition includes five oil paintings and one documentary.

The Hour Of The Wolf, Emily Louise Beresford

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

the hour of the wolf

In these photographs I try to capture the sense of time moving and changing. I am interested in the way that light can change the way we see something. We are made vulnerable by what light reveals.

The photographs are about a specific time of day as well as time passing over a year. The interweaving of faces and landscapes reveals this progression of time during the days, the seasons, and the years through which each person has lived.

With time, light moves across …

Topical, Trista Hurley-Waxali

The STEAM Journal

This is a piece to start the discussion of how the lightening of pigmentation through melanin manipulation evolved from the demands of cover art photography.

The Rug's Topography, Rana Young

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

My complex relationship with photographs began when I was young. I remember tearing images out of publications and bringing them to my dad prepared with questions. Where I grew up, normative values defined by anatomy at birth impacted an individual’s gender perception and performance. Raised by a single father, I experienced a non-traditional family structure in my home. Seeing photographs portraying the “wholeness” of family contradicted my reality. Those psychological impressions provoked my curiosity and propelled me to solve the mystery of what existed beyond the scene depicted.

In retrospect, my search for missing context stems from an interest in …

The Eyes Have It, Tara Thompson

Tara Thompson

Mythic Moments

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

An exhibition at HKDI this autumn aimed to introduce the power of photography through a series of family portraits that combined simplicity and emotional depth.

Mdocs Poster-2016-09-01, Fall Doc Dates, Jordana Dym, Jesse Wakeman

MDOCS Publications

When documentarians focus on a single subject-- a person, a research project, a community, an event-- they develop an individual or collective story from up close. These cases may illuminate a moment or a lifetime, the personal or professional, defeat or success, the interior or exterior journey taken by the subject. How do documentarians make such cases compelling, resonant and relevant? What are the building blocks that take the subject to story? How does the singular become the universal?

In Fall 2016, MDOCS presents a mini-series in which area practitioners engage with portraiture and biography in documentary work. One Monday …

Vestiges Of Vulnerability: Helen Post's Photographs Of 20th Century Navajo, Carlyle Delia Schmollinger

Theses and Dissertations

Helen Post (1907-1978) was a twentieth century American photographer, whose images of the Navajo offer sensitive insight into the lives of individuals residing on the reservation from 1938-1942. An employee at the time for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Post traveled to the West on numerous excursions, each time gaining perspective and understanding into the intricacies of Native life. Her ability to portray the Navajo in unguarded and intimate moments stands as a significant contribution to discourse on visual records of American Indians. Examining Post's work provides an opportunity to not only reexamine her work, which has largely been overlooked, …

The Portrait Of Homer In Strabo's Geography, Lawrence Kim

Lawrence Kim

Strabo’s Geography, as anyone who has perused it will know, is suffused with a profound, nearly obsessive, interest in Homer. The desire to demonstrate Homer’s knowledge of geographical information at every turn (even where it seems prima facie unlikely) is matched only by the determination with which Strabo “solves” notorious problems of Homeric geography such as the location of Nestor’s Pylos or the identity of the “Ethiopians divided in twain” visited by Poseidon. Strabo’s concentration on such arcana, often to the exclusion of more properly “geographical” material, has understandably exasperated many modern readers with different ideas about what constitutes …

Old Masterpieces, New Mistress-Pieces: Cindy Sherman's Reinterpretations Of Renaissance Portraits Of Women, Caitlyn D. Marianacci

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines a selection of eight photographs in the History Portraits series by American photographer, Cindy Sherman, produced from 1989 to 1990. The photographs are based on Renaissance paintings of biblical and secular women painted by old master artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Raphael. Sherman focused on the female types of Biblical mother and femme fatale, as well as wives and models. These types are defined in their relation to men and are depicted by men. In Sherman’s reinterpretations of their portraits, she retells the stories of these women in ways that reaffirm their independence …

Still, Samuel Lambert Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Still concentrates on façade as a means of considering what we can see and what we decide to show. I am curious about the relationship between our memories and our photographs, and how only the latter is truly accessible to others. In order to communicate what I see before me as best as possible, I ask those who I photograph to be still so that their likeness may be translated faithfully. In our stillness we can become increasingly aware of our surroundings and of ourselves. Though “still” describes the absence of motion, it also describes a continuation from the past …