Art and Design Commons^™

Duality: Artists' Books Exploring Multiple Sides, Kathryn Schug

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

In the display case next to the Schu on the upper level of the Learning Commons building at SJU is the exhibit Duality: Artists’ Books Exploring Multiple Sides. This exhibit was curated by Kathryn Schug CSB ‘25 through an internship with the CSB+SJU Libraries during the spring 2024 semester. The exhibit features 16 Artists’ Books from the Clemens Library Artists’ Books Collection plus 2 copies of the book Schug made for ART 213: Introduction to Artists’ Books during the Fall 2023 semester.

Saint John's Bible Gallery Anniversary Conference In London, England, Hannah Weldon

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

From November 4th to 11th, 2023, The Saint John's Bible Gallery Team celebrated the 25th anniversary of the commissioning of the Saint John's Bible by undergoing a pilgrimage through some of the most prominent Anglican institutions in the United Kingdom. On the evening of November 7th (my birthday) I attended the Anniversary Dinner Celebration and shared my valuable experiences as a student intern at the Saint John's Bible Gallery with my fellow attendees. Attending this special event allowed me the opportunity to connect and network with professionals in the gallery and museum industry, which is what I would like to …

Exploration Of Surface Embroidery, Samantha Schug

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

This is an Independent Learning Project on learning and mastering surface embroidery skills, learning a total of 48 stitches. This project culminated in an original design.

Sublime Memories: Bones As A Medium For Cyanotype Printing And Indigo Dying; The Strength Derived From Connection To The Environment; And The Power Of The Color Blue, Alexis R. Bernstein

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

This project attempts to portray how connections to the environment provide strength and opportunities for growth. By printing cyanotype images of landscapes and plant life on bones, my work links the ecological world with a representation of mortality. The symbolism of bones provide concepts of strength and life, while the symbolism of blue evokes emotions of distance and longing that create a dreamy memory-inspired image quality throughout the series. The historic processes of cyanotype printing and indigo dying were successfully modified for the medium of bones, allowing both artistic techniques to work together in harmony.

Cycles Of Growth And Decay, And Changing The Beautiful To The Grotesque: Installation Through The Lens Of Printmaking, Madeline R. Cochran

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

The intention of this project is to create an installation informed by printmaking processes and to explore the tension between what is fragile and delicate and what is decaying and visceral. Specifically, I am working with materials I find delicate and beautiful including: fine Japanese paper, lace, yarn and embroidery floss. I am coating and manipulating these materials with wax, epoxy-resin and baby oil to give the work a fleshy and unsettling feel. Through the process of working with these materials, I have created paper sculptures made from a mold cast from my own torso, miniature books made from monoprints …

Multisensory Tristram Shandy, Cynthia N. Malone

English Faculty Publications

An absorbed reader typically pays little conscious attention to the visual, tactile, and sometimes aural sensory experiences of reading. Unexpected formal and visual features of Laurence Sterne’s nine-volume fictional narrative, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, startle readers out of absorption and call attention to familiar operations like decoding black figures on white paper and turning pages. My edition of Volume I is designed to engage the senses through its visual structure, textures, and unexpected materials (buttons, marbled paper strips, and ribbons) and through formal surprises (interpolated documents, accordion-fold inserts, and paper lace). In its structure …

Noses In Books: Orientation, Immersion, And Paratext, Cynthia N. Malone

English Faculty Publications

Paratextual aids to reading in medieval codex books, printed codex books, and Kindle ebooks are compared. Medieval scribes designed paratextual elements that enhanced diverse reading practices, from lectio divina to scholarly textual study. Printers adopted and standardized many elements of paratext, and contemporary readers depend on these elements to navigate printed books. Because familiar paratextual aids to reading are less visible in Kindle ebooks, readers find those ebooks harder to navigate. Development of effective ebook paratext must take into account the needs and practices of readers.

Sju Pottery Kiln Firing, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

Dichotomous Identity, Tommy O'Laughlin

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

The photograph as a medium itself exists as a complex symbol. Our brains dissect various bits of meaning from images all around us whether we become conscious of it or not. Can highly manipulated compositions prove to be more authentic than an unmodified counterpart? Stifling magnificent fourth dimensional scenes before us by capturing them into a two dimensional composition is not to capture it at all.

While my work cannot hope to achieve what even moments as audience to these various wonders in our world could far more effectively realize, I only wish to communicate these ideas through my photography …

Latino/Latin American Muralism And Social Change: A Reflection On The Social Significance Of The Cold Spring Mural, Shannon Mcevoy

Art Student Work

No abstract provided.

Mentorship, Richard Bresnahan

Asian Studies Faculty Publications

Part of a special section on mentoring. Ceramist Richard Bresnahan discusses his role as a mentor. Since setting up his first studio at St John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, in 1979, Bresnahan has trained 32 apprentices. To alleviate the poverty that is an extra burden for many apprentices, grants from the university, the studio, and regional foundations provide apprentices with housing, food, health care, and a small monthly stipend. As all the clays and glazes employed in the studio come from local sources and are processed on site, there is a ready supply of materials for both apprentices and visiting …

Water And Woodfiring, Richard Bresnahan

Asian Studies Faculty Publications

Part of a special section on the 1999 International Woodfire Conference. The technique of putting water into a high-temperature woodfired kiln is discussed. This 800-year-old technique is used to oxidize the environment, clear carbon, and quickly cool the pottery. It produces unique, beautiful textures and colors, particularly a rich earth-tone palette that cannot be paralleled by chemical glazes or other firing techniques. This technique was used in a Teppo-gama (gun kiln) based on designs from 12th-century Korean tunnel kilns, built on the island of Tanegashima, Japan, in 1969. The writer discusses the work of a number of artists who use …

The New Plastic In Sculpture, Timothy M. Gallant

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

In his "new plastic" paintings, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) created an aesthetic of universal dimensions through the unification of simplified visual elements. Through an intuitive process of trial and error, Mondrian achieved the unity required for his universal aesthetic by creating a delicate tension between simplified elements in simulated three dimensional space. Mondrian's "new plastic" (neoplastic) aesthetic in painting, however, is physically bound to the two dimensional surface of his canvas and allowed only the appearance of three dimensions. In my thesis, I outline the translation of Mondrian's aesthetic into a physically three dimensional context, creating a universal aesthetic in sculpture …

The Styles Of Clothing Worn By Women In Minnesota From 1870 To 1880, Katrina Dolezal

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

My thesis was a study of the different styles of women's clothing worn in Minnesota during the 1870's. I have had two basic purposes for the study reported in this thesis. I hoped to provide an understanding of the influences that affected the clothing worn by women in Minnesota during the years 1870-1880. I also desired to assemble an illustrated record of typical women's fashion during this period. Pioneer women, who settled even in remote corners of the state, still tried to keep up to date with the fashion prevalent in the rest of the nation, but concessions to fashion …

First Fire, Richard Bresnahan

Asian Studies Faculty Publications

Potter Richard Bresnahan discusses wood firing. He asserts that it is not the placing of the pots in the kiln but where they are not placed that is the truth of wood firing; this theory involves the creation of a chamber in the kiln where no pots at all are placed. The theory, he continues, provided him with the answers to several problems in wood firing, including the problem of building a front fire-mouth chamber from previous first chambers. He adds that there is also the problem of combining three distinctly different styles of firing in a larger kiln for …