Art and Design Commons^™

Mothering As Feminism, Meera Patel

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay proposes the concept of mothering-as-feminism, with the intention of interrogating American ideals of mothering and caregiving. Reforming the way we view mothering, as it relates to feminism, requires a re-evaluation of the American role of women and mothers—and how they are portrayed (and therefore seen and understood), valued, and supported. Focusing on the evolution of feminist theory throughout the past 70 years, as well as personal and secondary experiences, I demonstrate how political and social change occurs generationally and is dependent on the education of our children. Ultimately, I show the important role children’s literature plays …

The Voice Of One Crying In The Wilderness, Megan Kenyon

MFA in Visual Art

I am a Midwestern, Christian, and feminist artist. I make work about the beautiful, broken, and absurd ways in which American evangelical culture influences lives, especially women’s lives. I’m dragging everything into the light by deconstructing and critiquing the world in which I live, move, and have my being. I do this by harnessing prophetic imagination and incarnational space to shine a light on how patriarchy infects evangelical Christian theology and practice. Using prophetic imagination through photographic self-portraiture and text (my own and found texts using the Bible), I seek to make plain the effects of white, Christian patriarchy on …

Perils Of The Heroine: The Historic Role Of Woman In Comics, Britain Bray

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Now more than ever the comics industry is welcoming diversity in its creators and stories, but with its historically misogynistic past, what legacy are creators inheriting? This essay seeks to explore that history, delving into the various eras of American Comics and how sexism shaped them. From the earliest heroines of the 40s, the ground-breaking feminist indie comics of the 70s, and the rampant female sexualization of the 90s, examples of brilliance and drudgery will be investigated in order to gain a better understanding of how comics became what they are today.

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …

Prosthetic Traveling Companions, Carrie Keasler

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the potential for narrative art (film, literature, comics) to be a transformative experience in the life of the consumer (viewer, reader) through a sensuous, embodied interaction with that work of narrative art. Drawing from film, narrative and comics theory as well as primary sources, I show that there is potential for consumers to engage in reading and viewing in an embodied way that allows them to take on these experiences as new memories, highlighting the ability of art to engage our senses in a manner that is similar to everyday lived experiences. In contrast with some theories …

My Kinship With The Trees, C. Daniela Shapiro

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This paper explores facets of patriarchy affecting women and the natural world. The paper suggests a cultivation of allyship and relationality between women and nature due to a shared experience of objectification within patriarchy. The separation of women from nature through origin stories, science, religion, language, and advertisement will be discussed. Examples from the graphic memoir Running without Moving are employed to emphasize this philosophy, including first person accounts.

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Ritual And Digital Craftsmanship: Imprudent Practices, Mik Patrik Mcdonnell

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This essay explores the role of traditional and digital craftsmanship in my art practice as it relates to provocative imagery. I tackle the question of how my practice is influenced by my audience. My process and products both aim to agitate the ascetic individual. The argument opens on a poetic, personal note, before defining craft/craftsmanship and its social reception according to scholarship. I outline the intended audience for my work being those akin to my mother: christian, middle-aged, and leaning conservative. Because I employ devotional, virtuosic craftsmanship I argue my work is effective at provoking dialogue with these persons who …

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …

Superficial: An Exploration Of Decoration, Fashion, Taste, Camp, And Trends, Jillian Ohl

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Since the rise of consumer culture in the late 19th century, Americans have had a complicated relationship with decorative objects, the idea of taste, and the cycle of trends within our classist society. This essay examines some of the decorative objects in my childhood home such as patterned wallpaper and an antique chair as well as a contemporary brand name mascara. While these objects do not have major functional properties, their decoration and superficiality bring me joy. To better understand my appreciation of decoration and aesthetics, I assess how an object or fashion is considered in good or bad taste. …

Crystal Queer: Fracturing The Binaries Of Matter, Creation, And Landscape, Sarah Knight

Graduate School of Art Theses

In this thesis, I compile a series of fragments consisting an analysis of my artwork in the gendered contexts of landscape, self-identity, mythology, and philosophy. I develop my concept of a “queer mark” in my art that serves as a form of queering, a disruption of visual and conceptual cohesion. I form a picture of how our contemporary selves are influenced by our gendered understanding of the landscape through the analysis of philosophical, artistic, and mythological concepts of creation. I see my sculptures as an atlas to an alternative means of understanding identity, a queering of these historical and exclusionary …

Pleasure Is All Mine, Lola Ogbara

Graduate School of Art Theses

One’s identity is shaped by many factors such as race, culture, physical appearance, nationality, and religion—amongst many more. As an artist, the subjugation of identity in the context of race, gender, and sexuality is a world I examine closely. Subverting myths of sexual deviancy and racial inferiority that perpetually pathologizes Black feminine sexuality, I often use and reference my own body to create avenues of power through physical and intellectual pleasure. Through material use of clay, metal, photography, and installation, I emphasize on how contemporary Black social cultures are able to write their own narratives in order to further progressions …

Big Girl | Little Girl, Emily Mueller

Graduate School of Art Theses

In my thesis document, I unpack the relationship of my photographs to space, bodies, language, and childhood through a feminist lens. The interaction with these various aspects alludes to larger societal structures that inform identity. I am interested in the negotiation between gender and the way it informs the occupation of space, both photographic and physical. The intersection between subjects and objects is dissected using the definitions of these terms set forth by Judith Butler. Becoming a subject does not indicate that one is free from the power that creates it. The figure in my photographs wonders if attempting to …

The Complexities Of Intimacy, Brie Henderson

Graduate School of Art Theses

Through my research I have discovered there are many complexities that exist within the topic of intimacy. Of these complexities, I chose to explore the topics attachment and codependency in my final series. Attachment and codependency are deeply rooted in psychology, poetry, and many artist’s practices. The relationship between poetry and my work has become deeply intertwined. I combine poetry with my work as a way to document my feelings and to inspire the titles for my paintings. Through a series of intimate watercolor paintings, I reference bodies, intimate interactions and the ambiguity within the two. This ambiguity asks viewers …

Hysteria, Fear, And/Or Delight, Alessandra Ferrari-Wong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis statement, Hysteria, Fear, and/or Delight, establishes the forms and concepts of my art practice as it stands as of May, 2020: performance-based and interdisciplinary. My practice implies narrative while acknowledging the audience. Physical language, in both dance and gesture, can be a means of communication or subversion. Pieces exist as ephemeral, often private, performances and then separately in archival forms ranging from video, to photography, to installation. The body of the statement details my thesis project, a remaking of Giselle, a 19th century Romantic-era ballet, into a performance series and video trilogy. …

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Sarah Adcock

Graduate School of Art Theses

I view my creative process as alchemy, the transformation of materials through experimentation. I use wax as a material that transcends its historical use as a sculptural process for casting and instead, use it for its transmutable qualities to inform content. Because of its plasticity and duality as fragile and resilient, wax is symbolically submissive and assertive. By applying heat, wax can be molded and formed into new shapes. Once it cools, wax reverts back to its natural state; solid and impermeable. I use objects to explore desires of origin and life. Transitional objects, the first “me not me” possession …

For Cheryl: The Long And The Short Of It, Rachel Lebo

Graduate School of Art Theses

Short stories are an indirect way of creating a truth by showing instead of telling. They are a way to observe and communicate a single idea. A short story for me is a vehicle for hiding my truth behind a character, exploring myself in the safety of an identity that is not my own. When I read Chunky in Heat, author A.M. Homes and I hide together behind her character, Cheryl, and find solidarity.

The following writings, paintings, and sculptures are collaborations between myself and the women of short story fiction. Those women being the authors, the subjects, and …

Wish You Were Here, Janie Stamm, Janie I. Stamm

Graduate School of Art Theses

The State of Florida is under threat from the effects of climate change. Rising sea levels are creeping up on to Florida’s coast, eroding the beaches and encroaching on heavily populated cities. Over my lifetime I will watch the water spill over the streets of my home town. I will watch the water flood the Everglades, pushing saltwater into freshwater habitats. I will watch the water begin to drown the state, taking Florida’s many little known histories along with it. This thesis serves as a document of Floridian life during the Anthropocene.

Within this thesis, I tell the story of …

It's Pink And Nice But We Are Done With It, Taylor Elizabeth Yocom

Graduate School of Art Theses

My work in video, installation, performance, sound, and photography is influenced and inspired by my experience of being a woman. In my work, I draw pink flowers and create pink backdrops. I smash things, eat, drink, drop things, smile, nod, and look at you. Through these works, I explore the gender performativity of female niceness, synthesizing these two separate theories as a social condition and expectation for women. I argue that female niceness consists of bodily and linguistic patterns that women must perform in order to be perceived as feminine.

In my video and installation work, I use a “sickeningly” …

Body; Broken Things, Seohyung Kay Lee

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Our bodies are the first of everything. They’re the first thing we encounter, and first space that we inhibit. Life ends when we leave the body behind. They’re our only means to reach with the world, with everything. From the beginning of time, we have strived to interpret the body and the its place in the world. However, the female body was never fully appreciated nor acknowledged. It is impossible to understand the body of women without considering the pain and violence they encounter, which is often easily overlooked.

In my body of work that I’ve produced this semester, Body; …

I'M Sorry For Everything, Hille Sennott

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My work is rooted in the fact that women are practically conditioned to apologize for everything, and tells the intimate story of my life. By recording my apologies for several months and deeply examining my behavior, I noticed themes and made work based on these — work that exposed my private moments. I noticed a disconnect between times I needed to apologize, and this compulsive need to take on the blame for every little thing. I examine the feminine battle of soft and strong, eventually coming to the conclusion that there are occasions calling for both. Women are taught to …

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

My City Limits, Maggie Tarr

Graduate School of Art Theses

Many have taken part in the act of flanerie,[1] however, many have fallen victim to the flaneur; “the flaneur is the man who indulges in flanerie…”[2]. I am perpetually followed by the male gaze. I am a flaneuse, a surveyor of my surroundings at all times. “Outsider/insider is a border the flaneuse must skirmish on constantly, if only with herself.”[3]

This thesis is a first hand account of my negative experiences that are generated by the many flaneurs of sexualized culture and lustful society. It is an analysis of the paintings I have created as …

Light On, Baby. No Future, Shane Dollinger

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This project is a realistic depiction of the circularity of experience. As Images of ourselves and our experiences become increasingly inescapable, the repetitive and nonlinear nature of those experiences is amplified. This issue is explored in looking at contemporary artists/filmmakers whose handling of inundation in representation and narrative distinctly embraces multiplicity. Queering structures of representation, the work holds a mirror to the way that we experience living, encountering images, narrative structures and memories.

One Epic Φf Stardusts, Y∞N Irene Hong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A long time ago in a far away galaxy,

there was a star shining alone in the deep darkness.

The beautiful star aged and exploded into a supernova,

where her golden light scattered into the tiniest sparkles of dust,

pouring down to Earth.

Made of Stardust,

humans naturally have responded to the divine light that they carry inside their souls,

through diverse acts of enlightenment such as art, religion, and science.

.

.

.

As a Stardust, an artist, a Korean, and a woman,

I keep walking in between opposing forces and varying perspectives

until I transcend their boundaries and …

Creatures Of Play, Melissa Shelton

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis explores my practice as an artist and my work’s cultural, theoretical and social contexts, such carnival theory, feminist studies and film studies, as well as references to mythology and my own biography. I discuss forms of representation of gendered identities through my work in drawing, performance, animation, video and installation.

The masks we wear become as real as our bare face. Through the act of doubling the representation, my thesis work BECOMING/a fine line situates the mask as the mediator between reflections, mirroring the identity and the notion of performativity. Embracing a certain incompleteness and embodying the theoretical …

Mr. Jonathan P. Berger: Gentle Conflations, Jonathan Patrick Berger, Mr. Jonathan P. Berger

Graduate School of Art Theses

Sentimentality is a critical aspect of human existence because it is human-natural, agendered, and provides ground for gentle conflation of the domestic sphere and the roles within it. As an artist, I am able to utilize sentimentality to open possibilities and welcome, instead of molest, viewers into contemplation with the assumed norms of domesticity.

With its origins founded in the Age of Enlightenment, sentimentality was a praiseworthy endeavor, one based on intelligence and contemplation. I define sentimentality as the emotional intellect’s way of encoding or decoding the soft emotions surrounding and within objects, people, times or ideas. Soft emotions are …

A Borrowed Language, Yvonne Osei

Graduate School of Art Theses

Art has the potency of mediation: bridging human differences, questioning voids in historical trajectories, negotiating spaces of relevance, and most importantly, being signifiers that embody the absent. I speak in a borrowed language, a multilingual visual tongue, inspired by a culmination of Western and African Art modes of practices to create charged platforms for multicultural communication.

My art presents visual portals that allow for intercultural and interracial mingling as issues of colorism, present-day colonialism, gender inequality and the politics of dress are foregrounded for collective deliberation. The essence of the work is often activated and brought to its full potential …

Pageant: Manufactured Beauty, Caitlin Penny

Graduate School of Art Theses

Pageant: Manufactured Beauty explores why the female body is abject and how that body is mitigated through sexually objectifying images. This paper discusses how the female body has been objectified in order to “correct” the elements of the body that are considered abject, through an exploration of psychological studies, philosophy and analysis of contemporary art and popular culture.

The effects of these images on the women who view them is often a desire to conform their own bodies to the images in order to gain social acceptance. Clothing and the decoration of the body, it is argued, are the methods …

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …