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Full-Text Articles in Art and Design
Inner Portraits, Bethany Salisbury
Inner Portraits, Bethany Salisbury
Graduate Theses
This paper investigates the many interconnected layers of women’s mental health through portraiture and how animal and plant symbolism can represent the way women's hormones and bodily health affect their mental health. I reveal how the artwork created presents these connections and inner mental health narratives to the viewer, creating a space of empathy, destigmatization, and self-reflection. This body of portraiture art connects five women through a series of both two-and three-dimensional portraits based on interviews using my own adaptation of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoots’ (1983) portrait methodology.
Women and non-binary individuals have always dealt with difficult interactions of bodily and mental …
Negotiating Balance, Oscar Adolfo Soto
Negotiating Balance, Oscar Adolfo Soto
Graduate Theses
When we enter a room with a bed and dresser, we imagine that someone goes there to sleep. When we enter a larger room, with rows of uniform desks facing a whiteboard or lectern, we understand that people go there to learn. In most cases, the intention for the space and how we are to conduct ourselves in it is determined before the furniture is selected. When we are not privy to those intentions, the furniture itself can offer clues that help us understand what we are to do. As a contemplative device, I apply this framework to the world …
Nurture, Lauren Taylor League
Nurture, Lauren Taylor League
Graduate Theses
Nurture is a series of sculptural and performative works created to explore the emotional and psychological effects of objects as they relate to familial memory and the various processes one uses to nurture and express love. These moments incapsulate the need for comfort and connection, the need to be nourished, the need for protection, and the need to remember. The filmed interactions with each individual sculpture evoke the natural relationship of emotional release to the processes of remembering and healing.
By using sculpture as a residue of performance and creating work that serves as a memory of interaction and experience, …
Dust And Shadow, Anna Grant Dean
Dust And Shadow, Anna Grant Dean
Graduate Theses
Dust and Shadow is an investigation into systems of order and chaos that exist within the natural and manmade worlds. Human constructs (such as grids) and manmade systems (such as social media) abide in a space that is tangential to the structures and systems that choreograph the functions of the natural world. Exploring how these two very different worlds weave in and out of human existence allows me to examine my relationship to the complex facets of this twenty-first century experience.
My research into chaos and entropy serves as a catalyst for this body of work. Examining the parallels between …
Things That Don't Work: An Exploration In Sculpture And Installation, Mark Tyler Frasier
Things That Don't Work: An Exploration In Sculpture And Installation, Mark Tyler Frasier
Graduate Theses
This thesis statement will explore connections between my work and contemporary artists and its references to art movements including Minimalism, Dada and Surrealism, and Installation art. My thesis work explores the metaphors of current social and political constructs that seem to operate properly, but in reality, do not. My intention is to juxtapose constructed and found fragments of mixed media in such a way as to subvert their traditional associations in order to encourage viewers to question reality. My relationship to the materials and interest in the process are as important to me as the final product. No single piece …
Weaving In The Third-Dimension, Jill Gottschalk
Weaving In The Third-Dimension, Jill Gottschalk
Graduate Theses
This thesis statement, along with my final exhibition of sculpture, is the culmination of my graduate studies at Winthrop University. My reflections upon my sculpture, as well as connections to other artists within the art-historical canon, have provided me with a foundation which will remain fast in the years ahead. Throughout my studies, my work has evolved and changed, yet commonalities remain. It is these commonalities, aspects of my own style that remain constant, that are explored: ambiguity, transparency, use of textile materials and repetitive units. My recent body of work, and the subject of my thesis Weaving in the …
Vita Via Dolorosa, Vivianne Lee Carey
Vita Via Dolorosa, Vivianne Lee Carey
Graduate Theses
This thesis statement accompanies my MFA project entitled Vita via Dolorosa, which features a glass and steel horse-drawn carriage sculpture that metaphorically depicts a woman’s journey through life, from childhood to death. Supporting the carriage, which is the primary sculpture in this exhibit, is a performance piece that addresses the transformation of this woman by means of sculpture, music and drama. This largely autobiographical multidisciplinary exhibit uses the metaphor to explore the passage of time symbolically through the dark, aged-color palette, the iconic imagery, and the combination of animate and inanimate sculptural resources such as horses, steel and glass. …
Stories Of Otherness, Lee Ann Harrison
Stories Of Otherness, Lee Ann Harrison
Graduate Theses
The thesis exhibition Stories of Otherness is an interactive installation created using dance, music, photography, video, ceramic figurative sculptures, and armatures of found objects to create a voyeuristic and physically participatory experience of situational art. Many artists from various art and literary genres influence my research and art, including Petah Coyne, Mona Hatoum, Pina Bausch, Mia Michaels, and Jeanette Winterson. The multi-faceted combination of art mediums and artists inspires me to create a mixed media, multi-dimensional installation for an immersive participant’s experience as a source for awareness, empathy, reflection, and ultimately as a “call to action” evoking change.
This thesis …