Printmaking Commons^™

Bitter Sweet, Hanna M. Kesty

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written document is the accompanying thesis for my Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, Bitter Sweet. The exhibition featured traditional framed prints with sculptural accents that reveal brutally honest negative personal experiences, interactions, and emotions, paired with delicately cute aesthetics. My work embodies the necessity of personal artistic expression to process years of emotional repression. The prints and sculptures in the exhibition focus around a collection of insults and harsh comments coupled with feelings of loneliness and isolation. I allow personal vulnerability to show, to reinforce that these moments have molded and shaped who I am and will continue to …

Amidst The Cardboard City, Olaf Tollefsen

All Theses

Amidst the Cardboard City examines moments where joyous potential is brought into the seemingly bland moments of daily life. The focus of this inquiry takes the form of a narrative that follows the character Birdman as he journeys through his environment, becoming more and more active within it as he strives for a greater freedom within his world. The thesis artworks take the form of nine multiple-block woodcut prints made through a unique photomechanical process involving set building, digital photography, color separations, hand printing, and laser engraving. A large, eight-foot by eight-foot by eight-foot gallery installation was also exhibited. This …

Q&A With Alex Long (Bfa Imaging Arts & Printmaking), Alex Long

Q & A Interviews with Art Students

No abstract provided.

"Illumination The Sculpture Of James O. Clark" Catalogue, T. Michael Martin

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

It has been a challenging journey to mine and sift through the body of work of James O. Clark to select a representation of his studio practice and 50-year career. While curating "Illumination: the Sculpture of James O. Clark," I encountered more than the common curatorial concerns such as artwork availability, scale, aesthetic and conceptual themes, transportation and presentation issues. During my conversations with Clark, we found ourselves in an unprecedented pandemic – impacting travel, shipping, and studio visits.Throughout this process, Clark and I remained flexible to ensure a representation of his career could be exhibited without compromise. Selections for …

I Bloomed In The Dark, Izzy (Kiara) Narvais

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

We come from different places and different backgrounds. Our lives are a constant trial and error. Our past lives on and makes us bloom into the people that we are today. I want to share my story to create a safe place to talk about our trajectories. In a place of darkness and sadness that I sat in for so long, a bright light and a flower grew through it all within me. I have been bullied, abused, and sexually assaulted. I take that as not a place of weakness but a place of strength. I stand strong to be …

The Anxiety Of Presenting Identity, Savannah Fleming

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This work explores aspects of Queer identity, historical reflection, and acceptance through painting, printmaking, and collage. Savannah Fleming's artwork intends to reclaim art history and alter it to include those excluded from its canon. Through the use of prints, paint, and collage, they create works that address the bias of art history, while tackling contemporary problems of identity and acceptance. References and alterations to art history are her way of addressing the erasure of Queer and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) from the art historical canon, while battling with modern-day confines on individuality.

Mélange De Motifs: Custom Pattern Designs Inspired By The Interiors, Architecture, And Gardens Of Vaux-Le-Vicomte, Jill Christine Harmon

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

How can a historic precedent be successfully employed to inform modern design? History will always provide a degree of influence in contemporary design. In design, a historic precedent can be the backbone of a creative concept and stands as a relevant and informative aspect throughout the project. The precedent acts as a basis in developing designs with substance and meaning and is a fundamental practice in architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design. Delving into the history of Vaux-le-Vicomte, often referred to as Vaux, provided three relevant aspects which compose the historic precedent for this MFA project. First, the creative initiative …

Sapping, Smudging, Staining: A Feminized Body, Breslin Shea Bell

Masters Theses

This book—of poetry, prose, and lists—muses on the effects of liquidity and leakiness of a feminized body. By bringing echo narrative, illegibility, de-telling, and that which is continuously wet to the viewer’s body and space, this book and accompanying multimedia installation provides a lens to consider reproductive rights, body autonomy, and gender-based aggression and violence. Work of matter and color investigates interiority, both bodily and spatial, as it relates to surface, access, and space-making.

El Suelo En Duelo, Mariana Ramos Ortiz

Masters Theses

This is a thesis about colonialism.

When I was seven years old I interrogated my mom about the consequences of Puerto Rico achieving its independence from the United States. I remember asking her “If Puerto Rico gains its independence, would that mean that we would no longer be able to purchase apples at the store?” The warm climate prohibits apples from growing in Puerto Rico. I never liked apples, and would much rather have had oranges, but I guess that concerned me at that time. She looked at me with a funny look. With that funny look that any parent …

All Bodies Wander, Haley Mackeil

Masters Theses

This thesis describes how aspects of the environment can evoke the presence of a living organism. It discusses several projects by Haley MacKeil that are based on research within the natural world that includes documentation of sites, processes, installations, and artifacts made through video, glass, and papermaking. MacKeil’s practice forms a threshold between two worlds, two bodies, two different understandings—it creates sites for connections with something, someone, or a place that cannot be directly accessed.

Sometimes Like Butterflies, Edward Steffanni

Masters Theses

Perhaps the most radical thing to do is to embrace the tension, being between the heavens and earth. Maybe regardless of identity, sometimes the earth is not enough but there are moments I’ve experienced where the distance between heaven and earth blurs. These are instants where my troubles do melt like lemon drop: the smell of freshly cut hay in a field nearby, seeing a baby goat’s tail wiggle while he nurses his mother, or making love behind the barn. These are moments on earth when something else comes into focus.

Prepositions, Alexis Hill

Masters Theses

My work is a conscious engagement with traditions of process art that emphasize making over outcome and the desire to create art that cannot be predetermined. The art objects are primarily a by-product of engagement with my material reality. This is hard to pin down and harder to talk about. Historian Kim Grant’s introduction to the circular and sometimes impenetrable creative process is a good summation of one of the essential problems of my art [school] experience: “The artist’s hard work often takes place without a clearly denied goal, thereby rendering the artist’s labors endless, and any results resistant to …

The Art Of Heritage And Mortality, Barbara Johanna Mileto

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through my art I explore the formation of cultural and personal identity addressing the importance of heritage, ancestors, and religion in Latin-American culture, while I develop my unique deities and spiritual space, creating my own iconography. The pieces are strongly autobiographical, using my family members, and frequently lived experience as a subject. Furthermore, I am drawn to the circle of life and productive failures - beginnings, deaths, and transitions. - My work integrates two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums, ranging from photography and printmaking to assemblage and textiles, video and digital.

And There I Was, Jennifer K. Jones

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Working with found imagery and objects, I explore sculptural processes and manipulated photographic methods as a metaphor for mental and physical transformation. Creating large scale cyanotypes that are exposed on painter’s linen, I have developed a unique process for stretching and coating linen that allows me to make images that feel more like paintings than photographs. Reflecting and analyzing aspects of my adult life, I present images and objects that challenge traditional gender roles that were impressed upon me throughout my up-bringing. My process is defined by experimentation. During the exposure of the image, dramatic shifts occur that allow for …

Power Structures, Michael A. Whitehead

LSU Master's Theses

Power Structures is a series of drawings and prints inspired by my fixation with the intricate utilitarian architecture and dystopian atmosphere of Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor. The architectural forms within this body of work juxtapose components of disparate industrial sites to form ruinous monuments to power and progress. The Power Structures are composites of photographs, technical drawings, and memories I have made in my time studying Cancer Alley. I introduce machined aircraft components, gate valves, and various fasteners into the architectural forms of petrochemical plants as elements of misdirection, blurring the line between reality and memory, fact and fabrication.

Hello Again يا اهلا A Study Of Grief, Diana Abouchacra

LSU Master's Theses

Grief is an unwanted visitor who we all come to know throughout our lifetime. Although every person reacts differently to bereavement of a loved one, almost always the lost other becomes etched into our being for the remainder of our lives (McClocklin & Lengelle, 2017). In today’s society, we are encouraged to say “Good-bye”, but what if instead, we allow ourselves to keep those who have passed on close to our hearts and say hello again? Hello Again يا اهلا is a body of work that explores my experience with grief. The artworks made for this exhibition investigate my process …

Cosmic Desert Art, Mike Graham De La Rosa

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

The Cosmic Desert are the designs inspired by chile hallucinations, desert creatures, and the long weird neon nights in the Borderworld. Made with love on the banks of the Rio Grande.

My family is originally from Northern Mexico but I grew up in Northern New Mexico down river of both where Al Hurricane and Nuclear Annihilation were originally created. Amongst chollas, rattle snakes, and river willow, the imagining of New Mexico permeates the landscapes. The Cosmic Desert is inhabited lowriders, taco trucks, neon adobe bars, cholas, native peoples, immigrants, punk rockers and cowboys. Just beyond the darkness, our imagination takes …

Weather Permitting, Acadia Kandora

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Weather Permitting is an exhibition of objects and printed matter, primarily in the form of publicationsthat examine my relationship to nature and the idea of nature as both sanctuary and armor. At a young age, my parents would take my on a hike every Sunday instead of going to church. The hikes acted as a weekly pilgrimage deep into the woods and a ritual instilling the idea of nature being a place of spiritual refuge and retreat. A sanctuary - of course, weather permitting.

As I grew up and experienced hardship, my first instinct has always been to go hide …

Turning Tides, Lauren Whitmore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Synthesizing personal narrative, sociological phenomenon, and art historical analysis, Turning Tides examines the relationship between power dynamics and sexual assault. Inequities and injustices with regard to the handling of sexual assault, and the norms that allow this issue to be pervasive, are woven throughout the cultural fabric of the United States. Feminists and feminist activist artists in the 1970s brought the matters women, and other marginalized groups, were facing to the forefront of political and social dialogue. The resulting work left an indelible mark on public perceptions and allowed for other activists and artists to build upon the foundations; creating …

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.