Art and Design Commons^™

The Garden Of Extraterrestrial Deee-Lites, Jessica Bremehr

Graduate School of Art Theses

I present a delusion where you, the reader, are a hitchhiker on a journey toward an alternate realm guided by a god-like buffoon. While I take you on a journey through my daydreams and my musings on an alternate existence, a tour guide will lead the way to an otherworldly realm called The Garden of Extraterrestrial Deee-Lites, reflective of a tourist experience to a faraway destination. The tour will culminate in an uncanny space where curious life forms converge with familiar objects to encourage a sense of wonder while promoting ideas of interconnectedness within the world around us.

Its Skin Is My Skin, Bryan Page

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text examines the complexity of attempting to empathize with bodies that are vastly othered from my own. This broad yet nuanced subject crosses epistemological boundaries and complicates the dualities between both the mind and body, and between the corporeal and the virtual. My desire to better understand the conditions of another’s experience originates from a painful traumatic loss which caused me to feel isolated and incomplete. In response to this suffering, I long to emotionally connect with other beings and create artwork that attempts to bridge the qualia of individual experience.

I am interested in the capacity (or lack …

Adaptive Strategies In A Slow-Motion Apocalypse, Allana Ross

Graduate School of Art Theses

Nature is a construct inherited from Enlightenment thought. Our culture of nature—the way we construct, teach, communicate and perpetuate our concept of nature—has furthered the false dichotomy of an untamed nature versus a resource-consuming culture. This dualistic thinking has facilitated the current environmental crisis. We thus need a new culture of nature and a system of re-education that enables a symbiotic relationship between ourselves and our environment. A re-negotiation of this relationship is imperative to our continued survival on this planet; thus a reformation of the culture of nature can be viewed as an adaptive strategy. Systems-focused ecological art practice …

Filter Feeding, Sam Boven

Graduate School of Art Theses

This paper is an investigation of the mechanics of evolutionary processes and its methods. These investigations are representative of both a world view and a methodology of artistic production. I consider a central consideration of my current work to be the interaction of distinct components and the new experience that these interactions produce when pondered by a viewer. Evolution and the development of life is driven ever forward by the interactions between organisms, both as groups and individuals. By grouping these relationships into three categories: parasitism, predation, and symbiosis, I aim to provide a lens through which to consider both …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Painting And Stuff, Lol, Sopearb Touch

Graduate School of Art Theses

Our own human experience is a distinct realm which can never be precisely duplicated in another lifetime. It frames our whole view of existence and, as artists, affects our art making process. The theory of the Tabula Rasa functions as the inspiration of my work and this writing examines my personal view of growing up in the internet age and America, and how my view of life, as well as artistic practice, is shaped by a consumerist culture that has gone global. Additionally, as a figurative painter, I create a context with other artists who create work about their own …