Digital Commons Network^™

All Bodies Wander, Haley Mackeil

Masters Theses

This thesis describes how aspects of the environment can evoke the presence of a living organism. It discusses several projects by Haley MacKeil that are based on research within the natural world that includes documentation of sites, processes, installations, and artifacts made through video, glass, and papermaking. MacKeil’s practice forms a threshold between two worlds, two bodies, two different understandings—it creates sites for connections with something, someone, or a place that cannot be directly accessed.

Sapping, Smudging, Staining: A Feminized Body, Breslin Shea Bell

Masters Theses

This book—of poetry, prose, and lists—muses on the effects of liquidity and leakiness of a feminized body. By bringing echo narrative, illegibility, de-telling, and that which is continuously wet to the viewer’s body and space, this book and accompanying multimedia installation provides a lens to consider reproductive rights, body autonomy, and gender-based aggression and violence. Work of matter and color investigates interiority, both bodily and spatial, as it relates to surface, access, and space-making.

Hybrid Garment, Diya Wang

Masters Theses

What is in the overlap between jewelry and clothing? Does the combination of jewelry and apparel create a new, significant,way of seeing art?

Hybrid Garment is a series of work that explores the overlap between fashion and Jewelry. As an artist and designer, my background and training prepared me to dissect and rebuild the relationship between and potential of jewelry and garments. The potential of hybridity serves as a methodology to combine and conflate the two disciplines.The essence of this work carries the idea of inclusivity, it encourages people at all levels to wear them. In addition, anyone wearing it …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

A Journey To The Deep Self, Fengkun Yu

Masters Theses

Filling the empty corners and walls with my favorite stuff in my house is essential for me to feel secure. Thus, I make pieces that I imagine being surrounded by the best collection by placing and organizing them in a touchable distance, such as wall shelves or bookshelves in my own space. I feel both physically and mentally comfortable with the atmosphere that these objects create and convey to me as a relatively sensitive and introverted person.

The state of being free from agitation and disturbance to me is the prerequisite to conduct studio practice. Being able to focus on …

Mars Is For Fags, Justin Quaid Grubb

Masters Theses

The overarching theme dealt with in my work relates to the Space Age - specifically the predictive futuristic approach to product design and the pop culture that came out of the movement. During this time, technological advancements permeated American culture. Manufactures made the future accessible to everyone and futuristic living became symbolic of innovation, progress, and prosperity. A blueprint for a futurist suburban utopia was forged and the American people were ready to embody the new “American Dream.” Residential Mid-Century Modern architecture emerged as the new site for this dream and along with it came a new way of life. …

Art Can Empower Children And Lead Them To Think Seriously About Significant Critical Issues, Jialu Gao

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation of how students can benefit through art and how visual arts educators can engage students in thinking about critical issues that are happening within contemporary society. Raising people’s awareness of the value of art, and especially urging to practice art better in schools’ curriculums are the starting point. This thesis includes looking at selective literature from Elliot Eisner, Charles Fowler, Mika Munakata and other educators and authors. The author also examines select contemporary practices in art education that occur in different settings, for example, in school, in gallery, in museum, and in community. The author …

Creative Learning: Art As A Language For Students With Diverse Learning Styles, Lana Gunn

Masters Theses

We all can experience a challenging time when finding the right word or sentence to describe something. However, for some individuals, this occurs every day with every sentence - so what if art were used as a language for those who have difficulties communicating their thoughts in traditional ways? Many children experience great difficulty when it comes to expressing their emotions and communicating verbally. However, the same children often thrive in the art room. Through art, the author believes that children can discover new ways to understand and explain what they are learning. In this thesis, the author explores what …

Beauty Still Lives Here: Narratives Of Radical Self-Love, Deshun Peoples

Masters Theses

This exhibition is primarily concerned with the act of taking up physical and socio-political space. Through the use of form, design, color, and installation this work places various histories and traditions of both ceramics and resistance in communication with one another. The red, black, and green of Marcus Garvey’s 1920 Pan-African/Black American flag are proudly displayed against a warm, calm, pale green backdrop to highlight the importance of mental health in all endeavors, especially in the emotionally taxing labor of social, political, and economic protest in the battle for humanity, life, civil rights, equity, access, and decision-making power.

Fableware From The Garden Of The Grotesque, Matt Becker

Masters Theses

In biology, a chimaera is created when two zygotes collide at an early stage of development, resulting in a unique creature containing two distinct sets of genes. The name is borrowed from Greek mythology where chimaeras are fire-breathing monsters born with the mixed attributes of lions, snakes, and goats. As creatures of myth, chimaera represent a narrative union of disparate parts; a collision of the fantastic and the mundane.

Clay can be used to explore this dichotomy, utilizing its ability as a mutable canvas to embody a vast range of visual vocabularies while referencing its rich history and placing new …

Cognitive Development & Art Education: Relationship, Suitability, And Future Implications, Zheng Yao

Masters Theses

In this thesis the author sought to discover linkages between Art, Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Cognitive Science through a review of scholarship surrounding the integration of cognitive theories, art, and education. There have been numerous studies that claim that art education in elementary and secondary schools improves students' academic performance, interpersonal skills and improves attitudes to life. Nations meanwhile constantly modify standards and frameworks for teaching and learning in the visual arts. However, despite these changes, the author wondered to what extent, if at all, new standards-based visual arts curriculum frameworks were responsive to concepts within cognitive theory. This qualitative study …

Control Theory, Colin Yoon

Masters Theses

When people feel that everything is out of control, their natural response would be to turn to a designated space to manipulate anything within it, whether a physical environment or a digital platform. This book expresses the comforts of order and predictability in response to the chaos and confusion that emerged from the train wreck known as 2020. After everything that has happened, it’s understandable that people want to have some semblance of control over something in their lives, as predictability makes them feel safe, intelligent, and powerful.

When Art Education Meets Environmental Issues: The Interconnectedness Of Art And Science, Eunhyung Julie Chung

Masters Theses

In recent years, we have come to understand that the environmental crisis is no longer what we see in books or screens but it is what we are facing now. Along with the public's increasing interest in the environment post-COVID, this thesis explores the role of art in enhancing awareness of critical environmental issues. Through a literature review, the author examines theoretical concepts at the core of the history of art and science in search of ideas about the interconnectedness of science and art. The review explores why an interdisciplinary approach to education is vital to learning about environmental issues …

Building Empathy At The Intersection Of Art, Nature, & Culture: A Field Guide For Art Educators, Jasmine Gutbrod

Masters Theses

This thesis is an offering for those compelled to use art and design learning as a way to strengthen the resiliency of our collective cultures. By integrating intersectional place-based pedagogy into art and design learning, art educators can resist the idea that humans exist on a hierarchy with each other and other species. A deeper understanding of place can build empathy for both nature and culture, and can help educators imagine alternative classroom models that focus on building empathy within a learning environment. The importance of place is examined through a literature review, contemporary artist analysis, case studies, and interviews …

The Non-Traditional Student Enrolled Full-Time In Art School, Sarah Kathryn O'Brien

Masters Theses

The unique needs, experiences, and contributions to the classroom of non-traditional students enrolled in a full-time undergraduate art program have been under-addressed in academic research. In this thesis, the author surveys existing research and reports on a series of surveys and some follow-up interviews conducted with both students and their professors. This thesis aims to identify the unique circumstances of non-traditional students in higher education and particularly in art school. The author identifies specific opportunities for fruitful continued research and application.

Counting Pebbles Wasn't Even A Class In High School: Seeing Visual Arts Education Through A Process-Forward Lens, Em Xiangning Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores process-forward visual arts education in the Greater Providence arts education community. The researcher conducted interviews with arts educators as well as administrators working within organizations guided by a “process-forward” philosophy. Interview transcripts are analyzed to identify any emergent themes of intended and actualized student learning outcomes as well as other commonalities which exist among the interviewed organizations. This investigation found that, within these organizations, multiple, significant forms of student learning outcomes were identified that extended well beyond any particular aesthetic merits of the artistic products created by students

The author calls, in this thesis, for a recalibration …

Sensory Refreshment: Tcm Reconsidered, Ni Tang

Masters Theses

With the rapid development and expansion of our cities and the economic demand placed on residents, city dwellers are under more personal stress than ever. Long commutes, overtime work, irregular rest, unhealthy diets, urban pollution and noise all adversely impact wellbeing. These unhealthy conditions overwhelm the mind and make residents mentally and physically sub-healthy. Sub-health is a state between complete health and sickness, which is especially common in large cities. The sub-health rate in Shanghai and Beijing has reached more than 70%.

Chinese medicine can regulate the human body from a holistic perspective and help solve sub-health problems. Chinese medicine …

Imprints Of Home, Sara Burashed

Masters Theses

I’ve always been interested in how home’s domesticity holds memories of space and objects that link back to people. This thesis explores home’s importance in holding memories of comfort. Yet architecture, being the physical embodiment of home, lacks using home’s ephemeral quality as an advantage in designing space.

This thesis will explore how objects from home that link to architectural parts of home can be used as tools for comfort and familiarity within the public realm. The objectives of this thesis is to create a public intervention that aims to create nostalgia of home.

The project will use home’s ephemeral …

An Interplay: Biomimetic Exploration Of Systems In Architecture, Sanjana Masurkar

Masters Theses

How can we use nature’s way of building and designing and apply this knowledge in a progressive, and innovative way? Can scouring the biosystem be an effective way of finding inspiration?

Art, in the broader sense, is anything produced by humans rather than nature. Through nature, the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom, is where we eventually draw inspiration from. By manifesting the environment, humans are able to respect and look into nature in a new light. Interaction with nature helps better understand and value the natural themes. The relationship between design and the built environment opens up the politics …

Loose Threads / Hilos Sueltos, Estefanía De Ros

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I’ve collaborated with four artisans from my home country, Guatemala: Apolonio Vicente, Vinicio Vicente, Mario Poz and Manuel Otsojay. They all use traditional craft methods with natural materials: wicker, wool, and cotton. I interweave, overlap, and knot mementos from my childhood with current ideas and dialogues that contain loose threads to the work. All of the layers merge in fluid forms with texture and movement. The curtains let light in, the rug sets warmth, and the “cayuco” invites you to slow down.

I aim to push back against the devaluing of craft traditions, especially in …

I Just Can't Get You Out Of My Head : Frenetic Vortex, Animal As Image - Field Notes (1989-2021), Steffanie A. Padilla

Masters Theses

This essay is an attempt to describe a hypnosis induced by media through the accumulation of images in everyday life starting the day I was born. Raised by television and the internet, I go through a chronological timeline of my life selecting banal memories to showcase how violence to animals became neutralized/rendered invisible. The work is primarily concerned with mental health while focused on the youth, ecological destruction, and how sensory overload keeps us from knowing ourselves. The motivation of this paper is to better understand how our environment shapes our reality by using a psychological, media theory, and cognitive …

This Trash Is Someone Else's Problem, Lauren Goodman

Masters Theses

This Trash is Someone Else’s Problem reimagines object design practices through a decolonial lens that embraces responsive approaches to the local environment and the communities that steward it. It advocates for design justice and social equality. The physical work was developed from discarded scraps of industrial waste harvested from the Providence area, such as wire fencing, oil drums, rebar and steel tubing. It was created without the use of expensive tools, machinery and materials in favour of a less extractive approach to design. In conjunction with the studio work is a series of community gatherings focused on low-fi ceramic pit …

Posthuman Ecologies, Christine Chang

Masters Theses

As we move further into the Anthropocene — an epoch of geologic time where human activity has caused significant impact on the planet’s natural systems — we can no longer ignore the environmental consequences of our actions. The artificial disconnect between humankind and wilderness has caused us to create built environments that reinforce a false separation from natural landscapes.

Modern architectural movements push us towards surroundings that create disconnect from our sensory relationship to matter and temporality. We must engage with the inevitable decay of the built environment to restore our neglected senses. Reconnecting architecture to local ecologies through adaptive …

Space Between Memories: Pause, Young Jae Cho

Masters Theses

The early 20th century was an important time for economic development and modernization around the world. However, the Republic of Korea spent decades suffering under Japanese colonial rule. For that reason, preservation or demolition of buildings built during the Japanese colonial period remains a polarizing topic. Many of these structures have been demolished or neglected, unrecognized for their historical and architectural value. Although Koreans learn about the colonial era in school, if those physical places experienced in their daily life gradually disappear, they will forget this difficult history. These structures should be a space where people can feel historical lessons …

Living · Sharing · Connecting : Rebirth Of Longchang Apartments Heritage Community, Linhong Jiang

Masters Theses

The Longchang Apartments, which the British designed during the Shanghai Concession Period, is considered a building of great historical importance. However, the disconnected relationship between this historic building and the ever-developing modern society surrounding it becomes more and more evident over time. The backward living conditions of residents and management fail to meet contemporary needs, which intensifies various conflicts between different user groups within the historic site.

This thesis proposes a different way of living in high density within historic structures and explores a new program focusing on user groups’ behavior and interaction to activate the site. The adaptive reuse …

Unraveling The Living: Reframing Cramped Housing As A Social Living, Dong-Zoo Han

Masters Theses

In Seoul, people of the poorest economic status live in compressed units no larger than 32 square feet, known as “sliced housing.” The majority of these residents hope for better living conditions, but they are unable to move for multiple reasons. This is an interwoven sociological issue that requires intervention proposals that improve the physical and mental wellbeing of the people in these housing situations. This thesis demonstrates possible architectural interventions that will enhance the quality of life and support systems within Seoul’s “sliced housing” villages.

Other urban villages in Seoul in similar states of degradation have been destroyed, with …

Remember Me: How We Can Modify The Home For People With Dementia, Wenjin Wang

Masters Theses

More than 50 million people live with dementia worldwide. For reasons of familiarity, affordability, and psychological comfort, the home is uniquely preferred by people with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers for aging in place. Ample studies show that built environmental features (e.g., furnishing, lighting, layout) influence the daily lives of PwD. These features can be modified easily and with fewer disruptions to daily life at home. However, most PwD and their caregivers usually have little knowledge of what can be achieved through simple interventions to environmental features.

There is a great need for an exhibition to explain the dementia-friendly home …

Reinforcing Connection Within Collective Housing: A New Vision Of Red Steel City, Guangyi Niu

Masters Theses

Red Steel City is a historical residential complex built 64 year ago for the first workers of the Iron & Steel Complex in Wuhan, China, under the help design guidance of the former Soviet Union. Equipped with educational and medical facilities, this “City” nearly meets every need of the residents. Where residents worked boosted the development of steel, which is considered a prerequisite for industrialization, and where they lived became the template for the era when China was finding its footing in its incredible drive to industrialization.

The original plan of Red Steel City did not consider practical conditions like …

Psychological Well-Being Through Music Listening, Majed Boughanem

Masters Theses

Design has gotten good at delighting and stimulating us in the short term. Could we design products that are good for us in the long run?

In this project, I looked at positive psychology for concepts to develop into features of products and use music listening as a vehicle for integrating them. I propose three music-listening features that help exercise and cultivate emotional regulation strategies:

1_The Reaction Tile

2_The Monofilter

3_The Vibelist

Each feature represents one or multiple strategies from the Process Model of Emotional Regulation.

Finding Home In Merry Hill: Appalachia Beyond The Mountains In Arnow's The Dollmaker, Adrienne Oliver

Masters Theses

The migration of Gertie Nevels in Arnow’s The Dollmaker from Appalachian Kentucky to Detroit examines the tense relationship between two vastly different cultures forced together in the city. Gertie’s identity as a strong, capable Appalachian woman used to the agrarian lifestyle of 1940s Kentucky struggles to find roots in the mechanized world of Detroit. In the city, Gertie faces fervent rejection of her Appalachian culture. She finds that Detroit society encourages her to adapt to the cultural norms of the city and put away her Appalachian practices. However, Gertie’s ability to adapt to the social demands of the city does …