Art and Design Commons^™

Fierce Female Friendships: An Artistic Representation And Exploration Of The Benefits Of Gender-Based Inclusivity And Community In Stem, Maya Bachmeier-Evans

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Incorporating visual art, social research, women’s studies, and artificial intelligence, Fierce Female Friendships investigates the ramifications of gendered experience on the learning environment. By reflecting upon her work in a male-dominated discipline, the author transforms her sense of classroom isolation into two paintings that highlight the subtle yet significant differences that separate inclusivity from alienation. In addition to her personalized reflections, the author also creates a fourteen-question survey which invites her peers to consider gender in academia, to assess their experiences on a university campus, and to imagine how they might depict those experiences using visual art. Positing the idea …

Verb Strings And Other Weavings: An Exploration Of Grammatical Structures, Visual Arts, And Language Teaching, Mae Bash

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In language education, visual arts are sometimes used as a tool to inspire communication and convey cultural concepts. However, limited research has looked into the application of visual arts in the classroom for the exploration of linguistic patterns. Both languages and weavings are complex systems governed by distinct sets of rules, yet they still permit infinite unique productions. This project explores this relationship by presenting five bandweavings, each of which is designed based on the rules and structures of different languages. These weavings show that it is possible to connect art and language through practical, structural methods, not only abstract …

Making Space: How The Engd Makerspace Promotes Inclusion And Belonging, And Its Success In Doing So, Noah Crow

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project is a comprehensive overview of efforts made in the ENGD Makerspace to strengthen community, make the space welcoming and inclusive to all students, and combat techno-centric norms and stereotypes that keep people from learning and participating in makerspaces. It includes research conducted on WWU students’ feelings and experiences in the Makerspace, which found that women and non-Engineering-and-Design-major students have lower self-reported feelings of belonging and being part of the Makerspace, and concludes with proposals on how to continue work facilitating an inclusive environment and increasing sense of belonging and participation for women, trans students, and non-majors.

Become The Monster: Identity, Perception, And What It Means To Be Inhuman, Juniper Amundson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This collection of crocheted pieces illustrates what monsterhood is, how monsters are created, and what it means to become one. Following concepts from queer and disability theory, monsterhood is established as an externally constructed identity that is traditionally imposed on others rather than self-initiated. The pieces illustrate three significant steps in understanding and unpacking how monsters come into being: finding the language to name the monster, embodying that language, and liberating that embodied language from the systems of oppression that shape it. In applying these steps to my own narrative as a disabled transsexual graduating college mid-pandemic, I demonstrate the …

Common Threads: Centuries Of Folklore Told Through Tapestry, Audrey Wheelock

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project contains two components: a research element and an artistic component. The research element examines how folklore and mythology stories evolve over time. As a deep dive of this phenomena, several versions of the folkloric story the Erlking are explored and compared. The basic story of the Erlking is a fae creature or malevolent elf luring humans into the forest and killing or trapping them. Similar themes and story elements across versions are discussed, as well as their implications for the larger narrative surrounding the Erlking. Particular emphasis is given to Goethe's 1782 poem version of Der Erlkonig and …

Burnt Out: A Graphic Novel, Amaya Udager

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A graphic novel reflecting upon my personal experience with burnout, whereupon I examine how I interpret my own creative burnout, and how I have attempted to overcome it.

The Eco-Thrifter’S Medley: Designing A Low-Waste Lifestyle Guide That Seeks To Address And Overcome Common Barriers To Sustainable Living, Laura Raufi

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Sustainability: a broad term that attempts to define societal effort toward ensuring future generations of humanity are able to survive and thrive on a healthy, livable planet Earth. In recent times, “sustainability” seems to have become little more than a buzzword, overused into oblivion by media and marketing campaigns. However, while I was developing my Interdisciplinary Concentration at Fairhaven College in which I explored the intersection between design, environmentalism, and communications, I found it difficult to avoid the word when I was explaining what I was trying to do through my studies. Despite its overuse, I find that the term …

Vulnerability, Tee Ing

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

It is about trying to compile everything I have learned out of class the last four years by dissecting and categorizing and recategorizing everything into a new form: zines. Focusing on one digital-physical medium for six months and with the mindset of archival art, I quickly realized that it is about the process and the thought behind the selection and reapplication of the old into the new.

It is about growth and progress. In this way, the medium reflects the theme, the form reflects the meaning. Leaving this chapter of my life with much more than just postmodernist theory and …

To Remember You By, Tesla Kawakami

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project is an illustrated zine memoir of queer love, dating, and growing up, framed by what was left behind. I explored my dating history through illustration, writing and material objects. Each section was about a different person, and was structured through a cut paper illustration of the item that they left behind at my house. I used a variety of different illustration techniques including cut paper, collage, painting, and found materials.

Family, War, And Identity, Claire E. Smith

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An exploratory mixed media project using photography transfers centered on my Ukrainian grandmother's immigration during World War II.

Dark Patterns: How Interaction Design Turned To Deception, Ian Bansenauer

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This essay examines the influence of human computer interaction design history on the current practice of deceptive “dark patterns” in interface design. It traces the design evolution of the computer from its initial use as a mathematical tool to the creation of the internet, and towards the current focus on user retention and profitability through the rise of growth hacking and deceptive design practices. Examples of past and current research on interaction design and dark patterns are used to determine that design choices have a measurable effect on user actions. After reviewing the types of dark patterns and their modes …

Human Origins: An Infocomic, Jocelyn Grant

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Perceptions of anthropology and especially human origins are skewed in the public consciousness, in part due to pop culture and in part due to longstanding misleading visual communication. This project is one experimental attempt to bridge the gap between anthropology education and the public through the application of design and design intentionality. With the book itself being currently unfinished, this project is equally an examination of the process of creating such a work and the visual choices the author made in pursuit of the project’s ideals.

The Joy Of Cooking With Ots: A Visual Guide, Sarah Baker

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Access to the full guide found here: https://mixam.com/share/60bf9e1ed250502f2e67534e

Occupational therapy (OT) is an allied healthcare profession that is uniquely situated at the intersection of art and science. OT seeks to improve quality of life by addressing occupations, or daily activities that are meaningful and purposeful (Nelson, 2014). In order to accomplish these goals, occupational therapists (OTs) must use design thinking through the lens of evidence-based practice. This artistic creativity paired with well-researched scientific findings mimics the visual nature of this guide, which prioritizes this need for alternative representation of the sciences.

This visual guide focuses on the interconnectivity of culture, …

Iterative Screen Printing: Finding Tactile Respite Within Remote Collaboration, Mercedes Schrenkeisen, Rae Baitx, Robin Goodwin

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This presentation details the formation of “Good Baloney”— a non-exclusive print club motivated by burn-out and the need for fulfilling forms of remote collaboration. Our solution was a generative design ‘machine’ fit for printmaking that leaves the initial ideation procedure up to chance. This project is an ongoing exploration and love-letter to collaborative printmaking and was founded on principles of resource-sharing, remote process, tactile modes of creation.

Structure Of Blood Coagulation Factor Viii In Complex With Anti-C2 Domain Inhibitory Antibody, Estelle K. Ronayne, Shaun C. Peters, Joseph Gish, Celena Wilson, H. Trent Spencer, Christopher B. Doering, Pete Lollar, P. Clint Spiegel Jr., Kenneth C. Childers

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Factor VIII (fVIII) is a procoagulant protein that binds to activated factor IX (fIXa) on platelet surfaces to form the intrinsic tenase complex. Due to the high immunogenicity of fVIII, generation of antibody inhibitors is a common occurrence in patients during hemophilia A treatment and spontaneously occurs in acquired hemophilia A patients. Non-classical antibody inhibitors, which block fVIII activation by thrombin and formation of the tenase complex, are the most common anti-C2 domain pathogenic inhibitors in hemophilia A murine models and have been identified in patient plasmas. In this study, we report on the X-ray crystal structure of a B …

Utilizing Vr For Manufacturing Learning And Training, Jetrin Wichienwidhtaya

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper looks into the world of virtual reality as seen from the manufacturing point of view, specifically inside manufacturing education. Virtual reality is growing within many industries including manufacturing and is a key piece in Industry 4.0. Every year, the capabilities of virtual reality grow as the resolution of screens progresses to the point where it can simulate near-perfect depictions of reality as processing power continues to grow. This opens a massive amount of potential into things like training. Especially in the current environment where learning virtually has become the norm, being able to have hands-on experience can help …

Raising Canes: Crafting Disability Narratives, Charlotta Abernathy

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Disability is a common part of life, but not a well understood part of our cultural conscience. Because of this, the oppression that disabled people face, ableism, is particularly pervasive and under addressed. In order to begin to chip away at the systemic ableism that is embedded in all parts of society, disabled people need better representation in the media. This means not just showing stories that involve disabled people or that are about disabled people, but actual stories by disabled people about disability. One area of particular interest to me is addressing ableist misconceptions about assistive technology. To take …

To Remember Even This, Jessica Oravetz

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A powerpoint presentation including collages I made in the Honors program, why I made them, and how they so powerfully affected me and my education at Western.

History Through Fashion: The 2020 Collection, Alex Wiecking

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

When analyzing historical trajectory, it is essential to acknowledge that events are neither isolated nor spontaneous; rather, they are points on a dynamic historical continuum. Because these phenomena are often intangible, their public invisibility can be conflated with nonexistence. However, “History Through Fashion: The 2020 Collection” seeks to reimagine the history of 2020 as a wearable, material art. In doing so, the collection will not only increase the perceptibility of historical trends and human agency, but will rebrand history as an active and interdisciplinary domain.

Speaking My Truth: Voices And Portraits Of Honors Students Of Color, Leah Kerbs

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Founded in 1962, the Honors Program at Western Washington University has prided itself on the cornerstones of academic excellence, student growth, and a tight-knit Honors community. With class sizes averaging 18 students and a dedicated Honors living space, the program certainly provides students a unique opportunity to build closer relationships with professors and peers alike as they pursue their goals within a larger university setting.

However, like colleges and universities across the nation, the predominantly white program has struggled to meaningfully include the voices and experiences of its students of color. For many, their relationship with the program remains a …

Storytelling Through Comics: An Animated Reflection, Skylar Kaster

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

For my Honors Senior Capstone Project, I am exploring the methods of 1970s -1990s newspaper comics, focusing specifically on the comics “Calvin and Hobbes”, “The Far Side”, “Garfield”, and “Cathy”. I present and engage with these comic artists’ opinions, methods, and experiences. Additionally, I delve into my personal experience and motivation behind comics. My final product culminating these findings is a 2D Whiteboard Stop Motion animation approximately 8 minutes long, accompanied by a voiceover and script.

Painting Ecological Change In Pacific Northwest Bird Populations, Rachel Rothberg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The following four oil paintings are part of an ongoing series that visually explores bird populations and behavior in Northwest Washington, particularly in Bellingham and Whatcom County. I combine biological, detailed illustration with painterly practices to communicate fragile ecological balances to my audience through a medium seen less frequently in the field of conservation. My work examines the tension between life and death in the natural world to provoke conversations about environmental issues and to encourage compassion for local scenery. The work illuminates how birds, humans, and the ecosystems we inhabit are intertwined, inspiring a sense of wonder for our …

Interlude: Pursuit Of The Present, Emily Bartlett

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This 12-piece tea and coffee set is the pinnacle of my design education at Western.

Graphic Design As Environmental Advocate: A Project On Graphic Design And Electronic Waste, Kelsi Giswold

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Graphic Design is visual communication. It uses type, images, colors, and lines to create visual representations of ideas. Sometimes these ideas are small, like a logo and business card for a small company, other times these ideas are big, like MTV graphics or packaging for Pepsi. In either case, graphic design is producing and reproducing culture. The decisions of designers have the potential for great and varied influences.

The Man Who Was Thursday, Kirsten Behee

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Illustration for G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, an Honors Program senior project.