Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Iain Muirhead, Iain Muirhead

CGU MFA Theses

Artist IAIN MUIRHEAD seeks possibility in a world of massive change. His work cultivates instability and chases an ungrounded experience. Systemic complexity and creative destruction are characteristic. Muirhead uses paint, objects, photography, installation, and video to break apart and reconfigure form and space. Terror often looms. Entropy gives way to emergence.

A Crocodile Passed By Today, I Said Hello, He Said Hello, That Annoyed Me, Mayra A. Villegas

CGU MFA Theses

The creatures in my paintings are vastly invested in catering to my sensibilities. Emotional cowardice, impulsive politeness: through them, I am relieved of those personal culprits. They lend ropes, take blame, spit in eyes, and color my streams of consciousness. Furthermore, they manifest personal and social arrays of vexing scenarios. Suffocating hierarchies, the monotony of existence, my paintings aim to offer respite from such malaise.

Ultimately, my paintings are resolving, absolving even, personal and societal grievances.

Lili Zhong Artist Statement, Lili Zhong

CGU MFA Theses

Appreciating beauty, the universe’s natural essence, is an innate and indispensable human ability that helps us learn about the world. Everyone has their own definition, even on the degree to which beauty represents something abstract or realistic. It could mean elegance or romance, be from an audio or visual source, pertain to religious wisdom or even human value. Regardless, art always address beauty.

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.

Flow And Performance Competency In Modern And Ballet Dancers, Ella Wilson

Scripps Senior Theses

A qualitative investigation is proposed to examine flow experiences in professional ballet modern dancers in order understand the nature of this psychological experience. It is not well understood where and when professional dancers experience flow, and whether or not their subjective experience is correlated to what an audience evaluates in a dancer’s performance. The study of performance quality and subjective experience of the dancer has not been studied within the dance movement analysis literature. This is an important topic to research to further understand what factors facilitate or debilitate a professional dancer’s well-being. This study aims to determine any facilitating …

Performing The Uncanny: An Exploration Of Self Through Alternative Process Photography, Caroline Thomas

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper considers how the tradition of self-portraiture and alternative process photography can be used in conjunction with one another to perform the uncanny. I discuss the "uncanny" through three theoretical lenses: Sigmund Freud, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss. I then go on to discuss how the "uncanny" has been used in alternative processes of contemporary work by examining Robert Heinecken and Joyce Neimanas. Finally by looking at Francesca Woodman's self-portraiture, I address how self-portraiture can be a type of performance and how this influenced my own series during my 2015 Fall semester. As a whole this paper addresses how …

The Naïve Ingénue, The Plucky Everyman's Hero, And The Ingénue Gone Awry: The Satirical Deconstruction Of Theatrical Character Tropes In Urinetown: The Musical, Victoria Montecillo

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis looks to explore Urinetown: The Musical through a critical and theoretical framework, analyzing the show's presentation and deconstruction of theatrical character tropes through musical satire. Using the theories of theatre theorists such as Bertolt Brecht, Peter Brook, and Augusto Boal, this thesis discusses the use of theatre as a device for political and social commentary. Additionally, this thesis focuses more specifically on the show's character of Penelope Pennywise as a new kind of character in the theatre: an "ingénue gone awry," within the context of approaching a performance of the character in a performance of the musical.