Art and Design Commons^™

Capes Make The Man, Khalid Mezaina

Masters Theses

‘Capes Make The Man’ is a project that provided me with the opportunity to grow as a designer and an artist. Over the last two years at RISD, I’ve frequently asked myself questions about my place and role as a man in the United Arab Emirates, and what awaits when I move back after graduating. Using personal narratives and cultural symbols from home, I bring to life the archetypes I carry as a mature masculine – my king, warrior, magician, lover and dancer. The end result is a series of bold, wearable capes, resembling stage costumes worn by pop stars …

Summer Peaches And Salt-Tinged Fog, Carolina Jiménez

Masters Theses

The pieces that I create are monuments of the mundane; they are both garments and--through their installation--a place as well. They are portraits of loved people, embodied through hand labor and industrial processes. In this project I destabilize the idea of a memory palace--an imagined rational space which holds memory--and replace it with an ever-expanding memory atmosphere. From a palace of marble and bronze to a fog of salt tinged color, a sky turning, like a cut plum, from orange to purple, music carried on the breeze.

I map individuals, qualities of light, flashes of color and material. Specific moments …

The Evolution Of Ornament, Charlotte Ngaio Fairless

Masters Theses

The Evolution of Ornament is a visual exploration of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, abstracted into three textile panels representing the allure of textural ornamentation. The fragmented shapes depicted are gathered together into asymmetrical layouts that reference dissection and bird plumage. The parallel themes of glamour in the natural world, and the pulsing vivacity of flora and fauna, emerge as a vehicle for the contemplation of the innate irrationality of desire. The viewer is seduced through neon color palettes, tactile materiality, and considered placement of specifically amorphous shapes. They are intended to simulate in the viewer the reaction of a …

Haptic Wonder : The Sensation Of Exquisite Craft, Anjuli Berstein

Masters Theses

I reinterpret traditional woven techniques to create permeable handcrafted screens, by using archival research of historical passementerie and gauze structures. Conceptually, these textiles are an exploration of how wonder can be reached through exquisite craft, a result of valuable raw materials combined with fine hand manipulation. I attempt to distinguish a kind of wonder that exists as a tactile sensation based on haptic sight of minutia, versus the sublime as an experience of optical sight of distant objects.

Cosmic Whatever, Cement Gardens, Luminous Shade, Winifred Vaughan

Masters Theses

My work is an assemblage of disciplines, reductive processes, and accumulated materials interpreted with a painterly quality. Slipping away faster than we can grasp, the unrelenting forces of time propel us forward. Memory fragments our chronologies, transforming our existence into a collaged fabric. Layered transparencies allow the three chapters of this thesis, Cosmic Whatever, Cement Gardens and Luminous Shade, to bleed into each other turning them into composed cycles. These unlikely combinations permit freedom to experience a narrative that is both vast and intimate.