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Articles 1 - 30 of 54
Full-Text Articles in Art and Design
Waiting To Exhale, Abigail H. Ogle
Waiting To Exhale, Abigail H. Ogle
Theses and Dissertations
We breathe as a measure of time, it keeps us alive, and fabricates the pattern of our lives. We are punctuated by “snarls,” “glitches,” or moments of irregularity – of trying to catch one's breath, having it taken away, or gasping for it. It is the punctuation of sighs, huffs, sniffs, scoffs, screams, and deep intakes that appear as glitches in the breathing system.
In our daily rhythm of breathing, the presence of the glitch, defined as potentiality, can create space for something unexpected or new to arise. Using the wind from fans and approximately 1,260 square feet of silk, …
Welcome To The Sitting Garden At The Busy Hands Museum, Stacie Sabady
Welcome To The Sitting Garden At The Busy Hands Museum, Stacie Sabady
Theses and Dissertations
I wanted to attend VCU to learn how to unravel my mind and find the words to describe it. While I did make progress in that area, my surprise discovery is that I need to unravel my body too. It has become unbalanced from years of neglect. When working, I find solace through escape. I find a positive outlet for my perfectionist tendencies. I find a way to visually illustrate my obsessive qualities. Throughout the years of these findings, I have ignored my body pleading with me to take it easy. I have always honored the materials and the tools, …
The Game Of Absolute, Rupeng Zhao
The Game Of Absolute, Rupeng Zhao
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis paper writing is a collection of short stories. Or it could be thought of as a small magazine or even an instruction manual for my work. There is a loose correspondence between its content and the symbols used in my installations. It is also realistically and physically presented in my exhibition as part of a "game box". The chaotic and contradictory narrative of this collection of short stories stems from my exhaustive pursuit of the elements that I try to approach in each story. This insatiable pattern of compulsive organization is also evident in the content of my …
Half Of Two Hungers, Aida A. Lizalde Rios
Half Of Two Hungers, Aida A. Lizalde Rios
Theses and Dissertations
Abstract
half of two hungers is an extension of my sculptural practice; a weaving of the ambiguous borders of memory, trauma, disease, identity, assimilation, survival, spirituality, love, erotics, and desire. It is a psychological and sensorial landscape, where I travel consciously and subconsciously to pull shapes and material experiences out into the world of bodies and objects.
Dregs / Lessons From The Things Around Us, Juan-Manuel Pinzon
Dregs / Lessons From The Things Around Us, Juan-Manuel Pinzon
Theses and Dissertations
The writing in Lessons From the Things Around Us is in support of the work in my MFA thesis show, dregs. I detail the progression of my making and thinking over the last two years. I expand on the material and personal relationships that have manifested themselves in the work and influenced my approach to the things that surround me. Finally, I point to a more expansive definition of Craft, rooted in its material sensibilities, and the possibilities already present in the field that this definition creates.
Until Its Calmness Can Claim You, Gabrielle Mchugh
Until Its Calmness Can Claim You, Gabrielle Mchugh
Theses and Dissertations
This is an invitation to pause //
This is an externalization of my inner landscape, a highlight of what I value in my everyday and what comprises my lexicon of a sacred space. The following is a journey of nets, quiet, the sacred, space, and the in-between; where I share research and questions that are the foundation for my thesis work, Until Its calmness can claim you.
// This is an invitation to find moments of quiet in the noise
A Gun For Every Woman, Gentë Retkoceri
A Gun For Every Woman, Gentë Retkoceri
Theses and Dissertations
Six centuries ago in Kosova, my home country, unmarried women known as sworn virgins, were forced to adopt a male persona and carry a gun to protect themselves. But today, guns have become tools of oppression and violence against women. And while the legal system carries penalties for domestic violence, marital rape is excluded. To shine a light on, and expose the topic of hidden violence, my thesis uses artivism to address a sensitive but provocative issue, exhibiting a large-scale sculpture of a gun, designed to provoke raw emotions; to challenge visitors to consider the terror felt by women threatened …
Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen
Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen
Theses and Dissertations
Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …
It Takes A Muscle: Wholes, Holes, And Other Voids, Saar Shemesh
It Takes A Muscle: Wholes, Holes, And Other Voids, Saar Shemesh
Theses and Dissertations
IT TAKES A MUSCLE1
In the BELLY of the BEAST, the HUMAN
in the deep end of a SWIMMING POOL
in a GRAVE, looking up/out from within
at the base of a CRATER, ABYSS, PIT
the room as a CRADLE, INCUBATOR
architecture as MOTHER MOULD.2
____________________________
1 Title is borrowed and abbreviated: Spectral Display, “It Takes A Muscle To Fall In Love,” 1982.
2 For what American-English delineates as ‘mold,’ British-English uses ‘mould’ and is more specific in its technicality. The former doesn’t distinguish in spelling between mold (fungus) and mold (mould). I’m not particularly a fan of …
Until One Resembles The Other, Chad E. Mundie Jr.
Until One Resembles The Other, Chad E. Mundie Jr.
Theses and Dissertations
A written accompaniment to Chad Mundie’s thesis exhibition titled Until One Resembles the Other, conceived during the years 2021-22 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from April 9-22nd.
The following writing explores themes of labor within the home, generational knowledge, interiority, exteriority, and emotional residue through a series of essays surrounding areas of interest within my practice. The writing concludes with documentation of the show and an accompanying explanatory text.
Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan
Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines an alternative processing mechanism surrounding the act of healing after traumatic experiences in life. Using a methodology of iterative patterning and tool-pathing, a collection of inflatable garments and wooden mannequins analyzes defense mechanisms learned in early childhood development. This work highlights an essential body of recent scholarship that takes cuteification seriously to restore a childlike approach to mastering fear. This paper will review the definitions of cuteness and childlike humor and then describe how visual culture has implemented these components to subvert established power.
Fatal Softness, Mariah B. Jones
Fatal Softness, Mariah B. Jones
Theses and Dissertations
my work is about my teeth falling out, the fatal softness in the earth, a monster tattoo on leathered skin, the bliss of not-knowing, revelation, reveling, the ship and the shipwreck, a fire that knows the naming of you, its dark flame acquiring every part of you, smelling a bad candle at tj maxx, handing it to your mom to smell too, a darkness of that which is golden, a god-shaped hole, the petals of a monstrous flower,1 and frog spawn and at the middle of each jelly pearl is a little secret i don’t have to tell you.
Pase Perdido Missing Pass, Larissa M. Garcia
Pase Perdido Missing Pass, Larissa M. Garcia
Theses and Dissertations
This paper contains the following terms: colonialism, ghost populations, natural occurrences, global positioning, poetic relation, confrontation/vengeance, mapping, graphs, models, warfare, bio warfare, magic, mystery, migration, memory, mutation, ghosts, and esoteric systems
An Escapist Utopia, Sara Eh Denney
An Escapist Utopia, Sara Eh Denney
Theses and Dissertations
As an active pursuit of avoiding excellence, my work acts as a space for failure, play, experimentation and imperfection. This document and final installation acts as a pause along a lifelong journey of object-making, creation, and spirituality. My work, specifically my working practice, rather than any one object or moment, is an escapist utopia for myself. My work is the process, the journey, not the ending or the completion of any one thing. The repetition, distortion, and production that I engage throughout my working practice acts as a spiritual exercise of meaning—making through creation. I fall deeply in love with …
Form Follows Culture, Nada Raafat Elkharashi
Form Follows Culture, Nada Raafat Elkharashi
Theses and Dissertations
We all use everyday objects as part of our daily routines, but the way we use them varies from one culture to another. Using George Herbert Mead’s study of human conduct and Louis H. Sullivan’s credo, “Form follows function,” this thesis examines the cultural meanings and implications surrounding the fundamental act of drinking water. Using a methodology of iterative, exploratory making, a collection of glass vessels explores philosophical and physical manifestations of Islamic cultural principles derived from the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم. With the goal of restoring cultural integrity to our daily activities, the work highlights …
Earth Tone Sigh Spell, Martha Glenn
Earth Tone Sigh Spell, Martha Glenn
Theses and Dissertations
A written accompaniment to the artist’s thesis exhibition titled Earth Tone Sigh Spell, conceived during the years 2020-21 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from May 1–15, 2021.
The following thesis explores themes of personal memory, geo-theory, myth, symbol, and historical event. The artist uses research and stream of consciousness writing methods as a way to weave these concepts together and tie them back to her own practice with installation, sculpture, and new media.
Reanimator/Reflection: Creating Mirrors Through Time With Ai, Sound, Video And Live-Generated Art In The Dark Age Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Eric Millikin
Theses and Dissertations
For my MFA thesis exhibition entitled Reanimator/Reflection, I used artificial intelligence to create three new works of sound and live-generated video art, each based on mirror reflections and 100-year-old racist post-pandemic horror literature by early 20th century American author H. P. Lovecraft. The themes of these writings mirror the issues of our current time. The primary works of Lovecraft that I referenced in the exhibition are “Herbert West: Reanimator,” (1922) a serialized tale about graduate school experiments which attempted to return the dead to life during a plague, and “Nyarlathotep,” (1920) a prose poem that suggests even our dreams …
Ties That Bind Us, Christine M. Orr, Christine M. Orr
Ties That Bind Us, Christine M. Orr, Christine M. Orr
Theses and Dissertations
when objects converge in a space
they start a dialogue of their lives
lives that become entangled with your life
your memory
objects are the narrators of memory
a stain, a chip, a tear
materials embed meaning and metaphor within the process of creating
woven cloth, throwing lines, squeezed and pressed coils
all become remnants of the hand
as I make, play, and collect materials and objects
questions are brought forward
How do these components talk to one other?
What are they saying?
How do I listen?
knowledge is generated in the transformation of material through the process of
making …
Straight Through My Heart, Raul A. Aguilar Canela
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.
Sweet Fruit, Daa Guy-Vasson
Sweet Fruit, Daa Guy-Vasson
Theses and Dissertations
The writing and images in Sweet Fruit are an exploration of my creative works. In the first section, memory, making, and poetics come together to help the reader feel the nuances of my experience. In the exhibition works section, images allow an extended look at the work. Accompanying text describes the relevance of my childhood and my parent's Caribbean upbringing to my creative practice.
I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo, Luis A. Vasquez La Roche
I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo, Luis A. Vasquez La Roche
Theses and Dissertations
I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo is a series of works--sculpture, installations, and performances--that explore themes of shame, failure, commodity, ephemerality, ritual, resilience, erasure, race, and death. The research and interest in these themes stem from a page of the Trinidad and Tobago Slave Registry. I use the research that surrounds this document to highlight different moments in history, in my personal life, and to imagine near futures.
...And Yet The Devil Exists, John Hee Taek Chae
...And Yet The Devil Exists, John Hee Taek Chae
Theses and Dissertations
...And Yet the Devil Exists is a project that explores the ways in which ideology determines reality. It is an installation that plots and connects the historical and personal narratives that have defined my sense of identity–narratives in which perceptions of reality shatter, mutate, or hybridize when confronted with power, opportunity, or coercion. The installation component of the project consists of three parts. The first is an infrastructure made of wooden beams upon which paintings and images are installed; I call this the lantern. In the center of this is a round table on top of which is a nonsensical …
Beauty In Imperfection: Post-Hyperreal Cosmetic Containers, Se Hee Jang
Beauty In Imperfection: Post-Hyperreal Cosmetic Containers, Se Hee Jang
Theses and Dissertations
An unhealthy reliance on vision alone, fed by pervasive, doctored, hyperreal imagery in the mass media, suppresses a more balanced use of other senses, reinforcing superficial beauty standards. Trapped by an uncritical preference for the visually “perfect” and harmonious, people increasingly seek to remove physical attributes they consider “imperfect,” without first considering how these “imperfections” benefit and distinguish them as unique individuals.
This thesis addresses superficial beauty standards by shifting focus from singularly visual experience to a more nuanced sensory aesthetic that also considers haptic qualities. Through a combination of research writing and targeted making, my work examines society’s understanding …
The Wild Beasts, Peter Cochrane
The Wild Beasts, Peter Cochrane
Theses and Dissertations
The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to …
Nigga Is Historical: This Is Not An Invitation For White People To Say Nigga, Sandy Williams Iv
Nigga Is Historical: This Is Not An Invitation For White People To Say Nigga, Sandy Williams Iv
Theses and Dissertations
Over the past several years I have been on a quest to locate a world beyond the one I’ve been presented. I am interested in the history of atomic particles - like everything that radiates off of a monument (both literally and those things that are metaphorically reified) - invisible things, and the ways in which these things insect beyond our knowledge systems. This inquiry takes many forms. Mine is a conceptually based practice linked to record keeping and time, and the ways in which these concepts find plurality within our culture; or more pointedly, the importance that we attach …
I Thought The Earth Remembered Me, Hannah Bates
I Thought The Earth Remembered Me, Hannah Bates
Theses and Dissertations
The forest is teeming with activity: fungi transform dead logs into nutrients, roots entangle themselves with the earth, and strong winds break resilient boughs. Like the forest, the human body functions according to a complex system of agents - from the micro bacteria in the gut to the pores of the skin. The built world has often been rendered in opposition to these processes of nature. As a vessel through which the world is experienced, the body is an intermediary between raw matter and fabricated things. The planet is suffused with human life, and there is a critical tension between …
This Must Be The Place, Eve White
This Must Be The Place, Eve White
Theses and Dissertations
This publication is the companion piece to “This Must Be the Place,” a 3D realization of my conceptual photography work exhibited in the Anderson Courtyard at VCU's 2019 School of the Arts MFA Show. I photograph scenes from nature and reproduce these images onto flattened plexiglass planes, arranging them in new, natural environments and photographing them again. The outcome is a scenic collage in which two unfamiliar locations become superimposed. It is my hope that as people experience the work they become a part of the texture of it.
Generic Of, Nicole Levaque
Generic Of, Nicole Levaque
Theses and Dissertations
generic of is a creative text paralleling the creation of my thesis exhibition. I use fragmented layers of narrative, description and prose in the same way each handbuilt ceramic is fired multiple times, allowing the glazes to build upon themselves. This is a close study of the still life, the intimacy of consuming, and how trauma is passed through the gut.
A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King
A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King
Theses and Dissertations
Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the …
Lotion In Your Lungs, Raul H. De Lara
Lotion In Your Lungs, Raul H. De Lara
Theses and Dissertations
This is a document explaining in detail my artistic practice from childhood to the day I graduated VCU. It will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already felt such ways, or similar ways – words and ghosts are mostly invisible.