Ceramic Arts Commons^™

Ripe Spoils, Yan Cynthia Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Chen’s practice primarily focus on sculptures and installation. She explores the interplay between the idea of nature and the constructed environment, by examining how language informs what we know. The central thesis, "Ripe Spoils", employs citrus fruits as symbols for bodily experiences and personal identity, investigating their cultural and historical significance. Her sculptures summon the qualities and embedded meanings in materials like paper pulp and clay, wax and citrus fruits, often resulting in abstracted forms evocative of the human body. This thesis paper and exhibition reflect on themes like mortality and the essence of self.

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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.

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.

Negotiating Liberty: Fine Ceramics For The U.S. American Market Before 1860, Presley Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the rise of the consumer market toward the end of the eighteenth century led to the production of decorated fine ceramics that became powerful modes of popularizing new ideas in the United States regarding independence, national symbols, and abolitionism.

Bloody Show, Leonie Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Leonie Weber reflects on how reproductive, domestic, and emotional labor is addressed in her artwork, and her experience as an artist-parent in the art world. Moreover, she specifically discusses mothers who are navigating their own artistic paths. Her practice encompasses sculpture, printmaking, performance, and installation.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Yellow, Sisi Chen

Theses and Dissertations

The following paper is a constellational unpacking of yellow through notes on critical race and feminist theories, myth, science, science fiction, disparate histories, cyborgs, biography, virtuality, materiality, fungi, porcelain, language, internalization, melancholia, smells, sounds, tastes, feels, and more feels.

You Wouldn't Download An Art, Rice Evans

Theses and Dissertations

To quote the late Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, “The internet is a series of tubes.” Like my art practice, these tubes meander through concepts, techniques, and mediums to arrive at a messy, confusing, and overwhelming shared experience of digital life. It is here where we find humor, creativity, and most importantly our own folk culture.

Ties That Bind Us, Christine M. Orr, Christine M. Orr

Theses and Dissertations

when objects converge in a space

they start a dialogue of their lives

lives that become entangled with your life

your memory

objects are the narrators of memory

a stain, a chip, a tear

materials embed meaning and metaphor within the process of creating

woven cloth, throwing lines, squeezed and pressed coils

all become remnants of the hand

as I make, play, and collect materials and objects

questions are brought forward

How do these components talk to one other?

What are they saying?

How do I listen?

knowledge is generated in the transformation of material through the process of

making …

An Open Bag, Matilde Benmayor

Theses and Dissertations

What do we take with us? How much space should we leave in the bag for what we might find? This paper is a journey from under the rug and onto the pavement. Sowing spiderweb maps I try to make a new city my own.

Monumentalizing Rituals Of The Palestinian Diaspora, Reema Abu Hassan

Theses and Dissertations

Displaced Palestinians have historically sought to preserve their Palestinian memories and identities in order to remain connected to their lost homeland. Despite the importance of memory for them, and their history of suffering and exile, there have not been any significant monuments designed to preserve their collective memory.

This thesis considers the adaptation of a traditional monument by redesigning it to the specificity of the Palestinian diaspora. In doing so it proposes the monumentalizing of four Palestinian rituals to add significance, meaning and permanence to them. The four rituals are making maamoul, applying orange and mashmoom perfume oil to …

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Generative Movements, Cabbage Juice, & Habitats Of Selfhood, Jason Michael Rondinelli

Theses and Dissertations

The content of this essay is a reflection on my practice as an artist. A summary of text includes an analysis of my attraction to certain materials such as drywall, cabbage juice and coconut oil, all materials are the extensions of my memory, intention and pleasure. From warm memories of bathhouses and the flesh of others to managing illness at home, my artwork distills a lived experience into material reality. These materials take the shape of sculptural networks that serve as biographical biomes. The architectural and organic components of the work are sourced from my own experience and the surreal …

Dress Up, Ye'ela B. Wilschanski

Theses and Dissertations

Dress Up (Performance, 40 minutes) is a dress that functions as a floor, blanket, tablecloth, book and walls. It tells a visual story about domestic care giving rituals, referencing different times and places.

The What If Collection, Aisha J. Daniels

Theses and Dissertations

The What If Collection is a visual narrative that confronts white supremacy, the social, economic, and political ideology used to subjugate black civilization via colonial rule and enslavement in history and via structural racism today. Many white people have been socialized into a racial illiteracy that fosters white supremacy. This racial illiteracy fails to realize and understand the destructive effects of Western dominance on the rest of the world, particularly on past and present Africa and her diaspora. In response, utilizing discursive design, the collection constructs a counter-story that depicts a shift in the power structure in which the white …

Generic Of, Nicole Levaque

Theses and Dissertations

generic of is a creative text paralleling the creation of my thesis exhibition. I use fragmented layers of narrative, description and prose in the same way each handbuilt ceramic is fired multiple times, allowing the glazes to build upon themselves. This is a close study of the still life, the intimacy of consuming, and how trauma is passed through the gut.

A Sacred Gift: Rebalancing Our Relationship With Water, Noora Naser Melhim

Theses and Dissertations

In the Middle East, and specifically Qatar, water has significant cultural history and preciousness as a commodity. Today, the rapid economic development has resulted in a disconnection from the past leading to subconscious overconsumption of water.

This thesis investigates water from the context of cultural relevance, by examining systems of distribution before and after the discovery of oil. It reinterprets the materiality of the traditional ceramic vessels used to contain and preserve water with the intention of using the natural properties of clay, such as cooling and filtering, to produce new artifacts. The intent of this research is to critically …

A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King

Theses and Dissertations

Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the …

Layered Histories, Interpretive Desires, Rachelle Dang

Theses and Dissertations

I aim to excavate source material from the past and reinterpret its significance in the present through art. I merge history with the contemporary through acts of appropriation and material exploration, creating conditions for the viewer to grapple with colonial legacies in an affective space of visual experience.

Polyanthroponemia: A Pursuit Of Mystery, Magdolene Dykstra

Theses and Dissertations

I wish I could believe in something. Having grown up in a religious household, I have continually teetered between faith and doubt. Landscapes seen and unseen are my last source of awe; here my doubt is suspended – for a moment. Using unfired clay, I create alternate landscapes inspired by sublime philosophy. The sublime experience is born in a sense of amazement linked to fear of something beyond our understanding or control. The amazing intricacy of microbiology, a whole universe existing alongside and inside us, fascinates me. The abundance of unfamiliar life in my work triggers a cautious curiosity. My …

Sub For More, Chelsea Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This written thesis unpacks the thoughts and motivations behind the decisions I have made in my artistic practice that have ultimately culminated in my M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition: Sub for More. By merging images of my own work as well as internet sourced images of the culture that drives my work, I have created a platform to begin to understand my experience during graduate school. This text examines and explores my belief in the inherent power in pop culture, my obsession with fame, celebrity, and my self-identity as a participant in current pop-culture.

Sawft.Servindat... [V1.7], Ray Ferreira

Theses and Dissertations

A descriptor of my artistic practice, a text piece, a series of linguistic musings, and more, Sawft.servindat… [v1.7] attempts to explore the dance between language, embodiment, and performativity. More specifically, the text moves through metaphor and metonym, Englishes, Spanishes, and Images, the performativity of representation and the representation of performativity —my body. My body moving across spaces and times. As part of the Sawft.servindat… series, Sawft.servindat… [v1.7] uses the scroll down format of most PDF reading software to activate the inherently embodied experience of intra-acting with technologies, resisting the dichotomy between the virtual and analog. Englishes juxtaposed with Spanishes juxtaposed …

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 …

Synthetic Landscapes, Benjamin Thomas Jordan

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores the complex social geography of modern society and the intricate relationship between mankind and the environment. Through this work I explore the past and present lineage of manifest destiny, from its beginnings in Europe to western expansion in America, to forms it has takes in contemporary America. These ceramic forms serve as the conceptual grounds to explore the romanticizing of the western landscape especially from an individual and group perspective. I simultaneously celebrate the history of the pastoral life while questioning the authenticity, and motivations of that lifestyle, and use this platform as a jumping off point …

Cajamarca Ceramic Spoons From Northern Peru: Forming A Symbolic Function, Jeanette Louise Nicewinter

Theses and Dissertations

Ten painted Cajamarca-style ceramic spoons form the foundation for an investigation of the way that these seemingly utilitarian objects were bestowed with economic and symbolic value both within and outside of the borders of the Cajamarca region, located in the north highlands of present-day Peru. Since the ceramic spoons have been recovered from sites associated with large and powerful societies and states, such as the Moche of the north coast and the Wari of the central highlands, an analysis of the form, style and imagery present on these spoons reveals how these objects transcended cultural boundaries. To assess and evaluate …

The Historical Ceramics Of Camp Floyd, Jennifer L. Elsken

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an historical archaeological project involving the classification and analysis of the ceramics found at Camp Floyd, a 19th century military site 40 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. United States military troops were dispatched to the Utah Territory to establish a Pony Express Station and an Overland Stage Trail, to assert federal authority in the Territories, and to end the ongoing conflict between the federal government and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The primary research question concerned the ceramic usage patterns at Camp Floyd as compared to other military sites and non-residential …