Fine Arts Commons^™

A Living House Never Stands Still, Holly Rose Kranker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A Living House Never Stands Still is an exhibition that explores the interplay between place, memory, and the suspension of time through diverse mediums and materials. I engage with seemingly mundane objects, interpreting them through a non-linear, dream-like, and irrational framework to unearth latent connections across time–past, present, and future. Central to these explorations is the concept of home—not merely as a physical location, but as an evolving entity. Home is a sacred space for me.

My recent studio reflections are focused on the lifecycle of objects, the emotional responses they evoke, and how these cycles emulate the human body …

Big Blue, Caitlin Mae Ramos

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Big Blue is a record keeping system of sorts- to show the story of my relationship with the tallgrass Big Bluestem as an Oglala Lakota tribal citizen of The Sioux Nation. It’s meant to question the idea of binaries, what is valued, how verticality is only powerful if supported horizontally, and the legacy of the remnants that remain. Big Bluestem is a reminder of our linked survival as humans with the land and the importance of knowing the individual names of the leafy and legged beings who exist equally on it.

Good Bassoon Reeds: Where And How To Find Them, Mads A. Barajas

2025 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Among bassoonists, it is understood that store-bought bassoon reeds are not manufactured to meet the needs of bassoonists. This study identifies commercial reed brands which permit school age bassoonists to play without unnecessary resistance and response issues, thus increasing awareness of reed selection to reduce formation of bad habits such as biting, improve tone, and reduce reed costs. Three reeds from four of the most common commercial bassoon reed brands were tested, accounting for variability in agricultural goods and handmade products across brands. Crowing, stability and intonation, high note responses, and low note responses were tested on each reed. These …

Curated: The Impact Of Architectural Sequence On The Journey Through The Art Museum, Zairis Padilla

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The museum is a culturally significant institution used for learning, thought, and contemplation from its conceptualization in The Enlightenment Movement of the 17th century. The art museum has the potential to create a powerful relationship between the art and the architecture that houses it. The architecture of an art museum becomes a critical participant in the experience of art and affects the spaces in a dramatic way. If the art or architecture overpowers the other, the user experience is impacted; therefore, the connection created between the two within the museum is one of great importance. When a symbiotic connection, or …

Realm Bound, Kailee D. Bal

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Kailee Bal paints stills from branching video games narratives to explore the anxieties reflected in everyday decision making. She photographs her everyday life that mimics the aesthetics of video games that blur the line between the escape to virtual worlds combined with the escape found in the act of painting and taking photographs. These are usually moments in a game where the player must make a choice that determines the next objective.

Bal uses imagery from video games within the horror genre as the landscape to explore difficulties of anxiety and apprehension in daily life. Her subject matter focuses on …

The Camera’S Sanctuary: Photographing The Queer Gardens Of The Vieux Carré, Tyler Rosebush

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the French Quarter courtyard as a site of queer sanctuary, memory, and community through a lens-based artistic practice. Drawing on historical and contemporary photographs, installations, and collaborations with friends and community members, the work examines how gardens and courtyards have long functioned as both physical and metaphysical spaces of refuge for the queer community in New Orleans. The project is grounded in both archival recovery and contemporary practice, combining the still image with sculptural installations that reframe the visual vernacular of gay clubs within these historic spaces. By slowing down the photographic process and attuning to both …

The Playground: Redefining The Artistic Experience And Expression With Technology, Meghan Hutto

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Throughout the artistic community, many creators are exploring new ways to generate innovative works for growing audiences. With the emergence of endless technology, dance makers are searching for mediums to include new lighting techniques and music composition. Across this past year, I have researched and explored new frontiers of artistic mediums to further my project’s artistic expression. By developing and investigating new systems of lighting and musical composition, I created a fifteen-minute work called “Metaphysical Mindscape”. When solidifying the through-line that carried the expression of my piece, I uncovered a piece of myself. The themes that I explored were thoughts …

A Feasibility Study Of Creating A Model For A Dance Outreach Program In Chesterfield County Public Schools, Katelyn Elizabeth Roberts

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Exposure to dance at a young age has many proven benefits for children and their communities, including healthier brain development, deeper cultural understandings, and higher rates of supporting the arts in the future. Unfortunately, most dance education options are costly, greatly limiting which families have access to the opportunity to allow their children to experience training in dance. Dance outreach programs, which focus on introducing dance to communities and children that may otherwise never have access to dance education, are one way the arts community is working to dismantle this elitism. Partnering with public schools is the most common way …

Collective Drip: Transformation, Hybridity, And Queer Ecologies, Vee Adams

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In my recent body of work, Collective Drip, I investigate the queer and trans body as a site for transformation. Through the lens of queer theory, ecology, and myth, I explore what it means to be becoming, always in process. Looking at hybrid bodies and symbiotic life forms, I’m interested in investigating what it means when the body is seen as a dynamic landscape? What happens when the community is reinvisioned as an ecosystem? Facing the current transphobic political landscape, this body of work offers queer and trans visions of pleasure and abundance.

The Duality Of Perception: Unveiling The Hidden Through Visible Forms, Sharmeen Uqaili

Art Theses and Dissertations

This MFA thesis, The Duality of Perception: Unveiling the Hidden through Visible Form, involves layering paints on shaped wood panels and paper, using the traditional technique of tezhib (gold illumination) and geometric art. Through these layers, I aim to challenge the viewers’ perceptions by simultaneously revealing and concealing elements within the work. Symbols drawn from Islamic traditions such as pomegranates, birds, and ribbons are incorporated in the paintings to carry both cultural and personal significance, evoking my connections to spiritual and physical realms.

Rooted in the principles of Islamic art and informed by spiritual themes such as paradise, divine …

Recollections Of A Tejana Life, Carolina Yáñez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This thesis encompasses the life of a young woman navigating life in Texas through various political and social barriers. My interdisciplinary practice analyzes the historical context of Mexicans in Texas from its Revolutionary period into current injustices. Through fiber, printmaking, and photography I create a visual diary to illustrate what the political has made personal. These works display the beauty of Tejano culture, but also the power struggles that threaten communities I care for, as well as my own existence that persists against far-right wing agendas.

Current politics and government leadership in Texas have inspired me to make artwork calling …

Artists And Inspirations: A Look At The Past And My Present, Sofie A. Curto

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper examines eight artists who have served as inspiration and guidance in my own artistic growth over the past four years. With in depth examinations of each, I dive into their personal life, practices, and experiences. I then examine one of each of their works and reflect on how it pertains to my practice. There are two separate sections that reflect the expanding scope of my work. Each section concludes with an investigation of several of my pieces and my creation process. Finally, there is a description of my four submitted works completed in conjunction with this research.

Cavedivers: A Multi-Media Visual And Musical Release, Emily J. Langford

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

For my graduating UNO Honors Program capstone project, I have chosen to undertake a creative project that involves recording and releasing an album with my band, Cavedivers, while also designing the visual media and advertising graphics to accompany the release. The songs we have recorded were all written and developed before the start of this project. Therefore, this project is less of a songwriting endeavor, since most of that process is already complete, and more of an experimentation and workshop in communicating music through recording and identifying effective trends within graphic design.

As an art major and musician, this has …

The Forgotten House In Richmond Town, Alexandra Cordato

Gandy Dancer Archives

Medium: intaglio etching on paper

Territorio Nepantla: A Visual Exploration Of The Matamoros – Brownsville Borderlands, Michel Valeria Flores Tavizón

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the work presented in the MFA exhibition titled Territorio Nepantla. A multidisciplinary exhibition featuring a visual exploration of the Matamoros and Rio Grande Valley borderlands through the perspective of a Mexican transfronteriza traversing the Matamoros – Brownsville border. The feminist Chicana theory of nepantla, a word from Nahuatl origin meaning “in-between” is central to the exhibition. Scholar Gloria Anzaldua defines the borderlands as a nepantla space, a liminal space where art and la frontera intersect. Nepantla represents the in-betweenness beyond physicality. A nepantla space can be emotional, spiritual, sexual, linguistical and more. This body of work …

Held On By A Thread, Annie M. Hutchins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Annie Hutchins, discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Held on by a Thread, which was installed at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, TN, from March 6, 2025, through March 28, 2025, with a public reception held on March 7, 2025. The exhibition is a collection of textile works containing repurposed material artifacts of the life she shared with her maternal family since childhood. The artwork incorporates found objects from the artist’s home, including domestic textiles, clothing, handmade sewing projects, family photographs, and sewing notions. The artworks are made using the printmaking technique of photo emulsion screen …

These Things Happen, Keleigh E. Mcmullen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My artwork emerges from moments of emotional and physical violence—both small and large. Although rooted in my lived experience, the truths I tell in my work are far from unique. Violence often hides in plain sight, buried in the mundane spaces of daily life. Through ceramic sculpture, I spotlight these moments, inviting viewers into a world that is familiar and simultaneously unsettling.

Scale plays a crucial role in this narrative—objects shrink or expand based on their emotional gravity, their object authority, or my own relationship to them. By amplifying the small and shrinking the overwhelming, I reshape how viewers interact …

The Space Between: Engaging And Withholding The Self, Maya Mcdonald

All Theses

This thesis, The Space Between: Engaging and Withholding the Self, documents my journey in understanding the self through the act of oil-painted self-portraiture. Through an exploration of eye contact, body language, non-performative representations of self, and the tension between engagement and detachment, this body of work examines the complexities of visibility, agency, and self-perception. Using my own body as both subject and metaphor, I investigate the interplay between revealing and withholding, questioning the boundaries between what is seen and what remains obscured. Blending classical figure painting techniques with abstracted elements, my work engages in a dialogue between tradition and …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Introspection Of A Memory, Luissed Yibirin

Gandy Dancer Archives

Medium: monotype and screenprint