Art Practice Commons^™

Analysis Of Jacques-Louis David's "Cupid And Psyche" 1817, Regina Bellian

The Downtown Review

This paper analyzes the painting Cupid and Psyche 1817 by Jacques-Louis David. The visual details and appearance of the painting is discussed in form and design and further elaborated with symbolism and interpretation of the artist's work.

Kathy Liao, Lei Chen

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Biography: Kathy Liao currently resides in Kansas City, MO, and teaches at Missouri Western State University as the Director of the Painting and Printmaking Studio Art Program. Drawing inspirations from her diverse cultural background and personal history, Kathy Liao mixed media work is about the intimate yet universal concept of relationships. Liao received her MFA in Painting from Boston University and BFA in Painting and Drawing from University of Washington, Seattle. Liao is a recipient of various awards including the StudiosINC Studio Residency Program, Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Residency, Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Grant, Artist Grants from Anderson Ranch Arts …

Heather C. Lou Interview, Katie O’Reilly

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: heather c. lou, m.ed. (she/her/hers) is an angry gemini earth dragon, multiracial, asian, queer, cisgender, disabled, survivor/surviving, depressed, and anxious womxn of color artist based in st. paul, minnesota. her mixed media pieces include watercolor, acrylic, gold paint pen, oil pastel, radical love, & hope. each piece comments on the intersections of her racial, gender, ability, & sexual identities, as they continue to shift and develop in complexity each day. her art is a form of healing, transformation, and liberation, rooted in womxnism and gender equity through a racialized borderland lens. heather works in education as an administrator. …

Quiet Moments, Deitra Charles

CGU MFA Theses

I am a figurative artist who focuses on ordinary people and everyday objects. I paint moments. A moment of peace, a moment of tranquility, a moment of contemplation. It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of day-to-day life – that they give you the opportunity to experience life differently, stirring within you some sense of peace.

It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of …

The Dream Of Being Totally Open, Frederick Greis

Theses and Dissertations

This essay details four major themes in the paintings of Frederick Greis: spiritual experience, nature, pleasure, and humor. These themes are described within the context of the artist's main goal, which is to create an experience of profound unburdening.

Over Certain Undecidedness These Heartstring Intimations, Martha Hemingway

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

over certain undecidedness these heartstring intimations is the culmination of a two-year-long abstracted cycle of textured conversation, internal eye contact, and endless playlist-making. Hemingway’s work is based in process-oriented reflections on habitual behavior, manifestation of sentiment, and sense of self. Her paintings draw inspiration from the ways in which we approach and avoid our internal and external routines – how degrees of our subconscious considerations affect how we extend ourselves to others. Individual auditory preferences of different colliding souls have carved a space for her in a language of empathetic abstraction – attempting to elaborate the curious beauty and pain …

Enmesh: The Art Of Trauma And Recovery, Joanna Pottle

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Liminal Space is an artistic installation within the ongoing, interdisciplinary creative/research project "Enmesh: The Art of Trauma and Recovery.” Utilizing a combination of research methods, creative processes, and cultural inspirations, this project asks the following questions: how can the artistic process (this project serving as a preliminary case study) parallel various modes of recovery and healing? How can this objective be visually communicated through a mixed media approach of drawing, painting, and printmaking and how can this approach be an effective tool of communication? What can we conclude from both modes of work (solitarily or collectively)? How do they accomplish …

Beyond Words: Expressive Arts Therapy In Individual And Group Process In Recovery From Trauma, Agnes Carbrey

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

This paper describes expressive arts therapies that are interventions for the treatment of trauma. A literature review of this broad topic is narrowed to define art therapy used in conjunction with talk therapy, and provides brief examples from dance movement therapy, visual arts therapy, poetry-journaling-storytelling therapy, and sound-music therapy. Recent innovations in the field include the use of body-oriented interventions and group processes. When thinking about trauma, the body is a positive and negative reservoir of memory, and trauma may be trapped in the body. The author reviews the overlap between contemporary art, contemporary dance movement analysis, and forms of …

Between And Beyond, Noah F. Heil

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Between and Beyond is a series of handbuilt and wheel-thrown ceramic objects which explore intimate queer relationships through the human figure. I assemble slabs of clay to create openings and negative spaces within the sculptures, implying the ways in which the human form also acts as a vessel. The sculptures as well as the figures themselves remain open and vulnerable, literally and metaphorically. The body is depicted through fragmented sections, alluding to the ways in which society and culture break up gender and sexuality into limiting binaries. These intimate, private moments are meant to conjure an imagined future free of …

Liable To Change, Jody Travis Thompson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Liable to Change is a body of paintings in which I explore diverse approaches to the representation of visual space. Depictions of space and movement change throughout the pictures by combining various artistic conventions, such as trompe l’oeil realism and non-objective, geometric abstraction. Oil paint, resin, beeswax, and other materials create built-up surfaces which contain the history of their making. Interaction between various finishes and light on these surfaces changes based on the viewers' proximity to the painting. Images of monkey bars, lattice, golden ratio and flower of life patterns provide a structure through which line, form, and space are …

Simply Mo., Marjolijn Jaliene Oskam

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

Small portfolio presentation of design work by Marjolijn Oskam, branded under simply mo. The poster includes school work as well as professional work.

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 …

The Artist Behind The Cover Art: An Interview With Tiffany Day, Tiffany Day

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Patronage On Contemporary Visual Arts, Emily Coats

Honors College Theses

Patronage is vital to the art world and the success and notoriety of its artists. From straightforward patronage during the Renaissance of the Medici Family, the independent artists of modernism, to contemporary crowdfunding, it is important to note the changes in the art world throughout history to truly understand how artists and patrons have grown and continue to evolve in our contemporary society. Considering how patronage has changed and adapted throughout history and understanding the influence it has, not only allows a deeper understanding of the art world but also the world’s culture.

Thesis/Thesis Document 2, Jessamyn Plotts

Art Theses and Dissertations

Thesis/thesis document 2 explores the subversive power of the painted image, made by a physical performative act. Such acts are not confined to the production of the art object, but expand across the landscape, involving the minds, bodies, and things of culture adjacent to the making process. Following the thinking of Maurice-Merleau Ponty, Thesis/thesis document 2 understands painting not as the container of a finite, legible message, but as a physical platform for the conveyance of perceptual, personal, and experiential ambiguity. Made in this way, painted images offer a powerful alternative to the proliferation of propaganda and advertisement …

Painting Down, Claire Stankus

MFA Statements

No abstract provided.

Para Ti, Ashley Lothyan

CGU MFA Theses

This group of work draws from family photos that are over 15 years old, chosen from when I was born to the age of ten. Torn, wrinkled, and discolored, these photographs influence how I paint immediate family members, locations I grew up in, and myself.

Exhibition Catalog For Learning To Count To One; Can The Center Hold? Tesserae @ .25 : .5 : 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 6 : 12 : 24 : 48 : 72 : 96 : 120. Attraction And Entanglement, Ron Mills-Pinyas

Exhibition Catalogs, Essays, and Related Materials

This catalog provides information on the exhibit Learning to Count to One; Can the Center Hold? Tesserae @ .25 : .5 : 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 6 : 12 : 24 : 48 : 72 : 96 : 120. Attraction and Entanglement, by Ron Mills-Pinyas. This exhibit was presented by the Linfield Gallery and the Department of Art at Linfield College from February 8 through March 23, 2019.

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.

North American Data, Joseph A. Burwell

Theses and Dissertations

North American Data fractures and reconfigures pre-existing narratives into new, unauthorized forms of storytelling. Core samples extracted from various narrative sources are reassigned new roles according to their proximity to each other. This paper functions as an introduction to the essential actors and their dramatic inclinations within fluctuating scenarios.

The Social Role Of The Artist, Gabino A. Castelan

Theses and Dissertations

Gabino A. Castelán, tells a personal story of loss that influenced his artistic practice. He embraced this narrative to create two projects “Practice of Everyday Life-205 (PoEL-205) and the formation of a temporary collective called, Cultural Workers. He presents two case studies of twenty-first century artists, whose projects have business models that allow them to function in social roles during political and social turmoil. "Conflict Kitchen" and "Rebuild Foundation" provide context about running for-profit and not-for-profit artistic practices. Castelan writes about these projects' influencing his artistic practice in general.

Archaeology Of Social Patterning, Chase Bray

Theses and Dissertations

The episteme that created the grid as a structure for logic has been usurped. We compose meaning from an adulterated grid, or pattern. I process meaning through the abuse of acrid patterns and the grid, the reduction of imagery to silhouettes and by referencing both cultural and classical mythology.

The Alchemical Vessel, River Soma

MFA Statements

My work comes from a place of deep feeling on a bodily level. Amidst the decorative play, there is a sense of the primitive and primordial, and also a certain humanity and clumsiness through struggle. Through the hermetic tradition I relate the alchemical vessel and its symbolic process of interior development to my artistic practice. Focusing in mixed media sculpture, I discovered a concentrated accumulation of symbolism specific to my practice, but also the full recognition of my practice as a ritualized psychological undertaking.

The Holistic Self: A Visual Analysis Of Carl Jung's The Red Book, Emma Lindsay Klement

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This senior project will look at Carl Jung’s The Red Book and how it’s creation was the process by which he healed from his psychotic break, or “deep-sea voyage.” Through the exploration of various other texts by Carl Jung this thesis will endeavor to understand Jung’s psyche during this time of deep turmoil by analyzing the images that he creates and the way in which he creates them. Jung was deeply molded by both Christian doctrine as well as Alchemy and the Occult, thus this project will take into account the specific Christian and alchemical meanings of particular motifs within …

The Wild Beasts, Peter Cochrane

Theses and Dissertations

The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to …

Thanks To You, I'M Alive, Antonio Scott Nichols

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Antonio Nichols

Artist Statement:

In this project I am using figurative painting to explore the meaning of relationships/emotion and my connection to the people I am painting. I question what this means and how each individual’s identity ties to mine and why it may or may not matter. “Thanks to You, I’m Alive,” the title of this project, encompasses the message I am sending not only to the individuals I painted but also to the viewer because there is a certain exclusivity in who I decided to paint.

I want the connection I have with these people to not only …

Graphic Content Warning; Personal And Political Traumas, Emily K. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of …

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 …