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Full-Text Articles in Art Practice

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow May 2023

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …


Martian Mother, Elizabeth Mcgrady Jan 2020

Martian Mother, Elizabeth Mcgrady

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between humans and land, through the lens of the scientific and religious, bridging the physical realm with the spiritual. It acts as accompanying material to the project titled Martian Mother, supplementary information to the visual work, and an extension of the proposal, the center of the work. The proposal exists to send myself, or a like-minded individual, to Mars with artificial insemination equipment to give birth to the first Martian, becoming the first Martian Mother. This work is rooted firmly in speculative fiction, creating a nonlinear future framework for a new society and space exploration.


An Uncertain Line: Making Art About Photographs Of American War And Violence., Cassidy Meurer Dec 2019

An Uncertain Line: Making Art About Photographs Of American War And Violence., Cassidy Meurer

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Photography’s power in capturing a moment in history is indisputable, but inevitably flawed. Assumptions of objectivity and truth are made that do not count for the bias of the photographer, or the bias of the viewer. These assumptions do not explain the warped effect of freezing life at a fraction of a second. Information is left outside the frame; stories are fragmented in their retelling. Certain historical photographs have become iconic over time. My interest lies in images of American battle, violence, and trauma; those that have political and propagandic weight. Coded, controversial, and inherently emotional, these photographs have become …


The Wild Beasts, Peter Cochrane Jan 2019

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 …


“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales May 2018

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.


A Document That Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction And Reality, Seth Lewis May 2018

A Document That Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction And Reality, Seth Lewis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In A Document that Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction and Reality, I first present a historical analysis of photography that complicates traditional assumptions of how photographs operate in the world. Rather than functioning as merely an objective record, the photograph takes on a dual status as both a document and an abstraction from reality. The photograph’s ability to selectively decontextualize the origins from which it came from and present itself as something other than what it simply records becomes the core of my artistic practice. This paper will also discuss my conceptual investigations into how we perceive photographs when they …


The Unveiling Of Us, Alexis Parra Jan 2018

The Unveiling Of Us, Alexis Parra

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Unveiling of Us is an affirmation by, of and for wom^n of color. In this collaboration, we - subject and photographer - seek to reclaim the performance, production and beauty of individual identities that are informed by collective pasts. Everyday acts of performance are emphasized in these images through objects and gestures that reference the day to day practices of black and brown wom^n based on our histories, our cultures and our senses of self. This is our space to claim: the viewer looks, but the subjects hold the gaze as they declare power through a notion of beauty. …


Hand-Eye, Michael S. Pszczonak Aug 2015

Hand-Eye, Michael S. Pszczonak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated article thesis has two distinct chapters: The first chapter is a case study on a selection of works by German artist Sigmar Polke using Hal Fosters writing on the historical and neo-avant-gardes. The study traces the way Polke revisits the first avant-garde project and comprehends its attempted traumatic rift from dominant ideologies for the first time. The second chapter is a comprehensive artist statement which simultaneously outlines the theoretical underpinnings of my work as well as the process leading to the body of work on display at McIntosh Gallery. The research sets out to answer the following question: …


The Misconception Of Knowing, The Invention Of Time; Curiosities & Introspections Of Vernacular Photography, Patricia D. Drummond May 2015

The Misconception Of Knowing, The Invention Of Time; Curiosities & Introspections Of Vernacular Photography, Patricia D. Drummond

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Misconception of Knowing, the Invention of Time; Curiosities & Introspections of Vernacular Photography is a body of work that combines photography, artist books, and alternative processes in a series of pieces that explore the synergy between the act of creating vernacular or common photography, the photograph in its many forms, and the interaction with the photographic image at all the stages of its existence. It also exists in conjunction with this written monograph, which supports and gives insight into the work. Through the use of poems, sketchbook musings, the history of photography, critical theory and social norms within photography, …