Art Practice Commons^™

Groundswell, Ursula Gullow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the artwork of her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Groundswell, held at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, March 11 – 22, 2024. The exhibition includes wall pieces, sculpture, plaster, and ceramic objects that explore the traditional parameters of painting and its presentation.

Ideas discussed include the philosophy of history, and the origin of European art tropes such as odalisques, flowers, and birds. Framing devices, deconstructed paintings, fiber arts, ceramics, 18^th Century decorative art, plaster, the studio practice, Walter Benjamin, David Lowenthal, Gustave Courbet, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Titus Kaphar, Valerie Hegarty, and maximalism are also surveyed.

Ripe Spoils, Yan Cynthia Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Chen’s practice primarily focus on sculptures and installation. She explores the interplay between the idea of nature and the constructed environment, by examining how language informs what we know. The central thesis, "Ripe Spoils", employs citrus fruits as symbols for bodily experiences and personal identity, investigating their cultural and historical significance. Her sculptures summon the qualities and embedded meanings in materials like paper pulp and clay, wax and citrus fruits, often resulting in abstracted forms evocative of the human body. This thesis paper and exhibition reflect on themes like mortality and the essence of self.

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Curiosity Beyond The Hidden, Yi Young Kim

Masters Theses

What lies beneath the surface of vessels? This captivating thesis explores the hidden world within, drawing inspiration from traditional Korean ceramics and employing coil-built sculptures. By focusing on the hollowness of vessels, this study unveils their profound interconnectedness and inherent uniqueness.

Through spontaneous stacking of claylike glazes and textured elements, the artwork reveals mysterious processes and transformations within these vessels. Exposing the intricacies of hollow spaces, viewers are invited to contemplate the mesmerizing realms concealed within.

Intertwining elements of Korean heritagewith intricate structures, this artistic endeavor

sheds light on the hidden and challenges preconceived notions of everyday existence. The work …

Spaces Of Wait And Their Weight, Eman Alhashemi

Masters Theses

i have been exploring, researching and observing what influences affect a space within the traditions, rituals, food, thoughts and behavior. what happens when that space of comfort disappears and changes? through a series of work that waits, melts, merges, and exaggerates in am attempt to find its place. as i borrow objects and movements from daily life observing my surroundings and extracting mundane things that take on different forms whether exaggerated or unidentifiable. this recent culmination of work over the two years at risd look at objects and spaces of waiting, discomfort, longing and sharing. our behavior is affected by …

The Hospitality Of Doubt, Ian Grieve

Art Theses and Dissertations

This paper discusses the last two years of research toward a Master of Fine Art in Studio Art. I mainly address my painting practice, but while in the program, I have worked in collage, ceramics, intaglio printmaking, and sculpture. My paintings are thick, multilayered, and often contain ambiguous narratives. The pictures develop through engagement, openness, and response within the work. I seek and embrace connection with viewers of the work. The spectator ‘completes’ the art and enhances or alters the artworks meaning by observing it and applying their individual perspectives. I seek to incorporate a sense of nostalgia and familiarity. …

Heretic Territories: Spells For Fracture, Mia Greenwald

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This monograph accompanies the MFA thesis exhibition, Heretic Territories: spells for fracture. The show uses video, weaving, clay, and bacterial/fungal bodies in three main bodies of work: Inter; Lost, remain, fracture; and For, Of Them. The pieces, and the relationship between them, explore themes of magic, the body, and land in contradiction and opposition to colonial and capitalist structures. I approach the artificial hierarchies that subjugate people, non-human creatures, and land while trying not to replicate the mistakes of posthumanist scholarship that bypasses the fact that not all people are afforded full access to the category …

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.

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.

Second Nature: Impressions Of Place., Trish Korte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For my art practice, I grow and forage my art materials for eco printing, a direct contact printing method that reveals leaf shapes and hidden imagery through heat and pressure. I take specific cues from surrounding materials, objects, and environments. Tree systems and compelling textures of fungus are interpreted through ceramic and fiber. With an ongoing collaboration of natural materials and eco printing processes, my art speaks symbolically and metaphorically through imagery and materials. This thesis and accompanying exhibition present an examination of current work in context with an ongoing investigation of natural materials and eco printing.

Crafting Community: A Ceramics Center, Nadia Mechboukh

Theses and Dissertations

For artisans, being part of a community can facilitate engaging with the public. Networking and collaborating with peers are vital for building meaningful relationships that can lead to mutual inspiration and learning opportunities. By strengthening the connection between society and various forms of craft, we can weave invisible threads that link the stories that craft tells with the time and place in which they were created. Pottery is a craft that has existed for thousands of years. Ceramics and clay have carried the history of communities and their ways of living through centuries and have been used as identifiers of …

Resonance Of The Unseen, Dung Thi Thuy Nguyen

Senior Projects Fall 2023

in the moment

playful

in memory of

learning

altogether

Thuy-Dung (Julius) Nguyen's exhibition, 'Resonance of the Unseen,' confronts the sensory saturation of contemporary life by elevating the unobserved aspects of perception. Through sound, scent, and touch, this immersive installation encourages a rediscovery of the elemental experiences of life. The show illuminates the concept of absence, not only as something lacking but as an integral part of the sensory narrative, inviting a deeper resonance with the world.

Exploring Growth, Integration, & Play Working In Clay: Finding Pathways To Healing And Hope, Dana A. Bridges

MSU Graduate Theses

I find therapeutic qualities in all the aspects of my studio practice and haptic experience: from the grounding sensory experience of clay, the quiet meditative motions of creating and constructing, acceptance or repair of mistakes, and the integration of failures which may occur. Specifically, I channel my experience to explore the themes of growth, integration, and play. By exploring these themes in the quiet and safety of my clay-studio, I engage in the opportunity to investigate these themes on a formal, practical, and personal level. I create the forms by hand or on the potter’s wheel. After constructing the forms, …

Winding Down River Road, Gillian Harper

LSU Master's Theses

As a mechanism to explore my temporary home in Louisiana, Winding Down River Road is a collection of artworks that integrates natural materials collected from landscapes in southern Louisiana with steel and petroleum-based products. My interest in researching environmental issues, ecology, and industry has shaped my vehicles for observation and how I generate data. Through a variety of methodologies, I am considering how climate change is forcing many of us to re-contextualize how our home can be affected by the very industries we rely on. Personal engagement with residents living in the dystopian atmosphere of southern Louisiana’s industrial corridor and …

Line As Site And Material, Analise Minjarez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This paper recounts my artistic practice over the last three years. I will describe the places, artists, artworks, and processes that have been meaningful to me in this time as I pursued my MFA and worked to understand my relationship to the living world. In the thesis Line as Site and Material, I respond to materiality and site through installation, sculpture, drawing, and video. I work with clay harvested from my hometown of El Paso, TX to connect to the personal histories of the borderlands and geological time. In the Second River Series, I walk in the empty riverbed of …

Crying At Nothing But Colors, Maryalice Carroll

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

crying at nothing but colors is an installation of ceramic works that explores the abstraction of feelings, both physical and emotional. The installation itself is a house made out of tension cables that stretch wall to wall in the gallery space. Inside the house are 7 ceramic objects placed on wooden pedestals paired with tufted rugs.

Throughout this essay, I will describe the abstract ceramic objects as Beings. They are colorful and have textured glaze on the surface with a gloopy opalescent glaze oozing out of holes that cover each piece. They are an extension of myself. They are the …

Echoes Of Home, Hanna Traynham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Echoes of Home, held at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee on display March 15 through April 8, 2022. The author provides insight into concepts and influences relating to the creation of the exhibition with perspective on her intimate connection with place and memory.

The exhibit features five installations addressing home, elusive memory, and the change and continuity of cultural traditions over time. The works consist of a series of large-scale wild clay vessels, gestural clay bookends, a wall installation of cups with a line drawing, suspended porcelain slabs, …

The Artist's Diary, Anamae Gilroy

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Inhumane, Jordan Brown

Master's Theses

My Goal is to bring awareness to the plight of wild creatures who have lost their habitats due to pollution and urban sprawl. I will be making porcelain vessels that influence people to think about their role on the environment. Both terrestrial and aquatic life has been impacted by humans through poaching, non-traditional medical practices, and human activity in the ocean. By making impressionable clay urns, I hope to bring light to these issues that affect animals. Through research I have been enthused by the steep historical forms from Greece, China, and Europe. Their exceptional skill and knowledge of the …

Damned Ol' Dirt, Molly Morningglory

All Theses

damned ol’ dirt centers mindfulness and embodiment practices to foster relationships with the self, each other, and the land. These relationships intend to collectively imagine and then build an emotionally and environmentally sustainable and joyful future. My practice foregrounds clay with digital video, photography, and fabric dyeing, recording the imprint of performance. I use my hereditary understanding of clay and fibers, a trained attunement to the natural world, and my background of performance in craft (via demonstration of tactile techniques) to transfer knowledge and skill to the viewer. Through the creation of tableaus and documents of rituals based in materiality, …

Drink Up: A Study Of The Food-Safe Quality Of Ceramics Glazes With The Addition Of Rutile, Morgan A. Baldinelli

Honors College Theses

Food-safe ceramic glazes can be altered with additives and become harmful to the user of the ceramic ware. Rutile is a frequently used material added to glazes to create variegation in glazes, but it is commonly known to cause defects in the glaze that can be unsafe for food. This experiment is conducted to determine if rutile can be added to food-safe glazes and still retain their food-safe status. A food-safe glaze is a shiny, thin coating that does not leach chemicals or has an excess of colorants; common food-safe glazes are white liners and clear glazes as they have …

The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience Of Vulnerable Immigrants, Eric Andre

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience of Vulnerable Immigrants" focuses on the impact of systems of state control such as immigration laws, policies, and practices that have been institutionalized and that have marginalized immigrants. In my thesis, I pay specific attention to inhuman acts of exclusion and discrimination resulting from the systemic barriers perpetuated by xenophobic and nationalist ideologies.

From this standpoint, my thesis exhibition employs interactive space, which includes visual art (drawing, sculpture ceramics), projection, video, and sound, as a means to explore the effects of the exclusive and discriminatory immigration policies and practices. Furthermore, it is designed to explore …

Yellow, Sisi Chen

Theses and Dissertations

The following paper is a constellational unpacking of yellow through notes on critical race and feminist theories, myth, science, science fiction, disparate histories, cyborgs, biography, virtuality, materiality, fungi, porcelain, language, internalization, melancholia, smells, sounds, tastes, feels, and more feels.

What's Going On Here, Joanna R. Pike

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project is an installation depicting shirts and pants in various degrees of Recognizability. The Components vary from somewhat Unrecognizable to entirely Unrecognizable; Bumps and Blocks are interspersed and interrupt the Semi-logic of What’s going on here while adding repetitive elements to clarify the existence of the Semi-logic. The arrangement of the Components in the installation makes the Unrecognizable forms surrounded by the In-between Space into somewhat Recognizable versions of shirts and pants. The viewer does not fully recognize all the Components, but instead understands the implied Recognition given their existence within the installation. The ideas of Lists, Patterns, Systems, …

Heartwork, Lance Taylor Loftin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Heartwork is a collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that explore the many ways identity is shaped by familial histories and personal memory. Focusing on my time growing up on a pine tree farm in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 90s, Heartwork explores gender, religion, regional traditions, family, and art. Through conversations and collaborations with my family, painting acts as an impetus for strengthening relationships. By reevaluating the past, I am able to create a web of interconnected narratives that inform and shift my understanding of the present.

Pink Fantasy, Andrea Clary

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

“I do my hair toss check my nails, baby how you feeling? Feeling good as hell”– Lizzo, “Good as Hell”, Cuz I Love You, 2019.

My work is about self-acceptance and body positivity. I am learning to love and accept my own body and channel this personal growth into my ceramics.

Reacting to media images of celebrity culture and the movement of fabric in Couture runway fashion shows, I am deeply impacted by contemporary American beauty ideals. Utilizing Hip-hop’s cultural messages of defiance and historical platform for presenting underrepresented voices, song titles and slang become titles for my work, in …

Beside| |Between, Brooke J. Armstrong

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beauty and the grotesque both induce physical sensations in the body. Pleasure and displeasure are two points on the same line. They are not mutually exclusive. Like the body and the vessel, like the self and the other all things exist in reciprocity. The capability of holding brings agency, breaking down perceptions of of subject-object relationships. The works presented in this paper represent a merging and a transformation of perceived separate entities. Craft history and processes inform the work present in the thesis exhibition, Beside| |Between.

Sacred Industry, Joshua Heimsoth

Master's Theses

Thesis show revolving around the design concepts found in religious art and in the functional beauty of industrial design with observations on the beauty and hypocrisy in both power structures.

Self && Self, Shuang Cai

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Seldom before the COVID-19 pandemic have so many people simultaneously had their lifestyle drastically changed in the same way. The forced physical isolation is, ironically, a communal experience. The sickening quarantine left everyone nothing but time to confront and reconnect with themselves. Another inevitable result of corporal isolation is the predominant awakening awareness of digital existences and connections. Evoking the shared sensitivity and delicacy, studying the tectonic activity of the digital world, the project documents the endured contemplation in the upcoming resurgence.

Crystal Queer: Fracturing The Binaries Of Matter, Creation, And Landscape, Sarah Knight

Graduate School of Art Theses

In this thesis, I compile a series of fragments consisting an analysis of my artwork in the gendered contexts of landscape, self-identity, mythology, and philosophy. I develop my concept of a “queer mark” in my art that serves as a form of queering, a disruption of visual and conceptual cohesion. I form a picture of how our contemporary selves are influenced by our gendered understanding of the landscape through the analysis of philosophical, artistic, and mythological concepts of creation. I see my sculptures as an atlas to an alternative means of understanding identity, a queering of these historical and exclusionary …

Capacity, Rachel Baydian

CGU MFA Theses

This Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition by Rachel Baydian is an installation of ceramic sculptures that function as a stand-in for the human body, touching on relationship, interconnectivity, and imperfection. Using abstracted forms that derive from the earth, these art objects are sculpted to mimic nature and its processes. The work highlights our human connection to nature as integrative and vital. Through experience and tactility, there is more of an awareness of space and heightened senses. The work taps into the awe and seduction of the mystery of nature through seemingly ordinary elements of the physical world.