Art and Design Commons^™

Nostalgic Neighbors: Engaging The Single-Story Of Wholesomeness, Jeffrey Johnson

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In exploring our pasts, memories aren’t made real until they’re articulated out loud. This critical essay offers a meditation on meaning-finding activities of the twentieth century. I offer a definition of the word wholesome, as it exists as both an aesthetic, and as a way to find personal connection with others. As an Illustrator and Storyteller, I carry a responsibility for depicting a way that the world may be remembered. When our stories paint only a picture of a triumphant and moral people we do not only a disservice to the struggles of those same people, but also to the …

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …

Other Bodies: Deconstructing Visual Binaries By Subverting Visual Representations Of The Other., Amaiya L. Crawford

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The goal of creating my sculptural work, The Avian, is both to broaden the visual categorization of sentient bodies, as well as to deconstruct binary thinking regarding the way that bodies display racialized, gendered, and sexualized characteristics. The Avian does this by subverting visual and aesthetic tropes that construct labels like human, monster, and animal. Subversion acts as the main design influence that illustrates how the display how othered bodies can be used to highlight the constructed nature of how we construct humanity. This paper posits that by acknowledging an expansion in visual categorization, in addition to further pushing opportunities …

Beyond Elements And Principles: Bringing A Visual Culture Curriculum To High School Art, Julie Winston

Theses

The elements and principles of design are the building blocks that art students use to create a composition. These foundational tools have been used by art students throughout their elementary and secondary school years, as required by state and national art standards. This project is an example of how to enrich high school introductory art classes by implementing lessons that include visual culture education. A combination of successful art museum teen programs and existing visual culture curriculum were used to aid in the development of a semester’s worth of lessons that emphasize visual culture. Visual culture curricula produces more student …

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

‘How Has Art Refocused Consumers’ Attention Within A Visual World Through The Exploration Of Package Design?’, Frances Hackney

Honors Theses

The art of design has refocused the attention of consumers as they have entered into a visually demanding world. While this concept is complex and perplexing, stemming from endless influencing factors, the elements of design can be broken down into areas of focus to dissect the visual world of marketing. A simple way to communicate the influence of design on the consumers is to unveil the answers through the study of art.

In this thesis, the study will turn to the world of art to learn more about consumerism. The goal is to understand how visual images and the ongoing …

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid: Exploring The Rhetoric Of The Monster In Political And Horror Posters Of The 20th Century, Julia Lane

Theses : Honours

Australia’s current social and political climate takes us back to a time when there was a strongly perceived fear of the other. This fear is heavily reflected by the monsters which we, as a society, create. This research unearths the constructed monsters of the 20th Century for a critical assessment of what makes a monster. More specifically, it focuses on depictions of monsters within political and horror poster designs. The purpose of this research is to identify and respond to the rhetoric apparent within and between poster images, specifically concerning the cultivation of fear of the other through the …