Art Practice Commons^™

Sanctuary, Harsha Kejriwal

Masters Theses

When I first arrived in New England, I was accustomed to thinking of winters as short but pleasant periods. For me, winter was a break from the strong and relentless sunlight of summer in Central India. But the contrast between my childhood winters and the same months in the Northeastern United States was dramatic. Statistically, Providence has an average of five hours of sunlight a day whereas Central India enjoys 9.5 hours during its coldest months. This pronounced change in light piqued my interest. I was struck by the various phenomena created by natural light during these cold months. Sunlight, …

Spatial Reveries, Alexander Wenstrup

Masters Theses

We live in a hazy existence marked by rapid pace, development, digital consumption, and a deteriorating environment. Spatial Reveries hopes to counter the current trajectory and offer an alternative perspective by presenting one with moments of awe, discovery, and wonder to improve the disconnect between society and their surroundings. The work refers to a history of anamorphic art, cubism, deception, and optical phenomena in Western society. It operates on the urges and instincts of the artist, utilizing massing, light, transparency, horizons, and vastness, to challenge perceptions of space, time, and memory. Through the play of perspective and projection the work …

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.

Continuing, Shauna Le Ann Smith

MSU Graduate Theses

Taking something whole, breaking it apart, and making it into another form of wholeness is the essence of both papermaking and grief. The papermaking process involves separation, maceration, and forming of new life; the grieving process involves a similar evolution. Creating this body of work has been a pursuit of continuation—a part of me forming new life. Using papermaking processes, I create work that is visually quiet. The details are only noticeable through sustained attention and close proximity. The quiet visual qualities are intended to create a viewing experience that is meditative and slow. The lack of details of the …

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

MSU Graduate Theses

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Buzz Buzz, Sarah Heinemann

Theses and Dissertations

Taking the form of a series of notes and notations, this document serves as an account of color in my painting practice as it intersects through personal memory, research, and my studio and professional practices.

Always Wednesday, Danielle Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

Danielle Roberts’ work explores personal narratives. The spaces she paints radiate, simultaneously dark and luminescent. Resembling the kind of archetypes of place used in film her cinematic compositions invite the viewer into the frame. Her figures capture feelings of alienation illuminated by the unnatural existential glow of constructed contemporary light.

Reflected Dispositions, Taylor Hedum

MFA Thesis Exhibit Catalogs

My MFA Thesis Exhibition, Reflected Dispositions, features an installation of sculptural objects and light projections in an unconventionally dark gallery setting. Spotlights shine onto the reflective sculptures, and the light is cast onto the surrounding environment. Motors or water deform the sculptures to create dynamic motion in the projections, with the cyclical changes and tempo meant to evoke a state of reflection in the audience. The percepts magnify the nuances of the material; to reveal the previously unseen.

My interest to control light stems from experiments with materials and the unexpected reflections that they produce. Since then, I have learned …

Kiddush Levana, The Moon Is Your Handheld Mirror, Noa Ginzburg

Theses and Dissertations

Noa Ginzburg is weaving cast-off and hand-made objects, lights, reflections, spells, drawings, and an abundance of knots into site-responsive installations. In her thesis, Ginzburg addresses Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, the synergy of assemblages, repurposing of materials in the era of Anthropocene, and how notions of solidarity and indeterminacy influence her work.

Hardcore Frivolity, Dixie Lyn Boswell

CGU MFA Theses

I believe in experiencing the world and truth through all the senses. Digging beneath the surface and not stopping at the first thing that flutters through my head. My art installations work with light, abstract imagery, reflective surfaces, and motion, to manipulate spaces creating multi-sensory experiences that encourage a heightened awareness of being in one's body.

I Promise, Maya Luque

CGU MFA Theses

This exhibition is about Chinese burial sites and the practices that accompany the loss of a loved one. The Chinese have a practice where they build large earthen mounds as burial sites; they then visit the sites of their ancestors once a year. I have made my own burial site out of beeswax-dipped paper, which I have then stitched together, like a quilt, to form a hollow version of this mound. In traditional Western home economics quilt making is important; in my installation I use the stitch work to represent a home. In this installation my aim is for the …

Heavy Light: Transformation Of Matter In Relation To Growth And Decay, Lauren A. Bennett

Masters Theses

Through my artwork I explore the cyclical relationship and inherent inevitability between the processes of growth and decay. I engage notions of place, memory, fluctuation, and ephemerality. Drawing inspiration from an abandoned house and its many atrophying, accumulated contents, I examine the human impact upon our ecological surroundings and personal domains, tied to notions of finality and sustainability. Using light and time as both narrative elements and the physical components to cultivate images, I create hybrid prints that weave a story of our ever-changing territories. I present visual works that challenge our idealized views of life, and call attention to …

Projectordinary, Paul M. Kelley

CGU MFA Theses

These works are slices, reflections and projections of life. They celebrate what seems humdrum and humble. With stripped-down almost deadpan effects that are nearly as dull as the objects, my works lie somewhere between 2D and 3D, blurring the lines of physical space with the digital. The spatial and sculptural qualities that they attain induce a playful illusion in the moment of trying to make sense of what the eye sees. With a bit of precision, it is vital to make use of the negative space and align animations and digitally repeated forms with objects to retain believability, normality and …

The Darkness Is Passing, Grace Heeeun Park

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about the interplay of light, darkness and space. I express illumination of space and penetrating light with abstract painting. I use the white of canvas and thick application of black paint to create frames and to break rules of defined dimensions. Through my paintings, I challenge the perception of space and question the boundaries between two and three dimensions.

Here's Looking When, Erica Ryan Stallones

CGU MFA Theses

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To End In Silence., Justin R. Hammer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis supports the Master of Fine Arts exhibition, To End In Silence, at the Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, March 15-19, 2010. The exhibit consists of fourteen pieces, which are either presented on pedestals or mounted on the wall.

To comment on the title of my thesis, it is a description of the state of calm that I strive to embrace during the creation of my work and the unobtrusive yet engaging tone that I hope for each finished composition to project. This paper explores the aesthetic and conceptual transitions in my work, inspired by a period …