Fine Arts Commons^™

Making Mochi!, Shannon 'Owo' Crystal Webb

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Making mochi (rice cakes) is a metaphor for making a way of life for myself through spiritual and cultural practice. I navigate the complexities of cultural mixing and identity as someone who is half Korean and half white. Rather than one or the other, I have always felt mixed, so my path to understanding my place in the world is also mixed. On one level, I am honoring my heritage by referencing Korean customs, folktales, and mythology. On another, I address how my needs are based on my current state, which includes my location, pop culture, and society at large. …

Rooted In Between, Manavi Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Rooted in Between is a personal project that explores the complexities of belonging and the emotions that come with navigating between spaces that we call home. This written thesis is in support of the carefully curated video based and photographic work presented at an exhibition of the same title. The project's primary objective is to delve into the physical and emotional baggage that we carry with us as we move from one place to another. The project highlights the coping mechanisms adopted by the different generations in my family while struggling to find a place where we truly belong.

Utility Lines, Carolyn Hartwell

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The paintings included in this Thesis Exhibition explore the theme of fragility that retains quiet strength. Combining delicacy with tenacity is how I arrived at the name of the exhibition, Utility Lines. A utility line transfers energy and is vulnerable to both weather and accident; the fragile materiality is the weakness inherent to functionality. In my work, I am deciding how much responsibility for the stability of a composition can be carried by the most tenuous elements. I test how much of the emotional and compositional load of a painting can be born by muted colors, awkward shapes and unsteady …

Music Therapy At An Inclusive Early Learning Center: A Grant Proposal, Laura Elliott Buckner

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Music in early childhood can enhance the development of communication, language, cognitive, and social emotional skills. Music therapy administered by a board-certified music therapist can be tailored to fit the specific developmental needs of children with and without disabilities. The purpose of this comprehensive clinical project was to develop a music therapy program for the Early Learning Center at the Lexington Hearing and Speech Center and a grant proposal to fund this program. First, I piloted a mini program through my Graduate Clinical Placement in Music Therapy (MUS 633) and supervisory experiences through my teaching assistantship. I then developed a …

Pathos, Winter 2023, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Introduction To Contemporary Art Across Political Divides, Alla Myzelev, Tijen Tunali

Art History

This book addresses the need for a more sustained knowledge and multidisciplinary understanding of what art and artists can do to create democratic spaces, forms and languages in a world devastated by multiple crises. The book’s main inquiry is whether contemporary art can or cannot cultivate an “agonistic” way of togetherness and facilitate difficult conversations through a multitude of contradictions, diverging views and conflicting visions. With Marxist, feminist and ecologist perspectives, the contributors analyze contemporary art worlds across the globe in relation to memory, conflict, trauma, transitional justice, social engagement, social resistance and activism.

In this volume artists, activists, art …

Staging A Musical Self Through Paper, Canvas, And The Screen: A Taxonomy Of Musicians’ Self-Portraits From The Renaissance To The Digital Age, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Abstract:

Musicians have engaged in visual self-representation at least since the Renaissance and have continued the tradition to modern times with contemporary practices including selfies and generative technology and AI art. The practitioners include so-called classical composers (Schoenberg is a well-known case) and performers (Caruso, for instance), but also pop singers and musicians (Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith, among others). The media used varies from oil on canvas to drawings on paper, from traditional photography to digital media. In some instances, there are grave, pompous self-representations, but caricatures also abound (e.g., Donizetti). There are also some miscategorized self-portraits (i.e., portraits …

Opportunities For Cantabile Performance In Seung Ki Hong’S Arirang Variations, Hye Jin Yeom

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this project is introducing South Korean composer Seung Ki Hong’s Arirang Variations (2015). Hong’s post-2013 work has focused on incorporating traditional Korean melodies into Western instrumental music; Arirang Variations exemplifies this process. The theme is “Arirang,” a folksong that Koreans have sung to express their joys and sorrows for centuries. Hong transforms this iconic melody through a series of variations in various dance styles such as a tango and a Viennese waltz.

This paper includes two main sections. The first provides background information that, although important for understanding Arirang Variations, is inaccessible to many performers. This section …

Fourpaintingsomedrawingsandaprintbehindapillar, Sam R. Brown

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My work is about the interest of communication and visual story telling through the mediums of drawing and painting. This comes from my earliest artistic education through comics. My exposure to comics has informed my decisions on composition and visual language. The reason why I chose to work with this in mind is because I see a general lack of this sort of visual storytelling in contemporary art. The process of telling stories through visual media is something that had been done for millennia. Through my work I wish to take this issue and utilize it to a contemporary viewer. …

Above And Below, Kristen Brown

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My recent graduate artwork uses abstraction of form to describe the intersection between humans and the environment while relating the landscape of our skin to the ever-changing qualities of the natural landscape surrounding us. The photographic material is stressed into three dimensional shapes, producing creasing and tears as it is being contorted by human impact. At the same time that I am creating something new, I am manipulating artifactual evidence of something that already exists in everyday life. This is akin to how our bodies are distorted by outer influence, as well as our own autonomy. Above and below the …

Tradiciones, Selena Medellin

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In the organic ceramic forms I create, I provide a look into memories of growing up with my late grandfather, a first generation Mexican-American. Our house was adorned with Mexican paintings, an altar for those that had passed, and traditional textiles such as sarapes, rugs, and blankets. I learned stories of our ancestors, the myths and legends of our native land, and that you must celebrate both life and death. I use the combination of ceramics and mixed media to convey both the vibrancy and solemnity of Mexican tradition. In my work, I reference Aztec Gods and Goddesses, Mexican textiles, …

Dear Everything That Feels,, Oga Li (Oga L)

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Can Animals Contract?, John Enman-Beech

Animal Studies Journal

Animals are, or are like persons, and so should not be treated as mere property. But persons are not just non-property; they are contractors. They interact with property and with other persons. This article analyses the possibilities for a range of animals to fit within market liberal society as contractors from a legal disciplinary perspective. Some animals are capable of contract-like relationships of reciprocal exchange, and can consent, in a certain sense, to parts of such relationships. However, the dangers of the contractual frame, which is used to legitimate exploitation, may exceed the benefits. Some scholars have begun to explore …

I'M Not Sure It Was A Hoopoe Or A Decanter, Ali Kaeini

Theses and Dissertations

“I’m not sure it was a Hoopoe or a Decanter” explores the experience of cultural displacement through the lens of an Iranian artist and immigrant. Drawing on ancient Iranian stories, Persian poetry, and cultural artifacts, my paintings and drawings reflect the uncertainty of the contemporary political and religious conditions in Iran, as well as the challenges faced by individuals forced to flee their homeland due to war, political instability, and social conditions. My work weaves references to ancient Iranian objects, Persian miniatures' structural forms and patterns, and Islamic architecture, using traditional and contemporary materials to create large, unconventional paintings. Through …

Wonderland, Mai Tran

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

“WONDERLAND” is a series of large-scale print and installation work created from 2021 to 2023. This body of work showcases dream-like landscapes, Vietnamese legends and customs blended with American culture to create unique visual narratives. Elements such as mythical animals, the Ly dynasty dragon and ceramics, and the Vietnamese Nom script speak to an almost forgotten culture. In contrast, the carno-lotus (cheeseburger) plant, Walleye, Bobcat, and winter scenery reference life in the Midwest. By combining elements from the two cultures, the artist builds parallel worlds where all living things can sustain and value each other’s differences — a place without …

Irene Cox, Lindsey Arturo

Theses and Dissertations

This document explores the question of “Who is Irene Cox?” as a jumping off point for creating an artwork which navigates online information landscapes and their logics circa 2023. By using thirteen unique but similar found paintings of the same floral still life by an artist named “Irene Cox” I create a visually meandering, absurd, haunting, and comical pathway for thinking through who exactly is Irene Cox via the internet. How such a question is even asked becomes the art in which a myriad of visual techniques are used to explore the nature of the question. Included in this paper …

Nuff Love: From Me To You, Katherine S. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis exhibition, Nuff Love: From Me to You, explores the profound impact of diasporic memory on identity within the family structure, particularly for those who were born after immigration. This unpacking of memories is achieved through photographs, collages, and installations that reveal the distant and absent attributes that reside within the home. As a second-generation American of Afro-Jamaican descent, this thesis navigates how the dual identity becomes too complex and is never allowed to exist in a binary state. The constant state of in-betweenness between both cultures led to further questioning of selfhood beyond the Caribbean identity maintained by …

The Old One And La Mer, Karter Tod Bernhardt

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Presenting And Curating Contemporary Installation Art; The Work Of Cornelia Parker And Céline Condorelli, Bridget Curtis

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

The popular sentiment in curation among contemporary British art institutions has emphasized the attempt to reconcile with the divide between public art and art presented in institutions. The globalization of Britain in contemporary times has led to the wide dissemination of shows curated by British institutions. The location artwork is exhibited can change the reception and interaction with the work. Artists who use their work as a means of activism can benefit from the perception of a global audience. The question arises as to how impactful activism art can be when exhibited within the contemporary institution versus when it is …

Sites Of Cultural Production In Response To Mass Extinction, Stephanie S. Turner, Evamarie Lindahl, Tara Nicholson

Animal Studies Journal

This conversation, mediated by Tara Nicholson, considers Stephanie Turner and EvaMarie Lindahl’s research in cultural representations of extinction and investigations of more-than-human forms of storytelling through an art historical lens. In response to Lori Gruen’s classification, extinction is a distinctive loss of ‘animal cultures’. It is more than biodiversity destruction or a static inventory of a species’ death. Nonhuman ways of building bonds, reproducing, teaching offspring, constructing homes and mourning the dead, are all systems of knowledge lost in extinction (Gruen et al. 2017). This conversation offers compassionate ways of bearing witness to species destruction and a space for empathy …

A Tenth Of A Second, Natalia Andrea Mejía Murillo

Theses and Dissertations

A Tenth of a Second is an installation that explores modes of cartographic representation of the universe, specifically the moon, in dialogue with poetic language. The work is based on research and reflection on disciplines such as astronomy and archaeology and addresses issues such as the fragility of the reference and categorization systems we use to approach reality, tactility and the body as a standard of measurement.

[Review] Krishanu Maiti, Editor. Posthumanist Perspectives On Literary And Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning And Teaching: Issues In Literature And Culture. 188 Pp. Isbn 978-3-030-76159-2 (Ebook), Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Krishanu Maiti, editor. Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning and Teaching: Issues in Literature and Culture. 188 pp. ISBN 978-3-030-76159-2 (eBook)

Introduction: Critical Animal Studies In An Age Of Extinction, Eva Kasprzycka, Chloë Taylor, Kelly Struthers Montford

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2023 12(2): Introduction: Critical Animal Studies in an Age of Extinction

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 …

Yes, Baby: Essays, Amy Gault

MSU Graduate Theses

This creative thesis includes thirteen flash nonfiction pieces and one fiction short story exploring emotions and experiences that have changed who I am today. These writings are personal experiences or are inspired by personal experience. These creative works interrogate deeply transformative events and situations, such as familial relationships, trauma, poverty, living in the Midwest, patriarchy, and the beauty in existing. In the thesis’s critical introduction, I examine how my flash nonfiction pieces employ Milan Kundera’s theory of the appeal of play and Charles Baxter’s concept defamiliarization. I analyze how the succinct form of the flash essay allows my nonfiction writing …

Understanding Castration Anxiety Through Contemporary Art And Feminism, Ember J. Nevins

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …