Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Winding Down River Road, Gillian Harper

LSU Master's Theses

As a mechanism to explore my temporary home in Louisiana, Winding Down River Road is a collection of artworks that integrates natural materials collected from landscapes in southern Louisiana with steel and petroleum-based products. My interest in researching environmental issues, ecology, and industry has shaped my vehicles for observation and how I generate data. Through a variety of methodologies, I am considering how climate change is forcing many of us to re-contextualize how our home can be affected by the very industries we rely on. Personal engagement with residents living in the dystopian atmosphere of southern Louisiana’s industrial corridor and …

Entities: A Field Of Imaginary Games, Thrasyvoulos Ioannis Kalaitzidis

LSU Master's Theses

With this body of work, I am looking for visual symbols that help communicate unuttered meanings through storytelling and stimulate an affectual response to the viewer. This exploration is presented in two different forms: a surreal sculptural installation and a board game. The installation consists of large-scale sculptures made from light and soft materials (polyurethane foam, plastic waste, paper) that are available to move inside the gallery, while the board game is presented as a set of 3D prints with instructions on how the participants can play it. The materials used in the installation suggest a way to transform waste …

Neverending Loop, Joseph Nivens

LSU Master's Theses

The intention of NeverEnding Loop is to depict the trauma of queer adolescense contrasted by the shadow of the closet that follows LGBTQ+ children into adulthood. The reality for queer people is that coming out is a process that never ends and a task that can create a lonely existence for those that are different from the norm. The artwork aims to convey the very real and confusing struggle of finding your identity as a queer person existing in a heterosexual world.

NeverEnding Loop explores loops and cycles in short animations, sculptural forms with repeating imagery, and mixed media forms …

In The Garden, Clare Samani

LSU Master's Theses

My work has focused largely on identity and self-expression, primarily through clothing, pattern, and color as a symbolic content. Having heavily investigated historical costume and clothing from various periods, my attention is drawn to the highly sculptural and ornamented garments of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the rococo, and the baroque. In these colorful and puffed garments, I am attracted to the similarities that I see in nature. How we adorn ourselves mimics various flowers, plants and animals in the pursuit of desire and procreation. Focusing on fabric manipulation, printmaking and sculpture, In the Garden coalesces into ambiguous sculptures that …

Yours Always, Always Yours, Emery Kate Tillman

LSU Master's Theses

The body of artwork discussed in this paper deals with the navigational process of the actualization of my own desires and needs in an intimate capacity specifically relating to my own queer identity. In this paper I will address the use of certain forms throughout the work as well as color and material choices. Yours Always, Always Yours is a thesis project produced as the final requirement of Louisiana State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art program.

So Long, Sinkhole City!, Heather Molecke

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

A sinkhole is land that appears structurally sound, but underneath its surface lacks foundation. If there is not enough support for the land above, a sudden collapse of the surface happens. Sinkhole City is a conceptual three-part installation that metaphorically conveys experiences of childhood sexual abuse, incarceration in adolescent psychiatric hospitals, and young adult drug addiction. This work illuminates and explores the relationship between childhood trauma and drug addiction.

Sinkhole City takes the viewer on a journey through semi-autobiographical life passages. In this three-part installation assemblage I am confronting my own sense of past shame, the emotional roller coaster …

Phantasmatic: Interrogating The (Im)Materiality Of Bodies Through Wool And Clay, Alexandria J. Arceneaux

LSU Master's Theses

Phantasmaticis an exploration of materials and materiality which relies on the concept of the phantasmatic body elucidated in Gayle Salamon’s work Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality. This thesis is an exploration of these ideas. In my work, I use wool and clay to represent the material (known) and phantasmatic (sensed) bodies in an effort to explore an expanded understanding of the body at large. My work is also an effort to expand my own understanding of my phantasmatic body and its relationship to (my) materiality.

Dearest, Grace Tessein

LSU Master's Theses

Dearest is the examination of what remains of a person, looking to the objects they cherished most while contemplating the inevitability of their certain absence. The work questions the futility of preservation in the measure of time, the failure of memories held in fragile containers, and the decay of the physical body. The materials that compose Dearest are chosen for their innate longevity and their ability to evoke remembrance.

Primal Matter, Lucas Allen Bush

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

Primal Matter is a physical representation of the intuitive process, through two and three dimensional forms. The pieces convey motion and tension while telling the story of their own creation. Working instinctively has always fascinated me, in the way of allowing our subconscious mind to make decisions in the place of preconceived planning. My work is heavily influenced by Intuition and the transformation of energy. I am constantly searching for the underlying image or object through scraps of wood and pieces of charcoal, and this body of work is the visible evidence. It explores the curiosity of our unknown …

The Truth About Your Monsters, Cassidy Creek

LSU Master's Theses

The Truth About Your Monsters is an immersive and dialogical exhibition formatted as a walk-through storybook environment. Viewers are transported into a child’s make believe world through hands-on stations. By building on the skeleton of an archetypal narrative, audience members are encouraged to tap into their own experience as they contribute imagery and action to the narrative. I call on audience members to discuss personal or universal fears by prompting them to draw images of monsters that represent their fear.

One Two One, Brianna Morgan Ozanne

LSU Master's Theses

These things, they speak in whispers. Come close, lean in, listen up. Whisper back. Tell me everything. I know you’ve been here, too. I know you’ll understand. I know you have a shoebox full of memories just like these hidden deep inside your closet. I know.

Momentary Eddies, Leah Marie Hamel

LSU Master's Theses

Our lives are in a constant state of change, from the most intimate scale physically and emotionally to the world surrounding us externally. The relationships we build with ourselves, others, and the world surrounding us are important structures we carry with us throughout life. Momentary Eddies is a visual poem about the interconnectedness of our inner and outer landscapes. I have created a hauntingly dreamlike space that explores a landscape of emotions that are an entangled part of personal intimate relationships and how the emotional and physical topographies of these relationships connect to the environment surrounding us. These paper sculptures …

This Is My Attempt To Hold On, Kimberly Reneé Jones

LSU Master's Theses

I am an identical twin. The connection I share with my twin sister is intense and immediate. But now, we live over 800 miles apart. This Is My Attempt To Hold On serves as a visual metaphor for the longing for the undiluted rapport we have when we are together, and the frustrations of communicating with her through a digital device. I am constantly dissatisfied with my attempts to connect with her. I watch myself, my words, and my thoughts become diffused through the pixels. The work exists as composites of various mediums, creating a dialogue between photography, printmaking, sculpture, …

Fare Thee Well, Georgia L. Godwin

LSU Master's Theses

The common thread in all my work is time—its passage, effects, and remembrance. I have created a series of works that are meditations on time, the ephemeral quality of memory and the effects of aging, profession, and life decisions on our bodies, especially faces. The physical materials and my treatment of them reinforce these themes, showing the erosive qualities of earth, and drawing inspiration from natural features that signify the passage of time such as desert hoodoos, desert varnish, old wood, erosion and chemical oxidation, and from man-­‐made features such as old documents that have been written, erased, and rewritten. …

The Collaged Practice : (Un)Familiar, Raina Beth Wirta

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis exhibition is an installation of works including sculpture, video, paintings, a hand made book, sound, and drawings that emanated from a series of two-dimensional collages: self-contained forms that evoke the surreal, (un)familiar, and/or grotesque. Infused with a sort of mysterious being-hood and intended to inspire curiosity (at the least), they are unfamiliar in relation to a particular biological thing, but (mostly) recognizable in the autonomous bits and pieces. I seek to question where our physicality ends and the next form of biological life begins, and our responses to that physicality. With childlike inquisitiveness and wonder, and a healthy …

Placed Residue, Thomas Lapann

LSU Master's Theses

“Placed Residue” is a series of eight works that highlight nature and its transformative quality. The video, photos, and sculptural objects, contained in the show, call attention to different materials and how they undergo growth and decay. Using various resources ranging from Kinect to video projection I incorporate the unnatural in order to depict a natural narrative involving the viewer. In order to emulate these natural processes, a cause and effect system had been developed where nature completes the final object. These systems activate the material providing for behaviors to be visible through their tactile qualities and allowing for their …

A Matter Of Time, Rebecca Kreisler

LSU Master's Theses

We frame our experiences as narratives, and associate the narrative with the book. My work takes the form of an immersive installation of printed, paper polyhedrons that act for me as non-traditional book structures. The planes of the polyhedrons function as pages without prescribing a certain order of events. The focus has been to blur the linear narrative into a body of visual work that represents my particular human experience, one full of memories and dreams, contradictions and juxtapositions, chaos and calm. What began as an objective examination of concepts of time in physics, philosophy, and psychology has developed into …

Course Over Ground, Kyle James Bauer

LSU Master's Theses

This exhibition, Course Over Ground, cohesively combines a metaphorical reference to maritime navigation with sculptural forms that convey balance, tension, and control. My mixed media sculptures are conceived with an adherence to the formalist perspective of objects. Each sculpture exists as an honest form. The work, and my intention in making it, is evidence of the process of breaking down selective images or objects into what I understand to be their purest representational forms, such as a squares, cylinders, pyramids, and rectangles. I allude to themes and the metaphor of a journey, which coupled alongside my continual quest for self-discovery, …

Wiggle Veil (Or, Love Needs Objects), Adrienne Lynch

LSU Master's Theses

The six sculptural works that comprise my thesis exhibition emerged from a prolonged series of investigations into the intricately interconnected phenomenon of embodied experience in the world as we know it. These works explore the connections between mysteries in our inner and outer worlds, taking as inescapable fact the notion that our bodily vessels, in all their complexity and subtlety, are the vehicles through which we encounter the world. As such, this work posits embodiment as both frame and anchor for all knowledge and experience. These sculptures, made from ceramic materials and mixed media such as sugar, salt, string, and …

Pensively, Kenneth L. Lantz

LSU Master's Theses

Pensively, uses toys and solar powered drawing machines to present elements of movement, time, and scale. Each of the works in this exhibition invites or implies action through automation or viewer interaction. The works in this exhibit creates an environment of wonder and excitement that triggers memories of childhood and the pleasure of learning. The works investigate and discuss the responsibilities attained through maturation that keep us from recovering the sense of accomplishment we achieved with play.

Site Unseen, David Christopher Carpenter

LSU Master's Theses

Site Unseen is a large-scale installation of seventy-three brightly screen-printed and painted house forms. The houses stack and interlock with one another, creating clusters of towers and archways. The forms appear to grow into one another, physically connecting the homes. Each house is printed with images of materials in various states: raw, processed and waste. These materials represent the cycle of community’s rise and fall. Beyond examining the construction of community, Site Unseen explores a moment when trust or foundation is lost in a community. In the center of the community is a gaping, spherical void. This void represents the …

We Believe In The Systems That Keep Us Alive, Ezra Kellerman

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT We Believe In the Systems That Keep Us Alive is a body of work that uses parallels identified between writing and media critique of contemporary events. The parallels are labeled as four specific systems: nutritional, administrative, life-support, and nurturing. Through a combination of interactive and object based sculpture, each system is represented with visual metaphor and allegory to place the viewer in a direct and specialized paradox. Paradoxes audience members encounter are intended to illustrate to the audience what conflicts can arise by being included in a system where governing agency of any sort does not meet with individual …

Land Alive!, Or Metamorphosis In The Sportsman's Paradise, Adam Tourek

LSU Master's Theses

"Land Alive!" is best described a multimedia work. The produce of travels to the area of the Mississippi River delta, along with text-based research, formed the materials from which two evenings of participative performance were crafted. Personal narratives were used alongside evaluations of administrative programs, and the space in the Backyard Gallery was transformed using shovels, buckets, and teamwork. Found chairs, rope, and other objects, through ritualized interaction, became an aesthetic formation; everyone present worked together in the assembly of a boat, which contained the results of these interactions between myself, six volunteers, and an audience turned participants. The evenings …

Building A Better Mousetrap, Jonathan Pellitteri

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT To me the phrase “building a better mousetrap” implies that a needless change has been made to something that already sufficiently serves its purpose. These words identify my thoughts about how over the past three years I have begun to replace trusted means of communication with newer technologies. My thesis work examines my relationship to these new modes of communication and how, as I see others around me making them useful parts of their lives, I am continually snared by the promise of their convenience. Ultimately, however, they distract and frustrate me with the countless hours I allow them …

A Hellenistic Masterpiece: The Medici Aphrodite, Angel D. Arvello

LSU Master's Theses

Numerous copies of both the Medici and Capitoline Aphrodite were produced in the Roman period. Judging only from the number of copies, it is generally accepted that the Capitoline was the most popular type followed by the Knidia and finally the Medici. First an examination of the copies, variants and quotations of each type is given to provide some background on the Medici and Capitoline. Next is a discussion of the dating of the pieces which has typically ranged from the fourth to the first centuries BC. An overview of a second century trend is presented to place both pieces …

Felt, Yvonne Pierce James

LSU Master's Theses

My work is largely autobiographical and the way I express myself is the product of memories and life experiences. I grew up as one of a family of ten children and learned early the values of sharing and helping others. We were also taught not to waste anything. We learned to recycle as part of our daily life. As you will see in my work almost all of the materials I use are found objects or recycled materials. In growing up as part of a large, rural, southern family, there was also a tradition of ‘women’s work’. Nearly all of …

Thick Skinned, Alair Dyan Wells

LSU Master's Theses

“Thick Skinned” is a series of sculptures using the domestic structure as a metaphor for the body. Issues of sexuality, gender roles, and domesticity are explored in this mixed-media installation. Viewer interaction with the work is encouraged for a complete sensual experience. The body and home are protective, yet fragile and delicately vulnerable. My work confronts notions of beauty and cruelty, bodily function and presence, with a focus on gender-biased social conventions in our culture. Conceptually, the work is autobiographical in nature, as it pertains to my experiences as a woman. Universally, it deals with the merging of sexuality and …

Elemental: Promise Of Plenty, Bill Wolff

LSU Master's Theses

This body of work is about human nature, and centers on issues of aggression, consumption and collapse. Five materials make up the exhibition, and each carries a specific metaphor: wood is flesh, brick represents collective history, rope is a metaphor for human activity, metal is control and salt is a quintessential commodity. Craft is used as a means to explore the boundary between natural and synthetic phenomena, as well as elevating the status of the base materials. The work is arranged to provide an environment and context for the viewer to respond.

Pulse, Janet L.U. Rudawsky

LSU Master's Theses

This video is an abstract audiovisual narrative. It relies heavily on its lush compositions to seduce the viewer. “Pulse” depicts humanity not as the strong rational rulers of the earth but instead as a tormented figure that struggles to find security in an uncertain world. The three characters, Blood, Lava, and Electricity, represent the human animal, the natural world, and civilization respectively. Blood struggles against both Lava and Electricity in their rivalry for control. The plot shows humanity developing a relationship with civilization, all the while being harassed by unpredictable nature. Civilization at first is a path to security. As …

Accelerate Into The Accident, Jeffey D. Hill

LSU Master's Theses

The installation uses purely steel to describe the organic and chaotic nature of thought processes. It looks for a way to confront grief and anxiety. The procedure's purpose is to understand abstract, emotional thinking in immediate, familiar physical terms. By examining each fine strand, either steel rod or line of thought, I attempt to revel in the overwhelming complexity and irrefutable beauty of the mind. It is not a strategy to control mental imbalance. It is rather a humble acceptance of the organic chaos of thought.