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Full-Text Articles in Art Practice

Container Film, Dena Kopolovich May 2024

Container Film, Dena Kopolovich

Theses and Dissertations

Container Film is an experimental nonfiction short film that explores the theme of carrying. Drawing inspiration from a blend of anthropological, religious, and artistic sources, the film is guided by an unknown narrator who contemplates the origins of humanity. Unlike conventional storytelling, the narrator’s uncertainty and inner dialogue punctuate the narrative, challenging a traditional linear structure. Jumping between diverse thoughts, she resists depicting human history with a singular hero or linear trajectory. Visually, the film unfolds through vivid tableaux vivants, dance sequences, and curious object arrangements, illustrating the subtle relationship between human cognition and materiality. Through its nuanced, tactile approach, …


The Fuller The Bucket Is, The Harder It Is To Fly, Jacob Littlejohn May 2024

The Fuller The Bucket Is, The Harder It Is To Fly, Jacob Littlejohn

Theses and Dissertations

My abstract paintings are informed by the momentary sublime rooted in the vastness of the natural world. Based on imagined and real landscapes, the work evokes minutia and phenomena that affect our perceptions of reality, and signifies a longing to reconnect with the natural world.


Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas May 2024

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.


Past And Future Winds, Alicia Ehni May 2024

Past And Future Winds, Alicia Ehni

Theses and Dissertations

Ehni’s thesis reflects on the role of wind to connect and transform. Looking at science and invisible forces like Earth’s magnetic field, her "Oculus" sculptures evoke old tools for orientation & migration. Birds, insects, plants, roads and sand, appear in a video and an experimental 16mm pinhole film of her bike journey along the Hudson River, NY. “Coordinates”, a magnetic drawing installation, addresses impermanence, attraction to land and fragility. Tracing memories of the Paracas desert in Peru, this thesis follows her interest in alchemy, ecology and the cosmos.


Pan Shot!, Samuel Robert Gaston Mattax Jan 2024

Pan Shot!, Samuel Robert Gaston Mattax

Theses and Dissertations

Sam Mattax's practice is aimed at working through what he has lived and what he is living. They are self-involved diaristic building blocks of marking time and release. The layered drawings negotiate Sam's history and his day to day, distorting one another into a place of unrecognizable space and condensed energy. It is a process of attaining a loose understanding of his life and forgetting it all at once. Sam's work is survival.


One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-One. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. Twenty-Six., Liza Lacroix Aug 2023

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-One. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. Twenty-Six., Liza Lacroix

Theses and Dissertations

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-three.Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six." is a biographical fiction of violence toward the protagonist. Comprised of writing, audio, documentation and intervention. This text is the first iteration, and the thesis work is the second iteration of the same.


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.


Tied Together, Eiko Nishida May 2023

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.


Contact Sheet, Jiwoong Jang May 2023

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.


Someone Will Remember Us / I Say / Even In Another Time, Paul Anagnostopoulos May 2023

Someone Will Remember Us / I Say / Even In Another Time, Paul Anagnostopoulos

Theses and Dissertations

Paul Anagnostopoulos’s paintings and vases use mythological melodrama in a contemporary context to portray vivid images of queer life in the wake of homophobic erasure and tragic loss. “someone will remember us / I say / even in another time” traces his aggregate interests in Greco-Roman cultures and art history.


Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana May 2023

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.


Rethinking Graphic Design Pedagogy For The Cuny Academic Commons: On Process, Generosity, And Creative Collaboration In Mapping A Foundation Graphic Design Course For Faculty And Instructors, Suzanne Dell'orto May 2023

Rethinking Graphic Design Pedagogy For The Cuny Academic Commons: On Process, Generosity, And Creative Collaboration In Mapping A Foundation Graphic Design Course For Faculty And Instructors, Suzanne Dell'orto

Publications and Research

The creation of an Open Education Resource with the CUNY Academic Commons for a foundation course in graphic communication at Bernard M. Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) is a natural extension of the generous visual and written communication that is at the heart of Graphic Design. Graphic designers are inherently collaborative, working through a shared visual and written language to communicate. This Open Educational Resource (OER) serves as a base template to be shared department-wide with all instructors at CUNY and beyond to provide a framework for instruction for this studio course that is taught as a …


Emotional Landscapes, Jin Young Jeong Jan 2023

Emotional Landscapes, Jin Young Jeong

Theses and Dissertations

“Emotional Landscape” delivers a sense of gravity, openness, and breathing space through oil paintings on linen of abstracted bodily forms. The imagery in the works generates an atmosphere where one can feel rooted and anxiety-free. The paintings invite a close read of the complexities of compounded affects.


What An Interesting Video To Put On The Internet (An Amusing Economic Indicator), Dahlia S. Bloomstone Dec 2022

What An Interesting Video To Put On The Internet (An Amusing Economic Indicator), Dahlia S. Bloomstone

Theses and Dissertations

My exhibition reconciles representations of domesticity, labor, and morality through the lens of sex-work (SW). It consists of video work, a video game, and free-to-take objects, where donation, the strip club, and the fish tank converge. My work concludes that SW is a timeless construct that will always exist even after reimagining multiple worlds.


Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman May 2022

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 …


New Animals, Alina Iakirevitch May 2022

New Animals, Alina Iakirevitch

Theses and Dissertations

To transfer the rhythms of the body into the earth, in Lippard’s language, one has to engage in a non verbal, illogical action. Art is the sphere of this action. Staying engaged with the unpredictable in us, the random, the primal, is the core of art making and encountering art.


Break Time, Quinlan Maggio May 2022

Break Time, Quinlan Maggio

Theses and Dissertations

In this graduate thesis artist Quinlan Maggio describes their two-part art project in which they create site-specific private/public spaces and encounters within a larger public, specifically, that of the Hunter MFA community and its art-viewing audience.


Scene By Scene, Katita Miller May 2022

Scene By Scene, Katita Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Katita Miller’s paintings and drawings depict quotidian scenes through the filter of an overactive mind. Populated by spectral figures and swirling portals, her interiors and landscapes fluctuate between the mundane and the fantastical. This paper explores the parallels between painting and theater and the context and process behind five paintings.


A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera May 2022

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.


The Screen To Desire, Joseph Parra May 2022

The Screen To Desire, Joseph Parra

Theses and Dissertations

Joseph Parra reflects on our often embellished online personas and their effect on our desires. Through luscious 3-dimensional painting Parra translates the seductive desire of the hypermasculine male-presenting figure through glorification and criticality. The tactile painting also acts as a rebellion to accurately represent “real” life on the digital screen.


Buzz Buzz, Sarah Heinemann May 2022

Buzz Buzz, Sarah Heinemann

Theses and Dissertations

Taking the form of a series of notes and notations, this document serves as an account of color in my painting practice as it intersects through personal memory, research, and my studio and professional practices.


Head, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes, Pol Morton May 2022

Head, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes, Pol Morton

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores ideas of transness, chronic illness, and injury. Through assemblage and repetition, my larger-than-life paintings address the dissociation and fragility of a body that is unmapped by society. These autobiographical works attempt to locate the self when it is trapped, whether in a bed, in the home, or within the body itself.


Water Bearer, Whitney Harris Jan 2022

Water Bearer, Whitney Harris

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores fantasy and mythological archetypes. The exhibition features works on paper depicting mermaids, and a fountain featuring two figures submerged in water, one spitting into the other's mouth. I use black ink and glazes to create variegated surfaces. In these works, I reimagine ideas about power and intimacy.


Play Among The Shadows, Xiong Wei Jan 2022

Play Among The Shadows, Xiong Wei

Theses and Dissertations

This article elaborates Xiong Wei's inspiration and experience from different cultural, political, social systems and art environment as a Chinese artist living in the United States, and the logic and methodology of how he went from a social realist sculptor to a contemporary artist.


Long Time, Jacob V. Reed Jan 2022

Long Time, Jacob V. Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Jake Reed’s work is driven by the idea that architectural ornament can be imbued with meaning not native to its construction or use. To find that meaning, he deconstructs and reassembles elements from the architectural and ornamental histories he studies, using the growing climate crisis as a generative framework.


We Miss Each Other, As In We Are Missing Each Other, Lily L. Randall Dec 2021

We Miss Each Other, As In We Are Missing Each Other, Lily L. Randall

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in the way metaphors efface the terms of their comparison and what utility COVID-19 has when positioned within a metaphor. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, metaphors touch the subject, symbolized by the plus sign (+) or the crossing of the signifier into the signified. In the fall of 2019, I presented a performance in which three participants strategically shared saliva, nasal, ear, and vaginal swabs to therapeutically address my chronic illness. Currently in 2021, our conceptions of bodily sharing revolve around the extreme contagiousness of COVID-19. There is a demand to visualize this contagion as if “respiratory droplets” were …


The Curtain Fell, Opal M. Ong Dec 2021

The Curtain Fell, Opal M. Ong

Theses and Dissertations

Opal Ong’s paintings and drawings are rooted in but larger than memory. The work is flat and graphic. With this practice, Ong makes do with the living memories that haunt her. This process is not nostalgic or sentimental. Instead, it is a meditation on a kind of loss without resolve.


A Dumb Mouth From Which The Teeth Have Been Pulled, Anna Sofie Jespersen Dec 2021

A Dumb Mouth From Which The Teeth Have Been Pulled, Anna Sofie Jespersen

Theses and Dissertations

This paper consists of a series of scenes in which various narratives with proximity to the truth plays out. within it I aim to articulate the dispersed subjectivity and forensic aspects to my work, as well looking at the perverseness in the desire for proximity to the fantasy, utilizing the self as a vehicle of desire.


Interview, Elizabeth Naiden Aug 2021

Interview, Elizabeth Naiden

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of work by Liz Naiden in the form of a conversation discussing light and dark, attention and proprioception, and design and architectural theories of space in installation works. Addresses the role of voice, speech, and reading and speaking aloud, performing for oneself, and performing for others.


Writing Not Writing: Transdisciplinary Poetics, Institutional Critique, Miriam L. Atkin Jun 2021

Writing Not Writing: Transdisciplinary Poetics, Institutional Critique, Miriam L. Atkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of transdisciplinary creative practice as a means of institutional critique. The artists I have chosen as my primary focus—Robert Kocik, Eleni Stecopoulos, Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmie Durham, Leslie Scalapino and Lyn Hejinian—employ multiple mediums and fields of discourse to address the presumptions and exclusions that are structurally integral to the institutions that house them. They enact “architextural” interventions through their use of forms that move between the page and three dimensional space, incorporating architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, performance, poetry and prose. My work aims at a renewed understanding of critique as such, and therefore—though …