Art and Design Commons^™

Mettle, Chelsey Augustine

Master's Theses

While many see Graphic Design as a separation from art, for me, it has always been a happy blend between my fine art and technological skills. In both areas, I think about what I want the audience to think of feel when the pieces in question. Form, color, anatomy, and concept are all part of my creative process, regardless of whether I am creating digitally with a Wacom or building a wax form in the foundry.

During my graduate studies, I started to get into a flow of building narratives to hone in on conceptual branding ideas. Being able to …

On The Line Mfa Thesis Exhibition Cassi Rebman, Cassandra Rebman

Master's Theses

My work asks, “What are we capable of and what might be holding us back?” I survey of themes of mortality and human frailty, psychological susceptibility, dependence and codependence, established ideas of being and an increased mediation of our experience through the screen.

I make strange and confounding objects that seek to entice as much as they repel. Though I gain method, means and motivation from the Dadaists and Neo-Dadaists, my work fits within the pluralism of the postmodern. By making material and stylistic choices to fit the narrative of each piece, I utilize the familiar and the uncanny with …

Mfa Thesis Exhibition - Enormous, Wendy (Suat Huay) Tan

Master's Theses

Artist Wendy (Suat Huay) Tan

MFA Sculpture

Artworks Statement

We all see the world in different ways and we all see it from a human scale. Observing small creatures in nature has always fascinated me. There is a small world that exists just below our feet which is full of beauty and excitement. These seemingly insignificant little creatures such as ants can represent a microcosm of human existence.

Ants live with us on every continent and their existence may seem valueless but in fact their lives have enormous ecological importance. One in every thousand insects is an ant. Their total …

Inhumane, Jordan Brown

Master's Theses

My Goal is to bring awareness to the plight of wild creatures who have lost their habitats due to pollution and urban sprawl. I will be making porcelain vessels that influence people to think about their role on the environment. Both terrestrial and aquatic life has been impacted by humans through poaching, non-traditional medical practices, and human activity in the ocean. By making impressionable clay urns, I hope to bring light to these issues that affect animals. Through research I have been enthused by the steep historical forms from Greece, China, and Europe. Their exceptional skill and knowledge of the …

Mother Water, Crystal J. Hammerschmidt

Master's Theses

Water is life. That which nurtures, sustains and nourishes. My mother is truly my water. The one who gave me life and has supported and nurtured me though and through. While wading through the challenges and adversity of graduate school, she has been there every step of the way; and while I struggled to find what I was trying to say, I was quietly toiling over thoughts of my own fertility, maternal instincts and desire to nurture something and I began to acknowledge the mortality of my own mother.

The materials and images I combine are deeply connected to my …

Alteration, Jared Jennings

Master's Theses

Mental illness is surprisingly far more common than people care to believe. This is in part due to the stigma which follows close behind it. Stigma, a mark of disgrace, began before medical experts and psychologists started studying mental illness in the 1840s. Before this time mental illness was seen as demonic possession. Usually, severe mental illness develops genetically. Although severe cases of mental illness are rare, the media has exploited them such as Jekyll and Hyde, Psycho, or Frailty. This stigma has caused many individuals who may suffer from mental illness to avoid treatment. I tell the stories of …

Hyperstatic, Zane Mahanna

Master's Theses

Hyperstatic is a designation given to structural elements when internal and external forces acting upon them are unable to be definitively calculated. The integrity of equilibrium therefore remains undetermined. The juxtaposition of literal, architectural forms, against the metaphorical, structural, hierarchies that govern society, seeks to question the very nature of humanity’s equilibrium often with a dose of comedic elements. The subversive humor manifested in my work is employed not only to make light of serious questions about the nature of existence, but also to disarm the viewer of preconceived notions about the esoteric seriousness of high art. This thesis catalog …

Sacred Industry, Joshua Heimsoth

Master's Theses

Thesis show revolving around the design concepts found in religious art and in the functional beauty of industrial design with observations on the beauty and hypocrisy in both power structures.

Dredge The Foundry | For Dirt And Era, Woody Stauffer

Master's Theses

Billions of years are past us and billions of years await. Shaping earthen material into sculptural abstractions is my way to sense and convey the lethargic natural progression of the planet. Fossilization, rot, dirt, plant growth, animal existence, and rust are aesthetics I endow with new perspectives and form through mold making and casting. The dichotomy between the eons of time behind us and the endless possibility of a technological future has inspired the addition of a science fiction aesthetic. To rust these computerized constructed geometric forms demonstrates how futuristic ideals will also wither away. In many ways we are …

Iteration, And The Iron Theater, Kurt Breshears

Master's Theses

Sculpture is produced with considerations to aesthetic appeal using mathematical patterns and physics. Both avenues of sculpture, the static sculpture and the performance art, have their foundation in this approach to creating artworks. The work in the catalog is a visual representation of this process.

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …