Art and Design Commons^™

Caddo Inspired Coil Pots, Jordan Weaver

Undergraduate Research Conference

When my bosses, John Handley and Alisa Steed, asked me to plan an educational program to go along with the upcoming Contemporary Caddo art show at the Cole Art Center I knew I wanted to find an art lesson to teach children. Creating is a great way to teach children about history because it invites them to take an active role in their education, rather than passively listening. After learning that traditional Caddo potters created coil pots out of clay, I knew I wanted to teach this art form to children in the community. Making coil pots requires children to …

The Artist Residency And Lumen Printing, Austin Cullen

Undergraduate Research Conference

The artist residency is a critical and informative experience that is privileged to few, and revered by many. Creating work in a completely foreign environment can yield beautiful and new work that the artists could have never conceived of making. Artwork could be made about anything, but choosing a specific subject matter, or theme, can be very challenging. This difficulty arises from lack of knowledge, experience, or most importantly, being bored with one's surroundings. Artist residencies, often being in other countries and always providing a new atmosphere, can be a great way to jumpstart new artwork. Residencies are incredibly difficult …

5 X 5: Conceptual And Technical Challenge, Madeline Castillo

Undergraduate Research Conference

Goals for the Week to Week Project

As an undergraduate student pursuing a BFA, the apotheosis of my education is to find and develop the content for my art and convey it in the form of my capstone BFA exhibition. My creative research for this project consisted of building a finished work of art each week during a five-week time period. The intent of the project was to expedite concept development and increase my personal technical speed while focusing on craftsmanship and design. Having seven days to respond to a content prompt, I was challenged to focus on creating without …

The Impact Of Patronage On Contemporary Visual Arts, Emily Coats

Honors College Theses

Patronage is vital to the art world and the success and notoriety of its artists. From straightforward patronage during the Renaissance of the Medici Family, the independent artists of modernism, to contemporary crowdfunding, it is important to note the changes in the art world throughout history to truly understand how artists and patrons have grown and continue to evolve in our contemporary society. Considering how patronage has changed and adapted throughout history and understanding the influence it has, not only allows a deeper understanding of the art world but also the world’s culture.

Carbon 碳, Mengyuan Li

CGU MFA Theses

Death is the one certainty in life. This fascinates me and I cannot stop thinking about it. When it comes to life and death, the cemetery is a more realistic place than heaven and hell, and it is also a place to feel life and death more directly. A simple gravestone separates life from death. Cemeteries let people come face to face with life, death, and even love.

In a cemetery, there is a tranquility that is different from the city or nature. In a cemetery, people take off their masks and face their emotions. I believe that when we …

Contemporary Muslim Fashions: De Young Museum, San Francisco, Ca, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Calico, chintz, damask, muslin, cashmere, seersucker, taffeta, shawl, caftan, and cummerbund-all English terms derived from Islamic textiles and dress-are the products of textile technologies that resulted from colonization and trade. Their cultural origins are long forgotten, shrouded in the fast-moving commercialized fashion industry and haute couture ofthe West that developed during the 20th century. The exhibition, Contemporary Muslim Fashions, is a game-changer.

The exhibition organizers, Jill D'Alessandro and laura Camerlengo, curators of costumes and textiles at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, worked with Reina Lewis in London as a curatorial consultant. Together, they drew upon the local advice …

Blanket Statements, Issue 138, Spring 2019

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 138, Spring 2019

Socio-Political Criticism In Contemporary Indonesian Art, Isabel Betsill

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The objective of this paper is to understand the connections between contemporary art and politics in Indonesia both in terms of how politics has shaped art practices, and in terms of how art influences politics. Questions I was interested in exploring include how contemporary art practices have changed considering the political changes over the past 30 years; if and how contemporary art is being used to facilitate political dialogues in the country; if and how contemporary art is being used to criticize and invoke change regarding social issues; and what the role of art spaces, collectives and foundations is in …

Z4, A Slow Puncture: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of Language, Embodiment, And Meaning-Making, Charlotte Rose Samuels

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In my ISP, I explored language as it relates to the ways in which people living in Cato Manor make sense of HIV/AIDS in their community. With 7.1-7.2 million people living with HIV (PLWHIV) in South Africa, individuals across the country are either infected or affected by illness. KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), the province with the highest rate of HIV, is also the province that was surveyed with the disproportionately highest internal stigma rates for PLWHIV. High prevalence of HIV, particularly in KZN, calls for a constant contextualization of life in the presence of illness.

Throughout the world, metaphor and symbolism is …

“Global” On The Rose Kennedy Greenway, Margaret Bellafiore

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Entangled, Katherine Cox

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

I create objects to incite wonder through their exuberance, inviting one to explore the beauty found in the strange and offering the viewer a way to interact with the discomfort of the unknown. Mysculptures are an assembly of engaging surfaces and forms revealing varying texturesandvibrant colors referencing natural and fabricated worlds. Each sculpture is entangled within its own environment or narrative and each is adorned for its own role, finding a balance between discord and harmony, captivation and repulsion.

Each is an individual exploration of the distinct qualities inherent within each object. They are precious in scale and stimulate …

Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal, Steven H. Gonzalez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its' imaged representation becomes …

Thesis/Thesis Document 2, Jessamyn Plotts

Art Theses and Dissertations

Thesis/thesis document 2 explores the subversive power of the painted image, made by a physical performative act. Such acts are not confined to the production of the art object, but expand across the landscape, involving the minds, bodies, and things of culture adjacent to the making process. Following the thinking of Maurice-Merleau Ponty, Thesis/thesis document 2 understands painting not as the container of a finite, legible message, but as a physical platform for the conveyance of perceptual, personal, and experiential ambiguity. Made in this way, painted images offer a powerful alternative to the proliferation of propaganda and advertisement …

Bookbindings By Peter D. Verheyen, An Exhibition At Maxwell Library, Bridgewater State University, 2019, Peter D. Verheyen

Librarian Publications

Checklist for the invitational solo exhibition of book bindings created by Peter D. Verheyen 2009 - 2018. The exhibition was held at the Maxwell Library Rare Book Room, Bridgewater State University (MA), February 1 - April 5, 2019. More bindings can be viewed at https://www.philobiblon.com/pdvgal/pdvgal.htm

Painting Down, Claire Stankus

MFA Statements

No abstract provided.

Here's What I Know, Kelsey Miller

MFA Statements

INTRODUCTION

Now, at the end of three years of graduate school, is a time for reflection—and a time to piece together a narrative of how I got to now. In our first semester here, we were given an assignment in a drawing class to gather pictures, text, and objects that informed or inspired our studio practice, a Collectanea. At the end of that semester, we documented and compiled our collection into a photo book—an atlas of our thoughts and observations. That book became the bones of the work I have made over these last three years. New thoughts and …

Para Ti, Ashley Lothyan

CGU MFA Theses

This group of work draws from family photos that are over 15 years old, chosen from when I was born to the age of ten. Torn, wrinkled, and discolored, these photographs influence how I paint immediate family members, locations I grew up in, and myself.

Madre Tierra, Christine Sloan Stoddard

The Crambo

“Madre Tierra Projection” is part of a series I began imagining while working at an international school in Gowanus, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. I’m interested in the ties between the idea of “motherland” and “Mother Earth,” which in Spanish are the same words; you simply the reverse order. Being immersed in Spanish while working at that Gowanus school made me think a lot about my mother’s native language and my relationship with Spanish as the language of the “motherland.” The historically industrial environment of Gowanus often makes me think about climate change, too. I can’t help …

Threaded, Madeline Arnault

CGU MFA Theses

This group of works is taken from my drawing practice. I have always been fascinated by the variety of line and color you can play with on fabric. For that reason each piece in this exhibition is image and line centric. I love the way a fabric can blend from color to color in the weave and yet contrast so sharply with a line placed on top. These works are a testament to that love.

An Artistic Contemplative Inquiry: What Arrives In Co-Contemplating Assessment And Evaluation, Michelle Searle, Lynn M. Fels

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Contemporary arts-based inquiry invites us to linger in moments, to reflect upon our lives, our encounters, our relationships within the grander context of the worlds within which we dwell and those that we co-create. Here, we explore the landscape of the arts in relation to assessment and evaluation. Through a collaborative artistic contemplative inquiry, an emergent dialogue exploring assessment and evaluation is recorded and presented as a found poem, “What Arrives.” Our hope, when we embarked upon this artistic contemplation, was that we would evoke, provoke, and interrupt each other for the purpose of creating possibilities of alliance and (re)cognition …

Making Peace With The Highwood River: One Year In Contemplative Photographs And Flows, Jennifer Markides

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Since the 2013 Alberta floods, my relationship with the Highwood River has been changing. Before the disaster, I had taken the power of the river for granted. Then, the floodwaters ravaged the community of High River—my home. In the time after the flood, I engaged in a study of place as part of a course in Holistic Approaches to Life and Living led by Elder, Bob Cardinal of the Maskekosihk Enoch Cree Nation. I observed the flows through my camera lens: visiting and re-visiting the river, observing the seasonal changes, forming a stronger connection to my place in the community, …

Relations To Live By, Morgan Gardner

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

In 2017, I experienced the ARTS Pre- Conference of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education as a welcome refuge. As participants, we gathered to feed our minds, bodies and spirits via arts-based, contemplative practice. It became a day of (re)visioning academic life. In gratitude for this day, I share two poems from my research journal supporting my own (re)visioning of academic research. The poems are meditations on the small and large wonders of nature and their connection to the wealth of our fragile, mysterious lives. They explore our immeasurable interconnectedness to all of life and the life-giving relations that …

"Born Different, But Still The Same": My Journey As A Sibling Of Persons With Special Needs: Contemplative Practices In An Academic Environment, Annemarie Cuculiza-Brunke

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article is an autobiographical exploration of the author’s experience as a younger sibling of two people with a cognitive disability. It comprises nine years of conscious self-work and shows how an academic environment can nurture reflection on complex personal issues, and through this reflection, aid in the process of self-discovery and healing. The author explores autobiographical writing and poetic inquiry as a method to develop witnessing consciousness. The purpose of this piece is to contribute to the conversation about the challenges that siblings of people with disabilities face, as much attention is focused upon parents and the people with …

Looking For Water Stories, Janice Santos Valdez

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

As an immigrant settler, I contemplate my role as witness and participant in relation to water and First Nations people, who, for many generations, have been guardians of the ecosystems where I live. The poem I offer here is a reflection and response to my experience of witnessing a First Nations community during a consultation on the topic of water treatment systems with the engineering initiative Res’ Eau. My poem, Looking for Water Stories, contemplates a relationship to water and humanity through physical, socio-cultural, historical and spiritual perceptions. The poem is the form which my field notes took …

Performing Research: Contemplating What It Means To Be A "Man", George Belliveau

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Sharing research in performative modes opens new possibilities for meaning making. This article offers a monologue that explores my experience of working on a theatre project with military veterans. The impact of working on the creative process with veterans inspired this performed piece, and provided an opportunity to contemplate what it means to be a ‘man’ in today’s society. The article first situates performed research within current arts-based literature prior to sharing the creative piece, which is at the heart of this offering. The piece then concludes with how performed research opens the possibility for different forms of engagement and …

Sharing Footprints: Dwelling With/In Loss, Robert Christopher Nellis

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This essay explores spaces between— between presence and absence, model and canvas, page and thought. Launching from the cliché that love is blind, the piece reads through Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind and its inspirations toward the paintings The Origin of Painting by Jean- Baptiste Regnault (1786) and The Invention of the Art of Drawing by Joseph-Benoit Suvée (1791) to locate spaces in between, spaces of contingency. The essay advocates not rushing through such spaces, but dwelling there—as sites of contemplation. The work engages in conversation with Lectio Divina as articulated by Mesner, Bickel, and Walsh (2015) and follows …

Holding Fast To H: Ruminations On The Arts Preconference, Carl Leggo

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When Susan, Barbara, Diane, and I began planning for the ARTS Preconference, we quickly decided that the event ought to be different from most conference gatherings. Early on, we suggested that the event ought to be a “happening.” My main way of ruminating, investigating, and questioning is to write poetry. In the process of writing poetry I slow down and linger with memories, experiences, and emotions. In all my writing, I am seeking ways to live with wellness. In poetry I seek new ways of knowing and being and becoming. I write in order to invite conversation about what it …

An Offering And A Prayer, Vicki Kelly

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This offering and prayer opens this special two part issue of Artizein entitled An Arts-Based and Contemplative Pause. Vicki Kelly humbly offers this songful prayer as a way of welcome and as an act of reciprocal recognition for the diverse ecologies of place and being gathered here.

An Art-Based Contemplative Pause: Introduction To Part 1: Sharing Radical Creative Possibilities, Barbara Bickel, Susan Walsh, Diane Conrad

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Contained here is the Introduction for Part One of the special issue An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause. Co-written by Barbara Bickel, Susan Walsh and Diane Conrad.

Front Matter: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause: Part 1

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.