Art and Design Commons^™

Fixing Broken Shit: How We Are Always Cleaning Up Some Mess, Kendall L. Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

My artistic practice deals with identifying and breaking down expectations that are placed on women in America; both in their personal and public lives. I have combined the ideologies of two previous feminist art movements: The Pattern and Design, and Deconstructivist movements. This creates a visual language that is unique to my time, while acknowledging the successes and contributions of the past. This thesis will analyze how my work draws elements from the past and expands upon those ideas to progress the feminist plight.

Filter Feeding, Sam Boven

Graduate School of Art Theses

This paper is an investigation of the mechanics of evolutionary processes and its methods. These investigations are representative of both a world view and a methodology of artistic production. I consider a central consideration of my current work to be the interaction of distinct components and the new experience that these interactions produce when pondered by a viewer. Evolution and the development of life is driven ever forward by the interactions between organisms, both as groups and individuals. By grouping these relationships into three categories: parasitism, predation, and symbiosis, I aim to provide a lens through which to consider both …

Shady Ladies: Femininity Across The Gender Spectrum, Holly Mcgraw

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis explores performing gender fluidity as a deviant act. The conceptual impetus is to tease out ways in which comedy and beauty can be used to subvert stigma against the gender fluid community in a cultural climate where it is still dangerous to be queer. Through aestheticized, heroic and subversive imagery, I utilize drag vernacular to contextualize my own feminine performance as a gesture of power. In collaboration with gender fluid models, we create imaginary spaces as a backdrop for the outlaw act of playing with the gender binary. Within recognizable systems of gender marketing, the cult of the …

A Borrowed Language, Yvonne Osei

Graduate School of Art Theses

Art has the potency of mediation: bridging human differences, questioning voids in historical trajectories, negotiating spaces of relevance, and most importantly, being signifiers that embody the absent. I speak in a borrowed language, a multilingual visual tongue, inspired by a culmination of Western and African Art modes of practices to create charged platforms for multicultural communication.

My art presents visual portals that allow for intercultural and interracial mingling as issues of colorism, present-day colonialism, gender inequality and the politics of dress are foregrounded for collective deliberation. The essence of the work is often activated and brought to its full potential …

Gesture As Revelation, Laurel Panella

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The two divergent paths of fine arts and psychological research come together to demonstrate how physical gesture and facial expression communicates significant meaning regarding human emotion and intention. The conceptual framework of these paintings arises from the artist’s engagement with peer-reviewed psychological studies on Affective Science. The paintings balance qualities of both emotional and intellectual thinking, with the goal of calling them forth in equal strength during the viewing experience. The symbolic and representational language of gesture is examined through the painting titled Precarious Extension. Dynamics of compassion and affect theory are analyzed through the painting Transmission of …

Artificial Infinite, Brandon Daniels

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis examines the complex history of the sublime, specifically the sublime Void of the Romantics and the newer concept of the technological sublime. From there, I examine the genre of science fiction and it relationship to the sublime, the Void and the grotesque. I use specific examples such Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and a few others to better understand and apply these concepts. Beginning with these examples, I start to posit what role special effects play in how these films embody these philosophical concepts.

Building on this foundation of research, I go on to …

Transitory States: Becoming And Continuity In The Drawing Process And Object, Ming Y. Hong

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis explores the influences and content of the visual artist Ming Ying Hong and in particular, examines her drawings created during her Master of Fine Arts degree program at Washington University in St. Louis. In theorizing about the practice of drawing, this document investigates the instability in meaning found in both her motifs of explosions and wounds, placing her research in larger philosophical context regarding the transformative potential of Giles Deleuze’s “becoming” and George Batailles’s “continuity.” Ultimately, the intersection of these two terms is exemplified in the in the paradoxical conflation of binaries, upsetting clear categorization and suspending concise …

Talking To Boxes, Hugging Robots, Vita Eruhimovitz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Relationships between humans and technology are at the core of my artistic research. Human-machine communication is defined by the technological level of the machines, but even more so by the way they are perceived by humans. Concepts of artificial life and artificial intelligence gradually have become part of the everyday life of growing numbers of people, and while there is an ongoing effort to design an increasingly anthropocentric technology, our minds also adapt to the new technological reality. Through immersive installations and sculptural objects my practice explores this reality. My artwork is designed to communicate with and stimulate the viewers, …

Pageant: Manufactured Beauty, Caitlin Penny

Graduate School of Art Theses

Pageant: Manufactured Beauty explores why the female body is abject and how that body is mitigated through sexually objectifying images. This paper discusses how the female body has been objectified in order to “correct” the elements of the body that are considered abject, through an exploration of psychological studies, philosophy and analysis of contemporary art and popular culture.

The effects of these images on the women who view them is often a desire to conform their own bodies to the images in order to gain social acceptance. Clothing and the decoration of the body, it is argued, are the methods …

Art And..., Dayna J. Kriz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Almost anything goes in this time of contemporary artistic production as long as an artist can ‘back’ their ideas and the position they operate from. This expanding territory of production and engagement is an exciting potential for working artists, providing freedom to self-determine ones modus operandi within an expanding support system to engage the world with. While this is an exciting growth it is also potentially dangerous. The un-named and historically ambiguous position that Art1 operates from has created a rootless position to the production of culture. This rootlessness or, universal position has historically established itself as the gatekeeper and …

Objects Of Loss, Amanda C F Helman

Graduate School of Art Theses

I use objects as sculpture in my attempt to make the intangible, tangible. Objects become a way to remember or go back to the past. These objects are often called souvenirs. Souvenirs are objects that we place meaning in to try to avoid loss. We apply narrative and that gives them value. Without these souvenirs, we fear that the memory will vanish or be lost. Experiencing loss is not just the wish for something to be there, it is also a negation. In other words, when we lose something, it is not that we wish to go back to past …

Extraction From The Essence Of Pure Power, Michael A. Helms

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis examines the intersections of bodybuilding and performance through a masculine lens. Much like theater, the body builder is activated by staging. In an investigation of its history and a sampling of its theories, we can challenge the hyper-masculine identity which is supported through the gym culture and gender constructs. The arena of the gym contains cues contributing to the artworks listed, and the icons of the gym itself are brought into the studio to transform not only the objects, but the actions themselves. The work challenges the ideals surrounding the superhero, godlike persona cultivated through media tropes. These …

Clairvoyant Learning: The Strangeness Of Playing Games, Jeremy Shipley

Graduate School of Art Theses

In retelling multiple stories of my research, this document serves as a quest to archive my interest in games as evolved systems of play that continue to manipulate the way we view literacy. In describing the subtly of these terms while examining the folkloric histories that contextualize the language of this media, I have doubly manipulated the form of my paper to be like a choose-your-own-adventure tale, reflecting the estrangement of time and authorship unique to the narrative space in games. Unlike the formal structures found in literature or cinema, games animate collaborative and nonlinear systems that return the craft …

Art, Labor, & The Absent Worker., Austin R. Wolf

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis considers the relationship between art and labor in twentieth century America while examining how this informs my art practice. The document aims to briefly examine Karl Marx theory of estranged labor, Hannah Arendt’s essay on the human condition of work, and philosophers such as John Ruskin and Jacque Ranciere, while discussing the relationship between art and labor. By giving a brief history of twentieth century art in reference to work and labor, I plan to excavate a deeper understanding of the relationship between Art, Labor, and work. The example artworks both historical and contemporary will support the accompanying …

Chimeric Realities, Thomas C. Moore

Graduate School of Art Theses

This essay examines the urban experience in postmodern cities and mediated reality. Modernity brought a change in perception that altered the experience of the city. This shift was registered through cinema which disrupted the fixity of classical space and provided an aesthetic reception similar to the gaze the flaneur. With the transition into postmodernism came the idea of the Heterotopia, a city that is capable of juxtaposing multiple temporalities and spaces that are themselves incompatible. The postmodern city developed with the exponential growth of mass communication and consumption immersing us in mediated reality.

My projective works make use of collage …

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …

"Am I Winning?", Diana J. Casanova

Graduate School of Art Theses

Mesmerized by horror, my artistic practice investigates traumatic stories of history, myth, personal narrative, and fiction. The serial narratives are imposed upon two decapitated historical queens, Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn. Represented through opposing sides, the women’s facial planes fracture and stretch and erupt in oral infestations. Stories of rage flood the compositions, fabricating an epic battle and argument. Through influences of Catholicism, I construct disputes over the feminine body. Monstrous forms are the effect of combining oppoisiton terms, formulating humanistic and sympathetic symbology. Mirror Theory and the myth of Medusa defend a destruction of self through reflection.

Influenced by …

On Thresholds, Jacob Muldowney

Graduate School of Art Theses

Thresholds, as a sign for that which is transitional, are ripe with metaphorical potential. One threshold that plays a major role in my work is the veil. The veil, as an object, provides more of a visual than a bodily obstruction. Because of this, some of the most potent metaphors surrounding the veil have to do with the threshold of human perception. By utilizing various veiling techniques, my work addresses the limitation of perception from multiple angles. Ultimately, encountering the boundary line of one’s perceptual capabilities gives insight into the possibility of the simultaneous existence of things both visible and …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Methodologies Of The Creatively Maladjusted, Michael A. Williams

Graduate School of Art Theses

As intellectuals, artists must actively challenge societal power structures and the accepted way of thinking. Unless authority is questioned and discussed by the masses, the perception of power can segue almost seamlessly into actual power. It is the responsibility of the artist to disrupt these ingrained social systems through the work they create. According to Pablo Helguera, there are two different kinds of socially engaged artwork: the symbolic and the actual. While symbolic artwork focuses more on poetics and connecting with the audience, actual artwork emphasizes the functionality and applicable nature of the art. It is vitally important to blend …

Breaching, Margaux Crump

Graduate School of Art Theses

I make objects that behave like bodies—graceful hybrids that are effortlessly cultural and natural, masculine and feminine, plant and animal. Shifting and slipping between unfixed identities, they exist as multiplicities. When these bodies touch, power and pleasure are fluidly exchanged. However, power is not structured here as a binary and pleasure is not finite; both have the potential to flow between bodies, blurring boundaries and rendering individuality delicate.

My work is primarily rooted in the relationship between desire, intimacy, and control, with the body acting as a site of power play. This body may be plant, animal, sculpture, or material. …

Re-Enchanting The Spectacle, Shayna Cohn

Graduate School of Art Theses

“Re-Enchanting the Spectacle” explores guiding notions and central themes within the art practice of Shayna Cohn. Cohn’s installation spaces and sculptures within them, evoke a type of fabricated aura and melodramatic attitude of entertainment sites. By isolating the affect outside of the original environment, Cohn references the perceptual duality of entertainment sites within this “post-sacred” era. Entertainment venues become sites of potential transcendence, yet are also inextricably tied to their automated mechanization. Drawing on the Peter Brooks’ analysis of the historical and poetic relationship between melodrama and the sacred, Cohn argues that contemporary notions of melodrama can be found within …

Expedition, Evan M. Crankshaw

Graduate School of Art Theses

Exoticism presents fantasy constructs of Otherness which make up a discourse of problematic “truths.” This discourse is reflected and perpetuated in culture-items (art, literature, music, etc.) which can be identified as “exotica.” On one level, exotica simply reinforces these “truths,” but it also offers potential revelations relating to the exotic construct itself, a collection of fictions so elaborate and vast that it may be said to have its own history. Exotica can be described as the reflexive form of that alternate history; it is also a fantasy zone which reveals a desire on the part of the exoticizer to escape …

Seth Czaplewski Thesis, Seth P. Czaplewski

Graduate School of Art Theses

My work investigates the history of production and how human interactions have been affected by shifts in production over the course of the past two hundred years in the United States: the pre-industrial, Industrial Revolution, and the post-industrial age. The changes that occurred in society as a result of how production shifted from era to era informs my artistic practice and productions, which address areas neglected in the wake of progress. At the onset of each era, the technological advances initially appeared to be beneficial to society and people shifted from being locally oriented to being globally oriented.

My historical …

A Composed Space, Adam S. Hogan

Graduate School of Art Theses

My practice is invested in expanding our conscious scope—revealing phenomena and observations, and presenting the information to the viewer through auxiliary channels. Using the language of minimalism, cinema, and abstraction I create technologically sophisticated systems to produce spaces of contemplation (a meditative space challenging the ephemeral relationships between our sensorial perceptions, space, and time).

Material, space, and technology become instruments for composition manifesting as silent experimental cinema (created and controlled sonically). My work seeks to illuminate our conscious scope through the succession of frames.

Finding Cathartic Beauty In Trauma And Abjection, Christy R. Kirk

Graduate School of Art Theses

Inspired by the dichotomy of beauty and the grotesque in relation to the female body, I set out to both find a balance and interrupt the balance between the two with my artistic practice. Defining beauty as something more significant and meaningful than a pretty image and the abject as something that inspires repulsion, I sought to find connection between the two. Through creating abject textures surrounding nude female forms, I discovered an underlying trauma latent in the artistic expressions of my work. The process of creating abject works of art has lead to catharsis and posttraumatic growth in my …

Exodus Hd, Christopher J. Thompson

Graduate School of Art Theses

To express the dramaticism of the themes in my work, I have written the following document in a pseudo-satirical voice, expressing both my interest in science fiction and my own eagerness to accept the profoundness of the Internet’s connectivity in my life. The sensational nature of the writing is both prophetic and personal, conflating manticism with art making. Due to the interlacing of the web’s influence with our individual lives, we must pay tribute to its power and guidance through endorsements of search engines and online marketplaces that have built a new world of convenience. This world of convenience is …

In Pursuit Of Distant Horizons, Whitney Polich

Graduate School of Art Theses

Our lasting human desire to rationalize the phenomena of nature manifests as ceaseless attempts to fix fluid landscapes within the rigid boundaries of an image. Each landscape with its own physical language, rooted in the temporal and subjective particularities of sense—taste, touch, smell, sound, and sight—requires a lived immersion to be read and as such, eludes static interpretation or expression. The physical horizon provides both a physical and metaphorical reminder of the limits we constantly find ourselves confronted with—those limits of perception, language, and knowledge—as we seek to expresses the immediate experience and profound vastness of a world far exceeding …

Remixing Remix Remixed, Joshua Cornelis

Graduate School of Art Theses

Remix culture plays an important role in the expression and communication of visual art. It is a discourse by which I strive to directly engage culture by cutting and pasting together already existing visual information. By doing so, I strive to promote an exchange of ideas and feelings between juxtaposed pieces. In this age of post-digital era collage, I am interested in the meaning and propaganda associated with collage and assemblage and the modes of disseminating messages via cut-and-paste.

By juxtaposing images that differ in style, content, and meaning, I am able to build panoramas of fractured identities that manifest …

Video Science: Cinema As Sense Organ, Rosalynn Stovall

Graduate School of Art Theses

The moving image exists at the interstice of art and science not only because it acts as a representation of human sight but also because it exemplifies the observational processes related to the scientific gaze. As such, film and video have extended human sense-perception properties by mimicking and manipulating the natural processes of the optic nerve. The capture – and in many cases, the simulation – of movement generated from the progression of images reveals a new sphere of human consciousness as it relates to the dimensions of motion, space, and time.

The conceptualization of the time-element present in film …