Art and Design Commons^™

A Dumb Mouth From Which The Teeth Have Been Pulled, Anna Sofie Jespersen

Theses and Dissertations

This paper consists of a series of scenes in which various narratives with proximity to the truth plays out. within it I aim to articulate the dispersed subjectivity and forensic aspects to my work, as well looking at the perverseness in the desire for proximity to the fantasy, utilizing the self as a vehicle of desire.

The Mvohc Project, Brooke Day

All Theses

ABSTRACT

A Mvohc is a Morphic Vessel of Human Consciousness. The Mvohc Project traverses' theories of spatial identity in tandem with creative world-building as a method for examining the intricacies of the human condition and reimagining reality. My creations are designed to promote autonomy over the contemporary world's ever-evolving societal complexities to empower individuals, foster imagination and communication, and create space for positive change. This body of work incorporates fleshy biomorphic sculptures inspired by science fiction, deep-sea marine life, and the human body. The abject creatures are partnered with constructed audio-scapes that encompass the frenzy of an overarching internal monologue, …

Neoliberalism, Institutionalism, And Art, Declan Hoy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

As contemporary art has expanded to encompass further disparate activities under its umbrella, the various institutions of art can be looked to as the only constant and defining characteristic of art. These institutions are often seen in sharp contrast to spontaneous collectivism, the real, and radical creativity—attributes deeply valued within contemporary art. This creates a troubling situation in which institutions are seen as limiting the possibility of what art could be, and artworks are perceived as needing to escape the very institutions which define them in order to be deemed worthy. In this structure, contemporary art follows and validates the …

Painting Outside Of The Lines: How Race Assignment Can Be Rethought Through Art, Giovanni Mella-Velazquez

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

For centuries art has been used to make us think about our own human experiences. Unfortunately, works usually reflect the era which they were painted in; this has led to various artists showing, maintaining, and therefore reinforcing racist thoughts in our cultures. Art can be used to create a new narrative for our race assignments and their meanings. The idea of loving one's roots has been prevalent in many cultures, but in art form a disconnect between history and the everyday experience can arise which could miss the mark in helping us redefine our own race. Therefore, artwork which empowers …

Exhibitions As Artworks - Research Output, Kaitlyn German

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Slide 1: Hello, my name is Kaitlyn German and I was the USRI Intern of Professor John Hatch this summer.

Slide 2: The goal of my USRI internship under Professor Hatch was to conduct research and find academic articles for Professor Hatch to aid in the design of a university undergraduate course. As such, there was a steady amount of research that was required in order to properly find information on the topics that Professor Hatch requested. To further my researching skills, I attended various Professional Development sessions including: Intro to Literature Searches and Information Evaluation, wherein I learned about …

Age, Ty Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Age is a body of work that uses open ended, multi-directional narrative, economical craft, body positioning, and disorder to create situations for curiosity to take hold and rekindle a sense of naivety. Intentionally pedestrian material choice and playful, curious methodology work in tandem with the visual language of play to create a world building opportunity for the participating viewer. The objects are anchors or starting points with spaces in between for flexible narratives and imagined and reimagined worlds with no prescribed beginning or end point.

The exhibition and written thesis represent a conglomeration of connected-by-association ideas, a Rube Goldberg machine …

2+2=Cake: A Book Of Conversations About Possibilities In Business And Art, Elizabeth Ann Alspach

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

2+2=CAKE is a toolkit for people interested in creating their own economic container to support their livelihood. Calling upon the entrepreneurial experience of artists and creatives who founded or run organizations, the book and accompanying workbook and motivational posters serve as an incubator, buoy, and affirming resource for those looking to build the economic container in which they make their livelihood.

Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia, Alaina Claire Feldman, Clayton Press, Solange Farkas, Gabriel Bogossian

Publications and Research

Bilingual catalogue for the exhibition "Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia" presented at Baruch College's Mishkin Gallery.

Compromised Values: Charlotte Posenenske, 1966–Present, Ian Wallace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fabricated in unlimited series and sold at cost, the sculptures produced by Charlotte Posenenske between 1966 and 1967—modular wall reliefs, interactive cubic structures, and tubular geometric units whose installation requires collective decision making—were meant to confront both the artwork’s commodity status and the limitation of its consumption to a privileged elite. Nevertheless, Posenenske’s work has been effectively recuperated by the art system: first, in the 1980s, through a series of exhibitions and publications organized by her estate; and second, with her inclusion in Documenta 12 in 2007, which reintroduced her work to the market. Since the artist’s death in 1985, …

Art And Empathy: Self Discovery In A Dark Forest, Younser Lee

Graduate School of Art Theses

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 million people report feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress as the world moves at an increasingly rapid pace and faces unprecedented challenges. However, many ignore these negative thoughts and fail to acknowledge them as a serious issue. My art, which shares my own experiences, creates safe, cathartic places for viewers to think about their own emotional experiences. Crucial to this process is my use of daily objects and the creation of individualized, participatory, and multisensory experiences.

My art relates to daily life and the negative emotions that we experience daily. I …

Combatting Arts-Led Gentrification: A Case Study Of Slanguage Studio, Julia M. Campbell

Global Tides

This essay examines Slanguage Studio, founded by Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra Jr. in 2001, as a case study that illuminates how community-based art spaces can resist arts-led gentrification. The processes of arts-initiated gentrification and displacement of lower-income residents of color are demonstrated through explorations of arts districts in the Lower East Side, SoHo, and Boyle Heights. In response to artist Charles Gaines’ claims that art spaces inevitably lead to gentrification, Slanguage Studio offers an alternative in which community needs are prioritized.

Aztlán Del Sol, Marcus Zúñiga

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

An artistic writing developed from the themes and concepts of an of art installation made by a visual artist of Mexican-American descent from New Mexico. The work references the relationship of Aztec mythology to the American Southwest, art theoretical discourse in object oriented ontology and aesthetics, and key ideas in astronomy. Additionally interwoven is an expanded sense for interpreting ancestry and history under the constructs of multicultural conceptions of time, specifically cultures with notable spiritual rituals of Sun worship and observation.

Structures Of Time: Expressions Of Subjectivity And Social Politics In Works By Silvia Gruner, 1986–2014, Silvia Sampaio De Alencar

Theses and Dissertations

The works of Silvia Gruner (born 1959) illustrate the use of time registers as strategies to express contemporary subjectivity’s experiences with globalized environments between 1986-2014. Through this approach, the artist connects her production to the social politics of Mexico to critique the effects of globalization on Mexican society and culture.

Made Of Water, Covered In Mud, Nicole Norman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My fixation on water as metaphor is a product of my cosmic design; Scorpio sun, Pisces moon, Pisces rising. I am made of water, begging to be held. Anything liquid has this same desire. I use my art practice to examine the fluidity of physical and digital spaces; how they transform almost constantly. This is only possible through the use of containers that give form to abstract ideas and make them easier to drink (read: digest). Containers can vary in size and shape, but their purpose remains the same. A drinking glass, a swimming pool, a creek bed. These are …

What's Going On Here, Joanna R. Pike

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is an installation depicting shirts and pants in various degrees of Recognizability. The Components vary from somewhat Unrecognizable to entirely Unrecognizable; Bumps and Blocks are interspersed and interrupt the Semi-logic of What’s going on here while adding repetitive elements to clarify the existence of the Semi-logic. The arrangement of the Components in the installation makes the Unrecognizable forms surrounded by the In-between Space into somewhat Recognizable versions of shirts and pants. The viewer does not fully recognize all the Components, but instead understands the implied Recognition given their existence within the installation. The ideas of Lists, Patterns, Systems, …

In-Between Spaces, Trinity Kai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In-between Spaces is a paper based in personal narrative that uses Critical Race Theory and art to analyze the history of photography and systems of discrimination facilitated by hegemonic culture. Body is at the center as a symbol of the physical and psychological impacts systemic inequalities have on people that are classified as other and how one can be absent and present in institutional and public spaces.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Optimistic And A Little Flawed, Christian Schultz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accompanying exhibition to this paper, Optimistic and Flawed is a body of drawings and objects that explores the liminal space between playful and intended actions. Inspired by the landscape of the yard and the actions that take place within, the goalless play of a child and the laborious maintenance of an adult. The value of play exists within labor and labor exists within play. The drawings observe this through the theoretical framework of telic and paratelic motivational states as they relate to drawing. Abstracted yards and landscapes provide a space for the labor of the hand. A history of …

Unmentionables, Madeleine F. Grotewiel

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text explores the capacity for shamed bodily materiality to narrate the complexity of healing from sexual trauma while rape culture persists. Because rape is discussed so little in public, sexual healing often takes place under a meaty layer of shame, placed on the survivor’s body. Their truth is frequently interpreted as too much/gross/ugly/unspeakable for the public, and it is simultaneously not enough to be discussed/accepted/pursued as an actual issue. This uncomfortable teeter-totter comes from the patriarchal boundaries drawn between what is privately or publicly acceptable. There are plenty of depictions of sexual violence in popular culture and the canon …

Shifting Sands., Rachid Tagoulla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shifting Sands is a re-exploration of the presentation of North Africans in colonial postcards, an examination of identity, and a critique of the modern Western museum. Since the inception of photography, colonizers used this medium- especially in the form of postcards- to categorize and exoticize Eastern peoples in order to more easily subjugate them. Shifting Sands is a series of reconstructed colonial postcards which challenges colonial-era stereotypes of North African peoples. The colonial gaze, represented by the camera lens, is subverted through a lensless image-making process in which sand is used to remove the subject from the colonial gaze and …

The Line Of Dichotomy: Standpoints And Meaning In Anne Truitt's Art, Charles J. Parsons

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Some of Anne Truitt’s formal strategies—such as using the separate faces of the work to force the viewer to engage in it sequentially—build or depend on real or literal facts of the “situation” of the artwork. If this is the case, how do such works escape being reducible to their objecthood, their literal properties of size and shape? And how do they produce effects that are not mere experience or mere affective response? The answer I offer is that they depend on conventions and interpretation.

Much of my analysis focuses on the ways Truitt makes her intentions visible through form, …

Artists' Genres: A Brief Introduction To Post-Medieval Western Art, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Faculty Book Gallery

Artists' Genres is a brief introduction to the history of post-medieval Western art organized by the major genres. The book is designed as a basic textbook for high school- or introductory college-level courses or for individuals simply looking for an interesting guidebook into the art of this period and geographical region.

This is the revised edition of Artists' Genres: A Brief Introduction to Post-Medieval Western Art, which was released in 2018.

How To Build A World Art: The Strategic Universalism Of Colour Reproductions And The Unesco Prize (1953-1968), Chiara Vitali

Artl@s Bulletin

What role did UNESCO play in the art world of the post-war era? This article makes use of published and archival sources in order to clarify the utopia of a “World Art” that shaped UNESCO and led to the “Archives of Colour Reproductions of Works of Art”, a project of worldwide collect and diffusion of images of “masterworks” inspired by Malraux’s “Museum without walls”. This case study focuses on one particular aspect of the project, the “UNESCO Prize”, conceived by the Brazilian art critic and Marxist intellectual Mario Pedrosa for the 1953 São Paulo Biennial.

These Are My People: An Ethnography Of Quiltcon, Kristin Barrus

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis presents the first ethnography of QuiltCon, the annual fan and artist convention for quiltmakers who identify with and participate in a social phenomenon called the Modern Quilt Movement (MQM) within the 21st century quilt world. QuiltCon (QC) is one product of this movement. This study considers the following questions: What kinds of people attend QC, and what types of experiences and encounters do they expect at the convention? What needs are met at QC for this subset of quiltmakers who attend and for the greater community of Modern quiltmakers? What role does QC play in cementing the identity …

The Passing Show, Kathryn Fanelli

Masters Theses

The Passing Show, examines the interface between contemplative practices and the destabilizing effect of the carnivalesque. A repurposed early 20th century merry-go- round is reconfigured as a conceptual vehicle for renewing our attention to removing hindrances. The site-specific installation, titled Vimoksha, is viewed through the lens of the radical imaginary, investigating notions of karmic inheritance through a heuristic approach to material processes, personal history, kinetics and sound.

Art After Dark: Economies Of Performance, New York City 1978–1988, Meredith Mowder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art After Dark: Economies of Performance, New York City 1978-1988 examines the interwoven social and economic histories of New York City and performance in the late 1970s and 1980s. The dissertation traces the growth and visibility of performance art, moving from the recession of the 1970s and early years of public funding for the arts, to the downtown nightclub scene of the 1980s, the history of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and artistic experiments with television in the 1980s.Looking closely at the economic conditions under which performance occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s, this dissertation …

2021 Mfa Thesis Exhibitions, The University Of Tennessee, Knoxville, School Of Art

Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture

MFA class of 2021: K. Clark, Mary Climes, Nyasha Madamombe, Conor McGrann, Jake R. Miller, Quynh Nguyen, Lilly Saywitz, Gina Stucchio, Lauren Terry, Alissa Walls, Erin Wohletz.

Professional Practices: Faculty Of The University Of Tennessee School Of Art (Exhibition Catalogue), School Of Art

Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture

This exhibition featured the work of current professors in the University of Tennessee School of Art.

Exhibiting faculty were: Joshua Bienko, Emily Bivens, Sally Brogden, Jason S. Brown, Rubens Ghenov, Paul Harrill, John Kelley, Mary Laube, Paul Lee, Beauvais Lyons, Frank Martin, Christopher McNulty, Althea Murphy-Price, John Powers, Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Jered Sprecher, and Koichi Yamamoto.

Also included in the catalogue are art history faculty members: Mary Campbell, Timothy W. Hiles, Kelli Wood, and Suzanne Wright.

Earth Tone Sigh Spell, Martha Glenn

Theses and Dissertations

A written accompaniment to the artist’s thesis exhibition titled Earth Tone Sigh Spell, conceived during the years 2020-21 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from May 1–15, 2021.

The following thesis explores themes of personal memory, geo-theory, myth, symbol, and historical event. The artist uses research and stream of consciousness writing methods as a way to weave these concepts together and tie them back to her own practice with installation, sculpture, and new media.

Site, Power, And Experience: Three Contemporary Installation Works On Global Mobility, Xiyin Sabrina Lin

Honors Projects

This Honors Project investigates the themes of immigration, space, and mobility through the lens of contemporary installation art. It addresses a brief history of global contemporary art, arguing that art of the past two decades has been shaped by preoccupations with and tensions surrounding space. Using the works of Yanagi Yukinori, Alfredo Jaar, and Doris Salcedo as case studies, the essay analyzes how artists use the medium of installation to address institutional history, contemporary geopolitics, as well as individual and collective experience. It interrogates the different aspects of installation art, including temporality, site-specificity, and the use of language, to demonstrate …