Fine Arts Commons^™

My Thinking Place, Claudia Murcia

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Polygonal Provocateur, Abigail Daleki

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis calls attention to what we interpret as a painting; an object hung on a wall for decoration, to be looked at, thought about, or just as an interruption to a dull, white surface. Historically, paintings were used in religious practice or to serve utilitarian purpose. Through the years, paintings have become less about content and more about catching the eye, making the viewer think. Paint, on a canvas, stretched over a frame and hung on a wall is, traditionally, a painting. I am focused on challenging that regime. I want to challenge the idea of what a painting …

Unapologetic Self, Aashish Maskey

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This body of work began with an intention to transform the mundane. During this process of intuitively interacting/improvising with my surrounding environment, objects and people, I noticed the photographs had more to them than my intentional concept. They were perhaps fragments of my subconscious at the time of making each of them. This body of work represents the contents of my conscious and subconscious mind, connected through my intuition. It is a visual story of polarity, which perhaps resides within us all.

Reviving Project:A Chinese-American Culture Exchange Project, Yushan Cassie Sun

UROP Posters

Through art exhibitions in Beijing, China and Richmond, Virginia, Reviving project 01 aims to help promote/ revive a craft technique in Qinghai, China that is disappearing due to the urbanized surroundings.

American artist were invited to collaborate with people from Qinghai to make new pieces incorporating original crafted pieces.

Paint And Sound: A Dialogue, Alyse M. Emanuel

Departmental Honors Projects

This project is an exploration of the confluence of visual and musical artistic processes. As well as exploring how music and visual arts can inform each other and create dialogue, a central part of the project is an attempt to reach a synesthetic state in my own artistic processes for which my training as a visual artist and musician laid the groundwork. Through active, creative experimentation with making music in response to artwork and vice versa, I undertook to achieve a union of the senses. The project includes historical research that places my work in the context of other artists …

Guest Editor's Column, Geoffrey Kain

Publications

“Increasingly in higher education we are said to value interdisciplinary approaches to subjects, to consider creative means to perforate if not actually dissolve some boundaries between disciplines, to potentially develop courses or opportunities for students and/or faculty to establish some innovative bridges between the arts and sciences, philosophy and technology, etc…”

An Interview With Dilip K. Basu, Geoffrey Kain

Publications

[Dr. Dilip K. Basu, professor emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the founding director of the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center, now located in Crown College on the UCSC campus. He and his wife, Dayani Kowshik-Basu, who serves as curator for the Center, continue to maintain, direct, and develop the Ray archival collection and oversee the continuing restoration efforts of a range of Satyajit Ray materials. Dilip Basu has played one of the most vital roles, worldwide, in the recovery and restoration of Satyajit Ray’s films. In 1992, when the Motion Picture Academy, with …

Examining The Role Of Active Student Engagement In High School Arts Courses, Athena Irene Nichols

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A primary challenge to educators is the design and implementation of effective student engagement processes. High school students cannot be successful if they are frequently absent from school, as active engagement opportunities reinforce knowledge and help to keep students enthused in their learning. To address the challenges of frequent school absences, this study examined a gap in the literature--namely, the relationship between active engagement and arts courses as a motivator for students to remain in high school. For this study, active engagement was defined as a process in which the student's interests, efforts, and knowledge culminated in an application of …

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Avatar, Cyborg, Icevorg: Simulacra’S Scion, Guido E. Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.”

The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

Into The Fray, Frances Pearce

Theses and Dissertations

My sculpture and prints are about dismemberment and the destruction caused by war. To address the high cost of war, I make works that present the threat of injury, amputation, and prosthetics. I use Classical Greek art history references to address contemporary political, military, and social issues. I include images such as Amazonian women, horses, and doves. These images are coupled with references to the damage caused by conflict. While my work concerns destruction, paradoxically, my process involves additive construction. I take a mixed media approach to both my sculptures and my prints, and use a wide range of materials …

A Perception Of Change, A Change Of Perception, Christopher D. White

Theses and Dissertations

Change is a constant reminder that permanence is the ultimate illusion. It is through the creation of hyper-realistic, ceramic sculpture that I explore the relationship between nature, humans, and the phenomenon of impermanence. I seek to expose the beauty that often results from decay while, at the same time, making my viewer question their own perception of the world around them. The juxtaposition of natural and man-made features in combination with the skewing of scale, proportion, and material, creates an altered perspective – forcing the viewer to look closer. By combining both human and natural elements within my work I …

Regarding The Porosity Of Borders, Lee M. Piechocki

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the surface of my paintings through Jean Baudrillard’s notion of seduction and the cool mechanism of the airbrush. I further investigate my work through the metaphor of the black mirror also known as a Claude Mirror and the connections between my work, Claude Lorrain’s landscape painting and divination through the use of reflective surfaces known as catopotromancy. Considering the notion of assemblage as outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour’s Action Network Theory I attempt to navigate the part/whole relationships found in painting, and in society.

Hands On Painting, Matthew Yaeger

Theses and Dissertations

How can we know something through how it is sensed? Making anthropomorphic, three-dimensional paintings through a set of basic, at-hand materials, I’m interested in how empathy, modesty, and doubt can mediate a tangible experience of an object. Challenging notions of perception, I want to create a heightened sense of awareness in which the intangible can be seen or felt.

Cute As A Button, Marta R. Finkelstein

Theses and Dissertations

Cute As A Button explores powerlessness, vulnerability, illness and addiction all wrapped up in tender buttons and a cute, cuddly creature. Using animation, sculpture, sound and an intimate space, I surround the viewer in a saccharine nightmare, one that references the dark underbelly of the cute and the sweet. The visual and aural elements are representative of the psychological and emotional states of powerlessness, which are overcome by the act of making and exploring a medium over which I can have complete control.

Double Zero, Anthony Earl Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis follows the trajectory of my artistic practice over the past two years, which has led to the installation of my thesis exhibition titled, Double Zero. I hope to position the work among its art and cultural terms by exploring how I have expanded my research concerning Situationist and Marxist theory as well as developed a broader photographic studio practice driven by material experimentation, play, and an investigation into how we live and interact with commodities through media.

Thank You For A Lovely Time, Kelley Mj Morrison

Theses and Dissertations

Stemming from my own fixation on trying to understand the actions, decisions and thought processes of those around me my work explores the difference between internal and external lives. I construct “brain spaces”; whether my own or someone else’s I strive to understand the decisions they have made and the stories we are a part of. I combine thoughts, feeling and sentiments which I have collected over my life to make objects that act as intermediaries, allowing others to imagine stepping into a mind other than their own. I attempt to bring the landscape of the mind into the physical …

Lullaby, Amber M. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

I have been investigating the way in which my mind has altered my memories, especially from childhood. The more a moment is recalled, the less precise it becomes. The most inaccurate memories from childhood are the ones I have fixated on. Bedrooms are spaces where dreaming, sleeping and reverie take place leading to even more fragmenting. The intimate space of a bedroom allows me to represent the personal distorted recollections. The bedroom furniture is missing parts, shifted in height and placement or combined together. By making doubles of furniture, a direct comparison can be made from the real piece to …

Postcession, Evan D. Pomerantz

Theses and Dissertations

This is a series of daily writings. Each day consists of a new topic and is closed at the end of the day. The ideas presented are philosophical, humorous, rambling, lamentations, incantations, doubt-ridden, aesthetic pep talks which combine into an affective representation of my studio practice’s becoming. There will be little congruency, some stories, and a lot of parallels because that is who I am.