Ceramic Arts Commons^™

Welcome To The Sitting Garden At The Busy Hands Museum, Stacie Sabady

Theses and Dissertations

I wanted to attend VCU to learn how to unravel my mind and find the words to describe it. While I did make progress in that area, my surprise discovery is that I need to unravel my body too. It has become unbalanced from years of neglect. When working, I find solace through escape. I find a positive outlet for my perfectionist tendencies. I find a way to visually illustrate my obsessive qualities. Throughout the years of these findings, I have ignored my body pleading with me to take it easy. I have always honored the materials and the tools, …

Vesptures, Nyasha T. Chigama Ms

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This is an invitation into the delicate space of living between two worlds, of having feelings of happiness and sadness at the same time. Delicate emotions and situations which are not easy to share but are paramount in my research of what it takes to want more out of being just a parent, come from a certain country than the one I am living in, and navigate between two cultures. This is a journey around some of the experiences I have faced when I found myself in a different space other than the one I grew up in. The …

Crafting Community: A Ceramics Center, Nadia Mechboukh

Theses and Dissertations

For artisans, being part of a community can facilitate engaging with the public. Networking and collaborating with peers are vital for building meaningful relationships that can lead to mutual inspiration and learning opportunities. By strengthening the connection between society and various forms of craft, we can weave invisible threads that link the stories that craft tells with the time and place in which they were created. Pottery is a craft that has existed for thousands of years. Ceramics and clay have carried the history of communities and their ways of living through centuries and have been used as identifiers of …

Frewayni's Garden: Preserving Tigrayan Culture During A Period Of Ethnocide, Gabrielle F. Tesfaye

Theses and Dissertations

The recent and ongoing genocidal war in Tigray, Ethiopia, has witnessed the destruction and looting of countless historical religious sites, ancient manuscripts, and artifacts, leaving Tigray’s remaining cultural heritage extremely vulnerable. Such cultural loss erases a shared understanding across generations, robbing them of their history and identity. My work contributes to the safeguarding of Tigray’s cultural heritage and collective memory, informed by literature on cultural preservation efforts in post-war societies, and a series of interviews with Tigrayans in the diaspora and in Ethiopia.

The outcome of this thesis is embodied in a series of distinct jebenas, traditional Tigrayan clay coffee …

Breaking Bread & Boundaries : Finding Home In Every Bite, Steffi Ann Braganza

Theses and Dissertations

Raised outside of their “passport” countries, Third Culture Individuals (TCIs) often experience a lack of rootedness and belonging, and home is often everywhere and nowhere. Childhood food memories can provide the sense of connection and identity TCIs crave. Four Qatar-raised TCIs, from very different backgrounds share memories of their childhood comfort foods, now hybridized dishes, that reflect their unique third culture experiences. Each dish, in turn, inspired the creation of a bespoke set of cooking /dining ware designed to trigger a specific sensory memory: the sight, smell, touch, or sound associated with the original comfort dish. This specialized cooking/dining ware …