Art and Design Commons^™

Nurture, Lauren Taylor League

Graduate Theses

Nurture is a series of sculptural and performative works created to explore the emotional and psychological effects of objects as they relate to familial memory and the various processes one uses to nurture and express love. These moments incapsulate the need for comfort and connection, the need to be nourished, the need for protection, and the need to remember. The filmed interactions with each individual sculpture evoke the natural relationship of emotional release to the processes of remembering and healing.

By using sculpture as a residue of performance and creating work that serves as a memory of interaction and experience, …

Dust And Shadow, Anna Grant Dean

Graduate Theses

Dust and Shadow is an investigation into systems of order and chaos that exist within the natural and manmade worlds. Human constructs (such as grids) and manmade systems (such as social media) abide in a space that is tangential to the structures and systems that choreograph the functions of the natural world. Exploring how these two very different worlds weave in and out of human existence allows me to examine my relationship to the complex facets of this twenty-first century experience.

My research into chaos and entropy serves as a catalyst for this body of work. Examining the parallels between …

Maladaptive, Megan Thomas

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This ceramics MFA thesis presents themes of environmental and emotional transition through metaphorical bird imagery. The artist juxtaposes humans and ravens, who are capable of adapting to changing environments, with songbirds, who are less capable of surviving change. The artist asks viewers to consider the loss of ways of existing in the world that goes hand in hand with loss of biodiversity. Works include sculpture, sculptural and functional vessels, and drawings.

Surface Levels, Keisha Brathwaite

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Surface Levels are depictions of unobserved and imperceptible realities of many phytoplankton exteriors. The exhibition explores various structures, textures, and repetitious forms from microscopic surfaces of objects that cannot be seen with unaided eyes. Electron microscopy is used to perceive and analyze these otherwise unseeable surfaces in depth. Magnifications provide a reference in creating three- and two-dimensional works that are minimalistic and abstract at a visible level. This abstract 3D/2D image collection is translated into material expressions using acrylic sheets, acrylic ink, and wood as the main media for construction of individual works. Collectively, they serve to make the invisible …

In The Garden, Clare Samani

LSU Master's Theses

My work has focused largely on identity and self-expression, primarily through clothing, pattern, and color as a symbolic content. Having heavily investigated historical costume and clothing from various periods, my attention is drawn to the highly sculptural and ornamented garments of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the rococo, and the baroque. In these colorful and puffed garments, I am attracted to the similarities that I see in nature. How we adorn ourselves mimics various flowers, plants and animals in the pursuit of desire and procreation. Focusing on fabric manipulation, printmaking and sculpture, In the Garden coalesces into ambiguous sculptures that …

Tension In The Curve, S.K. O'Brien

Masters Theses

This artist’s book is a meditative narrative on my making and exploration of materiality.

It’s the best way to allow you entry and understanding into how I see.

Finding the tension in the curve and the lines and shadow and light that are created,

These new forms that appear when stress occurs help me understand…

Recycle Bin (Trashure), Eunhyung Chung

Masters Theses

I am inspired by painful and exhausting situations, fragile or impermanent things that break easily and do not last long, so most of my works are installation or performance which changes as time goes by. I think a lot about the sense of loss and there are two kinds of loss in my work. One is the loss of precious moments and emotions of the past. Since I have so many blissful memories of my childhood related to art, they are the driving force of my artwork and they form the core of my identity. The loss of direction and …

Watermarks : The Catalogue For Home Enthusiasts, Susana Oliveros Amaya

Masters Theses

Not just when tricks are revealed as tricks, but also when they become something else and materials still push one direction but then take a different turn. The wardrobe does not quite fit in your Ford Ka, the shelves are not exactly straight, the bed does not fit the mattress and the cabinets do not line up. The tension between ideals and use opens a space for re-appropriation, one that can reveal and turn its socioeconomic codes against themselves. Perhaps these are precisely the moments of friction when these ideological watermarks can be disrupted.

Hain't, Jarrett Key

Masters Theses

Jarrett Key’s thesis book examines their journey towards understanding their freedom through three lenses: Survival, Transformation and Celebration. Through pointed excavation of the oral histories and lost stories of their upbringing in rural Alabama, their work presents critiques of the historical conditions that sowed the seeds of their contemporary personhood, while simultaneously creating spaces to celebrate beauty, joy, and survival. The objects Key builds perform their freedom and are crafted from materials that reference pieces of their own personal narrative. Highlighting works from Leaving the City (oil paintings on cement), the Hot Comb (forged black steel sculptures), and Slave Ship/ESP …

Wrung From Grave Architectures, Megan Solis

Masters Theses

Found or imagined findings... notes, diary entries, texts, prayers and poems

Disasters are avenues to gain intimacy glory is the constant

What is the skeleton made of, if not to be filled with meat to be piled and molded to bring back life.

pain and memory to be grave architectures, the stuctures that fall,

a plea for humanity: “Am I just a phantom waiting to be ripped from shady ground?”

desperate melancholy we realize that she is

I am

you are

tragic.

guilt to perform, to retraumatize is a punishment and is masochistic. to violently reenact, like haunted ghosts, to …

I - 0, Sanghyun Koh

Masters Theses

This pack of cards is a provisional collection of encyclopedic thoughts and knowledge selectively hoarded for the artist’s comprehension of the world. These cumulative writings, packaged in a distributive form for intellectual play, cover the artist’s past workings, current studies and dormant plans, amassed in the responsible attitude of selection as well as in the irresponsible method of organization. The content of this 144-card deck is basically oriented to the oscillating status of a self seeking the ‘Grasping Totality’ as a human desire and of the ‘Improbability of Reach’ as a human limitation, whether true or false, proven or unproven, …

Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around using a specialized blend of art, design, and craft to interpret political narratives through fabricated products. These objects weave contemporary commentary and consumer indulgences into sculptural cultures. Each product is designed to mimic its own marketed culture—offering an enticingly tactile, interactive experience that is equal parts confusing, concerning, and delightful. The products are accompanied by investment opportunities in the form of popular, limited released merchandized objects, such as hats and patches. Using humor and subtlety, my gamelike installations explore arenas such as agency, autonomy, intimacy, and dueling realities in a time of ecological collapse and cultural …

Tenacity, Order & Disorder, Lucy Manalo

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about empowerment. The idea of using metal comes from my past experience as a welder/machinist in the Air Force. Metal is a tough medium and I believe it conveys the themes of strength and tenacity through it’s materiality.

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Do You Wanna Go Dancing?, Anthony Kascak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transdisciplinary art work within Do you wanna go dancing? unpacks the experience and perception of my interpersonal relationships, as well as the role that touch and introspection has in my visual arts practice and everyday life. I am interested in pairing the act of looking with the sensation of touching through specific installation and arrangement of intimate imagery, ceramic fragments and frames, and manual or digitally fabricated surfaces. The negotiation of these installations orient the viewer to consider their positionality within space, as well as the extent in which distance, intimacy, and vulnerability fluctuate inside these psychological spaces.

The …

Second Chances, Michael Bingham

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

"Second Chances"

"Making the most out of whatever Life gives you".

For decades I have been making art out of things that other people have abandoned, discarded, sent to thrift stores or sold in garage sales. Since my youth I have possessed the ability to find value, usefulness and even see beauty in objects that most others would label as trash.

This is both a curse and a blessing. It requires patience and space to save, appreciate and tolerate the chaos accompanying objects that have not yet found their useful place in the world. Most of the art, including my …

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 …

An Open Bag, Matilde Benmayor

Theses and Dissertations

What do we take with us? How much space should we leave in the bag for what we might find? This paper is a journey from under the rug and onto the pavement. Sowing spiderweb maps I try to make a new city my own.

Who's Mess?, Jordan Stohl

Theses and Dissertations

Sculpture, Video and Painting have become tools for mediating a hyperactive society fetishizing sensory overload.

Memory Bread, Nisiqi

Art + Design Masters Theses

Memory Bread, constituting a daily performance ritual and the post-action objects, seeks to address the generational decline of mother language use in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a post-colonized province of China. I chose to eat sliced white bread in the performance and later casted concrete sculptures as the extension of the action for both substances’ capitalistic nature. Being an invasive material that took over the traditional architectural lifestyle, the use of concrete mirrors the pervasive cultural and ethnic assimilation in China. Meanwhile, the materiality of concrete being a mixture of various substances also metaphors the mixed culture that Chinese-Mongolians …

Good Grief, Madeleine Pearl Buzbee

Senior Projects Spring 2020

“Good Grief” is a memorial project that began with the loss of my childhood best friend, Camille Sdao (1998-2019). She was a light.

Grief is a thing that is carried, compartmentalized, expanded, forgotten, and remembered. Grief is nothing and everything at the same time. Grief explodes, lingers, leaves and returns again. Grief is blue. I know this because Louise Bourgeois, Maggie Nelson, Taryn Simon, the Pacific Ocean, my tears, the sky, my mother, and my grandmother have taught me this. Loss means wading in deep waters for a long time and you must build a boat to stay afloat.

Consumed …

In The Shadows And Folds, Julia Mueller

Senior Projects Spring 2020

In the shadows and folds is the result of a mental scavenger hunt that I began this past year, to uncover myself and find what is hidden in my crevices. It was spurred by my fear of memory loss which had grown to such a size that it sat visible in the back of my mind unaddressed for some time. The reason for this fear is not large but it feels monumental. I have been existing in various states of sadness and disconnect, which have acted like a thick blanket over my mind. This blanket is simultaneously protective and damaging, …

I Think You Were In My Dream Last Night, Josie Cotton

Senior Projects Spring 2020

I Think You Were In My Dream Last Night

I have always worked by creating opportunities for mistakes and then fixing them. I’ve taken inspiration from the things I pick up every day: cups, necklaces, coat hangers, tables, chairs. I’ve taken inspiration from my dreams. They are always based in reality but twisted into a shape I’ve never seen before, and I wonder where these ideas come from. When I wake up, the people or the places I dreamt about are changed forever by a new perspective, out of my control. That is an idea I wanted to sift through …

Dredge The Foundry | For Dirt And Era, Woody Stauffer

Master's Theses

Billions of years are past us and billions of years await. Shaping earthen material into sculptural abstractions is my way to sense and convey the lethargic natural progression of the planet. Fossilization, rot, dirt, plant growth, animal existence, and rust are aesthetics I endow with new perspectives and form through mold making and casting. The dichotomy between the eons of time behind us and the endless possibility of a technological future has inspired the addition of a science fiction aesthetic. To rust these computerized constructed geometric forms demonstrates how futuristic ideals will also wither away. In many ways we are …

Through The Fire, Carolyn Mimbs

Master's Theses

Through exploration of roots and establishing a deep appreciation for family, heritage, and upbringing, Carolyn Mimbs is on a journey into realms of personal discovery and a reconnection to the earth. Distant memories are unearthed through a vintage aesthetic and sensual, vulnerable figures interacting and struggling within their surroundings. Artist and art have traveled along the same path and rhythm with increasing strides as desires are directed towards personal growth and transformation. Learning to retreat into the process of life and art is expressed through creation and disintegration, seeing the path that our corporeal bodies make as they one day …

Accumulation, Erin Mccarty

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This written Thesis is the supporting documentation for Accumulation, a Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at West Virginia University. This exhibition creates an environment in which a viewer can enter. This installation environment is created based on formal elements combined with fantastical elements from the imagination of the artist. The formal choices in the work provoke a positive otherworldly and whimsical response in the viewer. The environment is designed to provide relief from problems in the everyday world through patterns, forms, colors and surfaces. These elements are harvested from the natural world and recombined in a fantastical way. …