Art and Design Commons^™

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.

Making Christian Art In A Contemporary Setting, Raven Cordy

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past 4 and a half years, I have studied contemporary art and seen countless artworks being made in an academic setting. In doing so, I have come to the realization that religious content is rare in today’s time. While it is not actively discouraged, the environment I am in and the current art community does not seem to be particularly interested in merging the two concepts. Without understanding why, I subconsciously kept art and my faith as separate entities for the first few years of my higher education. But as I matured and developed my own artwork, I …

Contemporary Handicraft, Textile Art, And Feminist Social Critique, Kaitlynn Blow

Honors Theses

My thesis looks at the work of female contemporary artists who use what has historically been considered “women’s craft” such as embroidery, knitting, stitching and other various textile arts. Since the Women’s Art Movement of the 1970s, women have used these creative outlets to express discontent and injustice in their lives revolving around gender and identity. In my research, three main themes emerged as addressed in each chapter. The first theme addresses the topic of domesticity and memory including unseen female labor, such as domestic chores and motherhood, and how fabric holds memories. Chapter two covers gender politics- specifically the …

Preying For A Miracle, Hannah Oakes

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For my BFA Capstone exhibition Preying For a Miracle I analyzed the Biblical book of Job found in the Old Testament in relation to my own life. My interest in the Book of Job stems from a human desire to understand suffering, especially suffering that is unprovoked. At the beginning of the book of Job, Job is described as “blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil”. (Job 1:1) As the first chapter of the book progresses, Satan comes to God and presents a wager. Satan insinuates that Job is only faithful to God because God has “put a …

North American Data, Joseph A. Burwell

Theses and Dissertations

North American Data fractures and reconfigures pre-existing narratives into new, unauthorized forms of storytelling. Core samples extracted from various narrative sources are reassigned new roles according to their proximity to each other. This paper functions as an introduction to the essential actors and their dramatic inclinations within fluctuating scenarios.

Chinese-American Landscape, Jessica Wen

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Cultural hybridity is an unwillingness to succumb to the notion of choosing sides when it comes to mixed heritage and culture. The approach taken to identity has a place in the artistic sphere as well. Through an investigation of my art practice in painting alongside a contemporary and historical context, the hybrid space between Chinese and Western landscape painting is explored and determined. The goals of nature depicted through distorted perspective, abstraction and simplification of objects, and emphasis on texture are techniques employed by both artistic spheres. By utilizing these goals and mixing materials of both Chinese and Western painting, …

A Shift In Silence, Bailey Idom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Shift in Silence is a body of work that emerged because of a key shift in my life. Using the formal components of line, shape, and value, I create a space representing an intimate moment in time. Physically, the medium can be any material, but I process all of this as an expression of line. Each piece shares the commonality of lines and lineage, while the layering embodies the record of my relationships from the past that directly affect the present. The abstraction and unpredictability within my own relationships require openness and vulnerability. This honest dialogue sustains and informs …

Real Goner, Nicholas Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis paper is to tell the story behind, and outline the theoretical and conceptual framework underlying the exhibition, Real Goner. The exhibition combines a number of elements drawn from music and art history, as well as the theoretical writings of Albert Camus, Guy Debord, and Joseph Kosuth. Together, these elements produce a cryptic exhibition that attempts to address the inherent chaos, and apparent meaninglessness of existence; and to see art as a proposition, a performance, and a practice. The exhibition addresses issues of celebrity, the production and consumption of culture, and where that cycle leaves us …

Artificiality And The New Image: The Image Body, Liza H. Butts

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This paper sets up a historical argument for how images exist in the world and how artists relate to these images. The questions of the paper are concerned with defining the “Contemporary Image” and looking at how the digitization of all the images in our world affect the art object and the experience of art in the physical world. The conclusion and answer to these questions is found in a resistance to images that oversaturate our culture. This resistance occurs by looking to the painted image to function as a body in the world; aware of its existence, responsive to …

Virsa: The Contemporary Value Chain, Samreen Zahra Mrs

Theses and Dissertations

"Handicraft" means a useful or decorative object made by a craftsman who has direct control over all stages of production. Handicrafts have always had a greater value, an identity of their own that is reflective of their place, culture and materials, as well as a sense of belonging to a particular place and time. With the ever-growing mass production that followed the Industrial Revolution, we lost those crafts to multiple reasons: one being cheaper, industrial-made products reducing the demand for handicrafts, and another being a shift in consumer tastes. Most craftspeople hardly earn enough to survive and fulfill their basic …

Countering The Voyage Of The Present: Histories Speak Fragmented In 25 Frames Per Second, Vanessa Kelly Gravenor

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

My thesis work presents a meditation on what it means to be contemporary. There are many ideas that prefigure this work but are not included in this written investigation.These notions come from Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations and Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. In these texts, the authors state that the contemporary is the one who turns her or his back from her or his time and looks at the past. For my purposes, to be contemporary, one has to revolutionize the notion of histories in order to make past materials relevant. Therefore, my videos and photographic works do not invite the viewer …

Zoom In To The Layers Of Graphic Design, Paola J. Robelo

Honors College Theses

Graphic design is a lot like languages varying from place to place. It’s a way of communication that retains its own cultural characteristics even though it shares similar design’s aesthetics. Graphic design varies from culture to culture, influenced by a country’s culture, language, traditions, history, and society. Just like art and music, graphic design’s aesthetics differs and expresses different messages across every culture. There are common graphic design’s elements found in one culture that are not found in other cultures and vice versa.

As an international student, this is a topic that has really interested me because I want to …

Deep Within, Caberbe Joseph

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a contemporary photographer, I focus most on light and color to bring out the uniqueness of my images. Photography is about lighting and I manipulate lights to raise questions in my viewers. Manipulating light is my way of being curious about how it may change mood physically and emotionally. Inspired by classical paintings, I have developed a body of photographs that can be admired by anyone. Although the main focus of my work is light and color, this body of work is also intended to empower those with little confidence in themselves and those who have been rejected, abused, …