Art and Design Commons^™

The Body Is On, Kitty F. Davies

Theses and Dissertations

THE BODY IS ON is a visual art exhibition that considers queer embodiment, pervert as political identity, the arriving climate catastrophe, and difficulty in artmaking. I make use of various concepts from Deleuze and Guattari to interconnect my own with the primary goal to ask: what does futurity look like or mean in these climates (in both a literal, warming sense and an increasingly fascistic, political one), and how do we actualize that future?

Research Reimagined: The Dissertation-To-Book Journey And Building A Scholar-To-Author Presence, Seema Kumar

Master's Projects

This capstone project, completed for a second master's degree after a Ph.D., discusses aspects of transforming the doctoral dissertation on digital versus manual mediums in fashion design into a research monograph book proposal for academic publication. It reflects on a publisher's requirements and the process, including de-thesizing the dissertation, planning the book's structure, rewriting sample chapters to improve flow and readability, and creating a table of contents that demonstrates the work's development into a publishable book rather than a dissertation. Another part of the project includes developing an author platform through blog posts and platforms such as Substack, preparing the …

Spatial Audio Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

Listen to Hi Song audio recording.

Shared Architecture Of The Sacred:Designing Sacred Spaces In Virtual Reality, Ian Gonsher, Sameerah Munshi

Scholarly Research

This project investigates how sacred spaces might be conceived and experienced within virtual reality (VR). Through interfaith dialogue, design research, and iterative prototyping, we explored affordances in virtual environments for prayer, contemplation, study, and communal gathering. Drawing on insights from Jewish and Islamic traditions in particular, we developed design principles that informed the creation of a pilot prototype for sacred space in VR. This paper presents the conceptual framework, design process, and architectural strategies embodied and expressed in that pilot prototype, with particular attention to the formal and symbolic elements of light, orientation, sound, and written text. Additionally, the project …

Remedios Varo: Peregrinaciones, Julia Condes

Honors Undergraduate Theses

At the time of her death, the artist Remedios Varo (1908–1963) left behind over 500 works of art, the majority of which were created in her adopted country of Mexico. Known for her meticulously crafted fantastical paintings, Varo underwent exile and displacement due to first the Spanish Civil War, and later World War II, which led her to relocate to Mexico, where she would create prolifically for the remainder of her life. This paper will examine the effect of those experiences on the artist and the work she produced, attesting to Varo’s ability to translate complex emotions regarding the human …

Design Thinking For Health Environments: Case Study Research On Innovation, Design Leadership, And Healthcare Complexity, Diana S. Nicholas

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

As healthcare costs are skyrocketing, of the 6,093 hospitals in America, 53% will lose money in the current year (Coleman-Lochner, 2022). Design health innovation centers (DHICs) are formed in Europe and the United States to create efficiencies in healthcare related to budget challenges. DHICs exist in unique contexts both in America and Europe that are not yet well understood. These efforts are difficult to lead due to the lack of understanding of their worth and how their process is valuable to healthcare settings (Bhattacharyya et al., 2022). The specific problem examined here is that little is known about how DHIC …

Attention's Loop: A Sculptor's Reverie On The Coexistence Of Substance And Spirit, Elizabeth King, Katherine Wetzel

Attention's Loop

This is a book about attention and memory. I am a sculptor, so it is also a book about size, dirt, artifice, work, and eye. The text is a set of stories and interruptions that pile up to make a play of overlapping loops. My organizing principle is the image of the round-trip, so one may open the book and step into it at any point. Most of Katherine Wetzel’s photographs are of a single sculpture. It is a self-portrait, a particular kind of round-trip, and it is small: one-half life-size. Called Pupil, it is jointed and movable, and …

An Experimental Investigation Into The Influence Of Colored Lighting On Perceived Spatial Impressions, Heejin Lee, Eunsil Lee

Funded Scholarship

The present study investigates the psychological impact of lighting color on spatial impressions within indoor settings, drawing on Mehrabian and Russell’s PAD model. The purpose of this study is to explore potential variations in spatial impressions, encompassing affectivity, tranquility, and thermality, across six different lighting colors (i.e., red, green, blue, yellow, orange, and purple). A controlled laboratory experiment was conducted with 101 participants, utilizing a color-changing LED lighting fixture to expose participants to actual lighting conditions rather than simulated images. The findings revealed significant differences in spatial impressions among the six lighting colors, indicating that the choice of lighting color …

Rhythm Against Poethics, Jayvyn Dacas

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis stages an auto-poetic ethnography that listens to, and moves with, the anterior spaces of Black life. Those murmurs, hums, musical hesitations, and infrastructural vibrations that refuse capture by dominant epistemic regimes. Drawing from Ramon Amaro’s reading of Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick and Alexander Weheliye’s reflections on sound, Fred Moten’s insights on displacement, and Tendayi Sithole’s attention to the phonographic, the project situates music production as method and unworlding. Through engagements with the 808, sampling, sound systems, and embodied listening across Florida. Spaces like the warehouse, the party, record stores, and community become the work of Black voices, and …

Lend Me Your Hands: Engaging Waldorf Teachers In Pedagogical Puppetry For Student Growth, Corinna Rezzelle-Pennypacker

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Although puppetry has a long history as a holistic teaching tool, it remains an underutilized arts integration technique in elementary and secondary schools. To better understand Waldorf teachers’ perspectives on pedagogical puppetry and the necessary training to effectively implement the work, this explanatory mixed-methods dissertation sought to fill the gap in research on teachers’ views of puppetry and what training they believe is important to feel comfortable doing the work. Committed to using an action research approach, a professional development workshop and lesson plans were created for 1st-8th grade Waldorf teachers based on the feedback from this dissertation’s explanatory interviews …

Feel Bad To Discard A Fashion Product: How Ai Designers Influence Individuals' Sustainable Consumption, Ha Kyung Lee, Dooyoung Choi

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

This study explores how AI technology in fashion design influences consumers' sustainable consumption behaviors, focusing on emotional attachment to products. By comparing AI-generated and human-designed fashion items, the study examines how designer type impacts negative emotions about discarding products, mediated by emotional attachment. Results from two experimental studies reveal that designer type significantly affects negative emotions toward discarding human-designed items, but emotional attachment was not influenced by designer type in the first study. This lack of difference may be due to personal characteristics that moderate the effect. The second study found that individuals who perceive AI as human-like form stronger …

F/Utility: A Sculptural Exploration Of Futility, Utility, And The Absurd, Asha Cabaca

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis provides context for my MFA thesis exhibition, F/UTILITY, displayed in the Laura Mesaros Gallery at West Virginia University. My sculpture visually references various aspects of human culture, drawing from the natural environment, urban architecture, and ideas of work and play. These elements, often contradictory and incongruous, are, in fact, humorously subverted, transformed, and combined so that the resulting artwork is serious, playful, and arbitrary all at once. At the same time, the uncertain and sometimes involuntary interactivity of my work prompts a phenomenological viewer experience. My practice is informed by the philosophical and literary absurd, focusing on not-knowing …

A Comparison Of The Strategies And Methods Influencing Success Among Formally Trained Artists V. Outsider, Naive, Or Self-Taught Artists, Anna Stolina

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis examines the contrasting strategies and methods formally trained artists, self- taught artists, naive artists, and outsider artists used to influence their success in their chosen field. The study explored each of their educational backgrounds, available resources, and unique expertises that allowed them to achieve a successful art career. Every pathway has unique advantages and challenges (Langley, 2024). Formally trained artists and exhibiting artists typically have degrees in art from a university or post-secondary art school. My research highlighted the benefits of having a formal art education, a structured learning environment, access to resources, networking opportunities, and professional mentorship. …

Apostrophes And Archimedes, Evan J. Clough

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis explores how digital collage and printmaking can be used to develop images through acts of subjective response, intentional and unintentional acts of appropriation, and parodic re-use and comparison pushed to absurd extremes. It looks at the history of creating art for parodic re-use and examines “Pataphysics”, developed by and for art appropriation of pattern, form, and process. These concepts are explained and related to visual artwork that was made for the thesis exhibition Apostrophes and Archimedes Cast Shadow Puppets. The exhibition invites viewers to experience the phenomenon of observation, automatic transformation, and creation using multiple modalities of exaggerated …

Soft Epilogue, Chloe C. Firth

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written document is the accompanying thesis for my Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, Soft Epilogue. The work in the exhibition serves as a visual record of my eating disorder recovery process. Each piece in the exhibition addresses a selected writing prompt from the book 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder, published in 2011 and written by therapists and former eating disorder patients Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb. The book provides information and journal assignments regarding the development of eating disorders, how to maintain the motivation to recover, and how to navigate the complicated emotions …

The Mercury 2025

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

Theopoetics Prothesis: An Exploration In Faith And Form, Elise Aleman, Elise Aleman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

My work is rooted in the biblical definition of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Like the Bible’s layered complexity—its patterns, metaphors, and cultural references—faith is not merely intellectual but an active trust in what is unseen. It transcends knowledge, anchoring itself in conviction and hope. This intersection of theology and lived experience is at the core of my practice.

Theopoetics—a framework that fuses theology and artistic expression—shapes my approach, allowing faith to be embodied through form rather than merely explained. Two seemingly distinct bodies of work—one centered …

Guanacos De Corazón, Ana Marcela Sinnett

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersections of indigeneity, mestizaje, and decolonial aesthetics through a mixed-media art practice rooted in Salvadoran history and identity. Drawing on ancestral traditions such as indigo dyeing and backstrap weaving, Guanacos de Corazón investigates how materiality, folklore, and handcraft function as forms of visual resistance, meaning art that disrupts dominant narratives, critiques systems of power, and reclaims erased cultural memory.

Through formal analysis, historical context, and interviews with Salvadoran artists, this thesis challenges ideas of mestizaje that promote cultural and ethnic superiority and contribute to the erasure of ancestral beliefs.

How do we rescue ancestral traditions that …

I Prophesy Disaster: Adapting Musical Storytelling To Fashion, Adam Snedden

Honors College Theses

Fashion is an artistic medium, where garments communicate ideas to any potential viewers by using visual imagery and relying on our cultural expectations. At the level of haute couture design, these visuals grow more elaborate and dramatic. With this project, I wanted to accomplish the goal of adapting a song, the gothic-inspired progressive rock epic A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, into a single couture-style look. Getting as many details of the song as possible to be apparent in an overcoat, shirt, and pants was a challenging task that required extensive use of embroidery and attention to detail. Additionally, this look …

Calliope, Georgia Southern University

Calliope Magazine

Volume 43