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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Art and Design

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla May 2024

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …


Things That Are Long, Frankie Gutierrez May 2024

Things That Are Long, Frankie Gutierrez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Bigfoot has become an important motif for Frankie Gutierrez, especially since his transition in 2021. The characters in this exhibition showcase the deeply personal exploration of transness and non-mainstream trans identities, the in-depth observations of others, and their interactions with transgender people. He compares transness to the likeness of bigfoot, typically an elusive and hard-to-find character that everyone suspects, but has rarely been seen. Evidence of their existence surrounds us, but only those with open minds can truly see them. The characters in this show look like you and me, and no one at all. This exhibition is not meant …


Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao May 2023

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.


To Remember You By, Tesla Kawakami Apr 2022

To Remember You By, Tesla Kawakami

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project is an illustrated zine memoir of queer love, dating, and growing up, framed by what was left behind. I explored my dating history through illustration, writing and material objects. Each section was about a different person, and was structured through a cut paper illustration of the item that they left behind at my house. I used a variety of different illustration techniques including cut paper, collage, painting, and found materials.


Heather C. Lou Interview, Katie O’Reilly Jun 2019

Heather C. Lou Interview, Katie O’Reilly

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: heather c. lou, m.ed. (she/her/hers) is an angry gemini earth dragon, multiracial, asian, queer, cisgender, disabled, survivor/surviving, depressed, and anxious womxn of color artist based in st. paul, minnesota. her mixed media pieces include watercolor, acrylic, gold paint pen, oil pastel, radical love, & hope. each piece comments on the intersections of her racial, gender, ability, & sexual identities, as they continue to shift and develop in complexity each day. her art is a form of healing, transformation, and liberation, rooted in womxnism and gender equity through a racialized borderland lens. heather works in education as an administrator. …


Womxn Of Color In Print Subculture: 1970-2018, Lenora Yee Jan 2019

Womxn Of Color In Print Subculture: 1970-2018, Lenora Yee

Summer Research

My research is rooted in the archival analysis of primary alternative print mediums produced by womxn of color collectives. Through the exploration of numerous databases and archives, I analyzed and explored the different ways in which the written word was, and continues to be, utilized by womxn of color as a site for activism. Focusing on the work of five different womxn of color collectives spanning from 1970-2018, I evaluated works by the collectives Asian Lesbians of the East Coast (ALOEC), Las Buenas Amigas (LBA), The Groit Press (African Ancestral Lesbians), the book #NotYourPrincess Voices of Native American Women and …


How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill Apr 2018

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.


Emilio Peral Vega. Pierrot/Lorca: White Carnival Of Black Desire. London: Tamesis, 2015., Enrique Álvarez Feb 2018

Emilio Peral Vega. Pierrot/Lorca: White Carnival Of Black Desire. London: Tamesis, 2015., Enrique Álvarez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Emilio Peral Vega. Pierrot/Lorca. White Carnival of Black Desire. London: Tamesis, 2015.


Transcendence Of Familial Expectations In Alison Bechdel’S Graphic Novels, Anna Priore May 2017

Transcendence Of Familial Expectations In Alison Bechdel’S Graphic Novels, Anna Priore

Honors Projects

This thesis focuses on the graphic novels "Are You My Mother?" and "Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel. I discuss the ways in which Bechdel highlights her own family’s atypical structure and how the ambiguous presentation of familial roles causes readers to see that being in a “queer” family is actually ordinary, just as being in an “ordinary” family is queer.