Art and Design Commons^™

Irrational Aggregates, Courtney N. Ryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper examines the work included in my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition entitled Irrational Aggregates. The goal of this work is to facilitate a dialogue between our natural environment and the excessive consumer-based environments in which we live. Combining a variety of ceramic techniques including hand building, wheel throwing, and casting these sculptures appear to be grown from, and even taken over by nature itself.

Often drawing inspiration from my personal narrative, that of consistent upheaval, relocation, and adjustment to new places, my work can appear both grounded and in a state of motion. I believe …

My Eyes Due See, Johannes J. Barfield

Theses and Dissertations

My Eyes Due See is a multidimensional examination of the “black experience” in America. The installation is composed of a single-channel video, a music composition that utilizes music samples and live instrumentation, and sculptures made up of car parts and broomsedge grass. Each of these elements arranged in space share a nuanced and complicated view of blackness through the lens of a black man decoding personal history and American history simultaneously. Autonomy is the overarching theme throughout the work as it pertains to race, identity, urban and rural environments, and the relationship between generational trauma and nostalgia.

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. …

Fruitcake, Joshua Schutz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

I explore figurative ceramics in relationship to gesture and sexual identity. The surfaces reference art history, decorative arts, and popular culture. The quasi-functional components of the work are inspired by my personal relationship with domestic objects and space. But also from the results of capitalism, which has created a materialistic, consumer-based society with heteronormative ideals. I respond to this heteronormativity by utilizing humor as a strategy to discuss subversive topics while simultaneously drawing in the viewer. I intend for the viewer to reflect on the purpose and narrative behind such flamboyant objects.

Misfits, Hanna Newman

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My figurative ceramic sculptures are comprised of deconstructed, fragmented and simplified renderings of the human form. Within these sculptures I integrate materials such as human hair, fabric, wood and plaster cast body parts to mimic limbs and body mass, creating diversity in the tactile surface quality. The pastel tones, bright colors and additions of hair further obscures the realistic appearance of these beings. Clay's malleability fuels my intuitive creative process and allows me to replicate the human form in ranges from anatomical accuracy to biomorphic abstraction.

I am inspired by the relationship between interiority and exteriority, between the mind and …

The Soft Animal Of Your Body: Seven Attempts To Explain Chronic Illness To Myself And To You, June Naureckas

Senior Projects Fall 2018

THE SOFT ANIMAL OF YOUR BODY – ARTIST’S STATEMENT

If I knew how to explain vision loss or chronic pain, I wouldn’t have started this senior project.

How do I communicate the knowledge that my body is slowly failing me, that even the best treatments aren’t guaranteed to work? With whom do I have to speak with to be heard and understood? I’ve previously attempted dictionary definitions, disability accommodation letters from the Bard Learning Commons, repeatedly cancelling plans with friends until they stop inviting me to things, and passive-aggressive conversations with my neurologist. None of these efforts have worked out …

Place Accumulation: Kingston/Ulster, Callan F. Fish

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Since February 2018, I’ve been listening and recording around Kingston and the town of Ulster; synthesizing interviews, bird song, passing cars, protests, conflict, unique perspectives and oral histories, meetings, optimisms, water, as part of a project called, Place Accumulation: Kingston/Ulster. Using the Dynamic Listening Instrument, an interactive sound sculpture which uses a venn-diagram of electromagnetic fields to allow sounds to be handled as a tactile entity and bended dynamically, sounds are arranged and dispersed back into different locations and events in Kingston. Using a sounding bucket, people in Kingston can listen in, re-arrange, explore, and play with sounds from their …

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 …

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …

Polyanthroponemia: A Pursuit Of Mystery, Magdolene Dykstra

Theses and Dissertations

I wish I could believe in something. Having grown up in a religious household, I have continually teetered between faith and doubt. Landscapes seen and unseen are my last source of awe; here my doubt is suspended – for a moment. Using unfired clay, I create alternate landscapes inspired by sublime philosophy. The sublime experience is born in a sense of amazement linked to fear of something beyond our understanding or control. The amazing intricacy of microbiology, a whole universe existing alongside and inside us, fascinates me. The abundance of unfamiliar life in my work triggers a cautious curiosity. My …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

A Familiar House, William Lenard

Theses and Dissertations

The landscapes of my home in Connecticut are important to me. When I was young, I went to the woods for seclusion and comfort. While I wandered through the woods, I discovered a passion for storytelling. Now that I no longer live in New England, I miss the familiar landscapes of home. As a way to portray my sentiment, I write poetic narratives and create objects to illustrate natural landscapes.

I combine my interests of classic Americana art and literature with brutalist architecture and modern furniture to create immersive installations. I work with concrete and hardwood to materially bridge the …

The Pond, Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik

Theses and Dissertations

A collection of creative texts written concurrently with the creation of the artist’s thesis exhibition. A range of written forms coexist - poetry, prose, and dialogue - to open up the narrative and emotional space of the visual work. The text emerges from the point-of-view of different voices, describing experiences and body states that hinge upon the physical and conceptual space of the pond. Amphibiousness offers a gateway to a state of becoming and transformation. Some of the following texts appear in video works by the artist.

Lit, Tyler Brumfield

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

LIT investigates the power of our daily visual interactions with commercial signage. The exhibition is comprised of ten individual illuminated constructions that appropriate the aesthetic strategies and design elements from commercial signage. The work offers the viewer a new aesthetic experience by nullifying the communicative and directional agendas that would normally accompany commercial signage. The viewer is free to see and experience the captivating nature of formal elements such as shape, color and light. The work explores the intersection of appropriation, minimal aesthetics and everyday experiences.