Arts and Humanities Commons^™

All The Things Left Unsaid, Philip Kim

CGU MFA Theses

I search in my paintings a state of constant glide; meditational state by flooding my senses as my eyes wander from scene to scene onto a daze of perpetual visual stimuli.

They are the frozen amalgamation of its transient state – A crosscut of fog condensing into honey. And the burning shadows of a golden hour vaporizing into electric haze. I try to keep the image in perpetual limbo, confused by their nature, wondering if they will be pickled in the vinegar of the web as digital ghosts or finally disintegrate from being a substance. I want to capture in …

Spragga, Johnny Guerrero

CGU MFA Theses

I produce experience generators: mystifying, quirky entities capable of creating their own atmosphere, making subtle but implacable demands for recognition and interaction. In order to cultivate work as evocative as it is provocative, I hybridize, bastardize and stylize any and everything I find interesting with special attention given to objects that have been discarded, forgotten or broken. These become hybrid creatures--not quite paintings, not quite sculptures--that teeter between form and formlessness, between coming together and falling apart, between blind hubris and aching vulnerability.

Rope-A-Dope, Gabriel L. Perez

CGU MFA Theses

I create from everyday items, coming from everyday people. I do not think that what I create is too difficult for anyone to understand but I know that although I created it, it eludes me. Plastic containers, disposables, and clothing reach out to eyes that see them differently. I’m not trying to make people see things differently; I’m just trying to make you look. Call it theatrics but with a history of various performance experiences, I am not above pulling a cheap trick to get your attention. Nor will I shun the lingo and logic of decoration since I am …

The White Room Disruption, Jamaal Hasef Tolbert

CGU MFA Theses

My artistic practices range from sculpture, video art, performance, and painting. Streaming most of my ideas from the African Diaspora and the American Social Structure, I introduce my viewers to a world of topics that are not often discussed in society. I invite viewers to think about how they have been trained to stereotype and label skin tones. This opens up conversation on everyone’s unconscious minds and socially structured beliefs, which often touch up on the topic of race issues. I also use the media whether it is the internet or social media to reach viewers globally and to engage …

Borders, Anwar I. Alzeer

CGU MFA Theses

Abstraction provides me with great freedom. Mixing abstraction and imagery introduces emotions and feelings. Color plays a vitally important role in my paintings. It can sway your thinking, change your actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite, when used in the right ways.

The Artist In The Library: Research Services For Creators, Kristina Keogh, John Glover

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

At Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries we serve a variety of disciplines. This poster session focuses on outreach initiatives by the Visual Arts Research Librarian and the Humanities Research Librarian to provide research services to a unique group: students and faculty who create new and unique objects and texts. The needs of artistic researchers in such diverse areas as interior design, painting, and creative writing overlap in many ways, both expected and unexpected.

Our efforts to reach out to creators and offer support for their distinctive research needs have included such activities as taking classes within particular programs and embedding ourselves …

Concrete Painting, Stephanie Cafcules

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the evolution of my artwork with synthetic materials through influences of the Minimalist and Process Artists of the 1960's and 1970's, inspiration from natural forms, and my exploration of concrete painting. Each work reveals discoveries of different processes and materials, accelerating the creation of new works. It is my hope this thesis will inform viewers about the process and concepts that my work embodies.

Keren, Shelly Bradon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis is to recognize the everyday victories of a child living with physical disabilities. This complicated subject matter has forced the exploration of a variety of media to successfully communicate the story; drawing, painting, china painting, altered books and sculpture have all become part of the process. At the age of 8 months the subject, Keren Hernandez, was diagnosed with Bilateral Closed- lip Schizencephaly, a rare disorder that inhibits development. Since the diagnosis seven years ago her family has struggled to overcome these challenges, committing to avail themselves to every resource possible. I began painting and …

Doubting Thomas: The Testaments, Ivan Riascos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper will discuss the creation of my artwork, which has been inspired by my experiences and understandings of Catholicism and its icons. I will consider how iconography works in art, its influence, and how and why I have created this artwork dealing with my beliefs. I will also refer to the works of contemporary artists Duane Michals and Michael Wesely to help explain my exhibition, which I have titled "Doubting Thomas: The Testaments."

Casta Paintings Of Colonial Mexico: A Visual History Of Social Anxieties, Emily Frazier

Whittier Scholars Program

This project looks into the historical anxieties of 18th century colonial Mexico as they came to grips with the deeply entrenched racial biases that existed within the society with artwork. Casta painting were meant to be like a timeline of how blood purity was able to be integrated in families on a generational basis, creating a caste like system.

To Die With The Buddha: The Brick Pagoda And Its Role In The Xuezhuang Tomb In Early Medieval China, Jie Shi

History of Art Faculty Research and Scholarship

The important late fifth- or early sixth-century brick tomb at Xuezhuang in Dengxian (Henan) features a brick form at the rear wall, which remained mysterious until it has recently been shown to represent a Buddhist pagoda. This discovery sheds light on the purpose of the burial chamber, featuring the novel combination of vaulted ceiling, colonnade, and pagoda, as simulating an Indian-derived Buddhist temple (caitya). To reinforce this Buddhist context, the burial chamber simultaneously imitates the structure of a Buddhist votive stele (zaoxiangbei 造像碑), in which various Buddhist images, including the Buddha and bodhisattvas, apsaras, worshippers, and guardians, are carefully organized. …

Art And Hyperreality, Alfredo Martin-Perez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My Thesis pertains to philosophy of art. Its main purpose is a reconsideration of the notion of art as a response to claims stating the end of art, as in the case of the writings on hyperreality, stating that the transformation of reality, has resulted in a world that is permeated with a virtual reality that replaces traditional schemas for ways of living in the world, that valued the originality of art.

In the setting up of the subject, I will briefly mention descriptions of both reality and hyperreality, and the developments in art throughout the modern, and post modern …

Built To Play, Forrest Sincoff Gard

LSU Master's Theses

Built to Play is an interactive art exhibition featuring four participatory installations. Each installation transforms non-playful objects and activities into handmade porcelain replicas used for exciting gallery made games. Focusing on the carry over from child’s play to adult play the exhibition emphasizes the importance of play in our adult lives. As gallery visitors risk breaking handmade ceramic objects for a moment of fun and a chance to win art as a prize, their interaction completes the exhibition.

A Storied Surface, Courtney Wilburn Marse

LSU Master's Theses

A Storied Surface is an exploration of narrative based graphic design engineered for textile surfaces. Beginning with an experiment involving the characters of the novel Matilda, I developed a design system. My process involves creating narratives and illustrating the characters. Then the illustration is abstracted. The abstraction is used to create prints. Finally, all of the elements including the original illustration, abstraction, and print are used to create engineered designs for three-dimensional surfaces. Advances in digital textile printing and the increasing implementation of graphic textiles in the fashion industry led me to experiment with applying my own design to textiles …

Lights And Shadows - 2014, University Of North Alabama

Lights and Shadows

Art and Literature Magazine

Painting (And Photography), Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Two of Foucault's signature essays on painting are especially well known: the analysis of Velazquez's Las Meninas, and an essay on Rene Magritte that includes a striking account of how abstraction displaced representation in Western art. In addition, many of Foucault's texts are studded with acute descriptions of major painters from Breughel to Warhol; he gave lecture courses on quattrocento painting and Manet and published essays on several contemporary artists (Rebeyrolle, Fromanger, Michals). Since one of Foucault's major themes was the relation between visibility and discursivity, it is not surprising to find that painting is a favored site for …

Robert Smithson, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Smithson, Robert (1938-1973), a prominent U.S. artist, original critic, and theorist, is known for the Spiral Jetty (1970) in Utah's Great Salt Lake and other earthworks. He was a continuing influence and significant voice with respect to environmental art and postmodernism, introduced concepts such as entropy and geological time into the making and discussion of art, and focused on the intertwining of text and visual structure or surface.

The Rhino Horn Group, Adam Zucker

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

A Look Into The Industry Of Video Games Past, Present, And Yet To Come, Chad Hadzinsky

CMC Senior Theses

Since its inception, the video game industry has been both a new medium for art and innovation as well as a major driving force in the advancements of many technologies. The often overlooked video game industry has turned from a hobby to a multi-billion dollar industry in its short, forty year life. People of all ages and genders across the world are playing video games at a higher clip than ever before. With so many new gamers and emerging technologies, it is an exciting time for the industry. The landscape is constantly changing and successful business models of the past …

Proust, The Suffering Artist, Matthew G. Buyachek

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

This thesis examines the interrelationship between suffering and art in the context of À la recherché du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. I first trace a lineage of suffering and art, conduct a literature review of relevant criticism on Proust's work and on suffering and art, and finally explicate volumes one and five of Proust's magnum opus. I interpret the scene of the goodnight-kiss to be the genesis of Marcel’s search and his path to artistry. In this scene, Marcel profanes his mother qua maternal and artistic ideal, and subsequently sublimates Mme de Guermantes and Albertine in an attempt to …

All Things In All Ways, Amanda Nicole Crary

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis highlights our obliviousness to nonhuman nature and how this ignorance severs a great connection to the earth and our senses. My work explores this important connectedness. The natural world is filled with fleeting revelations that shatter habitual ways of seeing and experiencing; my paintings act as record of such moments. The exhibition was held at the Conkling Gallery in Nelson Hall from February 24th to March 5th, 2014. It consisted of twenty-two works including paintings, drawings, and prints. All works were produced during my time within the M.A. program, 2012-2014. Postcards and a brochure advertised the exhibition. The …

The Cluster Account Of Art: A Historical Dilemma, Simon Fokt

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The cluster account, one of the best attempts at art classification, is guilty of ahistoricism. While cluster theorists may be happy to limit themselves to accounting for what art is now rather than how the term was understood in the past, they cannot ignore the fact that people seem to apply different clusters when judging art from different times. This paper shows that while allowing for this kind of historical relativity may be necessary to save the account, doing so could result in incorporating an essentially institutional component or making the theory extremely complex and virtually impossible to use.

A Leap In The Dark: Identity, Culture And The Trauma Of War Mediated Thorough The Visual Arts Of North-East European Migrants And Émigrés To Australia After 1945, Eileen Whitehead

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis explores the contribution to the cultural life of post-war Australia by migrant artists from north-eastern Europe. It researches the lives and work not only of displaced artists arriving in the mass exodus from Europe after the Second World War, but also second and third generation artists descended from original migrant families, and much later émigré artists.

Art histories written to date about the post-war period provide little coverage of the contributionto the art and culture of Australia by migrant artists from north-eastern Europe. The coverage in the literature written about the visual art produced by established Australian artists …

Analogue Angels And Digital Diamonds: Tracing The Origins Of New Media Art, John C. Ryan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper explores the key vocabularies, themes, ideas, artistic movements, and technological innovations contributing to the development of the digital arts over time. As new media theorists have argued, one of the defining features of the digital arts is the break-down of divisions between art forms, and between art and society (for example, Manovich 2001, 2005). This paper outlines how digital processes intersect with aesthetic and conceptual forms. Relevant frameworks, such as materiality, embodiment, hybridity, interactivity, and narrativity, form the origins of the genre. Digital artworks, like digital media, are interactive, participatory, dynamic, and customizable, incorporating shifting data flows and …

Nation, Gender, And Identity: Children In The Syrian Revolution 2011, Manal Al-Natour

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the victimization and role of Syrian children in the Syrian Revolution 2011. I claim that through engaging in a competition to provide a definitive image of the nation, both the regime and the opposition victimize Syrian children. Nevertheless, the art projects undertaken by nonviolence activists have proven to help children heal and to cope with the predicaments brought on them by the crisis. The poetry, paintings, drawings, and songs produced by these children are the best means they have of representing their victimization and their role in the revolution, and communicating their perspectives on the Syrian nation …

Art And Symbolism: The Technique Of Applying Hidden Meaning And Communicating Specific Ideas Through Art, Andrea C. Macbean

Senior Honors Theses

Symbolism is an artistic style frequently used in the arts. Through the course of art history, it was its own artistic movement as well. The incorporation of specific symbols, shapes, colors, or identifiable images communicates to the viewer an intended message or statement. Frequently, symbolism appears to be hidden or initially unperceived by the intended audience. In some works, symbolism is so abstract that it needs explanation or clarification to be understood completely by the viewer. This thesis will analyze a few techniques of symbolism that can be incorporated in a work of art to communicate truth, entice thought, point …

Representation And Appropriation In Guamán Poma De Ayala, Julio Ortega, Philip Debenshire

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

By discussing the cultural role of iconography, this article explores the likely source of representations in Felipe Guaman Pomade Ayala's The First New Chronicle and Good Government. His process of appropriation serves as a model of the new Andean cultural production by showcasing how emblematic allegories have been used in Latin America to illustrate Colonial manuscripts as well as national emblems and public art.

The Retablos Of Edilberto Jiménez, Victor Vich, Danielle Geary

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The Ayacucho retablo has changed dramatically as a result of life events and experiences. Its most prominent architects were not strangers to the period of violence, as they experienced it firsthand. I want to comment on a set of Edilberto Jimenez retablos in what we might call an "ethics of testimony," or an act by which authors take responsibility for that which they represent, believing that their goal is to reveal the truth and to discover a new range of possible truths by doing so. It is my belief that these retablos are worth contemplation, for they represent something forbidden …

Imaging Madness: Inter-Ships, Mieke Bal

InPrint

No abstract provided.

Tricksters, Troubadours - And Bartleby: On Art From A State Of Emergency, Jean Fisher

InPrint

No abstract provided.