Art and Design Commons^™

Hema Upadhyay: Disrupting The Hegemony Of The Slums, A Negative Social Spiral., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This essay presents the theoretical framework that informs my reflections on the hegemony of the slums’ poverty and human conditions, and whether art can disrupt the hegemony and also become a conduit to question our Being, hence Dasein, as per Martin Heidegger. The following pages investigate the work of Hema Upadhyay, in India, and specially, her inspiring protest work offering insights on India’s overpopulation in urban areas such as, Dharavi. She depicts slums becoming a continuum circle of human misery and wealth, politically called a negative social spiral. I argue that the slums, not only destroy the harmony and promise …

Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics And The Absence Of Emergency By Santiago Zabala., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Throughout history, we find ourselves searching for ways to nurture empathy and justice to cope with the political world crisis and improve our lives. The book, Why Only Art Can Save Us, written by a contemporary philosopher and author, Santiago Zabala, questions how the creation of art can shift the reasoning and existential being of humanity; and how art could be the only salvation to the political world crisis. Thus, Why Only Art Can Saves Us, is a philosophical, political, and existential reflection on the appeal and aesthetic qualities of art in the 21st century.

A Dialogue On Marta Minujin's Happening: Leyendo Las Noticias (Reading The News), Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias is a happening that combines feminine subjectivity with the socio-political, creating a dialogue around notions of trace, the feminine, text, meaning, and impermanence. Specifically, how these notions affect the women living in an unstable and pluralistic world. It depicts a woman as a ‘participatory woman’ talking about women, in a conflicted patriarchal society. I would argue that the popular Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias, represents a ‘slippage,’ for women (Cixoux 1976) amid a repressive culture, and a historical context of a Dirty War, violence, and fear. Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Jane Bennett, and …

Where Have All Our Women Gone? Using Art To Destigmatize And Celebrate Biblical Womanhood, Emma Catherine Ream

Masters Theses

In the 21st century, young Christian women struggle with understanding and applying practical aspects of Biblical womanhood in their day-to-day lives. Extreme views make it difficult for young women to navigate life in a way that makes sense in the cultural context of the 21st century. Young women today struggle to utilize the full range of talents and gifts that God has given them, and more importantly, they struggle to align their lives with Scripture. The lack of knowledge concerning what Biblical womanhood is, combined with confusion about how it is applied, impacts not only the women themselves, but everyone …

To Shake, To Shatter, Sydney Whitten

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

To Shake, To Shatter is a photography project about memory, family and relationship with one’s self. All images are taken on large format film, in Nashville Tennessee and Whitten’s home town of Carlock, Illinois.

For this series, Whitten explored her family archives to gather film stills from her childhood. She turned those stills into 30 x 40 inch prints, which would later be placed around Nashville to be photographed. These stills provided a way for the past to entangle itself with the present. She found theses still to interact hauntingly and romantically with the light and the shadows of the …

Eat My Quartz, Neil Celani-Morrell

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Pottery has a remarkable ability to tap into the human collective experience, so it is no surprise I express my own understanding of the world by working within the boundaries of “the pot”. With the capacity to communicate conceptual meaning and to serve as objects of utility, pottery not only dances in the notorious territory between art and craft, it embodies the human spirit.

My pots are totems of my existence and this work is an authentic representation of my creative journey. They are an homage to the key influences in my life which have informed and encouraged my creativity …

Cornucopia, Patrick Hargraves

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I navigate the uncertain times we live in by creating positive, playful sculptures because focusing on joy is not only possible in times of hardship, I believe it is necessary in order to thrive. I go through life with a watchful reverence, finding beauty and hope in the abundance of life in the natural world. Using this inspiration, I reinvent and intentionally exaggerate landscapes and plant forms in clay with a freeing sense of whimsy. My fantasized pieces are an invitation to extend imagination to the joyous moments in the world around us, and to return to an innocent sense …

Entangled, Katherine Cox

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I create objects to incite wonder through their exuberance, inviting one to explore the beauty found in the strange and offering the viewer a way to interact with the discomfort of the unknown. Mysculptures are an assembly of engaging surfaces and forms revealing varying texturesandvibrant colors referencing natural and fabricated worlds. Each sculpture is entangled within its own environment or narrative and each is adorned for its own role, finding a balance between discord and harmony, captivation and repulsion.

Each is an individual exploration of the distinct qualities inherent within each object. They are precious in scale and stimulate …

The Alchemical Vessel, River Soma

MFA Statements

My work comes from a place of deep feeling on a bodily level. Amidst the decorative play, there is a sense of the primitive and primordial, and also a certain humanity and clumsiness through struggle. Through the hermetic tradition I relate the alchemical vessel and its symbolic process of interior development to my artistic practice. Focusing in mixed media sculpture, I discovered a concentrated accumulation of symbolism specific to my practice, but also the full recognition of my practice as a ritualized psychological undertaking.

Littlefield Gallery Visiting Artist Series - Kazumi Hoshino, The University Of Maine Department Of Art

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

As part of the ongoing department initiative, The LIttlefield Gallery Visiting Artist Series, Maine sculptor Kazumi Hoshino will be our visiting artist-in-residence, May 1-5, 2017. Hoshino will provide daily demonstrations and art talks in and around the sculpture studio, free and open to the public and campus community. Hoshino will be working with various carving techniques in stone using both Japanese and American techniques and will create multiple stones that work together as a visually integrated single sculpture. The finished piece will later be installed in the lobby of the New Balance Recreation Center. The sculpture will also be scanned …