Printmaking Commons^™

To The Dogs Or Whoever, Jacqueline Walker

Masters Theses

My creative process is inspired by the natural world and its inevitable conflict with humans. Through intricately layered screen prints, repurposed furniture, or reimagined animal hides, I craft narratives depicting the complex interactions between animals and humans, examining their conflict and the ensuing consequences. I weave layers of information and symbolism from natural history, behavioral ecology, music, and personal experience into each piece. This thesis explores my artistic practice, discussing its underlying values, and examining the influences and stories behind each piece. Focusing on the narrative of the animal, my body of work strives to cultivate empathy towards them and …

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …

Overlay: Language Uncovered, Cecelia A. Moseley

LSU Master's Theses

Overlay: Language Uncovered presents a series of installations that address my experience navigating learning challenges during my formative years, and strategies I have developed for thriving within those educational settings. This body of work represents three years of introspection and research, leading to a deeper acknowledgement and understanding of the obstacles I faced in learning. The installations feature large-scale sculptures made from a range of materials including, vinyl, styrofoam, acrylic, paper, silk screen mesh, metal and light. The immersive and vibrant colors within these installations invite viewers to playfully explore and interact with language, all rooted in my personal experiences …

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Cliffhanger, Micah Mickles

MFA in Visual Art

I am Micah Mickles, a mixed-media visual artist in St. Louis, Missouri. My artwork is deeply rooted in my personal experiences and serves as a memorial and monument to counteract the enduring effects of grief and loss. What sets my work apart is the transformative impact of my everyday encounters, inspired by my 14 years of experience working at Trader Joe's. These encounters have led me to reflect on my profound connections with diverse communities. By delving into the hidden narratives of mundane materials encountered in the workplace, I prompt a reexamination of convenience and supply chain origins. Inspired by …

Édouard Manet’S Defense Of Modernity: Recontextualizing The Cat In Olympia, Rebecca Schiffman

Theses and Dissertations

The black cat in Édouard Manet’s seminal painting, Olympia, has often been relegated as a crude joke or symbol of reprehensible sexuality. This thesis argues that the cat plays a larger role in Manet’s representation of modernism, and functioned as a defense mechanism by the artist against his critics.

To Excavate An Absence, Margaret Compton

Graduate Theses

This thesis is an exploration of memory’s fluctuating aspects, utilizing natural materials and casting processes to create a sculptural body of work deeply rooted in materialized metaphor. Examining the relationship between mold and cast, part and whole, and interior and exterior, I utilize casting as a framework to understand the duality of remembering and forgetting. Memories, much like the natural landscape, are ephemeral, fading, and fracturing over time. Both external environments and internal mental landscapes share the common language of erosion, existing as present or absent, remembered or forgotten. Conestee Nature Preserve in Mauldin, South Carolina, serves as my “site” …

Sincerely, Regan Leigh Chrisman-Boman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sincerely is a compilation of diaristic narratives depicted through the lens of a distorted reality. This distortion is manifested through the influence of social norms placed on me and my gendered experience of this world. The stories I tell through my work deal with the mind, body and daily life. My images within this body of work are sourced from my written journal, and creating a visual diary. I provide a space of relatability for the viewer to feel seen and not alone through the discussion of personal experiences that are both unique and not unique to myself. The work …

Endo/Exo, Delaney Rogers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Delaney Shae Rogers, discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Endo / Exo, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN. The exhibition dates are from March 25th through April 5th, 2024, with a public reception held April 5th, 2024. The author provides insight into the concept behind the work in the exhibition and shares how the making process and specific materials impact the work. This body of work explores coping with grief, anxiety, and the state of the world through the process of making and communicating otherwise difficult topics through visually digestible symbolic language.

Temple Of Familiars, Madeleine Grace Kelly

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My paintings, etchings, and installation explore encounters with mystery in the natural world, especially through the flora, fauna, light, and water of the swamps around the Atchafalaya Basin. My practice explores kinship, reverence, and awe as an antidote to estrangement from the spirit of the land. I am influenced by artists and scholars engaging with the places that they inhabit and that inhabit them with a reverence and mystery of approach. My work invites viewers to engage with the memory that the water carries of our interconnectedness, and to remember that we are not separate from the natural world.

Extant, Amanda Joy-Petersen

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

On April 15th, 2022, I was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer, the most aggressive form. Everything changed that day. My body became a specimen, inspected weekly. I decided to document the process of my treatment as a way to understand the implications and ramifications of living with the disease.

I transform my artwork into multiple iterations in response to my body’s changing landscape. The transparent layers of my abstracted poetry, transitional body photos, and MRI scans suggest the permeability of the cortex and the fluidity between the interior and exterior. Looking through the layers allows for a connection with …

Away From Keyboard: Practical Applications Of Antifascism, Amber Sarelle Easley

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My work sits uncomfortably between and across the disciplines of activism and art. This tension is typical of Socially Engaged Art: a social interaction proclaiming itself as art. I aim for these interactions to center antifascism in interrogating the complex interrelation between digital spaces and the streets outside our front doors, as antifascism is the only appropriate response to the blatant fascistic aspirations that is both digitally and physically present.

Things That Are Long, Frankie Gutierrez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Bigfoot has become an important motif for Frankie Gutierrez, especially since his transition in 2021. The characters in this exhibition showcase the deeply personal exploration of transness and non-mainstream trans identities, the in-depth observations of others, and their interactions with transgender people. He compares transness to the likeness of bigfoot, typically an elusive and hard-to-find character that everyone suspects, but has rarely been seen. Evidence of their existence surrounds us, but only those with open minds can truly see them. The characters in this show look like you and me, and no one at all. This exhibition is not meant …

From Mountains To Cities: East Asian Landscapes, Catherine Haley, Conrad Martens, Cyndy Basil, Emma Wylam, Isobel Debenham, Katherine M. Tyson, Lenna Kouzoujian, Miriam Glatfelter, Molly Griffith, Noelle Muni, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Under the direction of Prof. Yan Sun, student curators examine diverse depictions of landscapes from China and Japan. The selected works, including paintings on silk, ornate carvings in lapis lazuli, and prints, among others, offer meditations on nature and industrialization. Students consider the historical, material, aesthetic, and environmental significance of the works on display.

Food For Thought, Alivia Palalay

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

I’Ll Just Dip My Toes In, Eva Steinitz

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

Creating An Index To Graduate Theses To Support Their Discoverability, Ellen Petraits

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

As a Research and Instruction Librarian, one of the most frequent questions I'm asked is how to find past theses on a particular topic or theme. There is an active thesis culture at RISD that goes beyond writing and binding a text. An exhibition is held in the graduate gallery to celebrate a curated selection of theses at the beginning of the academic year. (See Book of Thesis Books) Theses can range in format from an artist book to a loose-leaf portfolio. Many emphasize the visual and are a bridge to the student’s studio work. They may include unusual or …

Is It Gonna Be Fun?, Kim Tomlinson

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

I am a multidisciplinary artist working across digital and analog forms of printmaking, installation, playing, drawing, and writing. I incorporate elements of humor, autobiography, and nostalgic pop culture references to tell stories and facilitate connections.

At the heart of my work is the desire to be seen and feel connected. This starts with self reflection and building a personal archive of important references and symbols. Through recurring characters rooted in personal and historical pop culture references, I incorporate layers of complexity and inside jokes into the work. Humor is an essential tool to maintain levity, engage participants, and challenge traditional …

Diy Delivery Systems Rethinking Self-Sponsorship Through Extracurricular Literacy Narratives, Jason W. Luther

College of Communication & Creative Arts Departmental Research

This essay reconsiders the role of the “self-sponsored” writer in the attention economy by suggesting that contemporary do-it-yourself publishers have not only attempted to negotiate a public sphere which has linked "self-sponsored" to "entrepreneurial," but contend with a digital environment that makes it difficult to parse authorial desire from neoliberal rationality. Ultimately, this essay suggests that materialist models of circulation should be accounted for in studies of extracurricular literacies, specifically by drawing from the literacy narratives of public writers such as zine authors. It thus provides a method of analysis for understanding how these writers, who must necessarily exist within …