Ceramic Arts Commons^™

In-Between Places, Jonah Fleeger

Masters Theses

I am an emerging artist originally from Northwest Indiana. I attended a small boarding school called Verde Valley School, in Sedona, Arizona, which is where my love for pottery first started. I received my BFA in ceramics from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After college I was fortunate enough to find studio space and work at the Lillstreet Art Center, where I was a teacher, teaching assistant and glaze maker. Since then I have completed post-baccalaureate programs at The University of Colorado Boulder and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. This book is a presentation of myself …

Train Boy, Shannon Gross

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the story of the author's interactions with the hallucinatory figure of Train Boy.

The Movement In Nature : Deep Missing, Missing You From Far Away, Chia-Chi Wu

Masters Theses

The Movements in Nature

Soft waves, soft clouds, soft grass,

In the ocean, in the sky, on the ground. Mellow, smooth, satisfying,

No sharpness, no harm, just round circles.

Imagination of the mixture of the nature.

The Moment Someone Opens A Book, A Venus Flytrap Is Tightening Its Cage, Chenlu Hou

Masters Theses

his thesis examines transitions as a form of transformation.

Throngs, Yinan Chen

Masters Theses

Ceramic is an important element of my artworks. It is a material with strong bearing capacity, and at the same time, it is a tool with the attribute of nature and social function, for the similarity with humans can be found in it. Thanks to its characteristics, I am able to transform the forms, colors, and quality to complete my works. Collected from nature, carved with human hands, the clay is cultivated and my expectation of the outside world is satisfied.

Say Luv: Reimagining The Black Female Body, Jer'lisa Devezin

Art Theses and Dissertations

From hottentot venus to Cardi B, the influence of the white representation and the treatment of the black female body has shaped a culture of oppression amongst Black women, having surpassed the white community and trickled into the black community. In hip hop culture, reality television, and social media, black women are portrayed as angry and are stereotyped as ghetto and ignorant. On the music scene woman are always sexualized under the male gaze, however now that we are in the twerk era Cardi B is giving a new perspective to the representation of women in hip hop. By using …

Breath: Capturing Energetic Forms In Pottery, Raymond Brown

Honors Theses

As a Bachelor of Fine Arts candidate with an emphasis in Ceramics, the culmination of my undergraduate education was a formal showing of my work at the Gallery 130 in Meek Hall at The University of Mississippi, Oxford Campus from April 1, 2019 to April 5, 2019. I chose to make pieces of functional, utilitarian pottery with the intent of providing the user with an entrance into a memorable and contemplative experience. Taking influence from historical slipware mark-making - especially German Pennsylvanian Tulipware, I work to craft pieces that are inviting, generous, and strong. Both my show and written thesis …

Books / Vessels / Hours, Lara Head

Graduate School of Art Theses

My thesis works two vessels, book : 300 hours and book : terrain explore and enact states of meditation, focusing on the process of making and the specificity of materials used. The meditative aspects of my process of making correlate to an anticipated meditation in the observer's time spent viewing. I hope to spark in the viewer the same response and state that I myself was in while making. In this text I explore my artistic process and what I hope for the viewer to experience while they are spending time with my works. I discuss how spending time making …

White Noise, Chris Cohen

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

White Noise investigates moments when white supremacist ideology injects itself into the conversation about American Identity and American History in an attempt to co- opt those definitions and control the conversation. The exhibition considers the effects of this identity crisis on American identity, white identity, American history, and family unity. The exhibition looks at these issues through the lens of the Virginia Historical Markers program, Civil War Re-enactment, contemporary white identity politics and supremacy, monuments, educational history museums, and the artist’s personal narrative about white supremacy as it relates to his own sense of loyalty and connection to his family. …

Seeing Through Feeling, Christopher Mitchell Rodgers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to describe both the inherent formal qualities and conceptual framework that are addressed within the exhibition, Seeing Through Feeling. The exhibition is centered around the methodology of making, collection, and display all through the one singular positioning, the object. The objects within the exhibition are either handmade or collected fragments that weave together around the singular position of craft and history under the pretense of how our understanding of time may not always be true. The thesis breaks down key components through specific themes into the categories of the hand, eye, symbol, object, value, …

Good Dyke Art, Sam M. Mack

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The work in good dyke art visually expands upon conversations about institutional critique and its contradictions, specifically questioning who dictates the boundaries between institutions and bodies: how divisions are made between them and who enacts or receives force. One’s participation in this critique, however, indicates a participation in the problematics of the institution and by extension, a desire to critique may also be considered a desire to participate in that system.

Ceramic, glaze, and found objects manifest an allegorical formalism that utilizes coded languages of institutional spaces, traditions of queer-coding, and charged word-play. The ceramic vessel forms reference the Ancient …

Finding Balance, Quinn Maher

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Exhibition Statement

Finding Balance is my exploration into the relationship between form, firing, and utility.

In the studio I pay close attention the silhouette of each piece, looking for strong continuous lines in both the positive and negative space accentuating the volume created on the potter’s wheel. I spend time with each piece combing the surface to create texture and reveal the course particles below the surface. As I apply white slip to this textures surface, the high points allow the fluid slip to break and pool in recessed areas creating a layer of depth and variety. The white slip …

Wonder, Katriona Drijber

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

WONDER is an exploration of the point at which what we know and what we think we know begins to break down. I melt and erode the perfect patterns I worked hard to construct through the manipulation of kiln atmosphere, using excess carbon, wood, and soda ash. I then add ephemeral, delicate imagery of animals in china paint. These steps introduce elements of the unknown and unpredictable onto intimate objects at the core of domestic human life. By disrupting organized patterns and reintroducing the animals we share the world with, I explore the question: What is lost when we surround …

Rediscovering Brazil: The Marajoara Style In Modernist Art And Design, Alyson Brandes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

During the Portuguese rule of Dom Pedro II until 1889, through the years of the First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930) and into the First Vargas Regime (1930-1945), Brazil struggled to solidify a strong national identity that would finally unify the country and legitimize its rich cultural heritage. The discovery and excavation of Marajó Island in the 1870s provided evidence of a great, ancient civilization, and inspired Brazilian Art Deco and early Modernist artists. Polychrome ceramic urns, vessels, and tangas (female pubic covers) were among the most abundant archaeological finds, many with zoomorphic and geometric motifs that show the cultural importance of …

Between And Beyond, Noah F. Heil

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Between and Beyond is a series of handbuilt and wheel-thrown ceramic objects which explore intimate queer relationships through the human figure. I assemble slabs of clay to create openings and negative spaces within the sculptures, implying the ways in which the human form also acts as a vessel. The sculptures as well as the figures themselves remain open and vulnerable, literally and metaphorically. The body is depicted through fragmented sections, alluding to the ways in which society and culture break up gender and sexuality into limiting binaries. These intimate, private moments are meant to conjure an imagined future free of …

Simply Mo., Marjolijn Jaliene Oskam

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

Small portfolio presentation of design work by Marjolijn Oskam, branded under simply mo. The poster includes school work as well as professional work.

This Is Just To Say, Iren Tete

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My memories are marked by the desire to evade logic. At a young age I became a proficient player of the “What If” game.

What if I could hold light in my hands?

What if shadows had form that could be touched?

What if I could see through structures?

These mental exercises affected my relationship with reason and validity. Aware of the threat of the ordinary, I embraced the inherent magic in the notion of possibility. I understand possibility as the limitless potential of object, thought, or scenario. This potential extends beyond the apparent and prompts more questions than it …

Caddo Inspired Coil Pots, Jordan Weaver

Undergraduate Research Conference

When my bosses, John Handley and Alisa Steed, asked me to plan an educational program to go along with the upcoming Contemporary Caddo art show at the Cole Art Center I knew I wanted to find an art lesson to teach children. Creating is a great way to teach children about history because it invites them to take an active role in their education, rather than passively listening. After learning that traditional Caddo potters created coil pots out of clay, I knew I wanted to teach this art form to children in the community. Making coil pots requires children to …

Entangled, Katherine Cox

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I create objects to incite wonder through their exuberance, inviting one to explore the beauty found in the strange and offering the viewer a way to interact with the discomfort of the unknown. Mysculptures are an assembly of engaging surfaces and forms revealing varying texturesandvibrant colors referencing natural and fabricated worlds. Each sculpture is entangled within its own environment or narrative and each is adorned for its own role, finding a balance between discord and harmony, captivation and repulsion.

Each is an individual exploration of the distinct qualities inherent within each object. They are precious in scale and stimulate …

An Exploration Of The Prairie Through Ceramic Art, Erin Wilaby

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2019

The prairie is an underappreciated ecosystem. This is evident comparing the amount of US protected land: according to the 2018 Land Areas Report, there are 50 times more acres of National Forest as National Grassland. To change this unappreciation, I endeavor in this project to aid people in seeing the prairie as a complex, beautiful, and interesting ecosystem. My method is to present scientific knowledge about the prairie through the medium of ceramic art. Specifically, the project explores relationships between biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) factors in the ecosystem. The ceramic works entail a large amount of functional pottery with …