Art and Design Commons^™

Motive Through Automotive Compassionately Criticizing The Desires Of Car Culture, Erika R. Lehrmann

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My artwork represents my admiration and criticisms of car culture I have gathered throughout my personal experiences beginning at a very early age. The work exists in the form of drawings, paintings, prints, collage and sculpture. This work is created through the elements of personal narrative, desires, obsessions, and questions surrounding car culture and its influences. My intention to refurbish the icons of this culture has involved creating work that is both obsessive and critical for personal exploration and understanding of past memories.

A Chair In The Woods, Victoria Dolloff

Theses and Dissertations

Victoria Dolloff's MFA Thesis considers traces of play and perception in the development of her artwork, exploring the idea of reorientation through subtleties of the absurd. Her installation Untitled (Landscape) questions object as place and place as memory utilizing fragmentation as reconstruction.

Invisible Invisibility, Eugina Song

Theses and Dissertations

White America assumes its culture is the default, and Asian culture as foreign and irrelevant. I address Asian invisibility by using canvas structure as a Western framing device of painting, and make this cultural barrier visible by breaking out of the frame. Deriving from Dansaekhwa, I challenge the Western painting structure with materiality.

Curating Contemporary Japanese Art: Exhibition Catalogue Production For Hidden Landscapes: Yasuaki Onishi And Invisible Space, Emily Lawhead

Master's Projects and Capstones

In the last decade, there has been a telling increase of attention given to contemporary Asian artists exhibited in the United States and Europe. Since 2008, artists from China, Japan, South Korea, and Central Asia have been featured in exhibitions from the Venice Biennale to the Whitney Biennale, and are becoming ever more present on the Western art stage. Meanwhile, curatorial practice, once focused on the care of objects, is shifting to encompass a wider range of creative activity. Curators are taking time to engage with living artists in a collaborative setting, rather than as impartial facilitators. This capstone seeks …

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space, Jan Descartes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. …

Going Home, Emily Susannah Budd

MSU Graduate Theses

I continue to explore the space that exists between worlds and ideology in an attempt to blur the demarcation between them. Using the everyday, I attempt to show features of the uncanny and sublime nature of common objects by including fantastic elements while maintaining an illusion of reality. Rather than showing the audience one true meaning, I offer them a lens to one of the infinite possibilities. The story is left for the observer to complete, each narrative unique and valid. As the Western viewer tends to seek out absolutes and categorical placements, I try to create a venue that …

La Vida Y Andanzas De Un Libro Antiguo En Nueva España Y La Península Ibérica. Cultura Escrita En La Obra Hierofánica Del Doctor Don Alonso Alberto De Velasco, Raul Manuel Lopez Bajonero

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 1688 a legal text, Renovación, was printed in Mexico City, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, that explains a twelve year trial that focuses on determining if a 16^th century sculpture miraculously renewed itself. The final decision came from the Archbishop of Mexico City. A year after the book’s publication, the sculpture was recognized as miraculous. In 1699, ten years after this event, the author of Renovación wrote another book that narrates the same sculpture's history, Exaltación, but addressed a wider audience, and from a religious and pious perspective. The Exaltación was republished a …

Anthropo-Scenes, Ibel M. Sinohuiz

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ARTIST

My work is a melding of mythology and personal experience. Growing up in the harsh desert of the Coachella Valley, I found refuge in music and art. My desire to become a drummer has leaded me to create a persona called Baby Lamb. Baby Lamb is a symbolic representation, as well as a physical manifestation of this desire and she is slowly evolving, eventually becoming my alter ego. Currently, the artwork that I create is a chapter in the life story of Baby Lamb.

BABY LAMB

Baby Lamb's art shows have included a collection of relics that have been …

Prevail: In The Moment..., Nicole Stahl

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This body of work is composed of sculptural mixed media objects and scenes that heavily utilize cast glass. These pieces are physical representations of my quest to seek mental balance by focusing on what brings me happiness and comfort while still honoring mortality.

Moldmaking and repetition of process innate within casting and other aspects of this work makes me focus and revisit an idea, repetitively, like a meditation or a prayer. The intense focus required helps combat my anxiety and translates anxious energy into more positive, productive, balanced way of living.

Part of this balance requires the acknowledgment of the …

Tipping Point, Pang Z. Vang

Theses and Dissertations

What happens to a woman at the tipping point under oppression in a patriarchal society? How does she behave? Pulling from the vagina dentata mythologies, and personal and collective experiences of rape culture, I formed a body of work which problematize the stereotypical narrative of victim/perpetrator. As a visual and conceptual exploration, my work explores the themes of desire, agency/non-agency, and violence [as it manifests within and outside of the body]. Utilizing visual and conceptual quotations from film, pornography and sex toys, these works subvert the exoticized stereotype of the Asian woman as sexual plaything.

Dermis, Julia Betts

Masters Theses

I create situations that hold onto spaces or things. That psychic energy can be transferred to a viewer. I’m curious about this transference and The Aesthetics of Disengagement and the empathetic nature of making work.

I often engage the viewer through overwhelm (such as: texturally, amount of objects, length of performance, mark making…) to create anxiety/tension around a body or around how a body relates to space. To create this overwhelm, I use ritual, repetitive labor that is between obsessive and meditative. In this boundary, I wonder about whether art is healing or can be. I’m interested in creating spaces …

I Am Come Back To You, Eleanor Tomlinson

Masters Theses

Through various forays into psychological science and affect theory, this work attempts to understand how quick and simple commodities might coalesce into a complex portrait of individual and collective memory.

Tendrescopic Endeavors And Other Dynamics, Jared Akerstrom

Masters Theses

Tendrescopic Endeavors and other Dynamics is an attempt to coalesce the ideas and skills that have been flying around my studio over the course of the last year into a single project. A trip to Storm King Art Center and ideas of modular making began a cycle of exploration into the way custom fittings could create light-weight and transportable sculptures. Developing a greater ability to digital model and create my own unique parts has been the charge that I have built this work upon. Science and the devices that facilitate scientific discovery act as the embodiment of the desire to …

Thesis, Robert Joseph Anspach

Masters Theses

This is a seemingly didactic account of the nature of the mind, art, and the end of the world. It is probably not very good and the author does not stand by what is stated within it, but has to turn something in in order to graduate. Maybe do not read it.

Sight Lines, Makia Sharp

Masters Theses

Through investigations of liminal phenomena, this written thesis explores the direct and indirect effects of time, light, architecture , and metaphysical space. Along with the work, it is an attempt to create a framing around these phenomena which are both banal and transcendent, and which exist of the edge of perception.

Mortality And Artifact, Alexander Perrelli

Theses and Dissertations

Questioning one's death is questioning the invisible. Our innate fear and anxiety mechanisms enable us to navigate crises, yet can ruin us. Minute psychological transitions can spark ingenuity, the key to individual and species survival. But improvisation is uncertain. Our vulnerability defines us. I seek to better understand my fears.

Phantom Nation, Peter J. Hoffmeister Mr.

Theses and Dissertations

Phantom Nation is a sculptural installation consisting of “document-objects,” sculptures created using declassified and leaked U.S. government documents as their source.

Welcome To My Dream – Quasi Queer Fiction, Christian A. Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Roseate and bodacious, the hand formed surfaces of Christian Rogers' paintings explore gay culture and history though a quasi-fictional lens. While utilizing folk like imagery, Christian depicts dramatic moments of love, lust, sex and violence as he takes us to queer realms.

The Difference Between A Duck, Shelby D. Meier

Art Theses and Dissertations

. In this paper I will address each work from my exhibition the difference between a duck individually to address concepts and references in each work to elucidate some of the connections I have made between the all the works. Concepts and references range from the irony of the 19^th century arts and crafts movement, the possibilities of a blackholes, the subjective value of souvenirs, Tibetan prayer wheels and much more. And they all seem to add up to nothing, which for me is a respite in the comedy of trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t …

Ten-Der-Ness, Brittany Jasin

Graduate School of Art Theses

Ten-der-ness. The title of this document defines the word, because one can easily forget all the meanings of a word. To be tender is to be compassionate and kind but also can mean to be in pain. “The quality of being easy to cut or chew” is my favorite definition; because to me that says that to be tender makes you vulnerable to being swallowed by reality. It’s a common saying that without suffering we would never know compassion but, within tenderness, compassion and suffering exist simultaneously in a ten letter word. Within my thesis I am exploring tenderness through …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

An Experimental Study On Drag Reduction Of Aftermarket Additions On An Suv, Christiana L. Katsoulos

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Over recent years, the awareness of climate change has become more prevalent worldwide and one major contributor to global warming has been the use of transportation. Vehicles contribute to global warming by releasing petroleum based emissions such as significant amounts of carbon dioxide and numerous other harmful environmental pollutants. SUVs contribute to the emissions problem more so than sedans, since they have lower gas mileage and need more gasoline regularly. The main functionality of sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, includes hauling or off-roading and fuel efficiency is not always the focus in the design process. However, aerodynamic enhancements could improve …

"Collaborating With Chance", Alyse Gellis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Have you ever felt a desire to get lost on a journey much larger than yourself or experience the thrill of the unknown? Think about a time you intentionally swam further out in a lake or the sea than you have before, or drove down a road without knowing where it would take you, or wandered around a new city without a map. Think about how you made the decision to push those boundaries. Remember how taking that risk in pursuit of an unknown made you feel, because it is that thrill that drives my artistic practice. Through my thesis …

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 …

Nips Of Clairvoyance, Samantha Valdez

Graduate Theses

My thesis statement describes the fundamental elements of inspiration, along with the artistic references for my thesis body of work. It revisits memories, and explores the symbolic significance of bodily action, form, material and composition, as a means to expose the relationship between object and memory. The thesis exhibition, Nips of Clairvoyance, consists of an installation of a triptych of videos of performances that depict the complexity and pain of an abusive relationship. Adjacent to the videos are three sculptures that consist, of glass cylinders filled with personal objects embedded inside and placed on top of slabs of soap. While …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

Making Sense Of Nonsense, Parker Boales

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A paradox of simultaneous sincerity and humor, Making Sense of Nonsense attempts to identify deficient systems upon which we rely daily. Systems of logic, text, and visual language are all rife with flaws solely because their source--humankind--is irrevocably bound to error. This is not to say that these systems cannot be improved; on the contrary, a rigorous investigation of these systems allows one insight into their mechanics to the end that one endlessly questions the very foundation of the mode of communication being used. Materials and discarded objects such as vintage tools, automotive parts, spray paint, string, furniture, plastic, S&M …

A Hazy Bliss, Anna Joo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: "I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table." And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids …

Bloom, Madeline Walker

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Bloom is an installation that exists as a theory and expression of systems, inspired by harmful algal blooms found in various aquatic environments.The way in which a unit becomes exponential is explored, as well as the influence of pattern on perception and development. The balance between beauty and repulsion, as well as mindfulness and excess, is a paradox that is questioned and explored from concept to completion.

Working in an intuitive, yet methodical way, the experience of living with OCD is expressed as a parallel to the overwhelming growth patterns algal blooms exhibit. The observations and experiences that influence the …

Lacanian Gaze, Semiotics, And The Enigma Of Bosch., Virginia Lynn Hosono

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hieronymus Bosch’s (1450-1516) paintings have long fascinated, intrigued, and mystified viewers. In particular, the Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1500) has generated much discussion and speculation. Bosch’s use of medieval symbols and fantastic images, his preoccupation with sinfulness and Hell, and his dismal view of mankind’s future have long been sources of study and speculation. Not only do art historians ponder his work, but so do social historians, philosophers, creative artists and the general viewing public. There is no definitive interpretation of Bosch’s Garden that explains the power the painting holds over its viewers. By examining various interpretations of Bosch’s works, …