Glass Arts Commons^™

Garden Etiquette, Kai Wasikowski

Masters Theses

Garden Etiquette is an ongoing project concerned with landscape photography, environmental conservation, and the way they have both served the settler colonialist agenda. I focus specifically on the conservation ideologies shaped in New South Wales (NSW) Australia and New England, United States of America (USA) in the late nineteenth century and the settler visualities that underwrote them. Both countries’ histories were marked by photography and conservation’s common function of mythologising land as empty space—to be invaded, extracted and occupied, and wilderness—to be territorialized and protected, albeit, in distinct ways.

With British, German and Polish settler ancestry, born and raised on …

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang

Masters Theses

My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.

I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …

Destination Unknown, Dongheng Yang

Masters Theses

Since the end of my undergrad years, I’ve been noticing my increasing tendency to not want to talk much about my work. What is it that lingers inside of me behind such silence? What story could one possibly talk about his studio practice, when he has little to say? Well, this thesis documents the thoughts behind this silence, which, I have to admit, have fueled my works in the past two years. I investigate postmodern phenomena and literary analysis on pop culture in East Asia, including hikikomori and decisionism, to better understand myself and the world around me. Constantly faced …

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 …

I Buried The Fireworks Under The Tree, Sihan Zhu

Masters Theses

Unreachable memories always surround me. I've been trying to extract logical parts from my chaotic memories, hoping to find a connection with the world within the soundless, intangible black fireworks stored in my retina under the grand fireworks display. When I first encountered intaglio printmaking, I impulsively drew subconscious memories on the plate, arranging them along some chaotic storylines. Gradually, I realized that I needed to create my own logical structure. So I started using specific visual symbols and repeating them, using the repetition of the printmaking process to search for logical clues. Printmaking with its special rhythm allowed me …

Two Churches, One Vision: Sacred Architecture As A Reflection Of Benedictine Values And Liturgical Reform, Katheryn Wethli

Obsculta

This piece compares the architecture of the worshipping spaces of Saint Benedict's Monastery's Sacred Heart Chapel and Saint John's Abbey Church; presenting how the worshiping spaces uplift their monastic communities’ Benedictine values and demonstrate their monastic call towards evangelizing the Gospel in the modern world, highlighting the liturgical reforms of the mid-20th century.

Extended Substance, Danielle Brensinger

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Artist Statement:

“One of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the [viewer] in uncertainty.”

-Sigmeund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny’”

I’m interested in making people uncomfortable. Through the exploration of the uncanny, I exploit the unexpected and the psychological to embrace personal reactions. Like conversations we have with ourselves in the mirror, there’s an uncomfortable nature in looking beyond surface value. Utilizing beauty as a strategy and the laws of attraction, my work intends to entice a visual response only to be met with ambivalence. I try to establish a state of uncertain worlds, partial …

Glass: The Material That Defines Us, Madisyn Rex

Honors Projects

This Honors Project is an exploration of the intersections between glass science, geology, glass art, and my own personal experience with glass.

Jogakpo Window (7 Feet X 4 Feet), Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Materials: glass, sunlight, post-it notes. Image description: Photographs show a large window covered with a 조각보 patchwork of colorful post-it notes. Sunlight illuminates the paper.

The Color Of Stress, Jiemin Park

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the physical and emotional process by which stress in glass can be visualized through color by using a polarization effect.

A conceptual account of three different projects using this process of discovering and revealing the colors of stress hidden within clear glass will be addressed. The mainstays that catalyze the visual metaphor of extreme stress and beauty are; the making process, evidence of the making process and the polarization effect. These two contradictory concepts of beauty and stress are central to this thesis.

Retelling A Landscape Through The Alchemy Of Recasting, Amanda Lee

Masters Theses

This project is an acknowledgment of reshaped landscapes while also understanding that this moment of time is only relevant to my own human lifespan and perspective. The work embodies unmet expectations when one confronts a memory landscape of their, or my, childhood. Specifically, I am discussing the chasm between reality and memory through a recent return to my childhood home in Colorado, and was met by two of the largest wildfires in the state’s history. This project takes a moment to digest that loss, of what was known, what was not, and can no longer be known: forests, trees, and …

Meat The Future., Xin Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on the subtle relationship between human life, the environment, and other animals that we live among every day. Under the mainstream social background of capitalism and a commodity economy, animals are the victims of constant consumption and exploitation. However, meat is a basic substance for human nourishment, especially in certain cultures. As a result, meat becomes an important part of the commodity economy in capitalist societies, wherein the supply must be filled to accommodate society’s demand. This research formed an exhibition using glass and ceramic artwork using a playfully satirical tone to offer a crucial alternative: how …

The Effects Copper Has On Casting Glass, K. Malika Haver

Honors Projects

The aim of this honors project was to discern the difference between how various types of copper reacted with glass. The two disciplines that were connected were chemistry and glassblowing. The basic components learned in chemistry were applied to glass with an end goal of a project installation that visualized the discoveries with copper. The glassblowing technique used was lost wax casting, and the two types of copper used were copper foil and fine copper metal powder. The copper was found to turn the glass into various blues with the intensity and darkness of the blues being dependent on the …

Seeing Slavery, Lulu Hamissou

Theses

This paper examines the resilience of Laura Clark, Carrie Davis, and Delia Garlic, three formerly enslaved women from Alabama whose memories and experiences during enslavement were part of a large slave narrative project called Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938. The design exhibition, Seeing Slavery, visually communicates and portrays the accounts and portraits of the three women. Printed and embroidered fabrics visually communicate the narrative stories of these women, while their portraits are made from screen printed acrylic glass.

Following an introduction, a literature review details the history of the three slave …

Less Water, More Holy: Tools For Sustainable Ablution, Faheem Khan

Theses and Dissertations

Prayer is an important part of life for many people, whether it takes the form of meditation or talking to God. Muslims pray five times a day, and before each prayer, they first clean themselves by performing ritual ablution (wudu). The eight-step purification process of wudu cleanses the body from head to toe. The Hadiths of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim tell us the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ needed just one mudd of water (650ml) to complete wudu, but most people consume many times that amount—four-to-seven liters is more common today.

To visualize and better understand the nature …

Eadah: Tools For Celebrating Qatari Wellness Rituals, Abdulrahman Al Muftah

Theses and Dissertations

Friday prayer is an essential congregational practice in Muslim communities. To prepare for Friday prayer, worshippers groom and cleanse themselves ahead of time, according to Islamic ablution rituals, and dress in their best attire.

Eadah is a collection of contemporary tools designed to facilitate the pre-prayer cleansing ritual, inspired by traditional Qatari remedies and wellness practices. The tools reflect three balanced considerations: touch, meditative making, and cultural preservation. They are used to prepare natural ingredients through mindful making that produce remedies with stimulating scents and sensations through touch. An emphasis on cultural preservation differentiates Eadah from other tools offered by …

Balancing The Tangible And Intangible, Shiqi Wu

Masters Theses

I love reading stories, but until now, I had never written my own. Balancing the Tangible & Intangible is organized around my experiences and stories, which are inseparable from my work. Together they constellate a narrative of remembrance. Memories surface, and so do connections, allowing for assurance and conviction during a time of personal flux and global unsettledness. As a choreographer and composer of relationships between the tangible and intangible, I rebuild networks of connections linking memories of my relationship to China, my home country, to my experience of living in the West.

In today's global society, population migration is …

An Invitation, Ashley Harris

Masters Theses

I am currently navigating between the concepts of body, material, space, and surface. I’m exploring ways to document and understand the full extent of my physical body in relation to the boundary and extent of my personal space. Each of my works displays strategies to understand my body and personal space. My intention is to confidently advocate for myself, particularly when my presence is questioned. At a time in which my body and presence are inherently political, I’m finding an urgency in how I articulate what my body is, the spaces my body navigates, and the surfaces to which my …

Unfold The Body, Fan Su

Masters Theses

I was born into a physical body of flesh and bone, so I thought that I was one with it. As a carrier of my mind and soul, I believed that it was singular to me; that I had full ownership of it. So, why was I refusing womanhood? Was this devaluation of women a legacy? Was this a legacy unique to Chinese women?

As a woman born and raised in a metropolitan center in China, I proceeded through childhood and adolescence questioning my power as a woman. Feminine maturity and the societal pressure to follow the expectation of being …