Art and Design Commons^™

A Meditation On Loneliness And The Mind's Limits: Combining Buddhism And Art To Better Understand Our Relationship To The Unknown, William Masters

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In this essay, I explain how my art practice instigates inquiry into uncomfortable subjects such as loneliness and how our limits of perception and cognition prevent us from understanding and connecting fully with our environments. I begin by illustrating how I make such subjects more approachable by exploiting the inherent capacity of art to be both pleasurable and painful: a work's pleasing aesthetic can make one more receptive to its disquieting content. I then describe how eastern philosophy and western art have influenced my practice. I highlight how Buddhist insights into the relationship between calmness, security and clarity have informed …

Melting, Dripping, Becoming: The Operations Of Memory From The Perspective Of Wax, Naomi Yu

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my thesis, I explore how different compositional and material techniques are used to re-create a memory. Looking at artists such as Kiki Smith, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Anselm Keifer, I investigate the ways in which they utilize 2D and 3D materials to re-create feelings of memory.

I argue that the art object can conserve and portray memory through metaphorical acts of preservation. I will be specifically studying the acts of encasing and layering as a means to simulate the feelings of memory. I argue that these metaphorical actions create an artificial sense of time that imbues these objects with created …