Art and Design Commons^™

The A.H. Kotz Unnatural History Exhibit, Marian R. Trainor

Honors College Theses

An exploration in two parts into the development of a narrative through manufactured evidence designed specifically to encourage the suspense of disbelief. The physical work exists within a faux anthropological museum exhibition focused around a human whose history and existence is entirely fabricated. The structural work is the layers of historical and practical research used to develop the suggestion of reality. The exhibit contains samples of the research, artifacts, and specimens collected by the deceased naturalist August Hermann Kotz, along with his falsified history. The second part consists of an overview of the research process and techniques needed to successfully …

Unmaking As Making, Viola Bordon

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Artist Viola Bordon examines the processes of touch, unmaking, and materially dictated aesthetics regarding her studio practice. The philosophical ideas of absence are used to establish a purpose for undoing, which is then explored as a learning process. This process is complicated by the sense of touch, resulting in formal aesthetics that are materially inspired.

Real Goner, Nicholas Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis paper is to tell the story behind, and outline the theoretical and conceptual framework underlying the exhibition, Real Goner. The exhibition combines a number of elements drawn from music and art history, as well as the theoretical writings of Albert Camus, Guy Debord, and Joseph Kosuth. Together, these elements produce a cryptic exhibition that attempts to address the inherent chaos, and apparent meaninglessness of existence; and to see art as a proposition, a performance, and a practice. The exhibition addresses issues of celebrity, the production and consumption of culture, and where that cycle leaves us …

In Between, Wansoo Kim

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

In my eyes, the world is composed of both revealed things and hidden things. I interpret my surroundings based on this idea, seeking to realize my ignorance and awareness. With this in mind, I create objects in which dichotomous ideas are present, and use their physically revealed and hidden aspects in order to represent the greater human struggle to see and understand what is hidden from us.

The notion of inside and outside is one of my particular subjects. Upon observing an object or a structure, we see only its external reality. I aim to present the unobservable, often presenting …

A Synthesis Of Structures, Patrick Kingshill

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

I create compositional structures based on a curated catalog of physical and visual relationships that I have cultivated from my daily life. These compositions are intuitive expressions related to my fascination with the many facets of the built and designed world. My arrangements are curious and intriguing and they unify the expansive diversity of my formal inquiries into a cohesive visual and contemplative experience.

Ceramic and wood are my primary mediums. My interest in woodworking is both aesthetically motivated and nostalgic. I was born in a region of northern California that is historically known for its native giant sequoia and …

Mantle, David Hannon

Masters Theses

Through a large-scale installation called mantle, I explore how the queer body becomes uncanny to the home through a human sized dollhouse and using scenic design ideas. Home for many is a safe place, but for queers, it can be a difficult one, wrought with not belonging in a childhood of heteronormativity. Being stuck in that heteronormative space is what I communicate through a stage set, composed of four theater flats, printed and collaged wallpaper, free-standing photos mounted on MDF, a giant necklace in a separate room, and impromptu pieces made in the space.

Profile In Scale, Jason Boldt

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

I started gaining and interest in sculpture after seeing and learning about Frank Lloyd Wright and his use of natural materials integrated into planar and linear forms. I appreciate how he creates buildings such as Fallingwater, a home built for a family, where the structure is part of nature rather than intruding in on it.

The underlying feature between all of my work is the relationship between different forms that are integrated together. My sculptures include different media, such as wood, stone, metal, and found objects. My latest projects, however, include creating maquettes, which are miniaturized versions of larger objects. …

Xx Openings, Jackson Siegal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

XX Openings represents my dual sculpture and photography practice. The title comes from a 70’s domestic frame, with 20 openings of varying sizes for family pictures. Half of the slots were filled with stock pictures of smiling family scenes, while the others just had measurements for the openings themselves. The object struck me as alienating, and oppressive. I didn’t see any scene within those openings I felt connected to.

The frame came to symbolize varying perspectives, ways of seeing, and ways of being. As my sculpture practice has weighed more heavily on my work as a photographer, I feel tensions …

Of The Crickets, Kathryn Lien

Theses and Dissertations

Of the Crickets imagines the overlapping worlds of ethical ecological solutions to climate changed sustenance and the potential for collective excellence in female exclusive environments. Using garments, furniture, site-specific installation and directed performance, the project harnesses social and material sensitivity to mine solutions for idealized living.

Laminated Paint, Travis R. Austin

Theses and Dissertations

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.