Fine Arts Commons^™

Invisible Forces, Sarah E. Mullin

Theses and Dissertations

I seek abstract forms evocative of the underlying structures in nature. I paint sensations of vibrating light, deep space, and vast scale in an imagined image. These paintings combine an inner abstract dimension with landscape imagery to communicate to the viewer that we are a part of what we sense in nature.

Tuff Breeches, Arkadiy Ryabin

Theses and Dissertations

In consideration of language and it’s relationship to information and knowledge, the author explores personal set of events in relationship to that of the public, via forms of orality. 19th century American literature is posited as a hangover influencing contemporary events.

Mi Familia, Pnina Abramovich

Theses and Dissertations

The relation between specific art practices and the ethical and mystical ideas behind my work constitutes the core of what I’m doing. Using analogies between nature and culture, pagan and contemporary tradition's practices and symbols, primitive and modern art-making practices as a way to reflect on humankind's relationship with nature.

Untitled Art Fair Radio Panel Discussion, Dongyoon Park

MA Projects

Sotheby’s Institute MAAB students Dong Yoon Park and Nuria Richards are honored to announce the participation of a great group of speakers for a conversation about current issues in the arts, especially the impact of the global economy and social events on art production, institutions, and collections.

Between Rock And Breeze, Lena Schmid

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis project consists of a series of works on paper and songs about the collusion of the body and nature. I use a lens that both distorts and makes clearer the ineffable ways our bodies shake their boundaries, moving without us and within us.

The Itinerant Image, Maureen Elizabeth Munley

Art Theses and Dissertations

The forces enacted on the photograph from outside of the frame, the forces that give the image momentum, directionality, and cultural value, can be redirected and used as a defense against the recirculation of the male gaze. The momentum and malleability of what defines the photographic object is its pivotal distinguishing characteristic and the tensions of this constant movement resists any singular definition of what constitutes its boundaries. My photographic practice is positioned outside the mechanics of the camera and focuses on issues of subject-object relations, the gaze, photography as a medium, theories of representation and its relationship to technology. …

The Difference Between A Duck, Shelby D. Meier

Art Theses and Dissertations

. In this paper I will address each work from my exhibition the difference between a duck individually to address concepts and references in each work to elucidate some of the connections I have made between the all the works. Concepts and references range from the irony of the 19^th century arts and crafts movement, the possibilities of a blackholes, the subjective value of souvenirs, Tibetan prayer wheels and much more. And they all seem to add up to nothing, which for me is a respite in the comedy of trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t …

Absence Is Presence With Distance, James Bayard

Theses and Dissertations

Prompting obvious considerations for freedom and nationalism, language and race, time, and decay, the work asks not only what it means to be an American today, but also, more broadly, what it means to be human—to breathe and act, to live and die.

Summer Light, Sara Dolatabadi

Theses and Dissertations

"Summer Light" is a film about family dynamics. Using light as a defining factor, it looks at the relationship between the director’s parents and her daughter. It is the her response to a desire to record and safeguard intimate moments of an ordinary day before they disappear.

The Blue That Blew Bloo, Daniel Ray Martinez

Art Theses and Dissertations

My work is a combination of videos, objects, and performances with a multidisciplinary practice that engages with the formal language of sculpture, photography, video/cinema, and drawing while being in dialogue with concepts and concerns about the image, the surface, and the space of representation. I am interested in the poetics and phenomenology of life; and the way one interacts in an environment; and the way digital/virtual media has shifted our experiences in life. Rethinking the way one finds boredom to get away from virtual capitalist spaces is a concern for me. I find inspiration in the wandering through spaces. I …

Interdisciplinary Arts As An Agent For Community Building In A U.S. Public School, Ida Pappas

Educational Studies Dissertations

The aim of my dissertation research is to understand the relationship between interdisciplinary arts experiences and the establishment of a community culture in a mainstream public high school in northeast United States. With this research, I hope to provide evidence to support the inclusion of interdisciplinary arts projects in the fabric of students’ high school curricular and extra-curricular experiences. Through engagement in design, art, video, music, dance, theater and the close study of a minority culture, high school participants provided regular responses to planned survey questions and open-ended survey questions (Experience Sampling), as well as through interviews, written prompts and …

Same Stuff, Just Packaged A Different Way (Maybe It's Not So Bad?), Kyle Strobel

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Who Would You Be? examines the interplay between person and persona, relationship building, and artist-sitter dynamics. By placing contemporary sitters in the context of historical portraiture conventions, it seeks to lead viewers to consider the issue of self-absorption and vanity in social media profiles from a different angle. Additionally, this project became a way to enhance the quality of my personal relationships with those involved through providing a space to interact and creating a link for them between myself and each other.

Queering The Material, Rachel Youn

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Queer is the disorienting of a subject in space and time. With this notion, this paper goes through various extensions of my practice, investigating how I queer objects and actions to destabilize normative expectations of function. I engage with the aesthetics of Minimalism, the everyday experience of Asian American identities, and the association of the domestic environment with comfort and stability. Employing queer theory crossed with object theory, I posit how deception and failure exist as alternative understandings of how objects and environments function. Through subverting what is expected to be true and real, the work points to the fluid …

Betwixt / Between: Hybridity In Asian American And Christian Identities, Sherry Xiao

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Hybridity is defined as the fusion of worlds that were once separate in one’s self. Both cultural and religious identity are sites of hybridity and dialogue with one another to shape conceptions of sacred and profane. My research explores historical accounts and anecdotes in which cultural understanding informs expressions of faith. My practice takes elements of Eastern and Western visual culture and art history and frames them within a Christian perspective through painting, printmaking, and installation. By participating in the legacy of religious art through a hybrid lens, I seek to adopt cultural ownership of Christianity.

Encounter: Alone In The Woods, Max Zagor

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Encounter aims to take the viewer into the darkest parts of the mind through my own journey into the woods. With the images, my work attempts to capture a pure level of the fear that I felt as I ventured into the woods, alone, at night to experience the emotions I wanted to show. Similarly, Encounter deals with why we see what we see; as in, why do we think we see Bigfoot in the shadows? Where does that idea come from? Through my research, I work to prove that our culture has implanted the imagery and thoughts of monsters …

Humidifier, George Bowles

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A discussion of the painter’s position in relation to visual culture as organized by collage. The role of abstraction is described, the correlative possibilities for gestural and textual reference of which are entailed. Models for the translation of art-historical source material provide the painter with a path forward and justify the non-verbal art experience.

From Beyond, Dana A. Denoux

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My artworks are informed by my experiences in the landscape at dusk. As the sun sets, the energy of the landscape shifts and a whole new world of the unseen arise. Through my artworks, I seek to encapsulate the emotions that the landscape evokes at this time. I explore my own desires of being immersed in the natural world, as well as my wonder and respect for its mysteries. Through darkness and light, my artworks investigate the unknown, or the idea of the unknown, beyond what the senses perceive.

Perspective, Karie D. Cooper

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As an artist, I am interested in understanding how and why humans interact with the natural world. I examine my own individual behaviors and practices and research impacts made on nature by humans as a whole. I am drawn to nature for a multitude of reasons, including aesthetic beauty, psychological wellness, unraveling the mysteries of the universe and trying to understand the origins of life. As an artist I explore the dialectic relationship between everything we perceive outside of ourselves as the environment, and the way we think of ourselves in relation to that environment. I believe in the interconnectedness …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Ripple, Tyler P. Haney

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work leverages the dynamic processes the brain uses to compute visual stimuli to influence how viewers experience my work. My aim is to create a ripple effect as the brain processes the visual information I provide.

My process begins with a camera. Focusing on the face, I see how much contextual information I can remove while still capturing the emotional expression of the subject. Before long, a photograph ends up next to a canvas where I will rebuild the image from the photograph using a myriad of expressionistic marks and colors to amplify the emotion.

Recognizing human emotion is …