Art and Design Commons^™

Khruangbin On Tour, Meghan Eileen Connolly

Graphic Communication

My senior project, Khruangbin On Tour, creates the opportunity to ideate and promote Khruangbin’s, a three-person band, tour through branding and merchandise. The goal is to create visuals, such as a poster or t-shirt design, to complement their songs and the band as a whole through the use of color palettes, typography, objects and illustrations. The music’s feeling and aesthetic should be reflected in the visual aspects as it represents the artist overall and speaks to the audience.

Portraits: A Study In Objects, Family Relations, And Race, Julie Quintero

Theses

My final project is a body of mixed-media portraits which were exhibited at SculptureWorks Ferguson in December, 2021. Each of the twenty works are visual representations of events, identities, or relationships, experienced in both the past and the present. The materials used to help push each narrative include fabric, yarn, coffee filters, embroidery, wood, stain, plaster, metal, concrete, inks, conte, paints, and/or found objects. Each piece demonstrates a unique combination of image, media, and technique in the field of contemporary art. Some of the works include objects made by the people being portrayed. Others include materials that were acquired via …

Where Are The Women? A Feminist Field Guide To The Museum, Taylor Weaver

Theses

Linda Nochlin’s seminal 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” was at the fore of the great battle cries of many feminist scholars that drew attention to the limitation’s that female artist’s face in the art world. Women have systematically been left out of the art historical narrative while their male counterparts remain at the forefront.

There are many women that are very prominently represented in museums. They are largely nude and have been represented by male artists. While I do not argue that nudity in paintings should not exist, I do insist that museum goers become …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Covid-19 Infection Control On Visual Art Installations In Hospitals With Pediatric Patients, Shannon Kimich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the impact of COVID-19 infection control on visual artwork in pediatric hospitals and hospitals caring for pediatric patients. The study involved five hospitals in three southern America states and addressed visual artwork and art installations. The researcher administered an internet-based survey to participants in job functions related to hospital administration, environmental services, and project management across the facilities and received participation from 18 respondents. Additionally, telephone interviews were conducted with three participants with the job titles project manager/analyst, child-life specialist, and environmental services director. Survey questions were designed to examine visual art programs in selected children’s hospitals …

Dissonant Forms: Landscape, Nature-Love, And Art, Taylor F. Benoit

Masters Theses

As artists continue the long and storied lineage of Landscape, are there aesthetic responsibilities that come with representing the forces that afford you the capacity to do so? As we delineate spaces into places, endless interconnectivity into knowable “systems”, and living matter into thing based taxonomies, who do these delineations serve and with what intentions do we proceed? My studio art practice explores what it means to give form to our Former—the Former being that from which we came, the here and now, our explicit ecological reality, the stuff of what we call nature. …

2+2=Cake: A Book Of Conversations About Possibilities In Business And Art, Elizabeth Ann Alspach

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

2+2=CAKE is a toolkit for people interested in creating their own economic container to support their livelihood. Calling upon the entrepreneurial experience of artists and creatives who founded or run organizations, the book and accompanying workbook and motivational posters serve as an incubator, buoy, and affirming resource for those looking to build the economic container in which they make their livelihood.

The Undiscovered Country, Luke A. Atkinson

LSU Master's Theses

The Undiscovered Country is a compendium of paintings, prose, and poetry that defines the place of creation. This work is a response to life as I find it, in as honest and truthful a way as my ability allows. Sergei Prokofiev said, “The more the sea rages, the more precious a hard rock among the waves becomes.” My paintings are solid rocks that I cling to. Hopefully, someone else can too.

Hello Again يا اهلا A Study Of Grief, Diana Abouchacra

LSU Master's Theses

Grief is an unwanted visitor who we all come to know throughout our lifetime. Although every person reacts differently to bereavement of a loved one, almost always the lost other becomes etched into our being for the remainder of our lives (McClocklin & Lengelle, 2017). In today’s society, we are encouraged to say “Good-bye”, but what if instead, we allow ourselves to keep those who have passed on close to our hearts and say hello again? Hello Again يا اهلا is a body of work that explores my experience with grief. The artworks made for this exhibition investigate my process …

Water Gets Lost In The Sea, Sun Gets Lost In The Desert, Rocio Paz Guerrero

Theses and Dissertations

The absence of happiness, the absence of nature, the absence of justice, the absence of absence, which is presence. My desire is to make these voids visible and sensible by connecting to and with others, from our intimate and collective life experiences, with empathy, and by sharing. Through a hybrid of sculpture, installation, and performance, I move within this tense in-between space, asking myself about that void, if it is possible for it to be filled, or if it is perhaps too big, or if it is perhaps too late.

Icarus Rooted, Lacey Minor

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis conceptually frames and accompanies the MFA body of work Icarus Rooted by Lacey Minor. This work grapples with the acceptance of impermanence and illustrates her personal narrative about grieving family lost to addiction — juxtaposed with societal reflections on the opioid epidemic in America — using the potato as a symbol for the addicted body.

And All The Things That Grew On The Ground, Sarah E. Phillips

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This is a document archiving and describing my work for the years 2019-2021 as part of the completion requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree. As a whole, this work investigates the paradox and negotiations of access to the self, the history, and to the landscape you occupy. It asks questions about authorship, valuing, sacred and sacrament, but retains the gravitation, umbilical tie to memoir and narrative. Ritual, habit, and transformational cleansing are recurring themes in the work. Body, breath-- access to the invisible. Preservation of the uncertain. Fragility carries weight, and importance, destruction and negotiation as vessels of …

Memories As Old As Outer Space, Nicholas Benfey

Theses and Dissertations

My paintings draw from personal memory, as well as the nostalgic longing and nightmarish foreboding of the irrational psyche. Cosmic ruptures, cliffs, cemeteries, and parking lots appear alongside snowglobes and canopy beds. I aim to suggest things to be wary of, while giving space for optimistic fantasy and reflective wonder.

Riveting Vietnamese And American Culture Through Jewelry Alchemy, Thoa Kim Dichiara

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

My research involves a deep exploration of the visual and material language found in jewelry throughout history as it relates to deep social, cultural, and personal ideologies. I rivet my Vietnamese and American culture through jewelry alchemy while exploring my identity, sculpting and preserving the four sacred animals of Vietnam. I create boar head chains, the last animal in the Lunar Zodiac, and emerge unapologetically with crowns that proudly pronounce myself. I arrive at my altar with heirloom pendants and brooches, and lastly honor my family history with wearables that feature salt clusters and family gold. This body of work …

Turning Tides, Lauren Whitmore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Synthesizing personal narrative, sociological phenomenon, and art historical analysis, Turning Tides examines the relationship between power dynamics and sexual assault. Inequities and injustices with regard to the handling of sexual assault, and the norms that allow this issue to be pervasive, are woven throughout the cultural fabric of the United States. Feminists and feminist activist artists in the 1970s brought the matters women, and other marginalized groups, were facing to the forefront of political and social dialogue. The resulting work left an indelible mark on public perceptions and allowed for other activists and artists to build upon the foundations; creating …

Weather Permitting, Acadia Kandora

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Weather Permitting is an exhibition of objects and printed matter, primarily in the form of publicationsthat examine my relationship to nature and the idea of nature as both sanctuary and armor. At a young age, my parents would take my on a hike every Sunday instead of going to church. The hikes acted as a weekly pilgrimage deep into the woods and a ritual instilling the idea of nature being a place of spiritual refuge and retreat. A sanctuary - of course, weather permitting.

As I grew up and experienced hardship, my first instinct has always been to go hide …

In-Between Spaces, Trinity Kai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In-between Spaces is a paper based in personal narrative that uses Critical Race Theory and art to analyze the history of photography and systems of discrimination facilitated by hegemonic culture. Body is at the center as a symbol of the physical and psychological impacts systemic inequalities have on people that are classified as other and how one can be absent and present in institutional and public spaces.

Optimistic And A Little Flawed, Christian Schultz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accompanying exhibition to this paper, Optimistic and Flawed is a body of drawings and objects that explores the liminal space between playful and intended actions. Inspired by the landscape of the yard and the actions that take place within, the goalless play of a child and the laborious maintenance of an adult. The value of play exists within labor and labor exists within play. The drawings observe this through the theoretical framework of telic and paratelic motivational states as they relate to drawing. Abstracted yards and landscapes provide a space for the labor of the hand. A history of …

Time. Moves. Things. Change., Jennifer Wester

Art Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I discuss my art making principles and their physical representation in some examples of my most recent work.

Having started my artistic practice during a particularly transformative period of my life, this paper reflects on my artistic evolution, it’s influences, and the principles I’ve acquired along the way. In it, I explain and analyze the function of failure and mmy relation to manipulation. I show, through image and descriptions, the ways in which a spectrum of pieces converge to substantiate my claims of intent to outcome. And I illuminate synergies between my practice and historical artists such …

Observing The Transformation Of Sketches When Rendered In Different Scenarios, Cade Fallaw

Senior Theses

The purpose of the project was to see how a single image of my house transformed when I drew multiple iterations of it under different conditions. Each condition was applied to the artist (me); either by limiting my physical state or by creating a specific mental frame that I drew from. This project consists of 31 sketches of my house: 24 of them were drawn with applied conditions and 7 were drawn from memory. As expected, the greatest differences between the drawings occurred when a greater constraint was placed on the artist, such as when I drew using three different …

Abandoned Spaces, Anthony Tate

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

The goal of this project is to show how color can display an emotional connection to the environment. How colors can be portrayed to human emotions without telling the audience. As well as having the audience imagining what kind of economy that used to be in the environment. The objective is to create a game that will tell a story from the environment and how colors are used to help tell a story of the environment. This thesis project is a game that attempts to show how colors can be related to emotions.

From Here And Now: Monuments Of Today And Everyday, Adam Shaw

Theses and Dissertations

The arc of my educational narrative was drawing to a close. I was a month out from my thesis exhibition, the culmination of a three-year experience. The studio was full of an energy I had been longing to feel. I was just beginning. Then came the Pause.

Counterpoint: Music And Art Education, Eileen Kosasih

MA Projects

Music education programming is generally not as accessible or available as museum education programming. General music illiteracy and the elitism of music education perpetuate a cycle of inaccessibility and lack of understanding of the value of music education. Meanwhile, the auditory art form is a fundamental component of culture, society, and history. Music’s language and history should be understood and appreciated widely. Art museum education programmers can work with music educators, music historians, and classical music programmers to incorporate music education into museum education programming. This project consists of three parts. The first section advocates the inclusion of music education …

Straight Through My Heart, Raul A. Aguilar Canela

Theses and Dissertations

Straight through my heart is an exhibition that explores the concept of heartbreak as a socio-political phenomenon. Through the affect of sadness the thesis analyses the way in which subjects are formed under cognitive capitalism. Paying particular interest to the collateral effects of neoliberal culture —hyper-stimulation, self-exploitation, competition, and obsession with productivity—and the pathologies they create —depression, anxiety, body aches, fatigue— this work shifts the burden of sadness from the individual to the community. By doing so it proposes heartbreak as a public feeling.

You Wouldn't Download An Art, Rice Evans

Theses and Dissertations

To quote the late Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, “The internet is a series of tubes.” Like my art practice, these tubes meander through concepts, techniques, and mediums to arrive at a messy, confusing, and overwhelming shared experience of digital life. It is here where we find humor, creativity, and most importantly our own folk culture.

Painting While Black: Exploring Racial Identity Through Iconography, Blake Morton, Blake Morton

CMC Senior Theses

I constantly experience external pressure to make identity-related art work in response to the ongoing racial-reckoning occurring in the United States.

Initially, I was concerned with the pitfalls of creating identity-art. One of which being pigeon-held as a Black artist— whose sole function is to share my vulnerable experiences —and be commodified and diluted for superficial consumption. A Black artist whose work would only be valuable when institutions needed to satisfy a diversity quota, a Black History Month initiative or to conduct damage control after being “canceled.”

All of which may very well still happen. I’ve utilized this project to …

Unlocking The Energy Within; A Journey Through Healing And Evolution, Juliana Favela

CMC Senior Theses

Through a series of acrylic paintings and watercolors, I set out to document emotions, feelings, and experiences that I’ve had through my personal process of healing. By engaging in meditations for each piece, I was able to decide on a set of motifs, symbols, colors, and messages that I wanted to portray. This paper discusses in more detail how I went about this process and what the significance of each piece is, in addition to my inspiration, my identity and its impacts on the work, as well as what I learned from this process. I argue that as we unravel …

A Third Culture Kid's Quest For Belonging: Ephemeral, Eternal, And The Space In Between, Simona Darshani Wiig

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In fulfillment of my degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Central Florida specializing in sculpture and ceramics, I have produced a body of artwork in a range of media, including printmaking, bookbinding, painting, ceramics, and sculpture. This thesis is the exegesis of my creative work, informed by contemporary artworks and the study of shelter-making in nature. Utilizing The Practitioner Model of Creative Cognition as defined by R. Lyle Skains, I will establish my work as practice-based research. While "exegesis" generally refers to the critical examination of written work, I feel it is appropriate in this context …

As Many Names As Objects, Luke Herrigel

Senior Projects Spring 2021

“And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

turned toward the world of objects, never outward.

It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down.

We rearrange it, then break down ourselves”

• Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Honesty is Unbelievable”

• A Bumper Sticker I Saw

For my senior show I used collected materials, found objects, personal ephemera (both genuine and fabricated), paintings and sculpture to make installations that I would change every night of the show’s duration. Each morning the installation would be photographed, left for only a few hours, and then would be uninstalled to make way for creating a new iteration. …

Alteration, Jared Jennings

Master's Theses

Mental illness is surprisingly far more common than people care to believe. This is in part due to the stigma which follows close behind it. Stigma, a mark of disgrace, began before medical experts and psychologists started studying mental illness in the 1840s. Before this time mental illness was seen as demonic possession. Usually, severe mental illness develops genetically. Although severe cases of mental illness are rare, the media has exploited them such as Jekyll and Hyde, Psycho, or Frailty. This stigma has caused many individuals who may suffer from mental illness to avoid treatment. I tell the stories of …

Hyperstatic, Zane Mahanna

Master's Theses

Hyperstatic is a designation given to structural elements when internal and external forces acting upon them are unable to be definitively calculated. The integrity of equilibrium therefore remains undetermined. The juxtaposition of literal, architectural forms, against the metaphorical, structural, hierarchies that govern society, seeks to question the very nature of humanity’s equilibrium often with a dose of comedic elements. The subversive humor manifested in my work is employed not only to make light of serious questions about the nature of existence, but also to disarm the viewer of preconceived notions about the esoteric seriousness of high art. This thesis catalog …