Fine Arts Commons^™

Ten-Der-Ness, Brittany Jasin

Graduate School of Art Theses

Ten-der-ness. The title of this document defines the word, because one can easily forget all the meanings of a word. To be tender is to be compassionate and kind but also can mean to be in pain. “The quality of being easy to cut or chew” is my favorite definition; because to me that says that to be tender makes you vulnerable to being swallowed by reality. It’s a common saying that without suffering we would never know compassion but, within tenderness, compassion and suffering exist simultaneously in a ten letter word. Within my thesis I am exploring tenderness through …

Flesh And Blood, Clayton Petras

Graduate School of Art Theses

In my work, I look for ways to visualize and document the degenerative mental disease of Parkinson’s and transform it into portrayals of the disease itself, its effects, and those it afflicts. Being a physical breakdown of the body, both popular culture and my own corporal understanding influence my interpretation and representation. This document outlines those influences and their buildup towards a shared understanding of the interests behind the work, as well as implies what the work does through these contexts.

How do we give identity to a disease that is difficult to diagnose or view on medical technology, currently …

( )* *This Smells Familiar, Sachi Nagase

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Fragments from quotidian sensory experience conjure memories from personal history. Vague manifestations of feelings become interpretations of memories, which are investigated through immersive installation, sculpture, and video. Imagined scenarios are constructed to expose moments of cultural disconnect and reveal states of inbetweenness, which settle within territories amongst imagination and reality, adult and childhood, and loss and comfort. Within the works, sensory experiences including smell, sound and taste develop to relay meaning and affect. Haptic, olfactory, and auditory stimulation allow active participation, while subjectivity inherent in taste and smell generate space for new meaning. Color is used to immerse, to delineate …

One Epic Φf Stardusts, Y∞N Irene Hong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A long time ago in a far away galaxy,

there was a star shining alone in the deep darkness.

The beautiful star aged and exploded into a supernova,

where her golden light scattered into the tiniest sparkles of dust,

pouring down to Earth.

Made of Stardust,

humans naturally have responded to the divine light that they carry inside their souls,

through diverse acts of enlightenment such as art, religion, and science.

.

.

.

As a Stardust, an artist, a Korean, and a woman,

I keep walking in between opposing forces and varying perspectives

until I transcend their boundaries and …

Cat Metamorfosis: Becoming Animal And The Freedom Of Non-Identity, Hannah Becker

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A large number of modern and contemporary female artists have employed the state of becoming to either free themselves of or challenge the social norms that come with being a woman. Kara Walker frees the Mammy of her expectation by combining her with a sphinx in her monumental sugar sculpture, A Subtlety. The Guerilla Girls have an impenetrable and unidentifiable voice when they speak from behind gorilla masks. Lucy Gunning’s The Horse Impressionists depicts women mimicking the behavior of horses to lose their human consciousness, and more specifically, female identity. Looking beyond the art world and into recent consumerist …

Light On, Baby. No Future, Shane Dollinger

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This project is a realistic depiction of the circularity of experience. As Images of ourselves and our experiences become increasingly inescapable, the repetitive and nonlinear nature of those experiences is amplified. This issue is explored in looking at contemporary artists/filmmakers whose handling of inundation in representation and narrative distinctly embraces multiplicity. Queering structures of representation, the work holds a mirror to the way that we experience living, encountering images, narrative structures and memories.

[Insert Body Here], Katie Yun

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

The personal is political. Using humor and my individual narrative, I illustrate the main three factors that drive my work and relate them to corresponding theoretical frameworks: 1) My OCD tendencies and labor as art concept 2) Assimilation and the appeal of the White Cube 3) Reclamation of identity and Abject art. Through textual and visual research, I provide scholarly backing and precedents set by other artists to situate these personal narratives as part of a larger structural system of oppression, while being transparent of my culpability and participation in these structures. I posit that my work provides a nuanced …

Open To The Public: The Political Zoo, Mary Brown

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Open to the Public: The Political Zoo is a two-part project that began as an experiment, a creative curiosity into the intersections of co-authorship, political censorship, and mail art. Spurred in a moment when the news media is being challenged by those in the highest offices, the analog nature of this project explores the potential of a world in which online self-expression is hindered. Mail art projects, while out of the box in this digital era, are situated in a history of 20th century artistic practices. Used as a tool for creative exploration and community in Western countries, in Eastern …

My Giants, Teodora Altomare

Theses and Dissertations

My Giants is a thirty minute documentary about two journeys. During the first, in 2015, the filmmaker documented the story of Xylella fastidiosa, a bacteria responsible for the loss of many thousand-year-old olive trees in the Italian region of Puglia. During the second visit, in 2016, she witnessed the illness of her father.

By weaving together the two stories, My Giants is a snapshot of a transitional moment in the filmmaker’s life, a moment when illness became an opportunity to reconnect with her roots.

Badlands, Meghan B. Augustine

CGU MFA Theses

Badlands is a project that invites a viewer to be present and still. It

asks a viewer for their time, and requires contemplation, introspection

and awareness.

My work is a translation of the color made on a specific place. It

investigates the marks that we leave on the physical and psychological

landscapes, and what is left behind.

There is a rhythm to this project that touches upon process and

metaphor. Process permits metaphor, and ultimately the paintings

embody their own beings. Dirt, light, space and energy. Energy never

dies. It is only recycled.

This project veils and unveils time with …

In The Library And Online: Social Media And Civic Discourse, Samantha A. Mairson

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis analyzes the findings of an interview-based research study of public-serving libraries in the state of Connecticut. Specifically, it examines these institutions’ use of social media to promote civic discourse online and on-site with the purpose of producing guidelines for best practices. This new research emerges from the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts research Experience (SHARE) Award project, “Museums, Libraries, and Civic Discourse in Connecticut,” which concluded Spring 2016.

The research develops an understanding of the use of social media by public-serving libraries, presents three models for dissemination of findings to the field, and concludes with key observations and …

"Collaborating With Chance", Alyse Gellis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Have you ever felt a desire to get lost on a journey much larger than yourself or experience the thrill of the unknown? Think about a time you intentionally swam further out in a lake or the sea than you have before, or drove down a road without knowing where it would take you, or wandered around a new city without a map. Think about how you made the decision to push those boundaries. Remember how taking that risk in pursuit of an unknown made you feel, because it is that thrill that drives my artistic practice. Through my thesis …

Purge, Amanda Foshag

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement describes the eight hanging veil-like structures and sculptures that constitute my thesis exhibition work; it further comments on the movements, philosophy, and personal sensibility that most influenced the art making: Process Art, Taoism, and my own empathetic experiences. The movement of Process Art is discussed in reference to materiality and the physicality that goes into making these pieces. The influence of the Taoist philosophy is discussed in light of the unity and balance found in the combination of dualistic materials, and their relationship to one another, in these sculptural forms. Lastly, this statement expresses how the emotional …

Blueprints, Robert Blalock

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement is a written defense and an articulation of my thesis work Blueprints. Blueprints is a series of 78” X 42” indigo pencil on white paper drawings of clothed contemporary women in interaction with geometric objects. In this thesis statement, the method used to arrive at this body of work, my processes and materials, my artistic influences and artistic background will be discussed. My conclusion will connect the thread of ideas that ultimately led to Blueprints.

What You See Is What You Get, Kevin Kempisty

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement describes and comments on the four videos that compose my thesis exhibition, "What you See is What You Get." Together, they constitute a self-portrait. Videos require multiple mediums and software, each with their own purpose and aesthetic. The three key ingredients these four videos make use of are recorded performances, 2D animation and narrative. This statement will detail the visuals and purpose of each one, the technology and editing process, and the inspirations that have led to the thesis exhibition. The statement describes the choice of color, movement and rhythm to carry the narrative, which is not …

Nips Of Clairvoyance, Samantha Valdez

Graduate Theses

My thesis statement describes the fundamental elements of inspiration, along with the artistic references for my thesis body of work. It revisits memories, and explores the symbolic significance of bodily action, form, material and composition, as a means to expose the relationship between object and memory. The thesis exhibition, Nips of Clairvoyance, consists of an installation of a triptych of videos of performances that depict the complexity and pain of an abusive relationship. Adjacent to the videos are three sculptures that consist, of glass cylinders filled with personal objects embedded inside and placed on top of slabs of soap. While …

Remembering Virtual Worlds: Painting And Video Games, Nathaniel M. St. Amour

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Video games create the feeling of great achievement and place the player into a role that turns them into a great hero. These experiences feel significant because they require great time and emotional investment. The monumentality of these experiences, however, are at odds with the transience of the electrical virtual worlds. The medium of oil painting helps overcome the sense of transience because of oil painting’s durable permanent way of image making and stillness. Painting’s inherent nod to history also creates a dissonance between the newness of the video game medium and the antiquity of painting, a contrast exacerbated by …

Material Poetics, Ellen G. Reid

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

quench: /kwen(t)SH/

a : put out, extinguish

b : to put out the light or fire

c : to cool suddenly by immersion

d : to cause to lose heat or warmth

e : to bring to an end typically by satisfying, damping, cooling, or

decreasing

f : to relieve or satisfy with liquid

This is often how projects begin, a haunting idea, word, or experience inundates my consciousness and sub-consciousness. How could the body directly relate to an experience of quenching? This provoked the idea of the extreme sport: freediving. To adequately depict the definition of quenching, any …

"Transitions Through A Painter's Eye", Benjamin M. Wailes Iv

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Abstract

This monograph discusses a body of work that I completed during 2016 and 2017. The medium used for this project was photography. This work started on a very small scale taking a few photographs in Harrisonburg Virginia, but this initial investigation led me to complete over 25,000 photographs and travel to over thirteen different states including Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee over an eleven month period of time.

This work presents photographs of everyday items going through transitions as metaphors for the passage of time and …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …