Art and Design Commons^™

Reading The Room: Memory, Dwelling, And The Everyday, Sara R. Hardin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In any space, there is a residue that coats the present with a patina of memory. Creating layered imagery in dream-like paintings and prints, I use the domestic realm as a metaphor for the internal world of the mind, memories, and private thoughts, including them in compositions with symbols like the boundaries of windows, doors, and gates. These metaphorical structures also portray outward identities, which guard inner emotions. The conceptual aspects of these compositional elements weave together memories of the past and places of the present into a unified whole.

I began graduate school at the beginning of the COVID-19 …

An Exploration Of Bengali Identity With Material And Visual Artifacts Through Painting, Farah Billah

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Painting is and always has been, at its root, an exploration of identity for me. My current collection of work explores the stripping of Eurocentric beauty standards and presentation of the divine of the Brown Body to reveal my version of the human spirit. My drawings, paintings, and a hand-tufted rug all made with a surreal, colorful representation of the coming together of body and mind.

The Art Of Heritage And Mortality, Barbara Johanna Mileto

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through my art I explore the formation of cultural and personal identity addressing the importance of heritage, ancestors, and religion in Latin-American culture, while I develop my unique deities and spiritual space, creating my own iconography. The pieces are strongly autobiographical, using my family members, and frequently lived experience as a subject. Furthermore, I am drawn to the circle of life and productive failures - beginnings, deaths, and transitions. - My work integrates two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums, ranging from photography and printmaking to assemblage and textiles, video and digital.

And There I Was, Jennifer K. Jones

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Working with found imagery and objects, I explore sculptural processes and manipulated photographic methods as a metaphor for mental and physical transformation. Creating large scale cyanotypes that are exposed on painter’s linen, I have developed a unique process for stretching and coating linen that allows me to make images that feel more like paintings than photographs. Reflecting and analyzing aspects of my adult life, I present images and objects that challenge traditional gender roles that were impressed upon me throughout my up-bringing. My process is defined by experimentation. During the exposure of the image, dramatic shifts occur that allow for …

Chaos And Control, Hilary E. Dugas

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My anxiety, compulsions, and drive to control my surroundings inspires my work and at times hinders my process. I want to control every aspect of life, and the system of marks are symbolic of this. Printmaking permits me to express the area between control and lack of control, as the processes can be revised from beginning to end. My prints are composed of symbolic marks, which I create from objects that represent my compulsions and spiraling thoughts. The repetition of this indirect medium mimics my compulsive behaviors.

I convey repetitive motion, obsessive thoughts, and actions within my prints by overlapping …

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 …

Picturing Things, Matthew J. Bivalacqua

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My creative process is a ritual I use to examine my personal narrative. Digital photography is a way for me to mine an object or environment with an obsessive emphasis, and extract an image that signifies something relatable. By employing tropes derived from my personal narrative, and filtering them through image manipulation software; I am able to dramatize aspects of perspective and scale. With an automatic mark guided by printed images and projections of digital panoramic images, the surface and resulting picture comes into focus. This is a way for me to move past my experiences. Achieving this level of …

Darwin Or Frankenstein?, Sylvia S. Santamaria

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through sculpture and drawing, I create my own versions of natural specimens primarily based upon the visual unity of disparate organisms. Invented specimens are composed using a variety of processes employing a mixture of atypical materials following the (20^th, 21^st century) Postmodern shift away from formalist and traditional uses of any singular medium. As well as a variety of art materials, the specimens are hybrids of organic and biomorphic elements, blurring boundaries between botanical, animal, fungal, metal, and mineral. Is my approach perhaps like Charles Darwin, observant and studious naturalist, or am I more like Dr. Frankenstein, …

The Fool And The Flood: A Journey, Michelle R. Hoover

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This journey based narrative inspired by the traditional narrative of the Major Arcana cards in the tarot, centers on The Fool and his interactions with the rest of the Major Arcana. The Fool’s journey centers on memory, regaining personal power, admitting and accepting weakness, and creating a personal place in relation to a larger world. This evolution throughout the journey is explored through detailed repeating imagery and symbols drawn from a mixture of traditional tarot imagery and the author’s personal image set created for this narrative.

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.

People Like Ourselves, Harper D. Hair

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The thesis writing here is an effort by the artist to identify his motives in creating, and his aims for the audience, and to communicate this to the reader in a clear and truthful manner. Section 1 focuses on introducing the ground of the artists’ thinking, discussing his ideas of the body and culture identity, and how they motivate his work. Section 2 goes into greater detail about the manner his thought process evolved through the course of a number of works. In Section 3, there is an ever sharper focus in the works towards the isolated and inscrutable individual. …

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

Navigating The Moral Pitfalls Of The Service Industry "The Book Of Snake", Paul S. Punzo

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper examines how I turned real life experiences and observations into a fictionalized screenplay that explores the potential for vice inherent in tip-based service industry jobs. After that, I move on to the preproduction process and touch on casting, location scouting, visualization, production design, budgeting and crewing. Next I discuss how the preproduction and on-set efforts of individuals were all critical to our production. Then I chronicle the ups and downs of postproduction. Finally, I conclude with an admittedly subjective analysis of the effectiveness of the movie itself.

Ripple, Tyler P. Haney

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work leverages the dynamic processes the brain uses to compute visual stimuli to influence how viewers experience my work. My aim is to create a ripple effect as the brain processes the visual information I provide.

My process begins with a camera. Focusing on the face, I see how much contextual information I can remove while still capturing the emotional expression of the subject. Before long, a photograph ends up next to a canvas where I will rebuild the image from the photograph using a myriad of expressionistic marks and colors to amplify the emotion.

Recognizing human emotion is …

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 …

Remembering Vietnam War Veterans: Interpreting History Through New Orleans Monuments And Memorials, Catherine Bourg Haws

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This thesis is concerned with the question of how America’s citizen soldiers are remembered and how their services can be interpreted through monuments and memorials. The paper discusses the concept of memory and the functions of memorialization. It explores whether and how monuments and memorials portray the difficulties, hardships, horror, costs, and consequences of armed combat. The political motivations behind the design, formation and establishment of the edifices are also probed. The paper considers the Vietnam War monuments and memorials erected by Americans and Vietnam expatriates in New Orleans, Louisiana, and examines their illustrative and educational usefulness. Results reflect …

Esc, Craig E. Branum

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is about the impact of the digital revolution on every aspect of life, such as relationships, war, and self image. I explore this in the creation of sculptures that represent abstracted globes or video game worlds, digital animations concerning the virtual and simulated, and prints as allegories for embodied post-human experience. The visual themes of my work are bitmapped patterns, early computer graphics, and twenty-sided dice.

The Hat Lady Equation, Lauren Capone

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Hat Lady Equation is a collection of poems by Lauren Capone. As influences she cites Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, among the exquisite minutiae of day-to-day living. The poems explore works of visual art by Alberto Giacometti, James Taylor Bonds, Chris Dennis, Blaine Capone (her brother), and creatures of the natural world including fish, the rhinoceros, a lettered olive shell. . . . Lauren shows a preoccupation with disassembling through the poems whether it's her identity, art, or happenings of everyday life.

Maturation Of Practices, Wendell J. Brunious

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The disparate concepts of Pop Art and abstract painting heavily influence the scope of my work. Finding a link between these two concepts has been the focal point of my studio practices. The apex of my process is the focus on commercial imagery as abstract form. The merging of these two concepts presents a complex composition of balance, color and information.

This thesis explores the various concepts as well as influences that have propelled the evolution of my work. It chronicles the steps I have taken in my quest to articulate my conceptual ideas. By describing the works and defining …

Front Trigger Hose Nozzle/Pistol Grip Hose Nozzle, Ariel Mazariegos

Innovate UNO

debris, sandpaper, decorative paper, and rhinestones

Ritual Process, Kevin A. Baer

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art is a means for investigating the passage of time, the decay of physical things, and the truth of mortality. I explore these concepts through process-oriented sculptures that emphasize ritual and material. The process is communicated with the creation of relics, often existing as drawings or the remains of degenerated sculptures. These relics bear witness to the process. I focus on themes of temporal change and death because they remain central to our metaphysical and physical existence. I see a diminished reverence for the power of death in our culture, and through my work I aim to pay homage …

Exposed, Shelly Barq

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of The Ordinary, Natalie J. Tobacyk

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the progression of my work through my graduate studies at the University of New Orleans. I examine the central psychological themes of the human experience. Through painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture, I investigate various ways of translating personal and universal experiences into open-ended visual allegories. These psychological narratives are intended to function ambiguously- allowing the viewer to develop their own ideas and responses to the work. Using the figure paired with symbols and also using mass-produced common objects to function as the figure; placing them in ambiguous environments, I juxtapose physical and psychological spaces that evoke …

The Persistence Of Vengeance From Early Modern England To Postmodern New York, Dominic M. Sevieri

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As a passing glance at the popular texts of any given period reveals, the subject of vengeance is nearly inescapable; on billboards, websites, and year end lists, revenge represents a curious constant even amid disparate media. This study explores the cultural commonalities that align revenge texts of the English Renaissance and exploitation films of late 20th century America. As in-depth inquiry reveals, numerous ideas and narrative tropes popularized during the Early Modern period are pushed to their logical extremes in these films. The central factor that aligns London during the Renaissance and New York at the cusp of the 1990s …