Digital Commons Network^™

Embracing Identity And Narrative In Art For Self-Empowerment, Zalika Perkins

Art and Design Theses

This arts-based thesis will explore ethnic identity and narrative in symbolic self-portraiture as themes for a body of work. This paper will discuss how identity and narrative play an important role in the empowerment of the artist and viewer. It will also show how this can be incorporated into an art classroom engaged in multicultural learning and the study of visual culture to empower students and give them opportunities to narrate their life stories.

Negotiating Hybridity In The Work Of Lalla Essaydi: An Exploration Of Gaze, Susannah B. Darrow

Art and Design Theses

The photographic work of contemporary Moroccan artist, Lalla Essaydi, embodies a new artistic hybridity that reflects her nomadic, globalized background. With this work, the artist employs visual symbolism and uses multiple forms of artistic media as a means to analyze her multicultural background. Throughout her series, which spans 2004-present, Essaydi uses both literal and metaphorical representations of space and self as a means to examine the multifacetedness of her national identity and the many gazes that define that identity. She uses artistic production as a means of mediating the collective experiences of her identity in order to negotiate and construct …

Between Worlds: The Biography Of Madame De Pompadour's Boudoir Turc, Dana C. Lee

Art and Design Theses

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, known as the Marquise de Pompadour, was celebrated for her great patronage of the arts, including architecture. This biographical account of her Turkish boudoir at Bellevue examines its implications of personal and private life, class and gender, and the role of exoticism in eighteenth-century architectural interiors. Analysis of the boudoir and its contents reflect much about its unusual mistress and the unique period of the mid-eighteenth century, as all are likened to the metaphor of existing in a liminal space “between worlds.”

Plot And Escape, Paul Stephen Benjamin

Art and Design Theses

According to Aristotle, plot is the means by which a story is told or unfolds. In my plot, I have revised the narrative regarding the artist of color. The “native informant” dies because there is no longer a need for him to exist. The artist of color escapes from the narrowly defined constraints of how his work can be viewed and understood. His work is considered for its accomplishments (or failures) technically, aesthetically, and conceptually.

Action Through Aesthetics: Philanthropic Art Initiatives In South Africa During The Apartheid, Callie C. Crabb

Art and Design Theses

South African artists played an expansive philanthropic role throughout the stages of the apartheid movement. Their artwork ranged from reflective to pro-active and reconciliatory. Although many scholars argue that South African artists were agents of social change, scholars have not drawn a connection between South African art history and philanthropy. Philanthropy is a platform from which artists can serve as catalysts within society. This thesis argues that South African artists acted philanthropically through their work to challenge the destructive social mores enforced by apartheid.

Allegories Of Temporal Experience: The Late Work Of Frederic Leighton, Sarah V. Leonard

Art and Design Theses

The late paintings of Victorian artist Frederic Leighton generally embody an abstract idea or concept instead of a specific story or moral. Many of these images express humanity's experience of the passage of time as it relates to life, death, and rebirth. Leighton's paintings The Garden of the Hesperides, Lachrymae, and Flaming June represent allegories of timelessness, death, and regeneration, respectively.

Neither Here Nor There, Jeshua W. Holt

Art and Design Theses

Neither Here Nor There deals with the idea of memory indexing and archiving. Examining the construction and categorizing of such information and the possible parallels it may have to the people we become.

You Define Me, Nicole A. Klein

Art and Design Theses

The work I created in conjunction with this paper is a representation of myself and my family, both individually and as a unit. The work was spawned by a search for my identity at my current age of 25. The outcome is an installation of photographs that focus on my heritage and family work ethic and a series of altar-like tables highlighting the personalities of my grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, and sister when they were experiencing life at my stage. I believe that this work culminates in defining me. Every element, every individual, reflects a part of myself in the …

Liminal, William R. Moody

Art and Design Theses

My porcelain sculptural work explores the passage from life to death in the form of boat imagery. Many cultures and belief systems have water and boat references in their mythoi surrounding the passage of the soul or spirit to the afterlife. I combine many disparate boat elements into each piece in order to allude to an archetypal form. The black and white tones refer to mourning rituals of various cultures as well as the traditional practice of scrimshaw, in which sailors once made carvings on whale bone or walrus tusks and then inked the lines. My boats are intended as …

From Autonomy To Collaboration: A Creative Process, James E. Johnson

Art and Design Theses

The purpose of this auto-ethnographic and art-based study is to examine how the experiences throughout my life have influenced my practice as an artist. It is within the context of a socially constructed past and present place that I will explore my own process in terms of collaboration and the implications for an artist-teacher, or teaching artist. I reflect upon how my values and philosophy as an art educator have been formed from the synthesis of my experiences. My relationships with a gallery, its clients, and a fellow artist provide the context for reflecting about my process and gaining insights …

Recent Works, Andrew Boatright

Art and Design Theses

ABSTRACT

Recent Works chronicles and fleshes out the processes, formations, iterations, and manifestations that resulted in the creation of the thesis exhibition of the same name. This thesis is an examination of the underlying scaffolding that structures my current art process. The defense I give examines the work and its relationship to the body. Through focusing on the body of the viewer, my work aims at approaching the body directly by functioning aesthetically. By functioning this way the body becomes the site for meaning making. The individual works in Recent Works evoke associations with bodily forms and fluids; the substance …

Installation Art As A Means Of Exploring Place And Activity Fragmentation In Interior Environments Resulting From Contemporary Digital Technology, Cotter D. Christian

Art and Design Theses

This thesis explores how information and communication technology creates activity fragmentation within the interior built environment. This paper analyzes the work of psychologists, philosophers, architects, artists, designers, and others who have considered our relationship to physical space as well as how technological advancements alter our behavior and perspective. In addition to reviewing current thinking on the topic, the research conducted also looks at how architects, artists, and designers, particularly of the late 20^th century, responded to notions of fragmentation and disconnectedness often spawned by modernization. Through precedent analysis, a strong relationship between architectural design and installation art emerges. This …

America(N), Stefanie J. Liles-Ray

Art and Design Theses

AMERICA(N) is the exploration of entities that compose my life as an American artist that grew up in a middle-class suburban environment, and the idea of America which encompasses the great American Dream. This existential examination consists of the collecting, documenting and categorizing of information, including photographs of the houses I lived in, portraits of the dogs I have owned, as well as select lists and correspondences from the last few years. Through the accumulation of these items, I seek to analyze and derive meaning and connections amongst all of these things, which exist simultaneously with one another within a …

Considering The Function Of Humanistic Imagery Within The Court Of Pope Julius Ii: The Stanza Della Segnatura, Jessica Gillespie

Art and Design Theses

The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between Christian and humanistic themes within the four large frescoes that Raphael painted in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace. Through this examination I plan to demonstrate how the interrelation of these two seemingly contradictory themes was critical for the political aims and papal identity of the patron, Pope Julius II. I will argue that Julius commissioned the decoration of the stanza as a means of asserting his papal authority and presenting an identification of himself as the new Julius Caesar who ushered in a new Roman Golden …