Art and Design Commons^™

Going To The Sea, Lingyi Kong

Masters Theses

“Good-bye Icarus” is a work that aims to blend art, history, and environmental exploration through illustration, an interactive graphic novel, visual documentation, and programming language narratives.

A year of coastal life in Rhode Island has provided me with endless inspiration in terms of design language. I’ve ventured into blending dynamic visuals from TouchDesigner with illustration, a pioneering approach as far as I’m aware.

My narrative is based on seaside scenery and mythology metaphorical elements, making image programming to capture the essence of waves a focal point and central experiment of my work. Furthermore, after crafting a dynamic design visual language, …

Things That Are Long, Frankie Gutierrez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Bigfoot has become an important motif for Frankie Gutierrez, especially since his transition in 2021. The characters in this exhibition showcase the deeply personal exploration of transness and non-mainstream trans identities, the in-depth observations of others, and their interactions with transgender people. He compares transness to the likeness of bigfoot, typically an elusive and hard-to-find character that everyone suspects, but has rarely been seen. Evidence of their existence surrounds us, but only those with open minds can truly see them. The characters in this show look like you and me, and no one at all. This exhibition is not meant …

Always Judge A Book By Its Cover, Abby Miller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal for this honors project is to build my illustration portfolio and to explore the world of children's book illustration. This project will facilitate my improvement in design layout, theming, and illustration. I would love to pursue a job involving children's book illustrations at some point in the future and completing this project would help me to understand the challenges that come with designing such covers, it would improve my ability to illustrate in a purposeful manner, and it would strengthen my portfolio overall.

Dick Bruna, Roseld Laguatan

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

Dick Bruna was a talented and successful Illustrator and designer. He is most famous for his creation, Miffy, a curious simple white rabbit that has the innocence of a young child—which made her an endearing character to children all over the world. Because of his successful children’s books, he was highly sought after by children’s medical hospitals and world health organizations to help promote health and safety for children everywhere. He also designed thousands of spy, mystery and detective novel covers for his family’s publishing company. Bruna was a master designer of simplicity, color and form—able to convey a great …

Eric Carle, Emily Rudolph

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

If you grew up or had a child in the United States after 1969, the work of Eric Carle has touched your life. Carle was a German American illustrator, graphic designer, art director, and children’s book author, who is best known for his work The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book has been a staple to every American preschool classroom for over 40 years and has been translated into 66 languages to fit into schools across the globe (Eric Carle’s biography, 2019). It is hard to overstate the popularity and acclaim The Very Hungry Caterpillar has rightfully received. According to …

I Buried The Fireworks Under The Tree, Sihan Zhu

Masters Theses

Unreachable memories always surround me. I've been trying to extract logical parts from my chaotic memories, hoping to find a connection with the world within the soundless, intangible black fireworks stored in my retina under the grand fireworks display. When I first encountered intaglio printmaking, I impulsively drew subconscious memories on the plate, arranging them along some chaotic storylines. Gradually, I realized that I needed to create my own logical structure. So I started using specific visual symbols and repeating them, using the repetition of the printmaking process to search for logical clues. Printmaking with its special rhythm allowed me …

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …

Ingredients For An Invisibility Cloak Or A Blindfold, Laine Knowles

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

An artist book is an art object that expressly utilizes the linear, time-based form of a book in a way that will best serve the artist’s intentions. The contents of this 16 page book are an expansion of the ideas and themes in my BFA thesis show. This will include original writing, drawings, watercolor paintings, prints, and collaged elements that will inform each other artistically. The title of this art book refers to the circumstances and ideas that inform my sense of self-perception, and how I relate to others.

“The Escapades Of Cat & Dog” The Process Of Creating A Children’S Book From Start To Finish, Cosette Simmons

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis project was to learn and understand the amount of work that goes into children’s book illustration, as well as bringing the story of another’s to life. “The Escapades of Cat & Dog” was written by my grandfather, George Petrella, to tell the story of my mother and her sibling’s pets going on kooky adventures. The script was given to me back in 2017-2018 not to long after my grandmother, Jane Petrella, passed away due to cancer. The result consists of a 36 page 9 by 9 inch fully illustrated book intended to be …

Lisa Congdon: The Self-Taught Design Pioneer, Kate Foley

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

Known for her colorful, bold, and whimsical folk art-inspired illustration and design style, Lisa Congdon brings joy and passion, fueled by her own self-taught journey, to the modern world of graphic design. Congdon is a fine artist, illustrator, and writer, producing works driven by her experiences with mental health, social justice, being queer, and being a woman. “And while all of those things can feel really dark and hard sometimes, there is a certain amount of joy that I feel, and that’s always what I want to try and express to the world” (Johnson, 2021), she shares. Although her path …

Sarah Boris, Emily Gaugler

Communication Design: Design Pioneers

Boris Sarah Boris has been in the art and design industry for over fifteen years, but some might say she is just getting started. Boris worked for design industries and art organizations such as the Barbican, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), and Phaidon Publishing, but in 2015 she took a more independent approach and opened her own design studio in London, Sarah Boris Design. Since opening her studio Boris has pursued personal explorations, collaborations, and commissions. Her work is clean, bright, and impactful, and she is gaining admiration from students and design critics. She has a gift for creating …

A Perfect Escape: Fantasy, Place And Narrative In Adolescence, Cydney Cherepak

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the realms of special places, the literary genre of fantasy, narrative, and comics. These topics are traversed alongside subjects of adolescence and the creation of stories for middle-grade readers. Framed with personal stories, as well as peaks into my process, I investigate these subjects through the lens of my own life and work, specifically my thesis project, a comic for middle-grade readers titled Beyond the Castle Walls. Beginning with adolescence in association with special places, I consider the work of developmental psychologists David Sobel and Edith Cobb as they pin-point the role of secret forts, nature, …

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

Ipseity Vol. 1: An Artful Exploration Of Identity Formation In Emerging Adulthood, Lauren Alexis Taylor

Honors Theses

Ipseity is a multi-edition coffee-table style book that integrates digital and print design and incorporates handmade elements and processes such as die-cuts, letterpress printing, gold foiling, hand-sewn bindings, and embroidery. Its design is rooted in minimalism, yet the handmade aspects, eye-catching color palette, and bold illustrations make reading Ipseity a visual and tactile experience. The design utilizes typography and flat-color illustrations in a consistent layout, with a strong emphasis on the handmade elements and craftsmanship throughout the book. It is not only a publication to read and ponder, but it is an artful object with a physical presence to be …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Maddie Lebrun- Senior Art Portfolio, Madeline Lebrun

Senior Art Portfolios

A pair of hand-painted alphabets, compiled into an illustrated book to promote sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Painting A Biblical Worldview In Children, Brook Blackwell

Senior Honors Theses

Children are impressionable beings shaped by the changing world around them; this has become increasingly more true as the years progress and the impact and prevalence of media rises. Television shows, movies, music and books, no matter how insignificant they may seem, can play a tremendous part in the growth of children’s worldviews. It is important for authors and artists to delve deep into the impact of media on the growth and development of children in today’s media-rich world. In doing so, they should hope to find the best way to implement a Christian worldview into the media a child …

Leila Abdelrazaq Interview, Quest Sawyer

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Leila Abdelrazaq is a Palestinian author/artist, who was born in Chicago. Her work combines art and activism, addressing topics such as diaspora, refugees, history, memory, and borders. In 2015, she graduated from DePaul University with a BFA in Theatre and BA in Arabic Studies. She is best known for her graphic novel Baddawi (April 2015)- a story about her father’s refugee experience. Her website (https://lalaleila.com) also contains comics and zines, illustrations, and prints she’s created based on self- expression and her love of activism. Leila is also the founder of a blog called Bigmouth Press and Comix, …

Experience Bobo Experience, Sara Smith

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Experience Bobo Experience -by Sara Marie Smith (Artist Statements and Images of work)

Spring 2018-CSUMB Undergraduate Capstone Project/ Visual Public Arts Department

My Senior Capstone is about using inspirational wisdom from acknowledged sources to address the quandaries of our human experiences. I have chosen a cognitive clown, named Bobo, to investigate Henry David Thoreau, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Watts. Bobo, my character, goes on a journey of learning. Bobo is a line drawing, rendered in marker, with a circular head, two dot eyes, three puffs of hair with a clown smile and clown clothing. Experience Bobo Experience speaks to …

The Illustrated Masterpiece: Teaching The Artist Biography To Elementary School Children Using The Illustrations In Picture Books, Sophie M. Mueller

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Arts programs, particularly ones that focus on education, are constantly losing their funding. Even as Michelle Obama, the former First Lady of the United States, stated that “Arts education is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. It’s really the air many of these kids breathe^[1]”, programs that benefit these kids are seeing their budgets slashed, and classroom educators are unable to get the training that they need to provide fulfilling educational experiences.

In an ideal world, museums would be free to everyone who wants to learn about …

Nasty People: An Illustrated Guide To Understanding Sex, Sophia Weaver

Senior Honors Projects

Sex made me and it probably made you too, but for many of us sex remains a mystery for our entire lives. I see sexual images every day, but I rarely hear it discussed openly or factually. This is problematic. If most people are having sex and most people have a lot of misinformation about it, STDs, unwanted pregnancies and even sexual assaults are much more likely. Research suggests that increased (and well developed) sex ed. can reduce all of the possible negative outcomes of sexual misinformation. My observations of everyday life and my research in academia have given me …

Nuanced Translations: The Search For Unity Between Text, Image, And Self In Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales, Jana Purington

Senior Theses

Few scholars have invested much time studying Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, focusing primarily on their place within the fairy tale genre, their morality, and queer themes latent in the stories. Fewer still examine them as visual, rather than merely literary, texts. Many of these ways of understanding his tales provide valuable insight, convincing interpretations, worthwhile avenues for thought, but by considering the artistic elements of Wilde's work, we can appreciate the cross-fertilization of his abstract, theoretical Aesthetic principles and the tangible objects he produces. Even among the subset of critics who do emphasize the visual aspects of Wilde's books, attention …

Unspinning And A Constant Whirring, Laura Marina Salgarolo

Senior Projects Spring 2016

My senior thesis project is a living workspace and reading environment, housing a library of books and ephemera. This collection includes a series of books I made by hand, the foremost of which is a picture book I have written and illustrated. The books are “guarded” by several small librarian characters I invented and sculpted, and are shelved alongside classified and labeled ephemera and found objects. My aim has been to construct an environment for this library with a lamp-lit reading space and a work desk covered in process work and sketches. The exhibit will represent the merging and hybridization …

The Call Of The Undertow, Rebekah Bradford

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Artist Statement

Prior to becoming a graphic design student, I was very interested in illustration. I wanted an opportunity to hone my illustration skills, focus on one consistent style of illustration, consistently draw the same characters, and practice writing. Creating a children’s book gave me the opportunity to do all of those things. And, after several semesters of work, it’s great to finally see The Call of the Undertow completed! I hope that you enjoy reading this story and looking at the images because I enjoyed creating it.

Gustave Doré: The Magic Illustrations Of Charles Perrault’S Contes De Fées, Stephanie Breed

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Gustave Doré: artist, creator, dreamer. In 1862, Doré illustrated “Les Contes de Perrault,” an anthology of fairy tales by Charles Perrault including familiar stories like Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots. Doré’s intricate engravings accompanying each story include picturesque landscapes, expansive forests, and grand cathedrals. In his time, Doré did not feel appreciated or understood by his contemporaries in France and he therefore reverted to the spaces of his childhood for inspiration. Returning to the multi-layered landscapes of the forest and the Gothic cathedral, he re-discovered the sublime and grotesque, enfolding them in …

Comics And Illustration From The Written; The Conversion Of A Story From Prose To Graphic Depiction., Kayla A. White Ms.

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This is a thesis that details the process of writing a short 30 page novel, and then converting the subsequent story into a graphic format via illustrations and into a comic book layout. The story itself deals in reworking our learned assumptions of good and evil, specifically in the supernatural and human possibility for both. The comic book format is an exploration of my reader’s different responses to the written and the graphic.

Five Children's Book Covers Employing Illustrative Type, Rochelle Lynn Baross

Honors Scholar Theses

A colelction of five children's books created digitially and employing illustrative type.

The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves, Gwendolyn Brooks, Timothy Jones, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Illustration

[36] pages : color illustrations ; 19 x 26 cm. All the tiger's fierce qualities do not satisfy him; he wants to be stylish and wear white gloves. "First Edition, Second Printing" Stapled binding. In clear plastic cover. Walter Lorraine Fund. Formerly in the collection of Tidewater Community College.

The Art Institute Of Boston Course Catalog (1973), The Art Institute Of Boston

Art Institute of Boston (AIB) Course Catalogs

The Art Institute of Boston maintains, and always has maintained throughout the course of its long history, that the artist holds a unique position of responsibility in his society. Because the weight of his contribution is so widely felt in this age of the expanded media, the artist is expected to be not only innovator, but also arbitrator. The decisions which affect his life and his work influence a wide body of people who look to him for illumination.

Art cannot be taught as a development of certain visual talents separate from a larger awareness of life. The Art Institute …

Aloneness, Gwendolyn Brooks, Leroy Foster, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Illustration

16 unnumbered pages : illustrations ; 22 cm. Cover printed in blue and black and with illustration. Photo portrait of the author on back cover. Photograph by Howard Simmons. Stapled binding. Library has second printing January 1983. Inscribed to Martha Drake and signed by the author.