Art and Design Commons^™

Dear Sycamore, Anna Schenker

MFA in Visual Art

I create paintings, sculptures, and rubbings to pay tribute to the earthly beings found within my immediate surroundings. I use indexical processes that stain, trace, and record to preserve a moment in time. The process of rubbing is a tactile and meticulous activity of excavation. It is an imprint of what was once there, a mapping of attentive contact. The works are dependent upon the physicality of the host as I engage directly with the plants, seeds, weather, and trees that surround me. The rubbing’s flatness actively constructs a new reality; a liminal space hovers between the impression and the …

Every Rock Has A Soul, Karen Yung

MFA in Visual Art

My studio practice focuses on the Asian American diaspora and the feelings of displacement that arise from being away from one’s homeland. This paper traces the beginning of my journey to find a way to make art that observes and applies Buddhist philosophies, practices and acknowledges the intrinsic energy found in all things. I create sculptures inspired by the qi of rocks to explore my ongoing struggles with my bicultural identity. Through the continuous pouring of wax and plaster that create stalagmites on to domestic objects, I imbue positive qi into my artworks to pass on to whoever seeks it. …

On Autonomy: Personal Agency Under Late Stage Capitalism, Levi Gentry

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Personal agency is the feeling of control over one’s actions. Capitalism is deeply etched into the fabric of America and the world at large. In this paper, I propose that late stage capitalism has forever altered the means by which personal agency manifests, that it has left no room for alternatives on account of its far-reaching scope. My work, through its subject matter and medium, refers to the lack of autonomy under escape or embrace. Failure and futility are both key ideas, as complacency is intrinsic to our current moment, which is evocative of the ongoing metamodern art movement.

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

Echoed Sites And The Unknowable Object, Joseph Canizales

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis will discuss the expanded field of sculpture, simulacra, digital technology, and two terms I’ve devised: the unknowable object, and echoed sites. Within these two terms, I’m concerned with the complicated relationship between humans and geology and how we extract material from the ground without reflecting on the geologic history of the site. In echoed sites I create sculptures with and without a geologic site or object, by way of digital technology. These forms display two states paradoxically in balance, where what’s presented leaves more questions than answers. Thus, as part of echoed sites, exists the unknowable object. …

Sculpture As Memoir, Tirzah Reed

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Questions guide my art practice, so they naturally guide the structure of this thesis.

Remember?

If I remember, what then?

What makes a memoir?

What is the work made of?

Nouns and adjectives—why have both?

What’s the role of sound?

How does the form of installation relate to memoir?

How do we take an installation from situation to story?

What happens in the studio?

What gets me to the studio in the first place?

What matters?

Objects have power. They hold the histories of their owners—or if they have not had previous owners, they at least carry the connotations of …

Modeling Disability: Softly Making The Invisible Visible, Libby Evan

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

“I am not asking for pity. I am telling you about my disability.” -Eli Clare

In the following Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis statement, you will not find someone overcoming their disability. You will not find a tale of inspiration. You will not find a cure for ableism. You simply will find an individual's experience of disability— my experience of disability.

My invisible disability puts the medical model and social model of disability in constant tension as I navigate everyday life living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and severe arthritis. Both models seek to find blame for disability, whether in searching …

Overlapping Entities: Visualizing The Space Between Nature And Culture, Zoie Brown

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my work I generate forms that occupy the space between our false conceptions of nature and culture. I subvert binaries–both between nature and culture and between women and men–through the physical conflation of microscopic and macroscopic spaces. Nature itself is a cultural concept; the notion that we are separate from nature at all is a fallacy. The body of work discussed uses ideas from Environmental Sociology and my definition of intersectional Ecofeminism to visualize the intersection of these cultural binaries within physical space. The pieces included utilize light responsive technology as a means of mediating our experiences with the …

Unmaking As Making, Viola Bordon

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Artist Viola Bordon examines the processes of touch, unmaking, and materially dictated aesthetics regarding her studio practice. The philosophical ideas of absence are used to establish a purpose for undoing, which is then explored as a learning process. This process is complicated by the sense of touch, resulting in formal aesthetics that are materially inspired.

"Collaborating With Chance", Alyse Gellis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Have you ever felt a desire to get lost on a journey much larger than yourself or experience the thrill of the unknown? Think about a time you intentionally swam further out in a lake or the sea than you have before, or drove down a road without knowing where it would take you, or wandered around a new city without a map. Think about how you made the decision to push those boundaries. Remember how taking that risk in pursuit of an unknown made you feel, because it is that thrill that drives my artistic practice. Through my thesis …

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Through this essay I describe the theoretical and anthropological ideas that led to the creation of the Cushing Series. An interest in the obsession with photography in popular culture leads to an understanding of the permeation of structured reasoning beyond scientific research and into everyday life. Taking evidence from photography, and philosophy of science I establish the limitations of structured reasoning, both as a way of perceiving the world and as an understanding of identity, and define surface and frame as its physical representation. Using Sartre’s existential theory and phenomenological anthropology I then describe the infinite subjective existence of …

Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, Ambika Subramaniam

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

The following thesis examines the work of Ambika Subramaniam, in particular her thesis installation Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, for the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis. Based within a discussion of semiotics, the thesis researches furniture signification and tracks its evolution through traditional form, ergonomic function, and consumed product. Major points include the ways in which objects are capable of collapsing and retaining the semiotic divide between a sign and referent, and how that signification relates to contemporary design-oriented products. Using the chair as the exemplifying object, the thesis installation questions how objects have …