Art and Design Commons^™

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 …

The Standard Model, Manny Llanura

CGU MFA Theses

Photography is my medium. “The Standard Model” is a body of work created from photographs of the Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019 Collection runway.

Each final work starts with over a thousand photos that become the raw materials from which I eventually produce my final piece. Deep in the final piece are the lights, shadows, hues, tones of a themed shoot.

I believe that the ability to focus on what is in front of you is not directly proportional to how detailed the image is. My goal is to incite appreciation of what humans have done or …

Everything, Everything Seemed Once-Upon-A-Time, Denisse Leung Liu

CGU MFA Theses

The pleasant feeling of being relaxed is what I want the viewer to feel with my work. The art I make is the source of peacefulness and tranquility I treasure, in a way that there is tranquility and absence of noise, yet it whispers quietly to the viewer.

[Rebelution 17]: Gender Bender, Francesca Louise Inocentes

Scripps Senior Theses

Fashion embodies what is accepted and valued in a given culture or society and empowers individuals by building self-confidence, enabling them to express themselves authentically through their bodies and garments. The gender binary, perpetuated by the mainstream fashion industry, marginalizes individuals who do not conform to it. In Rebelution 17, I utilize clothing design and photography to empower and liberate individuals who do not conform to the standards of beauty in regards to gender identity and acceptability. The finished works are featured in a Lookbook – a digital and physical collection of photographs used to market fashion – designed …

Vida En Sombras, Tommy Canales Burns

CGU MFA Theses

Verisimilitude. What is reality? Subconsciously we are acting out and absorbing information collating data and in turn responding with instincts. Learning processes to view and shape this world. I think of the Hermann Hesse’s doppelganger, the idea of a shadow self. Group identities can also have strange shadow selves. It is bizarre to look back at history and see the changing context of social norms, fashions, traditions, scientific, philosophical, and political thought. Art is a sign of the times, creating space for the inner dialogue of collective consciousness to be purged and hashed out.

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.

Dissociative Anonymity: Performative Photography And The Use Of Uncanny Disguise, Catherine G. Poole

Scripps Senior Theses

In my thesis project, I aim to explore the ways in which we can perform parts of our identity by hiding the body through the use of performative disguises. These characters transgress the boundaries between societal norms and abject interactions. In these costumes, I hope to find whether or not the multiple facets of our identities can be distilled into one character--whether the self can be shifted into another character for a constructive narrative.

The Beautiful Corpse: Violence Against Women In Fashion Photography, Susan C. Bryant

Scripps Senior Theses

My senior thesis deals with contemporary depictions of sexualized violence against women in fashion photography. Images of bloodied, bruised, and dead-looking models have proliferated in fashion magazine editorials and advertisements since the 1970s and I want to explore why sexualized violence is seen as sexy and compelling advertising, in light of the fact that domestic violence is the greatest cause of injury to women in America. I produced my own fashion photographs in locations of actual female homicides in Los Angeles County, particularly those nearest to Claremont, with the use of The Los Angeles Times online homicide database, which pinpoints …

Since 1980, Sookyung Bae

CGU MFA Theses

Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Apparent Fate, 2010: Dismantling The Notion Of Photographic Truth, Kelsey M. Macdonald

Scripps Senior Theses

When creating a current work, artists cannot ignore the images that have preceded theirs. The history of a medium and the related history of subject matter is vital to the meaning of a new art work. Each sign and symbol has a connotation out of the artists’ control. The developed meaning of a symbol is inseparable for the viewer regardless of the acknowledgment of that meaning by the artist. To work with imagery and not address it’s historical context is to perpetuate it’s meaning. The only way to not state what has already been stated is to critically engage with …