Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Art and Design Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Art and Design

Material World, Nicole Weldy Dec 2023

Material World, Nicole Weldy

All Theses

My thesis, Material World, delves into the use of the crochet unit as a construction technique for building forms. Through this, I aim to organize different materials in a way that responds to the challenges posed by the physical world. My artistic process is centered around honoring the inherent qualities of thread and uses these qualities to create form, lightness, and linearity. At the same time, I remain receptive to transformative processes such as combining three-dimensional (3D) printed lines and lace stiffener to push the boundaries of what thread can do. By combining manual craftsmanship with technology materialized as …


Waiting To Exhale, Abigail H. Ogle Jan 2023

Waiting To Exhale, Abigail H. Ogle

Theses and Dissertations

We breathe as a measure of time, it keeps us alive, and fabricates the pattern of our lives. We are punctuated by “snarls,” “glitches,” or moments of irregularity – of trying to catch one's breath, having it taken away, or gasping for it. It is the punctuation of sighs, huffs, sniffs, scoffs, screams, and deep intakes that appear as glitches in the breathing system.

In our daily rhythm of breathing, the presence of the glitch, defined as potentiality, can create space for something unexpected or new to arise. Using the wind from fans and approximately 1,260 square feet of silk, …


Welcome To The Sitting Garden At The Busy Hands Museum, Stacie Sabady Jan 2023

Welcome To The Sitting Garden At The Busy Hands Museum, Stacie Sabady

Theses and Dissertations

I wanted to attend VCU to learn how to unravel my mind and find the words to describe it. While I did make progress in that area, my surprise discovery is that I need to unravel my body too. It has become unbalanced from years of neglect. When working, I find solace through escape. I find a positive outlet for my perfectionist tendencies. I find a way to visually illustrate my obsessive qualities. Throughout the years of these findings, I have ignored my body pleading with me to take it easy. I have always honored the materials and the tools, …


Dregs / Lessons From The Things Around Us, Juan-Manuel Pinzon Jan 2022

Dregs / Lessons From The Things Around Us, Juan-Manuel Pinzon

Theses and Dissertations

The writing in Lessons From the Things Around Us is in support of the work in my MFA thesis show, dregs. I detail the progression of my making and thinking over the last two years. I expand on the material and personal relationships that have manifested themselves in the work and influenced my approach to the things that surround me. Finally, I point to a more expansive definition of Craft, rooted in its material sensibilities, and the possibilities already present in the field that this definition creates.


Until Its Calmness Can Claim You, Gabrielle Mchugh Jan 2022

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


Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan Jan 2022

Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines an alternative processing mechanism surrounding the act of healing after traumatic experiences in life. Using a methodology of iterative patterning and tool-pathing, a collection of inflatable garments and wooden mannequins analyzes defense mechanisms learned in early childhood development. This work highlights an essential body of recent scholarship that takes cuteification seriously to restore a childlike approach to mastering fear. This paper will review the definitions of cuteness and childlike humor and then describe how visual culture has implemented these components to subvert established power.


Coping With Burdens, Jennifer Rose Wolken May 2021

Coping With Burdens, Jennifer Rose Wolken

MSU Graduate Theses

How to carry and cope with burdensome circumstances beyond my control is the main theme I am currently exploring in my artistic practice. I create art objects and experiences that can elicit an empathetic connection to the realities of living with burdens like grief and chronic illness, or help you to process your own relationship to a wide variety of burdens. Individual pieces explore aspects of how I or close family members cope. My practice is multi-disciplinary and the forms focus on reinterpretation of the book as a sculptural art object or artists’ book. The processes I use are overwhelmingly …


Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo May 2020

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 …


Kiddush Levana, The Moon Is Your Handheld Mirror, Noa Ginzburg May 2019

Kiddush Levana, The Moon Is Your Handheld Mirror, Noa Ginzburg

Theses and Dissertations

Noa Ginzburg is weaving cast-off and hand-made objects, lights, reflections, spells, drawings, and an abundance of knots into site-responsive installations. In her thesis, Ginzburg addresses Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, the synergy of assemblages, repurposing of materials in the era of Anthropocene, and how notions of solidarity and indeterminacy influence her work.


Seeing Through Feeling, Christopher Mitchell Rodgers May 2019

Seeing Through Feeling, Christopher Mitchell Rodgers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to describe both the inherent formal qualities and conceptual framework that are addressed within the exhibition, Seeing Through Feeling. The exhibition is centered around the methodology of making, collection, and display all through the one singular positioning, the object. The objects within the exhibition are either handmade or collected fragments that weave together around the singular position of craft and history under the pretense of how our understanding of time may not always be true. The thesis breaks down key components through specific themes into the categories of the hand, eye, symbol, object, value, …


After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee Jan 2018

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …


Pebbles Is A Girl That Doesn't Know Anything, Grace A. Kubilius Jan 2017

Pebbles Is A Girl That Doesn't Know Anything, Grace A. Kubilius

Theses and Dissertations

I am not quite sure how to be a woman. It’s complicated, contradictory and highly surveilled. I make videos, sculptures and wearable objects that attempt to rationalize my female identity. The body is a sustained fixture in my work: as an armature, as an absent actor for constructed environments, as fragment and as the literal inclusion of my image. It is through these various modes of dis/embodiment that I negotiate the complexities of gendered existence. Crumbling ceramic and paper objects, pieced fabric forms, videos, beauty products, and delicate flowers reference splintered narratives and unwieldy terrains. I consider the idea of …


With Every Fiber, Catherine Megan Calloway Jan 2016

With Every Fiber, Catherine Megan Calloway

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Displaying and covering the human form, fiber inherently refers to the body. It wraps, protects, and conveys stories about us. This accumulation of work uses strands of fiber to define space, create structures, and manipulate the human form. Considering the process of craft in which bodies manipulate fiber, this work explores the way in which fiber manipulates bodies. As sculptures that envelope a human form, each garment mandates how a body may move both within and outside of it, engendering a performance in which both entities assert limits and capabilities. Each knot, stitch, and weave, is an expression of time, …


Sensible Nonsense, Timothy J. Woodbrey Jan 2016

Sensible Nonsense, Timothy J. Woodbrey

Theses and Dissertations

“Truth happens only by establishing itself in the strife and the free space opened up by truth itself. Because truth is the opposition of clearing and concealing, there belongs to it what is here called establishing.[i]—Martin Heidegger

All things contain their own individual existence. When I look at objects I notice material, tradition, individual history. These are starting points for my imagination to seed and germinate. My ideas are fragmented, nonlinear and nonsensical to others but they hold honesty to me. Honesty is powerful and is worth sharing.

This document is an examination of my work during …


So Much Apparent Nothing, Emily Mcbride Jan 2016

So Much Apparent Nothing, Emily Mcbride

Theses and Dissertations

This document contains reflections on motivations behind selected works leading up to and including my thesis exhibition so much apparent nothing. Through journal excerpts and analysis of my own psychology, I attempt to put into words my thoughts concurrent to my making, indirect as they may be. The following text shares my personal conflicts and ideologies surrounding art-making, the permanence of objects, and the acceptance of an identity in flux.