Art and Design Commons^™

Pineapple, 022, Conversation – Behind The Cover Art, Jesse W. Standlea

The STEAM Journal

Many sources date the pit-firing process as a 30,000 plus years-old ceramic firing technique. Every year I take my AP 3D Design class to the beach to fire ceramic pieces using this method. Being a contemporary sculptor who shows in Los Angeles I have always appreciated pit-fired pieces but never used one in my own art practice until now. A connection between the first method of firing ceramics and my art practice seemed unrelated. The title for my piece might add to the disconnect; and yet these seemingly unrelated elements force the work into a place where the artistic process …

Between Material And Landscape, Martin Mcdermott

Masters Theses

Clay is a binary material. It is soft and malleable and yet becomes as hard as rock when subjected to immense heat. Its responsiveness to manipulation makes it well suited to recording touch in landscapes of surface. Its versatility makes it the ideal material for expressing other types of antipodal concepts: dark and light, banal and profound, temporary and durable. The sculptural objects in this body of work represent many of these contrasts through an investigation of various historical concepts within a broad definition of landscape art. The hollow clay “rocks” reference caves and grottos through apertures in the surface …

Empathic Exchange, Yu-Jung Kim

Masters Theses

My work explores the empathy existing between humans and animals. It is possible for humans and animals commune empathically by staring at one another. With empathy, human and animal connection can be built; comfort and healing can be found through this form of exchange. Non-verbal communication with animals may not often be thought about seriously. I aim to share the experience of empathy, comfort and power of healing through communication with animals I have felt, and to awake people with similar experiences in their memory through my works.

As a child, I thought I could not be truly understood by …

Memory: Tangible Decay & Growth, Rebecca J. Buglio

Masters Theses

What if the objects we had as children grew up with us and showed the decay, alterations, and new growth that occurred to us?

Natural sciences focus, in part, on the endless cycle of growth and decay. Through researching this topic, the question of current versus past arose to question how the mind evolves with age. As a ceramic artist, clay offers a memory through touch by taking the shape and form the creator wills it to have while still able to have movement and force of its own through the molecular makeup and processes it goes through in firings. …

Tableau Vivant [Living Picture], G J Christopher Drobnock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With an overwhelming concern for functionality, the design world and industrial production have moved far beyond the pure necessity of the handmade object. With the paper coffee cup, disposable utility is the primary goal; afterwards the service is performed and the thing is discarded. On the other hand, the clay object can be used and reused allowing a personal relationship to form between the user and the object, the maker and the user. My work is meant to reconnect us with the haptic; the tacit knowledge of the physical. I want the user to think of a place beyond the …

When The Wind Stops, Qwist Joseph

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

The sculpture I make exemplifies my interest in objects, their creation and our tendency to covet them. Humans have developed elaborate and diverse systems to categorize and dictate the value of things. As a culture we elevate and protect Art and its display is a platform in which this object obsession is exaggerated. Through the podium of art exhibition, I explore the idea of object-ness. I question the parameters around what defines something as an object, and more specifically what’s necessary to transform that thing into Art. Further, I wonder where the line is drawn between Art and the ordinary; …

Tangled Knot Tied, Shalya Marsh

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

I make formal studies in layering that use abstraction and visual symbols as a metaphor for the complex relationship we as individuals have with language, interpretation, and human interaction. My current work explores ideas of connection through representations of knots and tangles. While knots can signify protection and strength, tangles allude to anxiety.

I rely heavily on format and structure as a means of conveying content. Repetition, contrast, and layering of elements suggest the complexity of relationships. The work is composed of a series of tied knots or tangles, single knot forms in multiple variations, or a combination of multiple …

Tile History: A Brief Presentation, Virginia Raguin

Documentation

Slide presentation used to introduce the art and history of ceramic tiling to participants who worked on Lungs of the Planet, a tile mural created as a collaborative art project by students in the Natural World Cluster of the Monserrat First Year Program at the College of the Holy Cross. The project was led by Virginia Raguin, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the College. Particpants included students, faculty, staff and community members.

The presentation includes photographic examples of ceramic tiling in architecture located in Jerusalem and Istanbul.

Chasing The Craze: When The Right Variables Are Off-Stage, Tina M. Gebhart

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

A smooth white glaze, (Figure 1) with a buttery surface and smooth breaking on edges, just enough change of whiteness in a crevice pooling, seemingly opaque when thicker, but with a certain glow, a slight grey showing through. It crazes slightly, a fine webbing of cracks. Not enough to be decorative crazing, and not enough crazing to make me abandon the glaze, but enough crazing that I would like it to be gone. I prefer a system-oriented testing approach as a kind of universal order. A simple Unity Molecular Formula grid mapping method typically shows a boundary line of crazed …

Sensible Nonsense, Timothy J. Woodbrey

Theses and Dissertations

“Truth happens only by establishing itself in the strife and the free space opened up by truth itself. Because truth is the opposition of clearing and concealing, there belongs to it what is here called establishing.”[i]—Martin Heidegger

All things contain their own individual existence. When I look at objects I notice material, tradition, individual history. These are starting points for my imagination to seed and germinate. My ideas are fragmented, nonlinear and nonsensical to others but they hold honesty to me. Honesty is powerful and is worth sharing.

This document is an examination of my work during …

Artscience, Dustin Swiers

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My thesis show opened on Friday, March 11, 2016 at the 410 project's art gallery, located in downtown Mankato.

The artwork consisted of sculptures displayed on pedestals, hanging on the walls, sitting on specifically constructed arrangements, and hanging from the ceiling. The materials I used to create these sculptures have a dramatically contrasting appearance, but have one universal similarity. At some point most of the materials used were liquid or fluid. I used metals, ceramics, hand blown glass, plastics, and wax. I like to work with these materials in that fluid state because of the added flexibility and forgiveness they …

The Ceramic Body: Concepts Of Violence, Nature, And Gender, Chrysanna R. Daley

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the connection between women and nature, specifically the violence that has been inflicted upon them both and how it is interrelated. I positioned my research within the field of Ecofeminism, which critiques the language we (as a Western culture) use to associate women with nature and vice-versa. Traditionally, women are more often associated with nature than men are, and the environment is personified as “Mother Nature”. I argue that uncritically gendering nature as “female” is problematic because of the associations we typically make between the two, and the expectations and values we assign to …

House Of God: Ma Thesis, Michael James Cimino

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

What I tried: I considered the viewer more in this exhibition that any other prior. I created this work specifically to provoke response. I strategically exhibited objects deeply rooted in personal meaning, and mass culture in the Midwest. I intended to illicit a broad range of interpretation without any supplementary didactic. I wanted to observe the reaction of the view when no answer is given. I wanted to hear your interpretation without my own influencing yours. What happens with the responsibility falls on the view to make up their own mind, rather than simply responding to a predicated statement.

Why …