Art and Design Commons^™

Fears Revealed, Rebecca Tirado

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Artist Statement

Fears revealed is about moving through life while dealing with the fears we hide and choose to not face. The artworks I have created are made using acrylic paint, and have unsettling faces to express the battles within many people. My artworks depict some of the things that unsettle me the most. For example the paintings of insects, eyes, and teeth, embody the physical reactions, thoughts, and emotion that doesn't sit right within people. A natural way I tend to deal with negative emotions is to suppress them and not deal with it until it causes further damage. …

Rooted Transformations, Ricardo D. Moctezuma

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In my ventures through art I realized that I underwent an experience that was tailored to my process of release. As I struggled to share my emotions, I became distant and dissociated, I felt detached from others and even from myself. This process was something I visualized in my art from, the Tears, to Self Destruction, to the Release and onto the Garden. I’ve always felt myself in a state of Release, partly healed and partly damaged. All I knew was that the garden represented a new beginning for me, I just never knew what that Garden was. Time passes …

¿Cómo Anda La Chamba?/How’S Work?, Alexander Valdez Jr.

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

¿Cómo Anda La Chamba?/How’s Work? explores the conditions, experiences, and broadness of what labor is and how we see labor currently. Alexander draws on his lived work experiences to question how companies operate and to challenge the way workers are often undervalued and treated as disposable. Raised in a working-class family, Alexander’s view of labor was shaped not only by his lived experiences, but also his parents’. Each artwork communicates a different work environment and experience that he’s had. These places and interactions have influenced his work by making him question the definition of labor and how the working class …

Nasty, Mya L. Correa

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I am exploring artwork about women’s power and sexuality, centering on hair. I’m interested in how hair carries history and how it has been used to control and frighten women. I’ve been reading feminist artists’ books and researching their findings alongside my own work. Drawing on my personal history, my mother’s story, and the experience of raising my daughters, I consider how my children’s lives differ from mine and my mother’s, and what those differences reveal.

Hair has long been wielded as a weapon to enforce expectations on women’s bodies by a society afraid of losing control. As creators of …

Heirlooms Of Virtu, Santos Nunez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Heirlooms of Virtu explores familial history as a mode of self-study. By examining childhood, the more possible it can be to navigate the contemporary. Research into the self becomes the bridge between two states of being, allowing for a better understanding and a more purposeful approach to the future.

As an artist working primarily in photography and video, I am recontextualizing key nostalgic concepts with technology through interactive sculptures and video installations. My research alludes to classic toys and technologies specific to my childhood in an effort to find and understand the self. Nostalgia as an idea not only exists …

Between Chronicle And Legend: A Two-Scene Environment And Visual Effects Examination Of Physical Accuracy And Emotional Exaggeration On The Honey Creek Bridge Collapse, Alison R. Gaddy

All Theses

This thesis explores how truth and dramatization intersect in digital storytelling by comparing realistic and stylized simulations of the Honey Creek bridge collapse within the context of the Kate Shelley animated short. At the core of storytelling lies a tension between factual accuracy and dramatic stylization. We investigate that tension by examining how narrative truth is conveyed, distorted, or enhanced through visual dramatization by focusing on the psychology of audience perception and the motivations behind creative embellishment. The practical contribution of this research is the development of two distinct digital scene setups depicting the same Honey Creek bridge collapse event. …

Desert Ghost, Jessica Downs

All Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and the body through handmade paper installations inspired by the deserts of southwestern Utah. Drawing from personal experience of place and the loss of a childhood home, the work considers how environments are internalized and persist as shifting, sensory impressions rather than fixed geographies. The desert becomes a generative site for examining presence, transformation, and the passage of time, both geologic and personal.

I use handmade paper and installation to translate my experience of place into physical form. Paper serves as both material and metaphor; its fibers, textures, and muted tones emulate …

Weaving Ideology: Textiles In Florentine And Venetian Painting Of The Cinquecento, Ruben Verità

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Renaissance art historical scholarship has largely ignored the political and cultural significance woven into the representation of textiles, as well as their communicative potential in paintings. In this study, I examine how textiles in their various forms carry the potential to go beyond their normative categorization as decoration. Through a comparative analysis of the paintings produced in two politically distinct polities—Florence and Venice—during the sixteenth century, I integrate Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and Michael Baxandall’s period eye to elucidate how painted fabric was not the representation of a passive decorative ornament. Rather, it was an active and legible proxy …

Alternative, Ashlynn M. Stroud

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

A series of illustrations, sculptures and comic book issues designed to introduce a series of stories and characters that represent the history and members of a fictional mythology depicting the cultural social group often referred to as the “alternative” community. Alternative takes place in a world that combines high fantasy and science fiction with elements of pop culture and music. This world uses iconography of the various genres of the alternative subculture and music, metal, post-punk, and the evolving scene of the underground with varying visuals from both gothic and industrial time periods. Viewers are encouraged to read and follow …

The Southwest Black Artists Collective: Afro-Modern Ecology, Kinship, And Collectivity In The Desert Southwest, Bradley L. Petty

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Southwest Black Artists Collective (SBAC) as a site of

Afro-diasporic kinship, artistic production, and spatial intervention within the Desert

Southwest. Operating within a region where Black populations are comparatively small

and institutional support is diffuse, SBAC emerges as both a response to and a

reconfiguration of the regional artistic landscape. The Collective constructs an affirming

community through shared artistic practice, exhibitions, and the maintenance of The

Projects/Space in Tucson, Arizona, where public engagement and private creative

exchange coexist.

Drawing on theories of human ecology, this study expands existing frameworks

by introducing the concept of Afro-modern ecology, …

Volume 17, Christian O’Neill, Kyara Greene, Savva Sidorov, Laura Bisaillon, Luke Clemmer, Hannah Gordon, Kitt Benson, Taylor Blount, Rachel Danzitz, Nicholas Duellman, Chase Gionis, Hima Fernando, Seth Franzyshen, Onyx Gonzalez, Bryan Lin, Samantha Start, Ysabel Wells, Maggie Duncan

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Amorette Barber, Director, Office of Student Research

From the Editor Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell

Cover Artist’s Statement Maggie Duncan

On Mentoring Dr. Yulia Uryadova

Ukrainian Resistance in the Face of Russification: Nestor Makhno and Anarchism

by Christian O’Neill

Life Vest by Kyara Greene

Isolation and 16S rRNA Identification of Bacteria from Fire Department Connection Pipe by Savva Sidorov

The Effectiveness of Planned Exercise in Reducing ADHD Symptoms in Children by Laura Bisaillon & Luke Clemmer

Linguistic Analysis on Confidence and Communication Strategies with Disparities Between Sign Fluency and Hearing Impairment by Hannah Gordon

Freedmen in Indian Territory by Kitt …

Meikyu, Diana D. Dyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This thesis explores the relationship between digital and physical practices through the integration of traditional glassworking techniques and digital media. The project combines glass fusing and glass blowing with woodworking, screen printing, vinyl cutting, animation, and augmented reality (AR) technologies to create dialogue between physical and digital forms. This thesis documents the full creative process, beginning with conceptual sketches and progressing through the fabrication and assembly of glass components into finished sculptural pieces. Digital technologies are then incorporated to augment and extend the physical artwork. Three-dimensional (3D) assets were created using Maya, a 3D modeling software, and implemented within Snapchat's …

Visual Development For Descent To Paradise, Rowyn Porterfield

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis is a study in the process of concept development for video games within the format of a video game pitch. This includes concept designs for important characters, relevant settings, and other supplemental material deemed necessary within my research for a complete pitch. The content shown within this paper includes visual research, creative writing, 3D setting design, and 2D artworks for character, setting, and prop design. All of this is then put into context through two 2D illustrations of key art.

Beyond The Dice Roll: Investigating Character Creation In A Pokemon-Inspired D&D Game, Alberto S. Rendon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

For this study of Pokémon Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) I study gameplay as a way to capture how players use character creation and performance in role-playing games as a form of social identity expression. I provide a rich description of how players construct a game persona and relate it to their social identity.By engaging in an ethnographic study wherein I analyze the players’ game character, their style of play, the decisions they make during the game, and the small group dynamic that emerges as a result, I want to show how mixing these two fandoms can promote ways for players …

Towards The Publisher-Function Of The Independent Press: Authorship And Experimentation In The Semiotext(E) Oeuvre, Gilbert Aguirre

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project is a contribution to debates on authorship, expanding Foucault’s theorization of the author as a function of discourse into the field of creative production by proposing my theory of the publisher-function. Here, I highlight the role of the publisher in shaping literary discourse using avant-garde publishing house Semiotext(e). I analyze two experimental publications to illustrate how this publisher’s role in editing and curating their booklist—or, as I propose we call it, their oeuvre—compounds with the fact of publication to create a new kind of authorial role. This is done through emphasizing the paratexts, elements of design, and literary …

Epiphanies, Loren Malul

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

"Epiphanies” investigates moments that inspire humanity to experience and enact change. Before we break through our egos threshold, our journey begins as a form of questioning, delving into the relationship between self and environment. When we take a moment to slow down and focus on our spatial awareness, we recognize that reality is a channel we get to tune into where our reaction determines our experience. Doing my own shadow work, recognizing trauma and questioning “the invisible”, are ways to analyze our internal self. Portals, voids, intersecting landscapes, and first person perspective are all visual translations that play with environmental …

Echoes Of Becoming - K. Morrell, Kole K. Morrell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I work sculpturally, exploring presence, transformation, and emotional weight that is not inherently visible. My forms are recognizable yet unsettled, existing between familiarity and distortion. Meaning is not fixed or declared, it reveals itself slowly through texture, material, and time spent in observation.

I approach making as a form of therapeutic ritual. Through touch, I shape and alter the material, imbuing it with the story of emotions I want to convey to the viewer. I am most connected to the work in its “in-between” states, when the form is still shifting and unresolved. In these moments, it mirrors my own …

Echoes Of Becoming, Michelle D. Young

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I create illustrative works that deal with criticism and appreciation in parallel ways; addressing facets of society, government, the self, and the influence of social media. My art ranges from digital illustration to narrative paintings, fluctuating to the flow and response of a piece. A blend of cheekiness and empowerment, I play around with uncomfortable subjects and heavy topics to bring attention to those that are misrepresented or overlooked. I am interested in the intersection of consumable media, its history and the disregarded context behind it all.

Rooted in my experience as a descendant of generational immigrant-refugees, my work reflects …

Real-Time Adaptable Residential Kitchen: A Plug-In Standard, Rachel Fuelberth

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis looks at how a real-time adaptable standard could be put in place within the modern kitchen to allow for equitable use of the space by numerous members of the household and their differing physical characteristics. The residential kitchen is a fundamentally exclusionary architectural construction designed around able-bodied, average-height adults. This excludes children, the elderly, anyone outside of the average height, and people with mobility differences. The kitchen has never been a place of equity. It has been designed to be used by an average-height female, and it does not account for the discomfort of those outside this norm. …

Investigation Of Curing And Degradation Mechanisms In Lead White Oil Paint Systems: Impact Of Methyl Linoleate On Paint Matrix Formation And Solvent Extractability, Andrea Serrano Trujillo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Oil-based paints composed of drying oils and lead-containing pigments undergo complex chemical transformations during curing that influence long-term stability and degradation. Despite centuries of use, the molecular mechanisms governing oxidative polymerization and additive incorporation in lead white oil paint systems remain incompletely understood. This study investigates the role of methyl linoleate, a monoester analog of linoleic acid, in the curing and degradation pathways of lead carbonate and linseed oil paint films. A deep focus was placed on determining whether methyl linoleate becomes chemically integrated into the developing polymeric network or remains as an extractable and unbound component, as this distinction …