Art and Design Commons^™

Genetics With Nettie And Friends: An Exploration Of Genetics In Children's Literature, Erin Soule, Madeleine Gray Burland

Honors Projects

Genetics with Nettie and Friends is an exploration of chromosomal disorders and its place within children's literature. The book provides a comprehensive examination the genetic composition of Downs syndrome, Williams Syndrome, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy at a level to increase understanding in children. This paper provides an insight to the development and construction of the children's book that is available for purchase on Barnes and Noble as well as why representation of genetic disorders in children's literature is needed.

Japanese Paper And Paper Conservation, Kei Takahashi

Honor’s College Freeman Research Journal

Washi is a Japanese handmade paper which has very long traditions. There are many types of washi in Japan but there are three main types of paper which are the kozo, mitsumata, and gampi paper. Kozo paper is made of mulberry fibers and the most well-known and has the highest production in Japan. Mitsumata and Gampi paper are made of tree of daphne fibers but the process of these two papers are different and Gampi paper is the highest quality of paper compared to the other two types papers. Before washi was created, the handmade paper originally came from …

An Uncertain Line: Making Art About Photographs Of American War And Violence., Cassidy Meurer

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Photography’s power in capturing a moment in history is indisputable, but inevitably flawed. Assumptions of objectivity and truth are made that do not count for the bias of the photographer, or the bias of the viewer. These assumptions do not explain the warped effect of freezing life at a fraction of a second. Information is left outside the frame; stories are fragmented in their retelling. Certain historical photographs have become iconic over time. My interest lies in images of American battle, violence, and trauma; those that have political and propagandic weight. Coded, controversial, and inherently emotional, these photographs have become …

Existence Stories, Althea Keaton

Masters Theses

Existence Stories is an interactive activist art project that gathers personal narratives from people about the ways in which their lives have been impacted by the current political climate in the United States, particularly surrounding the 2016 Presidential election and its aftermath. The project harnesses first-person narrative and audience participation as tools for humanizing the “Other” and building connections between people through the act of sharing stories. As the project has progressed over time, it has evolved in multiple directions and come to incorporate a variety of media, primarily comics, animation, printmaking, and zines. The roles that reproduction, distribution, and …

Fielding, Emily Tareila

Masters Theses

Fielding is an ongoing exploration of place-making, spaces of learning and relationship building in formal and informal learning environments. The project is comprised of a series of events and workshops that are embodied, multimodal, olfactory and engagement-focused and a mobile cart that helps to facilitate these happenings both in and out of the formal gallery space. I regard my art practice as pedagogical, a blurring of art and life into intentional ways of being in the world; an experience of sharing practices with others and a form of what is regarded in institutionalized art as social practice. I find art …

Bridging Dimensions: A Robotic Art Project, Samantha Miller

Honors Theses

Spanning the divide between the humanities and STEM has been a pursuit of my undergraduate experience. In my senior project I seek to relate these disciplines through the creation of “automated canvases.” Resulting is a series of robotic art pieces that automate the opening and closing motion of Turkish map folds. These map folds then present a series of paintings displaying a tone of the uncanny and references to parallel universes. Utilizing robotics in my project allows the paintings to push further into a third dimension than normally possible. Providing literal motion to my traditionally two dimensional work requires consideration …

Books / Vessels / Hours, Lara Head

Graduate School of Art Theses

My thesis works two vessels, book : 300 hours and book : terrain explore and enact states of meditation, focusing on the process of making and the specificity of materials used. The meditative aspects of my process of making correlate to an anticipated meditation in the observer's time spent viewing. I hope to spark in the viewer the same response and state that I myself was in while making. In this text I explore my artistic process and what I hope for the viewer to experience while they are spending time with my works. I discuss how spending time making …

All The Better To See You With., Monica Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

All the Better to See You With is a body of work that deals with the inherently complex relationships between fairy tales and feminism. Consisting of an installation of hand-embroidered life-size or larger, papier-mâché female body parts and a series of six mixed media works on paper, this collection of work uses the imagery of fairy tales to address the violence of female experience. Through an exploration of the role of women in both the writing and literary function of fairy tales, we can see connections between the truth and fiction of women’s work and violence against women.

Graphic Content Warning; Personal And Political Traumas, Emily K. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of …

The Zone, Jordon W. Soper

Senior Projects Spring 2019

There are places, soft spots, in our world where the membrane between realities and possibilities is thinner. Here the familiar constant fundamentals described by natural science to order our understanding of the world are inconsistent. Natural laws are stretched, warped, and refracted in chimeric distortions. To enter is to encounter the unreal and the unknowable, to comprehend the incomprehensible. The familiar and the unfamiliar intertwine and overlap. In the zone we see in circles, sensory experience expands, and minute details become revelations. At the fringes of consciousness and perception we meet with the shimmer of simultaneous wonder and terror.

Within …

I Become A Beam Of Light., Leor Miller

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Who am I and what do I do about it? I come to a clearing in my mind. It is a landscape, constantly in flux: people running in and out, feelings swelling and crashing down, understanding moving in and out of focus. I am confused. I watch people and the ways they move, engage with each other, engage with the world, and wonder: how do I engage with myself, my surroundings, and the people who exist within them? Do I do it normally? Probably not. Maybe I should be asking if I do it well, or if the way I …

The Holistic Self: A Visual Analysis Of Carl Jung's The Red Book, Emma Lindsay Klement

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This senior project will look at Carl Jung’s The Red Book and how it’s creation was the process by which he healed from his psychotic break, or “deep-sea voyage.” Through the exploration of various other texts by Carl Jung this thesis will endeavor to understand Jung’s psyche during this time of deep turmoil by analyzing the images that he creates and the way in which he creates them. Jung was deeply molded by both Christian doctrine as well as Alchemy and the Occult, thus this project will take into account the specific Christian and alchemical meanings of particular motifs within …

Roses & Thorns, Stephanie Alaniz

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This written thesis has been created alongside the thesis exhibition shown in the Laura Mesaros Gallery at West Virginia University (displayed March 18th to March 22nd). The work presented consisted of drawings, bookmaking, and various forms of printmaking and collage. This body of work is meant to create an analysis of insecurities and body positivity we associate with our physical selves. This work is a collective experience that has been a collaboration with over 80 participants. The number of participants help to create a larger overall collective voice. By creating this collective voice, we can experience these feelings together and …

From The Dirt Up: Layering Story, Place, And Environmentalism Within Three Picture Books, Lucinda Rowe

Children's Book Writing and Illustrating (MFA) Theses

The world is changing before our eyes – species are going extinct, the amount of habitat available to wildlife has decreased, and children are spending less time outside than in the past. Through analyzing environmental ideology within early childhood education and children’s literature, I demonstrate that picture books can inspire nature conservation, appreciation, and stewardship by encouraging outdoor play and exploration. I compare picture books that successfully demonstrate eco-consciousness without being didactic, how my thesis fits within the current environmental movement, and how it helps stretch the definition of what is considered eco-writing.

This thesis consists of three illustrated picture …