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Full-Text Articles in Art Practice

Dissonant Forms: Landscape, Nature-Love, And Art, Taylor F. Benoit Jul 2021

Dissonant Forms: Landscape, Nature-Love, And Art, Taylor F. Benoit

Masters Theses

As artists continue the long and storied lineage of Landscape, are there aesthetic responsibilities that come with representing the forces that afford you the capacity to do so? As we delineate spaces into places, endless interconnectivity into knowable “systems”, and living matter into thing based taxonomies, who do these delineations serve and with what intentions do we proceed? My studio art practice explores what it means to give form to our Former—the Former being that from which we came, the here and now, our explicit ecological reality, the stuff of what we call nature. …


The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein Jul 2020

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …


Kofifi/Covfefe: How The Costumes Of "Sophiatown" Bring 1950s South Africa To Western Massachusetts In 2020, Emma Hollows Jul 2020

Kofifi/Covfefe: How The Costumes Of "Sophiatown" Bring 1950s South Africa To Western Massachusetts In 2020, Emma Hollows

Masters Theses

This thesis paper reflects upon the costume design process taken by Emma Hollows to produce a realist production of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company’s musical Sophiatown at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts in May 2020. Sophiatown follows a household forcibly removed from their homes by the Native Resettlement Act of 1954 amid apartheid in South Africa. The paper discusses her attempts as a costume designer to strike a balance between replicating history and making artistic changes for theatre, while always striving to create believable characters.


Detritus In Situ, Ariel R. Lavery Jan 2013

Detritus In Situ, Ariel R. Lavery

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis paper explores some of the cultural phenomena that influence my conceptual framework and describes the logic behind the formal decision-making that defines my work. Beginning with a description of the nature of the materials and environments I appropriate, this thesis aims to deconstruct the layered system of binaries that build the logic behind my work. The concerns in my work circulate around domestic consumption and the objects detritus, a term coined in the paper, that are produced as a result. However, rather than allow the objects detritus to remain cast-aways of a culture of excess, my work …


Population 7 – Lyman Street Art Intervention, Carli Foster, Elizabeth Ann Englebreston, Eric Wojtowicz, Yiwei Huang Oct 2011

Population 7 – Lyman Street Art Intervention, Carli Foster, Elizabeth Ann Englebreston, Eric Wojtowicz, Yiwei Huang

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

POPULATION 7 started as an experiment in the fall of 2011 as an Urban Art Laboratory “Art – Place – Tour” with the vision to make a tangible impact to the culture of public art in Springfield. At first sight art seems to be not existent in the public realm. We are searching for an organic, sustainable concept with the potential to grow from inside to outside. Our goal is to invite to a discussion about public art and art in general that is introduced through minimal but diverse, economical eventually temporary, site-responsive interventions. We see our art as personal …


A Process Of Design: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Dennis R. Berfield Mr. Jan 2011

A Process Of Design: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Dennis R. Berfield Mr.

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

A collaborative process, when implemented for a theatrical production, not only reinforces a design team's ability to tell a story, it supports a artistically unified design that can be communicated easily to all members of a production team regardless of their production role. The information within this thesis is documentation of a collaborative process between the Scenic Designer and the production team for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater's production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Rachel Sheinkin with music and lyrics by William Finn. Preliminary design images, model photographs, Autodesk AutoCAD design plates, …


Staging Through Rituals: Directorial Exploration Of The Imaginary Invalid, Dora A. Arreola Jan 2009

Staging Through Rituals: Directorial Exploration Of The Imaginary Invalid, Dora A. Arreola

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis describes how the experimental process of exploring ritual as a foundation for creating contemporary theater can be applied to staging a classical European play, in this case, Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, adapted by Constance Congdon. Based on research into the influences of Commedia Dell’ Arte in Molière’s plays, the directorial concept of “Mask and Duplicity” influenced all the artistic areas of the production and design (costume, sound, lighting and set). The process described includes the development of a physical vocabulary with the actors, exploring animal movements based on “The Dance of the Deer” (a hunting ritual from the …