Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Fragile [In] Tension, Jose Homero Gutierrez, Jose Homero Gutierrez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The exhibition, a FRAGILE [In] TENSION, is a compilation of 6 sculptural installation works—the result of two and a half years of work in the ceramics workshop— combining various ceramic procedures, incorporating crochet techniques, and repurposed materials. Each of the materials represents specific memories of the past linked to a place of origin and people deeply attached to me, representing complementary feelings. Ceramic objects were created on the potter's wheel and subsequently joined, modified, intervened, and added to their corresponding installations following a series of self-directed design rules. The sculptures are an emotional, psychological, and physical response to the past …

Nepantla: The Space In-Between, Samantha Shamard

All Theses

The word Nepantla is from the Mesoamerican Nahuatl language and is used by theorist Gloria Anzaldúa to describe a space of mixed, and borderland identity. Nepantla: the space in-between creates a physical manifestation of my experience as a mixed Latina woman raised in American suburban culture. This series is made up of ceramic objects on wall-mounted altars made of wood panels adorned with wallpaper and paint. The surfaces utilize visual references and color schemes from 90s girls’ bedrooms and Mexican pop-culture. Ceramic bones and cacti mounted onto the altar forms are all made through molded ceramic processes, which for me …

Supporting Students’ Social Emotional Well-Being Using Clay: An Action Research Study, Paul Monroe

Graduate Review

The purpose of this action research study is to examine scholarly recommendations on how to use clay to promote the social and emotional well-being of students in the high school ceramics classroom. This study enacts recommendations and strategies to enhance an existing curriculum to align with my school district’s educational goals of promoting social emotional learning (SEL). This study took place at a high school in Westchester County, New York in the fall of 2021. Data for this study is informed by my interviews with two specialists regarding putting SEL strategies into action, my modification of an existing curriculum as …

Mixed Messages, Hannah Duggan

Masters Theses

The bodies of work that I have created during graduate school stem from my interest in mass media, culture studies and spectatorship in the digital era. My research engages digital technology and media studies to consider the ethics and ambivalence associated with spectatorship. Using traditional art mediums, I explore social and digital media, revealing tensions through representation and materiality. This translation from digital to analogue media is pivotal in all my work. Handmade objects introduce slippage and meaning as they break from the limiting format of the screen. This thesis will explore the research and content that inspired the creation …

Towards A Standard: Designing An Open-Source Clay Measuring Tool, Tavs Jorgensen, Sonny Lightfoot

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper describes early stage research into the development of a common standard for measuring clay hardnesses in craft and design practice. The research has emerged in the context of the development of 3D printing with ceramic paste. The paper initially provides the wider context and motivation for research followed by a review of the development of this new area of practice – an area of innovation that has largely been driven by individual design practitioners through an open source approach. The paper also outlines existing approaches for measuring the plasticity and hardness of clay. The paper presents key re-search …

Ceramics And Life In Tandem, Katharine Lee Robbins

LSU Master's Theses

From the ground up, my work emerges slowly. As each coil is added, I am conscious of how my body is interacting with the rich red clay body. Each time I press clay between my hands, the material reacts and changes. It gives me comfort to feel a tangible response as I push my body into the clay. The cyclical process of art making becomes my daily ritual. Each step is repeated over and over again until it becomes ingrained in my body’s existence.

As I add coils to my work, particularly the large sculptures, I continuously circle around each …

Growthlines, Alexandra Saunders

LSU Master's Theses

The work in Growthlines is a collection of ceramic objects that are characterized by floral pattern and their potential for use. I make ceramic work that is functional and designed to be in the home. I think that the way something looks is an integral part of function and I seek to make objects that function well. The surface of my pottery is rich with images of flowers and I hope that the surface both draws in the user and highlights flowers and how important they are for the preservation of the natural world. My work functions as a surrogate …

Hesed: Redeemed Brokenness In A Multimedia Retelling Of The Biblical Story Of Ruth, Elizabeth R. Kijowski

ELAIA

Through the powerful interaction between the visual arts and music, an ancient story of brokenness and redemption is retold. This thesis seeks to give greater insight into this multimedia retelling of the biblical book of Ruth. Scholarly sources were reviewed to deepen understanding, and works from professional visual artists and musicians were examined for this project to come together. The end product is this thesis as well as a body of art and a five-movement piece of music. This combination of visual art and music allows the relevance of the biblical book of Ruth to be seen in the transforming …

Brick Collage, Dehmie Dehmlow

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

bricolage: construction or creation from a diverse range of available things

I create abstracted modular sculptures, assemblages, and collages that playfully reference utility, using salvaged materials and carefully fabricated objects. My sculptures are considerately composed, elevating the materials with a determined focus on how each disparate part connects to the next to become a meaningful whole. I have a reverence for all of the objects and materials I use, no matter their origin, and thoroughly consider how each of their forms, textures, colors, weights and other formal and physical qualities integrate into a whole. With the use of recognizable utilitarian …

Crying At Nothing But Colors, Maryalice Carroll

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

crying at nothing but colors is an installation of ceramic works that explores the abstraction of feelings, both physical and emotional. The installation itself is a house made out of tension cables that stretch wall to wall in the gallery space. Inside the house are 7 ceramic objects placed on wooden pedestals paired with tufted rugs.

Throughout this essay, I will describe the abstract ceramic objects as Beings. They are colorful and have textured glaze on the surface with a gloopy opalescent glaze oozing out of holes that cover each piece. They are an extension of myself. They are the …

Sweet Nothing, Austin Riddle

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

These pots were made as companions for you and your home. A vase for your table, full of freshly picked flowers as you and your partner eat breakfast and plan your day's activities. Large platters and compartment trays to present home-cooked meals with friends on a warm summer evening. Whiskey sippers that nestle in warm hands, topped off as needed from a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

As a maker, I play these moments on repeat in my mind. As a designer, these scenarios direct the formal elements I develop for each piece. Pushing out an exaggerated belly on a …

Artifiact, Max Saunders

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The main purpose of this body of work is to explore gestural mark making and wood kiln effects on functional and sculptural vessels. A limited number of forms, including teapots, cups and large sculptural vessels were made to explore different types of mark making and the different effects that can be achieved in the wood kiln. The end goal was a body of work that can be explored on many levels, from using the pots as functional vessels to exploring the larger work as dynamic gestural sculptures.

Echoes Of Home, Hanna Traynham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Echoes of Home, held at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee on display March 15 through April 8, 2022. The author provides insight into concepts and influences relating to the creation of the exhibition with perspective on her intimate connection with place and memory.

The exhibit features five installations addressing home, elusive memory, and the change and continuity of cultural traditions over time. The works consist of a series of large-scale wild clay vessels, gestural clay bookends, a wall installation of cups with a line drawing, suspended porcelain slabs, …

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

Photography Is All We Need - Photography Is Never Enough, Lex Thompson

Art and Design Faculty Works

An essay about the exhibition Surface Tension, curated by Michelle Westmark-Wingard, at Bethel University’s Olson Gallery. Featuring four artists working with photography: Sophia Chai, Paula McCartney, Christine Nguyen and Letha Wilson.

Rachel Stover: Senior Art Exhibition, Rachel Stover

Senior Art Portfolios

Here is my design installation created for my Senior Art Exhibition.

Stil-Life, Yi Xiong

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This written thesis is the supporting documentation for Still-Life, my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition. I use handmade ceramic still-life objects to depict my specific memories and experiences about my life before and after the pandemic. Death, hope, time, and emotion are the themes explored in this exhibition.

This installation of ceramic sculptures not only recreates a historical moment in the pandemic but also captures the current times that we live in. It records the artist's life and time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The selection of still-life objects for the exhibition often has special significance on a personal, cultural, …

The Artist's Diary, Anamae Gilroy

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

The Shape Of Faith: Understanding God Through Pottery, Kenton Ke

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The Bible uses the relationship between a potter and the clay as a metaphor to describe the relationship between God and humans. “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8, NIV). This paper will expand on this metaphor, and draw parallels between the development of personal relationships with God and the complicated processes of pottery making.

Human Nature, Mary Robb

Master's Theses

Human Nature explores my personal observations and life experiences through the use of my narrative ceramic sculptures. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviors to non-human entities, such as animals. Some animals are more desirable than others, but all have value and purpose. They exist for a reason. They all bleed. They just want to be. People are like that. I became untrusting of humans after a childhood trauma and began relating more to animals than humans. I observed many similarities in wild animals with my experience. They are continually on alert searching for food and watching for …

Mechanisms Of Nourishment, Raymond Lloyd Brown Iii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This written thesis is a description and analysis of the ceramic work of Ray Brown. Included in this thesis is an explanation and defense of my work in my exhibition Mechanisms of Nourishment. It also unpacks the conceptual, technical, and formal aspects of the work.

The research explored in this written thesis discusses the relationship between the aesthetic and utilitarian components of pottery. From an analytical, iterative approach to form, I strive to isolate proportions that evoke a sense of volume and repetition. My references to Mid Century Modern and Streamlining Era design guide my efforts into dynamic mechanisms of …

Repercussions: The Pressure To Be Thin, Shuhan Liu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

My MFA thesis and supporting exhibition will highlight ceramics work I have created with the intention of dissecting the relationship between a soul and reality to convey the story of tension and anxiety and show it in a way that would let viewers identify with my discomfort and anxiety. The inspiration for my work came from the severe body anxiety that I faced that broke out during the three years of psychological stress caused by the pandemic. Using personal narratives as a starting point, I created object-based artwork that addresses the external pressures I feel to be skinny. As an …

Current(S), Austin Raye Navrkal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Current(s) addresses my perspective of the subtle changes that happen as the seasons slowly transition to act as a metaphor for the subtle changes that have happened to me over the course of my time in graduate school.