Art and Design Commons^™

Ambivalent Images, Beloved Objects: Building Bridges Between Picture Books And The Tangible World, Danielle Ridolfi

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

"Ambivalent Images, Beloved Objects" examines how pedagogical theories prioritizing objects and direct sensory experiences in early childhood can be applied to the creation of picture book illustrations. In doing so, it positions picture books as educational tools, and advocates for the importance of using them not to recreate nature, but to connect readers with the tangible world of natural and human-made objects that our digital-driven culture eclipses. It strives towards a unifying pedagogical and aesthetic philosophy that accomplishes what illustrator Eric Carle characterizes as a bridge between the tactile world of objects and the world represented in illustrations.

This exploration …

Contact Sheet, Jiwoong Jang

Theses and Dissertations

Jiwoong’s thesis paper is a field guide to how he navigates his curiosity with photography, sound, sculpture, ceramic, and installation. Connecting fragments through narrative vignettes, he underscores how chance, walking, light, time, and uncertainty inform his art.

Fragmented Relationships, Drew M. Dzurko

Student Projects

Relationships are often viewed through a binary lens. This greatly oversimplifies their intricacy, yet they can be one of the most challenging human experiences to navigate. Drawing on the symbolisms of memories Drew created digital images that embody these memories related to lost relationships. Using a binary image converter Drew created a visually simple image made up of only two colors down to each pixel. He then brought these images into a text editor on a computer which would display the raw code of an image. This revealed long strings of machine learning code that are indecipherable to the human …

Personal Equation, Nicholas Hobbs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The body of this paper is a formatted version of text which exists natively on the web and is accessible at www.personalequation.art. Its non-linear narrative is meant to accompany and mirror, not describe, the artwork in the exhibition. The following two paragraphs are copied from the exhibition statement accompanying Personal Equation, which is on view in the Reading Room at the Fayetteville Public Library from April 3 to June 30, 2023: A personal equation is one that attempts to account for the inevitable role of subjectivity in scientific observations. The term was coined by astronomers in the 18th century who, …

Ni De Aqui Ni De Alla..., Jc Santistevan

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

Ni de aqui ni de alla navigates the complexities of belonging to two cultures-Mexican

and American-while not fully identifying with either. By visualizing liminal spaces,

migratory patterns, and quotidian subject matter the work serves as a metaphor for

the Latinx experience in the United States-an experience defined by conflicts between

conformity and resistance, individuality and community, spirituality and secularism,

alienation and belonging. "Black and white are the colors of photography…..they

symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair," Robert Frank once said, and it is

through a nonlinear installation of black and white imagery that I seek to describe the

push …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

Site, Sight, Swipe, Prada Marfa: A Case Study In Public Art, Cultural Tourism, And Image-Based Social Media Engagement, Ha'ani Joy Hogan

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Through a case study of Prada Marfa, a site-specific public art sculpture located in West Texas, this dissertation examines the connection of public art, cultural tourism, and image-based social media engagement. Little scholarship that combines all three areas of study exists. To fill this gap, this study incorporates five methods of research to determine how one public art sculpture's existence can contribute to its surrounding community by prompting economic activity and influencing the way that community is seen through a public lens. The five methods encompass a historical analysis of news articles about The City of Marfa and Prada …

Fraz, Caitlyn Frazer

Master's Theses

Phrase /fraz/ noun:

A small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause.

Frazer:

My last name. A word that encapsulates my family's stories, creativity, and legacy.

Fraz:

The title of my thesis show, it combines both the former words into one. Fraz is the idea of pulling family history and distilling it into visual storytelling through graphic design and creating the conceptual unit that is me. I am a unit that is multifaceted and strive to have work that is dimensional and encompass aspects of all different media including photography, sculpture, …

Above And Below, Kristen Brown

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My recent graduate artwork uses abstraction of form to describe the intersection between humans and the environment while relating the landscape of our skin to the ever-changing qualities of the natural landscape surrounding us. The photographic material is stressed into three dimensional shapes, producing creasing and tears as it is being contorted by human impact. At the same time that I am creating something new, I am manipulating artifactual evidence of something that already exists in everyday life. This is akin to how our bodies are distorted by outer influence, as well as our own autonomy. Above and below the …

Documentary Photography And Curatorial Practice In The United States, 1902-1967, Katie Hegebarth

Master of Arts in Art and Design Theses

Documentary photography has been a historically difficult medium to define. Is it art, or journalism or somewhere in between? Over time, the medium has undergone several redefinitions as photography became more accessible to the masses through technological advances, and its inclusion in museum spaces. By examining the history of photography, the elitist motivations of museums in the early twentieth century, and the curatorial practices of landmark photographic shows organized by Alfred Stieglitz of the Photo-Secessionist movement, Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration, and Beaumont Newhall, Edward Steichen, and John Szarkowski of the Department of Photography at MoMA, this paper …

Chez Henri Cookbook Redesign, Izzy Kelly

Graphic Communication

Chez Henri is a redesigned version of a cookbook that Bonnie Henry, my grandmother, has curated over the past 50 years. The original book was entitled “A Collection of Recipes From Friends and Family”, but I decided to rename it to “Chez Henri”, a phrase that was written on a sign outside of her home for almost 20 years. Bonnie Henry is an excellent cook and her recipes include many salads, soups, entrees, and dishes that most people don’t see everyday. Chez Henri contains photography that depicts these recipes, notes from the chef, and clear cut instructions that are easy …

Vitality, Bernadette K. Curl

Student Projects

Vitality is a study of life, joy, and motion. It is in response to the portraits of models in endless magazines made to look as though they mourn their own vitality, standing stock-still and vaguely bored. These images are also made as archival evidence that, as Phil Ochs said: “In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.”

These portraits were made under studio lighting on medium format, high speed, black and white negative film, and medium format, colour positive film. The materials are chosen for their ability to capture truth over fact.

I asked my subjects beforehand to …

Crochet As An Allegory, Maeve R. Wallace

Student Projects

I have created a series of photographic installations that are inspired by the work of feminist and queer thinkers. I draw parallels between the manipulation of a weaved material through crochet and the way feminists work to continually create change. I find that the physicality, patience, detail, and repetition that comes with crocheting yarn or creating a photo mimics the ways in which activists, and more specifically feminists, have worked to combat the oppression and intersectional oppressions they face. String theory, potentially a theory of everything, proposes that in the quantum realm, stings, or loops, are the foundation of all …

Genius Loci: Capturing The Distinctive Roman Spirit Through Pochoir, Carlee Mcguire

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone explores the concept of genius loci through photographic and artistic exploration and does so through a lens of study set on Rome, Italy. The first major goal of the process has been to discover the elements, moments, physical textures, and other design elements that comprise the genius loci of a city or space. The second goal has been to partake in a process that can be used by myself and other designers in efforts to make more conscious design decisions — gaining a better understanding of ‘sense of place’ can assist designers in straying from globalized, placeless design.

Urban Portraiture: Capturing The Personality Of Place, Hannah Gray

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone aims to develop a prototypical process using digital photography to document the essence of place. A final visual narrative element is created with the intent of being utilized by architectural designers to draw inspiration and understanding from the setting in which they are designing. The process involved four distinct phases that culminated in a single narrative montage. These four phases included the actual photographing of the city, evaluating and taxonomy of the photographs into categories that best embodied the spirit of the place, the altering of individual photographs into their essential parts and pieces, and the process of …

A Story Of The Social Life Of Yulupa Cohousing, Kayla Ho

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone is a study of the lived social experience of one cohousing community. Cohousing communities are designed with the intention of fostering a community with a mixture of privately-owned units and publicly shared spaces and responsibilities. The study is conducted at a significant point in American history: these communities are a fast-growing phenomenon in the United States yet they remain unknown and/or unattainable to many Americans.

Qualitative information from the community’s current residents is gathered by using research tools of interviewing and photography. Interviews were completed virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographs were created during a three-day visit …

Functionally Intense Training (F.I.T.) Multimedia Rebranding Package, Kaitlin Manger

Honors Projects

Branding and social media outreach to customers is essential to small businesses that are looking to grow their business and attract new members. This paper covers the development and production of a multimedia rebranding package that was produced for the high-intensity, CrossFit-like gym in Wapakoneta, Ohio, owned and operated by Steve Knapke, Functionally Intense Training. This gym has been open since 2013 but has no consistent social media content or branding content for the business. This project includes the deliverables of 10 videos, 20 photos, 5 graphic design templates, a new logo, and new branding guidelines. Along with the final …

Ours, Emma J. Vitallo

Student Projects

This semester I have been researching and reading about artistic relationships, specifically Just Kids – detailing the collaborative partnership between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. I began working collaboratively and using my peers’ photographic knowledge and personal practices to understand more about my own photographic practice, style, and rituals. By making environmental portraits on a whim of five of my closest peers turned mentors turned collaborators and friends I am documenting our shared experiences in locations they occur. These locations are specific and significant to our connections – each of us shares these spaces with each other, our ideas, our …

The Silent Rage Of Being Loved, Michelle R. Albertson

Theses and Dissertations

The Silent Rage of Being Loved is a multimedia installation working primarily with photography, video, and sculpture. It explores the nuanced ways in which memory, grief, and veneration manifest physically in my life through objects and my body. My proposed thesis installation is intended as a place of refuge for my audience amongst a shrine-like space and for us, collectively, to reexamine and widen the ways in which we experience mourning and grief.

Reclaiming The Appropriated Space Through Care, William P. Glaser

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis navigates the complex and (at times) frustrating experience of balancing caregiving and art making while attempting to converge both practices into one. The collaboration of caregiving and art making serves as a potential solution for those that struggle with the seemingly unreconcilable stratification of both activities.

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

Offerings, Diana C. Patin

LSU Master's Theses

These photographs and writing are a set of offerings, collected as part of an intensive examination of myself and my contentious relationship with self-image. I first established which traits in my personality represent me best. I landed on my fatness, my queerness, my southernness, and my penchant for caring. Then I took a deep dive into each of those four themes with the objective of uncovering both the areas of exaltation and spaces of hurt within them. The images that result are both confrontational and gentle. It is my hope that the uncompromising honesty within these offerings communicates that while …

In-Between The Wind, Victoria L. Vontz

LSU Master's Theses

In-between the Wind is a compilation of poems, short stories, theories, photographs, and drawings that reveal my relationship and connection with nature. Through prose, I expose and question my place in the world, how I see it and how I am connected to it, while photographic images and drawings leave space for thoughtful and reflective meditation. The work draws upon memories, discusses theories of connection, and aims to record ephemeral moments that often seem to be too easily forgotten.

The Reenactment : "Object" As Performance, Yue Jiang

Masters Theses

Throughout history, women have endured many obstacles placed upon them in both the private and public spheres. Women are pressured to achieve an ideal beauty standard and the expectation to fulfill the obligation of traditional domestic roles. As a 23-year old Chinese woman who daily faces these pressures, I intentionally critique them using my body as the site and the pressure as subject. Through acts of performance, using handmade and mass-produced objects consumed daily by women, I highlight the insidious pressures and expectations placed upon women’s bodies. By utilizing the format of photography to document the discomfort of “wearing” or …

Made Of Water, Covered In Mud, Nicole Norman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My fixation on water as metaphor is a product of my cosmic design; Scorpio sun, Pisces moon, Pisces rising. I am made of water, begging to be held. Anything liquid has this same desire. I use my art practice to examine the fluidity of physical and digital spaces; how they transform almost constantly. This is only possible through the use of containers that give form to abstract ideas and make them easier to drink (read: digest). Containers can vary in size and shape, but their purpose remains the same. A drinking glass, a swimming pool, a creek bed. These are …

In-Between Spaces, Trinity Kai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In-between Spaces is a paper based in personal narrative that uses Critical Race Theory and art to analyze the history of photography and systems of discrimination facilitated by hegemonic culture. Body is at the center as a symbol of the physical and psychological impacts systemic inequalities have on people that are classified as other and how one can be absent and present in institutional and public spaces.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Waves: An Exploration Of Emotions, Aminatta Mbow

Honors College Theses

Emotions are at the core of every human being. They can dictate the decisions we make whether we are aware of it or not, and can be shown in many ways. For my honors thesis, I created a magazine that explores emotions. I utilized my skills and knowledge in portrait photography to showcase the complexities of happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety. I also employed my skills in design to not only present these feelings but evoke that specific emotion in my audience with ideas such as color theory and photographic psychology. Color theory encompasses a multitude of practices on how …

Stranger’S Window, Nation’S Mirror, Kyoko Hamaguchi

Theses and Dissertations

In this text, I consider my identity as a Japanese immigrant in the United States during a global pandemic and its impact on my understanding of home as a liminal space. In particular, I discuss notions of home in relation to my work as an artist including two works that utilize the home-sharing platform Airbnb and three works that deal with the dichotomy of inside and outside.

Girl In Action: Junior Bazaar, 1945-1948, Rose D. Bishop

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an overview of Junior Bazaar, a short-lived magazine for teenage girls published by Hearst between 1945-1948. Under the supervision of art director Lillian Bassman the magazine featured a variety of aesthetic devices — such as photomontage, asymmetrical layouts, the selective use of color, and playful placement of graphic forms — in efforts to distinguish itself from other publications on the market and construct a visual space specific to its teenage readers. Bassman’s unconventional stewardship of Junior Bazaar made room for an up-and-coming set of photographers, including Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Louis Faurer, and other …