Art Practice Commons^™

Bad Girl: Feminism, Contradiction, And Transformation, Laura Goodwin

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

My thesis work developed out of a personal tension and insecurity surrounding the complexity and the seemingly contradictory nature of my identity. For an example, as a feminist, artist, and scholar, is it acceptable to also be a lover of popular culture tropes, makeup, and fashion? I have learned that female empowerment comes in many different forms. This paper will discuss the ways I have been visually exploring the female identity through multiplicity, contradiction, and most importantly: acceptance. I want my work to operate in a way that communicates the complexity of identity, transcends binary thinking, and promotes introspection. Third …

Ordinary Effort, John Mcmahon

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The thesis is primarily concerned with how the search for knowledge is driven by a quest for certainty, resulting in a compulsion to fix knowledge in explicit rules and procedures. Rather than producing a satisfactory sense of stability, this produces comedy and tragedy as human endeavors play out against a backdrop of arbitrary structure.

Three videos explore this problem through the lens of professional sport, where the quest for certainty is evaluated against the application of rules, against rules governing the action of the body, and against the attempt to circumvent the rules. Theoretical background is provided by examining the …

Nuevas Narrativas: Translation Of Family History, Migel A. Delgado

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Family histories are hard to pass on when the native language of one's culture is no longer passed on to the next generation. Growing up between two cultures has created a void that is considerably complex. Nuevas Narrativas: Translation of Family History represents the dynamics involved with deciphering my grandfather's migration story. This investigation within family narratives illustrates the dynamics within reception, translation, and transcription of traditional narratives.

In this installation, I engage the reception of my grandfather's migration story as a way of addressing how foreign languages and historical narratives create displacement through time. The context for this work …

Confabulation: Photographs, Memory, And Painting, Erin Cunningham

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is in regards to paintings created by Erin Cunningham for the completion of her MFA in Visual Arts at Boise State University in the spring of 2011. She primarily discusses the tenuous connection between photography and memory. Examining ideas developed by Roland Barthes, she set out to prove that while there is a distinct difference between the factual language of photography and the fictive language of memory, that the two have a type of symbiotic relationship. Particularly in regards to familial photography, the paintings she has developed from this concept examine the construction of memoir using images that …

P̶L̶A̶C̶E̶ : An Artist’S Experience In A Highly Mobile World, Arin Lindstrom

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In this highly mobile world, it is the undefined and in-between spaces encountered, such as while being in a car or train, that characterize the non-place. Traveling across town or across the globe, most of us spend much of our time in these spaces. P̶L̶A̶C̶E: An Artist’s Experience in a Highly Mobile World investigates the external-to-internal experience of moving through the non-place. Explored through my own recent travels, the non-place is analyzed as informed through the cognitive and by imagination; I consider the subjective view to the totality of experience.

In my body of work, I interrogate the non-place through …

Cell(F), Nicole Lynn Herden

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

I see the human experience as composed of both objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity in that science has helped us better understand our physicality, such as defining biological processes within our body. Empirical knowledge has provided a level of truth in explaining a foundation for our existence.

Subjective experiences materialize as we engage within the environment. Walking in the park or purchasing food seem to be similar experiences for everyone in that we can envision the process of doing it; however, that process is an individual process composed of unique characteristics and perspectives. A subjective experience is as unique as one’s …