“This Little Patch Of Earth Is Inexhaustible”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner And The Outdoors Movements, Erica Evans

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the influence of reform movements and hiking and mountaineering organizations on the life and work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I explore how principles of these outdoors movements, including a healthy mind/body connection and rustic lifestyle, inform Kirchner’s works created while living in Davos, Switzerland.

Future Trash, Xinan Ran

Theses and Dissertations

Xinan Ran explores the politically different, yet similar cultural habits that China and the US share under the influence of late-stage capitalism. Through her handmade, speculative products inspired by novelty gadgets, or “Unitaskers,” she examines the heightened prevalence of the contemporary wellness market. The project “Future Trash” encompasses soft sculptures, printed materials, performance, and installation.

Illustrating Waterfowl At The Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Through A Tactile Artist Book, Stevie Lee Evans

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Creating A 1940s Costume: A Historical Investigation, Jennifer Mott

The Confluence

The purpose of this Art History research investigation was to create a costume from the 1940s by immersing myself in a time period when people often made their own clothing. This was done to better understand what it means to have a personal connection to the items I wear. Our experiences as consumers in the twenty-first century are vastly different than those belonging to the people that lived during the mid-twentieth century because almost all of our clothing is purchased from corporations and created by people that we will likely never meet. For this investigative study, I shopped for and …

Black Lives Matter: Keep Your Eyes On The Prize (2021), Gregory T. Wilkins

The International Journal of Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education

The image is of a woman of African descent who is wearing a colorful headdress which cascades down one side of her head to her tattered sweater. One eye is blind. The other eye has a target over it with her eye looking to the side. The target represents the world looking at her, targeting/labeling her because of the color of her skin, and it also represents her looking out into the world focusing intently on the future. Her eye is looking to the side engaging the periphery; she is ready and fully aware of her surroundings. Pending on the …

Black Lives Matter: Hands Up, Don't Shoot (2021), Gregory T. Wilkins

The International Journal of Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education

The image is of a multi-colored background with crochet thread radiating across the canvas. White Fleece letters are quilted onto the canvas spelling out the words ‘Hands Up, Don't Shoot’

Clothing Autonomy, Audrée Wilhelmy

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

(Translated by Lucas Zabotin)

Colby Museum Of Art: Faith Ringgold “Story Quilt” Acquired, Bob Keyes

Colby Magazine

The Colby Museum of Art adds a coveted Faith Ringgold story quilt to its collection.

Creating Adaptive Face Masks With Clear Inserts To Aid People With Hearing Loss, Blare Offenbacker

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to create adaptive face masks with clear inserts to aid individuals with hearing loss. In early 2020, when the world went into lockdown and quarantine, guidelines were set by the Center of Disease Control (CDC) on how to protect yourself from Covid-19. Covid-19 is also known as SARS-CoV-2, which is severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2. The main protection against Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic was the use of face masks that covered the nose and mouth. This has been a continued recommendation for protection against Covid-19 with the different variants …

Imprints: The Marks We Make, Patricia Botts

Graduate Theses

When walking throughout a cemetery, you may notice the small dash on a tombstone between the year of someone’s birth and their death. Have you ever given thought as to how a tiny line can represent so much? Even a small mark, such as the dash, can represent volumes in the entirety of a person’s life and the imprint they leave on those around them. In my work, I use various types of line as symbols associated with representations of life. I am most interested in lines as visual representation of physical and psychological wounds, both newly created and those …

Winding Down River Road, Gillian Harper

LSU Master's Theses

As a mechanism to explore my temporary home in Louisiana, Winding Down River Road is a collection of artworks that integrates natural materials collected from landscapes in southern Louisiana with steel and petroleum-based products. My interest in researching environmental issues, ecology, and industry has shaped my vehicles for observation and how I generate data. Through a variety of methodologies, I am considering how climate change is forcing many of us to re-contextualize how our home can be affected by the very industries we rely on. Personal engagement with residents living in the dystopian atmosphere of southern Louisiana’s industrial corridor and …

What Do We Stand For?, Lauren Koven

Masters Theses

I am exploring constructed realities and dismantling binaries and dualities. Much of this work is investigated through, but not limited to, language, gender, sexuality, race, and performativity.

Soul Soiree: How “Sunday Best” Dressing Encourages Celebration Of Self, Olufisayo Quadri

Masters Theses

Celebration is an important part of living a fulfilled life. From significant milestone events like weddings and birthdays to smaller moments of serendipity, the act of celebration is an affirmation of one’s place in the world. Across cultures, communities have used festive textiles to show an appreciation for their values and histories.

World Settings, Elizabeth Meiklejohn

Masters Theses

Acoustical building materials, with their ability to absorb and diffuse sound, can reshape the character of interior spaces in profound ways. Woven textiles often perform as acoustical materials, whether by coincidence or by design; strategic use of textile structure and dimensionality can yield specific experiential qualities in homes, offices and shared spaces. The way certain materials manipulate sound can feel otherworldly, as if they break the laws of physics or the familiar parameters of one’s surroundings. The same properties can be found in emergent visual patterns and illusory lighting conditions, which provoke an investigative, deliberate way of looking.

In this …

Shifting Landscapes, Zahra Tyebjee

Masters Theses

Landscapes are never stable. Light, color, and weather interact to create dynamic atmospheres. As a designer who works with textiles and immersive spaces, I observe sensorial and fleeting elements of optical phenomena and textural landscapes. The goal of this collection of knitted fabrics is to capture the experience of these effects and bring atmosphere from the outdoors in. My memories of landscape are filled with impressions of light, color, and weather shifts. I draw from my experience of shifting landscapes to emphasize textural material exploration. I activate space through material contrasts, ephemeral qualities, and large-scale knitted fabrics. I seek to …

Shaping The Witch: A Visual Art Thesis, Amanda Cobb

University Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the complex and interconnected nature of folklore, personal mythology, and re-enchantment as expressed through the lens of puppetry. I have drawn inspiration from the works of deeply reflective works concerning the psychological nature of mythologies of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, as well as the magical and beautiful work of artists Jim Henson, Brian and Wendy Froud, and Mercer Meyer. Through working in the medium of puppets, I have given consideration to the possibilities and limitations of these forms in expressing the complexity of narrative, personal mythology, the anxiety of disenchantment, lost and reclaimed …

La Cultura Que No Cambia, Karina Arreola-Gutierrez

MFA in Visual Art

In the text of La Cultura Que No Cambia, I mention how my work has been influenced by becoming more aware of generations of altar making that occur in my family. By collecting stories and photographs of altars, I can observe and create work based on how the legacies can change through generations or stay the same. The memory of my ancestors and family traditions is strengthened. Growing up seeing discrimination towards others has influenced me to highlight my Mexican heritage of traditions, culture, and language through several different methods. Using these elements, I can create work informing audiences about …

Entities: A Field Of Imaginary Games, Thrasyvoulos Ioannis Kalaitzidis

LSU Master's Theses

With this body of work, I am looking for visual symbols that help communicate unuttered meanings through storytelling and stimulate an affectual response to the viewer. This exploration is presented in two different forms: a surreal sculptural installation and a board game. The installation consists of large-scale sculptures made from light and soft materials (polyurethane foam, plastic waste, paper) that are available to move inside the gallery, while the board game is presented as a set of 3D prints with instructions on how the participants can play it. The materials used in the installation suggest a way to transform waste …

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

Nest, Camillia Elci

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The major themes in this body of work are time and layers. These themes are linked by the materiality of the work. Intentional destruction and recreation, perpetually. The work is constantly being made, destroyed, and remade. It is always partly past and partly future. Nest is a self portrait displaying objects acquired and made over the past several years.

Skins+Fabrications: Addressing Fashion And Clothing Waste, Renee Palmer

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Articles of clothing; they are the second organ, the Second Skin. Their functions are to protect the body from the harsh external elements and create a sense of design with Fashion—the same as exterior facades on a building. However, where architecture and Fashion differ is sustainability.

The Global fashion industry contributes 10% of greenhouse emissions. From that 10%, about 13 million tonnes of clothing waste ends up in landfills or burned. Most of the waste comes from the Fast Fashion Industry, which sees cheap labor from underdeveloped countries to maximize profits. These companies will spend a good portion of their …

A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents the first fragments of a political framework outlining how I situate my work, which lives between “craft” and “art” models of making and between colonized and colonizing traditions. My writing proposes ways of making and being informed by practices, strategies, and organizing that work towards greater autonomy and liberation under these conditions.

Through The Eye Of The Needle: Embroidery As A Tool For Intimacy, Feminism, And Activism, Kristin D. Howell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the work of contemporary women artists who utilize embroidery as their primary medium. The careful execution of each artwork, whether created by career artists or amateur participants in artist-led projects, simultaneously engages with the legacy of the embroidery arts and explores new strategies of expression.

Apparel Students' Perception Of Denim Quality In Relation To Price And Brand, Karli Haws

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to evaluate apparel students’ perception of quality in denim jeans based on the influences of price and brand. The following research objectives were developed:

1. To determine if apparel students’ perceptions of garment quality are affected by price and brand.

2. To determine how apparel students perceive quality in a garment.

3. To determine if price and brand are indicators of quality to apparel students.

Woven Words In The Iliad: Gender, Narrative, And Textile Production In The Scholia Of The Venetus A Manuscript, Anne-Catherine Schaaf

College Honors Program

The work of previous scholars has established powerful connections between the process of creating textiles and process of epic oral composition. I build on disparte sources from the fields of archaeology and philology and analyze how the scholia in one epic manuscript of the Iliad, the Venetus A, treat this issue and with a focus on how it interplays with gender, specifically the female characters in the Iliad who produce textiles. I focus on a few major sections of scholia and important scenes of weaving in the Iliad. The key female characters in the novel, both divine and human nearly …

Line As Site And Material, Analise Minjarez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This paper recounts my artistic practice over the last three years. I will describe the places, artists, artworks, and processes that have been meaningful to me in this time as I pursued my MFA and worked to understand my relationship to the living world. In the thesis Line as Site and Material, I respond to materiality and site through installation, sculpture, drawing, and video. I work with clay harvested from my hometown of El Paso, TX to connect to the personal histories of the borderlands and geological time. In the Second River Series, I walk in the empty riverbed of …

Where Do I Belong In The United States Public School System?, Christiana R. Becker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I seek to inquire about the world as it relates to my identity as a first generation descent of the Penobscot tribe living in the United States by utilizing four methodologies in my research: life histories/autobiographies, narrative inquiry, a/r/tography and practice-based and practice-led. Through coupling my artistic practice with those four methodologies I am able to creatively show the information I have unearthed in hopes that others will benefit from a fresh and augmented understanding of what it historically and culturally means to be a part of a community that makes up a very small percentage of the United States …

Sewing And Dressmaking In Martha Mcmillan's Day (1891), Elizabeth G. Allen

Martha McMillan Research Papers

This paper describes the process of sewing and dressmaking in America from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s and provides historical context for Martha McMillan's discussion of sewing and dressmaking in her 1891 journal.

Fashsim Lab: Learning About Cotton From Field To Virtual Fashion, Kelly Cobb, Angela Beckett

Frameless

The global pandemic is clearly illuminating the value and even necessity of online education and remote learning for students around the world (IIIE, 2020.) Virtual modules engage students, substituting valuable learning experiences that are not possible to recreate due to constraints on time and/or materials, or physical meeting ability, demonstrated by the pivot due to COVID. In the virtual lab, students are able to work together, applying course concepts to new situations and contexts, as well as develop data analysis skills. Common in the sciences, this novel concept embeds state-of-the art learning into the textile and apparel curriculum. In the …