Painting Commons^™

Stop Kiss: A Scenic Design, Taylor Walters-Riggsbee

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The purpose of this thesis is to document the design processes of the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s production of Stop Kiss by Diana Son, produced March 1-9, 2023, in partnership with the Nebraska Repertory Theatre. Documented is a complete representation of a scenic design process including discussion of practices and design methodologies, research plates, supporting analytical paperwork, preliminary sketches, digital renderings, and 1/4” scale model photos, a full set of drafting, painter’s elevations and a corresponding props and dressing list. Performance photos follow as an archive of the production process and performance photos.

Advisor: Joshua David Madsen

The Ghosts Shed Tears, Sarah Jentsch

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Before I was taught what made us different, I thought my brother and I were the same. The only difference between a doe and a buck was the antlers. As I grew, I noticed differences—in the way people spoke to us, in what was expected of us, in the questions we were asked. In what our futures were supposed to look like. The difference between the doe and the buck was still the antlers, but those antlers made one a trophy and the other venison.

Many of my formative experiences I came to understand through animals. My family home, cradled …

Idylls, Madison Aunger

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

An “Idyll” is defined as a happy, peaceful, or picturesque scene. The term references poetry that describes a small intimate world, and scenes from everyday life.

This exhibition, Idylls, showcases the little world of my home here in Lincoln, Nebraska. The paintings mirror my experience of the domestic spaces in my life, and the peaceful moments I encounter. In Idylls you are encouraged to be idle. We do ourselves a disservice when we don’t take the time to slow down.

My work begins as an excitement about a specific formal quality, a shape of light, a hint of color, repetition …

Tomorrow Is The Worst Day Since Yesterday, Matthew Carlson

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Susan Sontag wrote: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other space”.

This work addresses aspects of that citizenship. I used my experiences as a person living with a disability and as a parent to a son with Autism to explore the dichotomy of this dual citizenship. The …

Short Stories, Tall Tales, Chance Lure Allen

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

It is often said that the truth should never get in the way of a good story. I use painting and drawing to override truth, open a door to imagined lives, reflect on the past from a new perspective, and look to the future from my current perspective. Thedrawings and paintings in this exhibitioncombine elements of personal history, historical art references, popular culture, and music, drawing heavily from American iconography. I use the format of the still life to create idiosyncratic parings of objects and images documenting memories of growing up in Missouri. Some of the images are short stories. …

Study Of Native Colombian Tribes: Art As A Means Of Inspiration, Sofia Fernandez

Honors Theses

Study of Native Colombian Tribes: Art as a Means of Inspiration, examines Latin American art, particularly Indigenous Colombian art as a source of inspiration for the creation of a series of artworks. This project considers two Colombian tribes: Wayuu and Okaina. It emphasizes these tribes’ ancestry, history, purpose, and traditions, with the objective of giving them a voice in a community where they are underrepresented and unknown. This thesis provides a critical look into the tribe’s traditions and artistic techniques through the creation of a variety paintings, drawings, and prints. This body of work concentrates on textiles and patterns from …

Things Change, Julia Leggent

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The paintings in Things Change are pieces of my life; they follow my routines, thoughts, and worries, but these topics are experienced by many. The images of flesh, knobs, and pills are painted at life scale and are meant to be widely relatable. With each of my works, I hope to bring awareness to social, political, and feminine themes while drawing the viewer in and inciting interest in the ever-changing visual aspects of everyday life.

Examining routine, ritual, and time is always fascinating to me; I work to show this through my paintings. Practices change throughout the years. Strangely, you …

Study Of Native Colombian Tribes' Art As A Mean Of Inspiration, Sofia Fernandez

UCARE Research Products

Culture is one of the most important aspects of a human being, it shapes our behavior and identity since we are born. It is our lifestyle and it refers to many aspects such as the language we use, our values, traditions, beliefs, etc. Cultural diversity is one of the aspects communities nowadays emphasize the most, they want people to be mindful and respectful of the different cultures represented within the community itself. This creative project examines Latin American art, particularly Indigenous Colombian art as a source of inspiration for the creation of a series of artworks. This project aims to …

From Lace To Chains. The Making Of A Print, Alison G. Stewart

Zea E-Books Collection

How have printed works of art changed over time? Do printmakers today work with the same materials and techniques that printmakers used centuries ago? And does printmaking involve the same motivations, concerns, or methods of distribution today as it did in the past?

These were questions asked by University of Nebraska–Lincoln students in a history of prints class in the School of Art, Art History & Design taught by Hixson-Lied Professor of Art History Alison Stewart during fall semester 2018. For this curatorial project, students selected one set of old master prints (pre-1850) and one modern (post-1850) print from Sheldon’s …

Deforming Normalcy: Deformity And Disability In William Blake's Art, Seolha Lee

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines William Blake’s verbal and visual art from the perspective that disability is a physical and mental condition that is viewed by society as deviant. Prior to modern conceptions of disability in Britain, the deviation was labeled as “deformity.” This thesis demonstrates various ways in which Blake illustrates deformity, and through this, prefigures the modern sense of disability in his art. I argue that Blake’s representation of deformity in his poetry and drawings is intended to reveal the precariousness of the “normal” human body and inform the reader and viewer that normality is an illusion. The age of …

Malleable Perspectives, Erik White

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I attentively paint hastily formed figures, symbols, objects, and scenes that were modeled with never-dry clay onto stretched canvases of various sizes. I paint the malleable character of the clay by depicting its bumps, marks and dents, which emphasizes the fragility, impermanence, and the physical construction of the forms. Those visual attributes serve as a metaphor for the social construction of the concepts within the chosen imagery. To create my images I build clay up and physically move it around—in a similar way, ideas and concepts get built up, manipulated, and changed over time. These paintings serve as a cultural …

Crushing Caution, Lindsey Day

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I am preoccupied with the nuances of ordinary risk. I view this not as paranoia, but as prudence. To live without fear is a privilege, to be arrested by it is paralyzing. I often encounter two competing ideologies, two lenses, through which risk is evaluated. The first lens is for the victim, the person being crushed by, or blinded from, cautiousness. They see life as something happening to them, and avoid active risk-taking. The second lens is held by the person dominating apprehension, taking action in spite of consequence. I am inclined to find and maintain a balance of these …

Artistic Syncretism In Latin America: From Olmec To Spanish Colonialism, Nicole Timm

Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historic and systematic review of colonial Latin American art. The first half will focus on the ancient arts created by the ancient civilizations that sculpted culture in Latin America centuries before the Spanish were aware another continent existed. The latter portion of the paper will look to the post-colonial period. It will begin by delving into the influence of European artistic styles blending with Latin American culture and style of painting and vice versa. The final goal of this paper is to uncover the syncretism that took place across Latin America …

"Introduction" To Crossroads: Frankfurt Am Main As Market For Northern Art 1500–1800, Miriam Hall Kirch, Birgit Ulrike Münch, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Table of Contents Inhaltsverzeichnis

Simple curiosity has sparked many a book, and that is true of this book, too. We wanted to know what role Frankfurt am Main played in the rise of the commercial art market in general and in particular of painting and printmaking during the early modern period. We were surprised to find no ready answer to our question, for although the Frankfurt Book Fair remains a major publishing event, art historians have not yet focused sufficiently on its precursor, the Frankfurt fair, an important location for the trade in paintings and prints. Frankfurt's hub function as …

Art Club, Elizabeth Griggs

Honors Expanded Learning Clubs

The goal of this art club is to introduce students to various painting techniques. This club is designed for those students who enjoy being creative and learning various painting techniques.

It Can't Leave You The Way It Finds You, Kyle Nobles

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

There’s a beautiful innocence in childhood where, although the world is large and new, it feels as though your place in it and the roles that you play are stable and unchanging. In our youth, outside of extraordinary circumstances, we are unburdened by the awareness that everything and everyone is subject to radical change—including our own sense of self. As we grow older though, looking back it becomes clear that this was never the case. In a matter of years, you can change so dramatically that you did not even notice as you became an entirely new person. For me, …

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Whitetail, Michael Steven Villarreal

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

When I was growing up, both my parents worked at a U-Haul from which they brought home discarded objects to the house my dad built with his own hands. This home, interior and exterior, was not designed to fit an explicit aesthetic, but all aspects of the house were in harmony and completed by the objects brought into each space. The house became a repository for abandoned domestic American culture— beds, window blinds, couches, appliances, and other products made it into the home in irregular but frequent intervals. For me, each item was an opportunity to have something new to …

Maybe The Gate Could Be A Fan, Erin L. Schoenbeck

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I notice with quiet thrill an individual object or shape such as a railing, an odd pattern in the cement, a handle that does not match the rest, or a surprisingly decorative form intended only for a useful purpose. Choosing a form for its potential function, strange shape or particular color, I filter it through my aesthetic. My mental repetition of the day’s stresses is changed into lighthearted wondering. Maybe that gate I passed could become a beautiful fanned shape, its silhouette in gold and pale green. It could be so tiny its functional life outdoors is transformed into delicate …

Land Of Enchantment: New Mexico As Cultural Crossroads, Jonathan Frederick Walz

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

This exhibition foregrounds Sheldon Museum of Art’s collecting strength in fine and decorative arts with connections to New Mexico, and, more broadly, to the desert Southwest. For thousands of years this corner of the United States, situated on the north-south trade route between Colorado and Mexico and at the western edge of the Great Plains, has hosted human habitations, each with its own distinctive material culture. The area’s diverse topography and population have inspired countless visual responses, from petroglyphs to photographs. The state’s relative isolation—at least before the mid-twentieth century—provided a backdrop upon which the movement of goods, practices, ideas, …

Review Of The Cabinet Of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting And The Studiolo Of Isabella D'Este. By Stephen J. Campbell, Andrea Bolland

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Isabella d'Este's activities as an art collector and patron are richly documented and have received a correspondingly large amount of art historical attention in the modern era. Yet Isabella--and the studiolo she had created and decorated in the Mantuan Palazzo Ducale--have gotten mixed reviews in this scholarship; the former has historically emerged as difficult, irrational, and acquisitive rather than discerning, while the paintings done for the latter by Andrea Mantegna, Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, and Correggio between 1497 and 1530 are often treated as curiosities-stilted in style and didactic in subject-within the larger scope of the artists' careers. The paintings have …

Our American Artists. Iv. William M. Chase, Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

A biographical sketch of Indiana-born United States painter William M. Chase, with illustrations.