Art and Design Commons^™

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

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

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Future Trash, Xinan Ran

Theses and Dissertations

Xinan Ran explores the politically different, yet similar cultural habits that China and the US share under the influence of late-stage capitalism. Through her handmade, speculative products inspired by novelty gadgets, or “Unitaskers,” she examines the heightened prevalence of the contemporary wellness market. The project “Future Trash” encompasses soft sculptures, printed materials, performance, and installation.

Here And Now, Samaira 2023, Samaira G. Wilson

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Consider my work as a thread weaving through time. Illustrations of grappling with the present and its illusive constant nature. Questioning permanence. The temporary. This show, these walls, not forever, not for lease. Just a point in time. Can we hold time? Keep it? Is it ours? No. Time is something that is eaten, driven through, falling, perpetual, casual, necessary, fought against, spent, and healing.

Here and Now plays with what time feels like and is contrasted by an active voyage to another world.

This Side Of Silver, Bennett Wood

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Dear Everything That Feels,, Oga Li (Oga L)

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

MSU Graduate Theses

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Winding Down River Road, Gillian Harper

LSU Master's Theses

As a mechanism to explore my temporary home in Louisiana, Winding Down River Road is a collection of artworks that integrates natural materials collected from landscapes in southern Louisiana with steel and petroleum-based products. My interest in researching environmental issues, ecology, and industry has shaped my vehicles for observation and how I generate data. Through a variety of methodologies, I am considering how climate change is forcing many of us to re-contextualize how our home can be affected by the very industries we rely on. Personal engagement with residents living in the dystopian atmosphere of southern Louisiana’s industrial corridor and …

Half In Dream: The Tangle In The Grid, Abbey L. Paccia

Masters Theses

Half in Dream: The Tangle in the Grid discusses the form and content of a physical art installation by the same name. The site-specific installation is a large three-dimensional collage of natural ephemera collected from the area around Amherst, Massachusetts, which interacts with natural lighting conditions to illuminate a gallery-facing image of ever-moving light and shadow. The written work elaborates some of the many details within the structure of the artwork, and reveals the philosophies, embodied practices, and methodologies that informed the visual work's creation. Woven throughout are reflections on phenomenology, walking practice, General Systems Theory, collective making, narrative arts, …

My Sitayana: Sewing Seeds Of Empowerment, Dhea Kothari

Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of sculpture and installation. My project depicts a narrative of generational emancipation of women. The narrative was inspired by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel, ‘Forest of Enchantments,’ in which she rewrites the ‘Ramayana’ with Sita, the female character, as the protagonist instead. The Ramayana is a popular Hindu mythological story that revolves around Prince Rama’s quest to rescue his wife Sita from the perils of the villain Raavana. This story encapsulates the undertones of the patriarchal culture in India. This My thesis installation stands as a symbol of generational transformation of love and what it means …

Sanctuary: The-Construction Of Communion, Carlos Salazar-Lermont

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis narrates the development of the multimedia art installation called Sanctuary. I unwrap the theoretical background of my practice, which is rooted in the theories of deconstruction by Jacques Derrida, and the rhizome theory by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I approach my creative process as a grammatic of matter, space, and time, constructing meaning through an interplay of significants that connect to political, social, economic, and cultural implications. In the case of Sanctuary, I sought to create a path of empathy towards Venezuelan refugees in St. Louis, Missouri through the exploration of the concept of communion. …

Crying At Nothing But Colors, Maryalice Carroll

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

crying at nothing but colors is an installation of ceramic works that explores the abstraction of feelings, both physical and emotional. The installation itself is a house made out of tension cables that stretch wall to wall in the gallery space. Inside the house are 7 ceramic objects placed on wooden pedestals paired with tufted rugs.

Throughout this essay, I will describe the abstract ceramic objects as Beings. They are colorful and have textured glaze on the surface with a gloopy opalescent glaze oozing out of holes that cover each piece. They are an extension of myself. They are the …

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

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

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

Until Its Calmness Can Claim You, Gabrielle Mchugh

Theses and Dissertations

This is an invitation to pause //

This is an externalization of my inner landscape, a highlight of what I value in my everyday and what comprises my lexicon of a sacred space. The following is a journey of nets, quiet, the sacred, space, and the in-between; where I share research and questions that are the foundation for my thesis work, Until Its calmness can claim you.

// This is an invitation to find moments of quiet in the noise

Interview, Elizabeth Naiden

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of work by Liz Naiden in the form of a conversation discussing light and dark, attention and proprioception, and design and architectural theories of space in installation works. Addresses the role of voice, speech, and reading and speaking aloud, performing for oneself, and performing for others.

Sculpture As Memoir, Tirzah Reed

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Questions guide my art practice, so they naturally guide the structure of this thesis.

Remember?

If I remember, what then?

What makes a memoir?

What is the work made of?

Nouns and adjectives—why have both?

What’s the role of sound?

How does the form of installation relate to memoir?

How do we take an installation from situation to story?

What happens in the studio?

What gets me to the studio in the first place?

What matters?

Objects have power. They hold the histories of their owners—or if they have not had previous owners, they at least carry the connotations of …

Tomorrow Is The Worst Day Since Yesterday, Matthew Carlson

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

Susan Sontag wrote: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other space”.

This work addresses aspects of that citizenship. I used my experiences as a person living with a disability and as a parent to a son with Autism to explore the dichotomy of this dual citizenship. The …

The Weight Of It All, Amythest Warrington

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

The impetus for this exhibition is to visualize the weight of loss and to focus attention on the need to recognize the inherent dichotomy between life’s beauty and loss. My mobile upbringing taught me that details may differ from group to group, but the core experiences of loss, empathy and belonging are a universal language that connects us. I utilize clay’s unique physical properties of malleability, recyclability and permanence once fired, to explore the dichotomy between strength and frailty associated with these universal connectors. The meticulously crafted beautiful objects draw one into serious and often taboo subjects. The work comforts …

Dead Weightless, Isaiah Schwartz

Senior Projects Spring 2021

There is more than convenience embedded into my attraction to the unrefined materials that I work with. Shopping cart (baby size), palette, cheesecloth, bucket, and window. Each is rich with an individual history that expands beyond the use it was intended for. Suspending them in the air is my observance of the sanctity of their mundane uses. To create something new, also out of these unrefined materials, and to refuse to polish it. To have resolution in a thing that is also ambiguous. I can find intrigue in a million different things as soon as I pay attention to them. …

Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around using a specialized blend of art, design, and craft to interpret political narratives through fabricated products. These objects weave contemporary commentary and consumer indulgences into sculptural cultures. Each product is designed to mimic its own marketed culture—offering an enticingly tactile, interactive experience that is equal parts confusing, concerning, and delightful. The products are accompanied by investment opportunities in the form of popular, limited released merchandized objects, such as hats and patches. Using humor and subtlety, my gamelike installations explore arenas such as agency, autonomy, intimacy, and dueling realities in a time of ecological collapse and cultural …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Patterning A Home, Zoë Finkelstein

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

The question driving my constant impulse to create is this: how do the places in which we spend our time transform the four walls around us into this larger entity we call “home?” I begin to answer this question with an investigation into the use of repetition, time spent, and memory in my own body of work. In order for a space to become a home, one must build up a collection of experiences in that space over time. To show this, I explore the relationship in my work between repetitive mark making, pattern, intense labor, memory, comfort, and my …

Memory Bread, Nisiqi

Art + Design Masters Theses

Memory Bread, constituting a daily performance ritual and the post-action objects, seeks to address the generational decline of mother language use in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a post-colonized province of China. I chose to eat sliced white bread in the performance and later casted concrete sculptures as the extension of the action for both substances’ capitalistic nature. Being an invasive material that took over the traditional architectural lifestyle, the use of concrete mirrors the pervasive cultural and ethnic assimilation in China. Meanwhile, the materiality of concrete being a mixture of various substances also metaphors the mixed culture that Chinese-Mongolians …

Hut Annandale: Humblest Dwelling, Ruiqi Zhu

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Lots of us have a dream deep down in the heart: to get away from the congested cities and live in a hut in nature. French port Jean Wahl once wrote: The frothing of the hedges I keep deep inside me. In my project, he explored this dream and constructed a group of architectural structures by hand for those potential hermits. Studying at Bard College, I have found this region is a place with a great hermit culture. With the picturesque scene of nature and the location near the New York Metropolitan area, here the mid-Hudson Valley has attracted lots …

Installation: Untitled#0420, Thesis: Is The Artist’S Position Valid And Necessary To Her Completed Artworks ? —— An Investigation Of The Artist’S Position Through Martin Heidegger’S Poetry, Language, Thought And The Fisherman Analogy, Coco Ma

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Artist statement:

In my practice of mixed-media sculptures and installations, I use different kinds of materials in unexpected ways to provoke uncertainties, inquiries, and reflections. My works entice people to stop and pay close attention. In this process, they may be confused and amused. By being labor- intensive and repetitive with ordinary materials, my works inspire people to see familiar forms and materials in new and fresh ways. Underneath the familiarity of the materials is the “white noise,” a hum of dissonance between the familiar and the strange.

The installation Untitled#0420 uses fishing lines as its major component, which is …

I Think You Were In My Dream Last Night, Josie Cotton

Senior Projects Spring 2020

I Think You Were In My Dream Last Night

I have always worked by creating opportunities for mistakes and then fixing them. I’ve taken inspiration from the things I pick up every day: cups, necklaces, coat hangers, tables, chairs. I’ve taken inspiration from my dreams. They are always based in reality but twisted into a shape I’ve never seen before, and I wonder where these ideas come from. When I wake up, the people or the places I dreamt about are changed forever by a new perspective, out of my control. That is an idea I wanted to sift through …

Honor The Precariat, Natalie Barnes

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

Honor the Precariat is an art installation conceived and executed to acknowledge and honor the significant contributions of non-tenure track faculty, particularly those colleagues teaching at Colorado State University. The exhibition and accompanying article recognize faculty who work in anonymity and often without security, teaching, advising, and mentoring hundreds of students and representing millions of dollars in tuition revenue.

The essence of the artwork captures the 20+ year struggle of the artist to come to terms with the value of a career in which she has been viewed as a second-class faculty member – and this dichotomy facing all members …

Enmesh: The Art Of Trauma And Recovery, Joanna Pottle

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Liminal Space is an artistic installation within the ongoing, interdisciplinary creative/research project "Enmesh: The Art of Trauma and Recovery.” Utilizing a combination of research methods, creative processes, and cultural inspirations, this project asks the following questions: how can the artistic process (this project serving as a preliminary case study) parallel various modes of recovery and healing? How can this objective be visually communicated through a mixed media approach of drawing, painting, and printmaking and how can this approach be an effective tool of communication? What can we conclude from both modes of work (solitarily or collectively)? How do they accomplish …

North American Data, Joseph A. Burwell

Theses and Dissertations

North American Data fractures and reconfigures pre-existing narratives into new, unauthorized forms of storytelling. Core samples extracted from various narrative sources are reassigned new roles according to their proximity to each other. This paper functions as an introduction to the essential actors and their dramatic inclinations within fluctuating scenarios.