Art and Design Commons^™

Parts Of The Sum, Andrew Cho

Art and Design Theses

Parts of the Sum is an installation of ceramic, wood, and drawn components which examines the symbiosis of individual and cultural identity: a recursive relationship which engenders unceasing diversity. The installation uses patterns and rule-based compositions as vehicles to address the development of complexity from compounded simplicity as it relates to personality. An immersive meta-network that emulates the complexity underlying identity, Parts of the Sum ultimately relies on the active participation and inclusion of the viewer for completion.

Repetitive Acts Now, Leigh K. Peacock Ms.

Art and Design Theses

This paper explains at the intersection of Memory theory, Feminist Theory, Existential Psychology, Faith and Contemporary Art, I have found a way to embrace and integrate memories and experiences into my art and be a more fully integrated, emotionally healthy person living fully in the present moment. I articulate my exploration of the broad concept of memory and addressing unresolved negative memories in order to realize healthy change in forming my identity.

Through art and philosophical research I have found substantial corroboration, conceptually supporting my information supporting my Post Minimal art making process. I employ memory evoking materials through the …

Ambient Void, Joy Phoenix M. Savage

Art and Design Theses

The constructed works of Phoenix Savage point to the negotiated world of African Americans. Savage explores her artistic process in relationship to racial tensions both personal and historical.

Foster Child, Brooke N. Creef

Art and Design Theses

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Foster Child is my attempt to bring to light my love for dolls as creatures to be created and imagined again and again. In terms of childhood play, toys function and exist on many levels. Each becomes a friend to some and, in some cases, a confidant. Dolls become more than a plastic play-thing and through the eyes of the individual take on a life of their own based upon the user’s own …

Conscious Living: A Look At Two Low-Impact Intentional Communities, Carmen S. Price

Art and Design Theses

Conscious Living is a series of visual solutions to a current and escalating problem in increasingly populated modern societies between its citizens and the environment they inhabit. Documented in the photographs are two dissimilar intentional communities that both strive to operate harmoniously with the surrounding ecology.

Originally intending to address the misconception that low impact living is uncomfortable or unsatisfying, this research and my firsthand experience has led to conclusions that are more complex and less didactic. Although the images focus on these two communities, ultimately the intention is to provide the viewer with new perspectives on these niche groups, …

Looking Back: An Examination Of Family Archives, James E. Bentley Iii

Art and Design Theses

With digital technology now dominating the film and photography industry, analog resources are becoming scarce. Simultaneously, memories preserved through personal family archives also are in danger of deterioration. Time, heat and humidity can cause film to decay just as the passage of time and the erosion of memory allows their contents to fade. In Looking Back, my family film and photography archives are exhumed and collectively examined by myself and my family. Reflecting upon this massive accumulation of imagery and their attached memories seems an endless task. However, as expressed in Looking Back, the greater the effort to …

Luce E Ombre - Light And Shadows, Robert L. Foah

Art and Design Theses

This thesis focuses on the oppositional and complimentary forces of light and shadows in the culture of Naples, Italy. Demonstrating, through photographs and the analysis of these photographs, how the light of Naples, a ‘northern’ light, and its resultant shadows echo (metaphorically and in reality) the light and shadows of the society, culture and history of Naples, Italy.

Wisp, Karen E. Cleveland

Art and Design Theses

WISP is a forest that requests a reconsideration of the human relationship to nature and to the woods. It beckons the spirit and threads the supernatural through the everyday. The forest installation is comprised of drawings, sound, and suspended inorganic and organic objects that create an intimate entanglement and engages the body and senses. This paper reflects the experiences and the philosophies that led to this installation.

Shirin Neshat: A Contemporary Orientalist, Mojgan Khosravi

Art and Design Theses

This thesis analyzes Shirin Neshat’s Women of Allah photographs by exploring key socio-political events that have shaped Iranian history since the reign of Cyrus the Great, ca. 600 B.C. Since Neshat’s photographs have been largely intended for a Western audience, it is important to explore the concept of colonialism that has created East/West polarities and so greatly influenced our modern era. This paper intends to demonstrate that Neshat’s images perpetuate Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, which allocates the Oriental to an inferior position vis-à-vis his Occidental counterpart. For a Western audience, Neshat’s consistent use of the Muslim veil, illegible Persian …

Critical Regionalism And The Contemporary Indian Workplace, Cynthia Lakshminarayanan

Art and Design Theses

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This paper represents an exploration into the expression of critical regionalism in a globalized design market. The research looks at the historical progression of Indian design and analyzes traditional concepts and patterns that can be melded with an international design language to create a design solution that speaks to both sides.

From Performer To Petrushka: A Decade Of Alexandra Exter's Work In Theater And Film, Laura A. Hunt

Art and Design Theses

The subject of my thesis is Russian artist Alexandra Exter’s work in the performing arts, with a focus on her theatrical set and costume designs in the Kamerny Theater, her creations for Iakov

Protazanov’s 1924 science fiction film, Aelita, and finally her exquisitely fabricated set of approximately forty marionettes. Within these colorful wooden figures are reconciled conflicting notions of stasis and dynamism, sculpture and performer, human and object. Drawing upon Victor Shklovskiĭ’s formalist definition of “enstrangement,” I examine her introduction of the object in place of the human performer as a means of exposing the creative process, forcing the …

Best Of, Nimer I. Aleck Ii

Art and Design Theses

The majority of modern popular trophies seem to act as memorials to small victories. Foiled plastic figures sitting atop extruded tubes of holographic tape are given for everything from internationally recognized achievement to participation in regional events. These architectural sculptures are icons of success. This thesis explores the themes, processes, and contexts that inform the ways that we perceive value. Using the iconography of the popular modern trophy, this thesis and the artwork associated with it examines the constructs of value within visual culture. My goal is to display and understand the way we appreciate and define that which implies …

The Scuola Dei Mercanti: Social Networking And Marital Mobility In Sixteenth-Century Venice, Rachel D. Erwin

Art and Design Theses

Renaissance marriage is a much-studied subject, yet little attention has been given to the influence of marital practice on the civic affairs of confraternities. By considering the decisions of the Venetian Scuola dei Mercanti confraternity through the lens of Venetian marriage practice, I demonstrate how the Mercanti employed a multi-alignment advancement strategy in a manner similar to that employed by marriage partners seeking upward social mobility. Specifically, I argue that the Mercanti’s maneuvers were carried out for the purpose of transforming itself from a scuola piccolo to a scuola grande. Viewed from this perspective, the Mercanti’s artistic and architectural commissions …

The Pink Passenger, Samuel Tovarisch Parker

Art and Design Theses

The work I have created during my time as a graduate student is a reflection of the dialogues I have engaged in with other artists and acquaintances both in and outside of the academic arena. Stylistically this work is derivative of my involvement with graffiti, Tattooing, and underground comics. I have developed the icon of the rider to represent the agency and responsibility of myself as an artist in reflecting these various contexts.

Mythos For The Mortal, Stephanie Elaine Kolpy

Art and Design Theses

My Thesis body of work, The Mythos for the Mortal, presents visual interpretations of apocalyptic mythoi—past, present, and future. These works are both a conscious and unconscious response to childhood exposure to apocalyptic stories and form a visual record of social, political and religious interpretations of the apocalypse. The overarching theme of apocalypse (from the Greek word Apokalypsis, meaning ‘to unveil’ or ‘to reveal’) has allowed me to reconnect to my youth and heritage and has driven me to articulate more clearly a perspective regarding the future and what it will ‘reveal’ to us. I use the landscape as a …

Stories From A Chair: A Life Exquisite, Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn

Art and Design Theses

Exquisite is defined as carefully selected or sought out. I believe myself to be a selected soul placed in a body of circumstance. My work is self-explorative and telling of those circumstances in hopes of evoking empathy. Our bodies function and exist on many different levels. What I understand as normal for most differs vastly from what is normal for me. I aim to offer my perspective on the world, establish understanding, and blur the lines of normalcy.

Ties That Bind, Jessica Marie Orlowski

Art and Design Theses

I am fascinated by the inner thoughts, the memories, and the cumulative experience that make us each a complex physiological puzzle. From birth, sociological building blocks are constructed forming emotional walls and unexpected doorways, boundaries and comfortable passageways through the architecture of our personalities. My thesis work, which is comprised of ceramic figures and interactive toys, offers playful memory triggers and evocative spaces in which viewers can deconstruct the building blocks of their social persona.

In A Strange Place, Benjamin Goldman

Art and Design Theses

My work is about stress and strain in our modern times. I am using self portraiture as a way to discuss the world around me and hope that the viewer will relate to my experiences. Drawing, painting and video are used to convey different aspects of my observations, and old techniques are mixed with new technologies. Personal observations, artistic and scientific influences, and the art-making process have shaped this body of work.

Khwaam Jam : Memory, Keith Lee Crane

Art and Design Theses

Khwaam Jam is an introspective installation of works that explore the perceptions of identity based on memory. Created through the exploration of my past and present, the works of Khwaam Jam utilize the principles and techniques of textile design and production while involving mixed media and new materials in a site-specific installation. This installation is intended to represent my memory on a large scale. The hanging pieces are the focal point of the exhibition and are the physical manifestation of my perception of the categorization and storage of my memories. Memories are the vessels through which we create our identity. …

Wangechi Mutu: Feminist Collage And The Cyborg, Nicole R. Smith

Art and Design Theses

Wangechi Mutu is an internationally recognized Kenyan-born artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She creates collaged female figures composed of human, animal, object, and machine parts. Mutu’s constructions of the female body provide a transcultural critique on the female persona in Western culture. This paper contextualizes Mutu’s work and artistic strategies within feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial narratives on collage, while exploring whether collage strategies are particularly useful for feminist artists. In their fusion of machine and organism, Mutu’s characters are visual metaphors for feminist cyborgs, particularly those outlined by Donna Haraway. In this paper, I examine parallels between collage …

The Culinary Browns, Phoebe A. Brown

Art and Design Theses

The Culinary Browns is an experimental documentary that traces four generations of the Brown family beginning with Bob Brown, my great-grandfather, a writer of pulp fiction, modern poetry, cookbooks and social commentary. This documentary is not a linear history or purely factual document, but instead, uses personal experience as a means to generate more universal connections to the inherently dysfunctional dynamics of family, the fragmentary quality of memory, and to ultimately remind the viewer that history is relative.

The Thirteenth-Century Fresco Decoration Of Santa Maria Ad Cryptas In Fossa, Italy, Ashely Wilemon Walker

Art and Design Theses

This paper discusses the fresco decoration of Santa Maria ad Cryptas. The frescoes are described and analyzed, and then compared to similar programs in order to determine which features are based on earlier sources, and which are unusual or unique to this particular church. The traditional features are found to reflect a long-established pattern of church decoration reflected in such monuments as Old Saint Peter’s, Sant’Angelo in Formis, the Cathedral of Monreale, and the Cappella Palatina. The unusual features (including the placement of the Passion cycle in the presbytery, and the location of the Crucifixion over the altar) are explained …

The Origins Of Three Meroitic Bronze Oil Lamps In The Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston, Stephanie Joan Sakoutis

Art and Design Theses

This thesis discusses three bronze oil lamps found in the ancient city of Meroë, in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Scholars have considered the lamps to be imported from Hellenistic Egypt, but careful examination has revealed that the lamps were not imported. The lamps were locally made in Meroë; the materials and technology needed to create bronze lamps were available to Meroitic craftsmen.

In The Name Of God, Sharon Mccusker

Art and Design Theses

This exhibition is a direct response to my own religious upbringing. I chose to explore the oppression upon women, gays and people of color by religious intolerance. The Church dictates social and political mores that affect our society and culture and the way we are treated and governed. The use of the bible and conservative belief structures to defend the ill manner in which we are treated should not be ordained in today’s social construct. In the Name of god addresses issues from the Inquisition to the current war for control over women’s bodies and our reproductive systems. By revisiting …

I Remember..., Jessica Scott-Felder

Art and Design Theses

I Remember…, a series of drawings, is based on personal social experiences starting from the age of thirteen. This series begins with a memory of the first time I had to speak to a room full of people and the unexpected events of that followed. My own relationship with one of the primary subjects, the chair refers to memories of being raised in a home where certain furnishings were “off-limits.” Even more important is the presence of a cryptic narrative, fractured and dreamlike, similar to the style of writing created by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It has been a lifetime goal to …

Consumer Goods?, Matt Sigmon

Art and Design Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to extrapolate through research the conceptual underpinnings of a body of artwork created by Matt Sigmon. The thesis explains the work in relation to art historical references to readymade art and the dilemmas that arise when fine art is compared to consumer commodities.

Reflection: The Structure Of Memory, Etienne Jackson

Art and Design Theses

The research and body of work collected in this document address the relationship of my memories to specific physical visual forms. These representations form the basis of how the mind structures relationships between specific objects and memories. Through reflection associations are created that activate the mind to recall these memories via mnemonic visual references. These mnemonic references are objects of familiarity that create a concrete relationship between form and memory experiences.

Let's Exchange The Experience, Jesse Creede Hinshaw

Art and Design Theses

The purpose of this study is to attain an understanding of my work for the viewer as well as myself. These works on paper are visual documents illustrating my ideas and opinions about media and its desire for control. Through research, critical thinking, experience, and exposure to media (both wanted and unwanted) I have created imagery that I feel is exemplary of our forced relationship with advertising. In order to accomplish this I studied my influences, and the origin of my current work. Reading upon realization of those influences further informed the work. Every conceivable influence was studied and analyzed, …

If Animals Could Talk, Matthew Moore

Art and Design Theses

This paper is an investigation of the ideas and philosophies that have played a role in the creation of my thesis exhibition entitled If Animals Could Talk. While my research into the subject of animals and more specifically human/animal interaction has covered a wide spectrum, this paper focuses on several texts including, “Why Look at Animals,” by John Berger and “Simulation and Simulacra” by Jean Baudrillard as being influential in the development of my artwork. This paper also analyzes the work of several artists dealing with human/animal relations. Those artists include Sanna Kannisto, Neeta Madahar and Douglas Gordon.

Trashures, Clarissa Pimentel Brandao

Art and Design Theses

Trashures celebrates my debut in the sustainable world and is my public statement of change. It is essentially provocative, informative and educational and serves three major fronts. First, Trashures aims to raise awareness among visual artists. Second, it seeks to introduce and explore the use of agri-pulp papers in Graphic Design, as a viable commercial solution. Third, it culminates in an invitation to visual artists to search for sustainable solutions. Trashures is about transformations. It highlights the transformation of passive materials into active ones, or the transformation of waste into either papers or as subject matter, as a sustainable way …