Fine Arts Commons^™

Reclamation: The Towns Of The Virginia Coalfields, Craig Owens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses his work in Reclamation: The Towns of the Virginia Coalfields, a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibit held at the Tipton Gallery from February 12th through February 23, 2024. The exhibition focuses on coal towns located in the southwestern part of Virginia. The exhibition consists of 20 framed, archival inkjet prints. Each framed work is 36” x 24” and is representative of the artist’s exploration of the towns. A catalog of the exhibit is included at the end of this thesis.

Owens examines formal and conceptual artistic influences, both historical and contemporary. Historic and contemporary photographic …

Encapsulating Scars, Ashley Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work explores scars through encapsulation, a desire to enclose and express the emotional scars of memories or physical scars of the body. Life’s experiences impact the living, leaving behind scars that we feel the need to understand. Through the mediums of metal and mixed-media photography, I utilize found and created imagery, as well as a triality of text in order to preserve and remember these scars.

You Are What You Wear: A Vital Materialism Of Textiles, Walter J. Greenleaf Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intermedial artworks are deemed effective when they draw from the roots of the most basic, universal elements of materiality, concept, sensation, and/or experience, melding disparate elements into an inextricable novelty. As hybrid artifacts, they take up an unusual degree of substance in one dimension or another, and can at times be difficult to categorize, describe, or document. Nonetheless, the potential for intermedial expressions to resonate with their viewership is strengthened by the depths to which the artist ventures, and through such a process the most far-reaching and complexly interconnected issues of our time can be made approachable on the personal …

Examining Our Relationship With Death: A Participatory Art Project, Lia A. Davido

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Death is a fact of life, yet researchers such as Caitlin Doughty, Todd Harra, Ernest Becker, and others, have found that people deem death a taboo topic of conversation. Doughty herself started a social movement, death positivity, to encourage this taboo to be broken, and to normalize talking about death. However these researchers published their findings in the early to mid 2010’s, before a major pandemic made death a more common occurrence for people. Inspired by previous researchers' experiences, this project asks the question: How do people feel about death now, and can socially engaged art create a space where …

The Great Unlearning, Catherine Mccrory Pears

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Great Unlearning is a conceptual exploration: sifting through experiences and objects to overcome psychological pain, expectations of society, individual upbringing, and outside influences in an ongoing quest for authenticity. To both embrace personal history and honor loved ones while letting go of lingering negativity is challenging. Using objects culled from my life, examining the past, and incorporating items gathered along my path through nature, the work seeks personal healing while promoting the power of all people to break from indoctrination, group think, and mob mentality to make better choices to live a satisfying and peaceful existence…hopefully in a democratic …

Someone, Stop Her! The Musical (The Gallery Show): The Thesis Document., Hannah Dewitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis document accompanies a body of work that is radically vulnerable, personally political, and emotionally complex. Through my work, I challenge myself and my audience to sit with discomfort and create an environment suitable to generate a nuanced appreciation of pain that approaches its acceptance through humor, confessionalism, and the subversion of tropes against themselves as an act of counter-mimicry. This document situates my work within art-historical context with a primary focus on performance art and applies insight from each artwork referenced to further analyze and defend my own work. Additionally, I use texts relating to Camp sensibility, binary …

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 …

Art As Ritual: The Realm Between Identities, Haley Scarboro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ritualism is everywhere in the world and something that everyone takes part in, whether we acknowledge it or not. Rituals can be as simple as a morning routine or as monumental as memorializing a loved one. The works in this thesis are within the covenant of southern witchcraft and how it comes together in Ritual Art. Through documentation, memory-fueled found objects, and time-based installation I consider how growing up in Georgia and being a practicing witch played a role in my identity formation. Rituals are vital to the identities themselves and the history they hold. Symbolism plays a major role …

Sana Sana: Unlearning Generational Expectation Through Performance, Jalen R. Ash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work is an exploration of identity as a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color) body traversing through the generational histories of my family and the struggle of cultural loss to our assimilation of Whiteness. Through the multi-faceted medium of performance, my work uses physical and mental spaces of self and technology to understand how the body functions as a screen. Our bodies house projections of generational expectations that have trickled down from the past into the present. These projections shape our own unique identities along with the personal experiences we gather as we move through the various spaces of …

The Art Of Surviving: Alchemy Of Healing Trauma In Relation To Identity: A Self Study., Rebecca Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis explores trauma’s physical and psychological aspects concerning identity as an artistic practice. Through exploring materials, subject matter, and media, my approach to trauma is based on personal and socially engaged experiences and my attempt to re-conceptualize that experience through the language of contemporary art. Extensively this work is governed by childhood memories and the critical aspect of being raised as a female in a patriarchal society. Being raised female comes with a certain number of expectations and requirements. This work creates a physical and spiritual connection between trauma and the identity of what is female. Discussing these …

Principal Decision-Making And Perception Of Fine Arts Programing In Curricular Design, Osvaldo Altamirano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study included an exploration of the concept of perception affecting decision- making in curriculum design and the support of school administrators toward fine art programs in West Texas School Regions 18 and 19. Research shows that the fine arts provide students the social and creative skills to become productive citizens. However, research shows that in the current realm of urban and rural public school curricula, the fine arts exist at either a limited capacity or are nonexistent. This dissertation included an attempt to answer how a school leader's fine arts perception affects a principal's ability to support, build, …

Home/Sick, Elizabeth P. Fontenot

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a supporting document that discusses the conceptual and technical aspects of the artworks in the accompanying exhibition, HOME/SICK. The work in the exhibition consists of selections from different series of work that are inspired by related subject matter. The content driving the work responds to anecdotal experiences of people living in communities near oil refineries and chemical processing plants and how events at these facilities affect their way of life. Many times, these are communities of color which strive to voice concerns and protect homes from harmful toxins. In one series, original and appropriated imagery serves as …

Where Do I Belong In The United States Public School System?, Christiana R. Becker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I seek to inquire about the world as it relates to my identity as a first generation descent of the Penobscot tribe living in the United States by utilizing four methodologies in my research: life histories/autobiographies, narrative inquiry, a/r/tography and practice-based and practice-led. Through coupling my artistic practice with those four methodologies I am able to creatively show the information I have unearthed in hopes that others will benefit from a fresh and augmented understanding of what it historically and culturally means to be a part of a community that makes up a very small percentage of the United States …

The Reading Of Sir Toby Belch: A Queer And Black Exploration Of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night., Jahi E Bogard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This MFA thesis explores queer, black representation in William Shakespeare’s drama and in the University of Louisville’s Department of Theatre Arts Fall 2021 production of an adaption of Twelfth Night (1601). Directed by Jennifer Pennington, the repurposed script and non-traditional casting targeted a modern audience. Cast as Olivia’s drunk uncle, Sir Toby Belch, I aimed to discover if my identify as a black, queer, cis man could be incorporated into Shakespeare’s text. Sir Toby Belch’s raucous, heterosexual, and sometimes violent, traits are often imagined today as innately masculine. I argue that Shakespeare’s plays can be appropriated by queer, black actors …

Blue-Collar Backroads, Hannah Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses work in Blue-Collar Backroads, a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibit held at downtown Tipton Gallery from February 1st through February 18th, 2022. The exhibit consists of 17 archival inkjet prints selected from the artist’s two-year exploration of rural backroads as a vehicle for creating images. Using aesthetic traditions of large-format film photography, the photographer poses questions of identity, place, memory, and the intentional pursuit of meditative practices in art. Non-photographic influences are listed, including Claire Wellesley-Smith and Elizabeth Catte. Photographic influences include Joel Sternfeld, Rachel Boillot, William Christenberry, and Mike Smith.

A catalog of the exhibit …

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, …

Transformation., Jingshuo Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My works mainly show my perception of life and my change of thought. The world is full of changes, and the pandemic has disrupted our lives. Many people, including me, are confused about the world. Philosophy and my observation and thinking about the world helped me to have a clearer understanding of the world. My paintings Licia, Butterfly Woman, and Live with Covid reflect my understanding of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of empathy. Within my art, I also use another German Philosopher Theodor W. Adorno's theory of the culture industry to deepen my understanding of some social phenomena. My …

Economic Aesthetics, Ashrafi Sultana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary socio-economic reality is like a robbery, where the wealthy people have all the money, and the workers live from hand to mouth. These systematic inequalities are happening through capitalist consumerism and creating a growing economic contrast globally. Rather than considering imitative freedom promoted by the mainstream media that drives us to power, greed, or ego-centric mentality, I believe human rights can direct us to real freedom. In current society, basic rights are being taken away from many, while a great number of us are trapped in our utopian reality without recognizing the truth. We are stimulated by our socio-economic …

Perplexions: Perceptions, Plexi And Prose, Amy B. Nelson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An understanding of our world is unique to each individual and their experiences. While experiences are often shared, we all process them according to our own schema. Through exploration into the multiple facets of plexiglass, my work examines trauma, loss and its lasting effect on a person's memory of the past, present and perception of the future. These experiences can cause an abrupt shift in personal schema and reshape one’s perception of the world. Through the combination of visual and linguistic stimuli, my trauma-informed work can be a catalyst for my viewers to discuss what they are experiencing and why. …

Clean Fields, Lindsey E. Creel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Clean Fields is an exhibition consisting of 3 anthotypes and 11 drawings on paper mounted to panels. The work is part homage and part documentation of the emotionally restorative properties found in gardening. It is a contemporary view of a timeless activity. While the work references realistic content, the artistic outcomes are non-objective. Modifications in composition and scale provide variation throughout the series. The large-scale of the works and the use of economy and movement in the composition move the viewer into a meditative state.

The Uncanny Desire In American Animation And Film., Kristen Hankins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although surrealism was short lived, the impact on popular culture is ongoing. Analyzing this impact is quite interesting because it set a standard for American animation and film. In this thesis, Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis and the uncanny are investigated through the lens of the camera in American cinema and animation. This thesis looks at cartoons and films that were made after Breton’s surrealist manifestos were published. This thesis aims to show the viewer the lasting impact that Breton had on American popular culture. This thesis is divided into three chapters with an introduction and conclusion. Chapter one discusses Fleischer …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Covid-19 Infection Control On Visual Art Installations In Hospitals With Pediatric Patients, Shannon Kimich

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the impact of COVID-19 infection control on visual artwork in pediatric hospitals and hospitals caring for pediatric patients. The study involved five hospitals in three southern America states and addressed visual artwork and art installations. The researcher administered an internet-based survey to participants in job functions related to hospital administration, environmental services, and project management across the facilities and received participation from 18 respondents. Additionally, telephone interviews were conducted with three participants with the job titles project manager/analyst, child-life specialist, and environmental services director. Survey questions were designed to examine visual art programs in selected children’s hospitals …

Love Labor: Literal Symbols And True Abstractions., Karen Weeks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

If the home can be a metaphor for our own interiors, then the things that collect there can be similarly thought of, performing as punctuated moments within that interior, giving it shape, creating contours. Within the domestic setting, macro social forces such as global capitalism as well as the more immediate experience of meeting our children’s demands can push and pull us, equally informing the experience of being in the home. Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions is comprised of images sourced from common ephemera of the home meant to represent the everyday: notes, discarded letters, open envelopes, unfinished …

Shifting Sands., Rachid Tagoulla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shifting Sands is a re-exploration of the presentation of North Africans in colonial postcards, an examination of identity, and a critique of the modern Western museum. Since the inception of photography, colonizers used this medium- especially in the form of postcards- to categorize and exoticize Eastern peoples in order to more easily subjugate them. Shifting Sands is a series of reconstructed colonial postcards which challenges colonial-era stereotypes of North African peoples. The colonial gaze, represented by the camera lens, is subverted through a lensless image-making process in which sand is used to remove the subject from the colonial gaze and …

Coherence, Travis Walthall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

COHERENCE is a series of oil paintings and pen drawings that explores open narratives, or different ways to read artwork. The paintings and drawings showcase harmony, or tension, between ambiguous and representational forms. The visual experience requires the viewer to create their own narrative and decipher forms to do so. COHERENCE is a psychological and aesthetic exhibition fueled from human experience— one of fragility, uncertainty, imperfection, beauty, faith and memories.

Putting Myself Back Together, Kailan Counahan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Putting Myself Back Together is a collection of works created from poetry that is created from memories and phrases. The work is autobiographical in nature as it deals with my life and loved ones who have passed away. I have found the poems alone are not enough to fully represent or honor the memory or person they are about, leading me to create them three-dimensionally. I create from a large body of materials which is incred- ibly specific to my experiences while still allowing the viewer into the piece to connect with it through their own experiences.

-Rhiza., Katherine E. Watts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

-rhiza is a collection of work that focuses on an immersive experience of local ecology and the dichotomous relationship of humanity and nature, presented through the artist's eyes, ecophilosophy, mycology, ecofeminism, and metaphor. An installation of experiential work, -rhiza consists of videography, printmaking, photography, musical elements, both found object and natural item sculptures, and poetry. This compendium of work addresses humanity's apathy towards the ecological imbalance and how this affects our fundamental interconnectedness with all life. Based on explorations of local waterways and the recognition of human consumerism's pressing issues, -rhiza attempts to present the urgent matter of rising …

But Also Full Of Seeds For A Future That Could Have Turned Out Differently., Megan Marie Bickel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between "illusion," "allusion," and their relationship to contemporary images which announce, shield, or reference information. Beginning by discussing Casualist and Post-Digital Painting discourse, two styles I work within, we see connecting tissue in announcing and shielding of meaning. We look at the meaning of marks, and in the parallel exhibition, marks that utilize camouflage strategies appear as a metaphor for illuding to information which appears as conveying depth when there is none, and using paintings' symbols in objects that are not paintings. The work 'alludes' to what the viewer has seen before and relies on …

Present In Presence, Lyndsey A. Frantz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My ceramics are made to entice the viewer to live in their present moment by altering their perception and familiarity of utilitarian objects through means of natural processes found out in nature. I want the user to be fully engaged with thoughts about time, nature, and being present during their lives. Life in not just about daily responsibilities and sometimes we as humans can get so caught up in everything around us that we simply forget to enjoy everything we have worked hard to achieve. By experiencing something new, we can get out of our comfort zones and being present …

Surface, Depth And The Ephemeral Experience, Naghmeh Hachempour

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Music has long been an important medium for fulfilling and expressing emotional needs. In fact, music can become a powerful tool to create emotional responses in humans, such as happiness, sadness, awareness, as we see in recent decades in cinema, social media and advertisement. Today, a combination of different media is used to arouse our emotion and feeling, but often music has been used to accompany a visual realization, rather than vice versa. In my work I explore new modes of communication between people and sound by transfiguring music notation to a visual graphic. The scope and scale of my …