Art and Design Commons^™

Elaborations On Thought Process And Practice, George A. Schwab

Theses and Dissertations

An extended statement describing the thought process and practice behind the sculptural work of artist George A. Schwab. Includes short descriptions and documentation of work installed during the Fall 2015 Thesis exhibition at CUNY Hunter's 205 Hudson Street Gallery.

Multiples In Late Modern Sculpture: Influences Within And Beyond Daniel Spoerri’S 1959 Edition Mat, Leda Cempellin

School of Design Faculty Publications

The first Edition mat was founded by Daniel Spoerri in 1959 and recreated in collaboration with Karl Gerstner in 1964 and 1965, with a special Edition mat mot the same year. Consisting of sculptures that change optically, electrically, or through the audience’s physical interventions, this series brought in an innovative idea of multiplication through movement. The potential of mat sculptures for configuration changes within the continuity of their structure in space sets them apart from serial twodimensional works, where any change in the gestalt requires the production of a new copy. This paper reconstructs the genesis of the Edition mat …

Light Sensitive, Andrew Thompson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I am an excremental artist. I do not mean an artist who works with feces or is interested in manure but one whose artwork is expelled through the results of process. As a photographer, I am not as interested in indexing a location, a person or a moment as I am dissolving the structure of photography through the manipulation of photographic materials. I typically photograph landscapes that catch my attention for a myriad of reasons. The commonality between these images is anonymity of place. Hints of location are always present but never accentuated, instead their purpose is akin to a …

The Hero's Journey, Alan Van Fleet

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My ongoing series of assemblages are an expression my modern mythology through the juxtaposition of esoteric symbols and my collection of beloved action figures. Though myth is founded in partial truths and allegories, it has the unique capability to speak about our relationships to one another and the universe. My artwork conceives of anime, comics, and videos games as part of our contemporary mythology.

Inspired by a fusion of pop culture and spirituality, I also draw on the magical properties attributed to flowers, gemstones and other materials to create shrines, altars, and other objects. Juxtaposing these properties, found in my …

Performing Binaries, Humberto Reynoso

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I take a critical view of sociopolitical and cultural issues dealing with homoeroticism andgay politics. I explore gender theories in order to further understand what it means to bemasculine or feminine and how it affects my placement in society. I use art as a tool forexpressing sexual freedom while questioning traditional sexual identity. I'm interested in exploring ideas of the oppressor and the oppressed, and how power becomes an inevitable force (in every society) that creates a hierarchy, consequently establishing control. But what is power? According to various definitions, power is an entity that possesses and or exercises authority or …

A Slight Hysterical Tendency, Allison Baker

Masters Theses

Sexuality, sculpture, and sadness as sites of female subversion.

A woman's internalized suffering and sadness is deployed as an act of resistance. Women have a long lineage of historically tragic female figures, particularly authors and artists that disrupt the status quo by relishing and thriving and they wallow in their sorrow. Women's collective and overwhelming sadness is both a singular and unified protest against cultural and social systems of oppression. Sad girls are bad girls.

[Nos]Otros, Lucia Monge

Masters Theses

Environmental issues are part of our daily conversations but not as common in our everyday considerations. The times call on us to approach things differently. We must find alternative ways to relate to each other and to understand the real issues of our ecology. We cannot perceive the whole through our accustomed senses, so we must open and expand our perception. Art offers that possibility, allowing for points of contact across distance while physically representing that space in between.

How do we relate to other living beings around us, determine what is living, and decide who is part of our …

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Through this essay I describe the theoretical and anthropological ideas that led to the creation of the Cushing Series. An interest in the obsession with photography in popular culture leads to an understanding of the permeation of structured reasoning beyond scientific research and into everyday life. Taking evidence from photography, and philosophy of science I establish the limitations of structured reasoning, both as a way of perceiving the world and as an understanding of identity, and define surface and frame as its physical representation. Using Sartre’s existential theory and phenomenological anthropology I then describe the infinite subjective existence of …

What's Left Over, Bryanna Jaramillo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The MFA thesis exhibition titled, What's Left Over, is comprised of a series of drawings as well as a large painted sculptural installation assembled as a child's fantasy world. The work explores the roots of creativity through the lens of childhood play by assembling an invented world named Lola. By exploring the relationship between the real and the imaginary, the work manifests childhood memories into a form that can be studied and better understood. Lola is an elaborate but clearly handmade world that explores an unresolved past.

Noise., Laura Katherine Polaski

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My research is in the realm of the psychological, the emotional and way these drives manifest physically. The works in Noise. aims to give a physical representation to the non-physical. Research on Affect Theory and the teachings of Silvan Tomkins were paramount to understanding emotional drives and the ways in which they manifest.

The purpose of this research is to understand how emotions are generated and communicated and to ask if specific emotions can be generated upon viewing inanimate objects. I create abstract figurative sculpture, which imitate emotion that has no specific physicality. These works exist with one foot in …

2015 Forces, Scott Yarbrough

Forces

No abstract provided.

Half-Light, Kelly A. Stading

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My work explores concealed emotions such as fear, disgust, rage, resentment and shame. This emotional darkness is the underbelly of life, resulting from situations where people are victims of social pressure, trying to survive with what they have, while trying to achieve social norms. The comfort of a home allows these emotional responses to surface. “Half-Light” focuses on my concealed emotions, bringing them out of the dark to be confronted.

Adviser: Santiago Cal

Littlefield Gallery Visiting Artist Series - Andreas Von Huene: Figurative Sculpture, The University Of Maine

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

Andreas Von Huene will give a lecture on interpretive figural sculpture and the next day he will give figurative sculpture demonstrations in the sculpture studios.

Littlefield Gallery Visiting Artist Series - Mark Herrington: Sculpting In The Moment, University Of Maine College Of Liberal Arts And Sciences

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

Maine Sculptor Mark Herrington will be our Visiting Artist in Residence April 27-May 1, 2015. Herrington will provide daily demonstrations and art talks in and around the Sculpture Studio, free and open to the public and campus community. Herrington will be working with various carving techniques in stone, culminating that week in a finished sculpture that will eventually be placed in a garden on campus designed by Elaine Elliot. This work will also be scanned and we will produce a smaller scale version from a 3D printer on campus.

Breaking Wind, Todd William Pentico

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breaking Wind is a research project and thesis exhibition composed of a series of ceramic objects in conjunction with paintings that explore the systems that dictate belief, the motives that drive curiosity, and biological connection to our surroundings. The work uses the context of the gallery and devices used in museums such as plinths, shelves, and wall text to reinforce the idealized and fictive into something believable.

In the work, Breaking Wind refers to a clumsy breakdown and rethinking of the seemingly simple natural phenomenon, wind. Wind is understood as a natural occurrence that has no origin or any innate …

There's No Place Like Home, Stacey Lynn Rathert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I grew up on a farm in Northeast Kansas, under a big sky that had open views of the fields, pastures, and farmsteads. During that upbringing I learned about hard labor as well as work ethic, and what it took to survive in an often harsh and unforgiving environment. It is these experiences from my formative years, in that environment, where most of the driving force behind my artwork is derived. The work materializes as objects and narratives in sculptural manifestations. The themes range from domestic activities taught to me by the women in my life, to the hands-on, “dirty” …

Leading Edge, Seth Michael Thibodaux

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I was introduced to the airplane at a young age through my father. Since that time I have been obsessed with airplanes. Wanting to be like my father in my youth, I became interested in the construction of these machines. I would spend hours working in the shop with my dad on airplanes and learning the specific structures that made up all sorts of different aircrafts. As I grew older I became fascinated with the history of aviation and where the idea of flight came from. It was this passion and knowledge that led me to my current body of …

Contemporary Kitsch: An Examination Through Creative Practice, Sally Stewart

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This exegesis examines the theoretical concept of contemporary kitsch within a creative practice that incorporates sculptural and installation art. Kitsch is a distinct aesthetic style. Once designated to the rubbish bin of culture, kitsch was considered to be low class, bad taste cheap fakes and copies (Greenberg, 1961; Adorno & Horkheimer, 1991; Calinescu, 1987; Dorfles, 1969). I argue, however, that this is no longer the case. This research critically examines the way in which contemporary kitsch now plays a vital and positive role in social and individual aesthetic life.

Although there are conflicting points of view and distinct variations between …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

More Is The Same, Tyler Reeves Nansen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Nansen, Tyler, M.F.A. Spring 2015

More Is The Same

Chairperson: Associate Professor Trey Hill

More is the Same is the result of my examination of the perception of space in relation to architecture and landscape. By embracing modern concepts of the grid, formalism and design, this compilation of personal experiences and memories, manifests as post-minimal sculptures. However, when considering the hierarchy of importance in my work this involves pure visual perception over any specific narrative. The final product is an exhibition which elicits a perceptual experience for its viewer.

My work is about space and the creation of visual interactions, …

Visual Phallacies, John Howard Cummings

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Roland Barthes wrote that only after removing all of the author's intentions and traces can a work of art truly be perceived by viewers fairly (Barthes). A viewer's perception of the world is influenced by his or her individual subjective history, which is the product of his or her own experiences. But as the author of ceramic work, my influence is ever-present. Clay records every push, pull, spank, squeeze, and poke. It fully records its physical history and as well as my actions upon it. This thesis exhibition asks the question: Can a viewer de-contextualize familiar-but-contentious subject matter and be …

Cute As A Button, Marta R. Finkelstein

Theses and Dissertations

Cute As A Button explores powerlessness, vulnerability, illness and addiction all wrapped up in tender buttons and a cute, cuddly creature. Using animation, sculpture, sound and an intimate space, I surround the viewer in a saccharine nightmare, one that references the dark underbelly of the cute and the sweet. The visual and aural elements are representative of the psychological and emotional states of powerlessness, which are overcome by the act of making and exploring a medium over which I can have complete control.

Belt Melon Grass, Andrew M. Francis

Theses and Dissertations

This essay was written largely after the completion of my thesis exhibition which shares its title. An integral aspect of the work was the after-­hours maintenance it required. Below I describe the unforeseen personal significance that labor came to hold and the way in which it functioned as a healing ritual. Through this work, and those leading up to it, I have a reinvigorated awareness of the importance of therapy as an aspect of my art­making, of which this thesis is a testament.