Art and Design Commons^™

Auras, Adele Ball

Scripps Senior Theses

Auras is a series of illustrations of Carlos Fuentes’s novella, Aura, a horror love story about memory, obsession, desire, corporeality and immortality. Defying narrative conventions, the story is told through second person. You are the protagonist, Felipe Montero, and are employed by a 109-year old widow to edit her husband's memoirs. Inside the pitchblack house, you fall in love with her beautiful and bizarre green-eyed niece, Aura. The gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion.

The story seems to take place within the confines of the …

Bikeurious: A Transportation Reorientation, Aerienne Russell

Pomona Senior Theses

Since a young age, I have been interested in bicycling as a form of fun and fanciful recreation, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2011 that a serious shift occurred in my understanding of the bike as more than a mere machine. A spontaneous 700-mile journey redefined my relationship with travel, transcended my notions of transportation, and enabled me to better mediate myself within my environment. In writing about these experiences, I hope to offer some insight into how American culture currently frames transportation and how I hope the construction of a bike positive culture can instill social, environmental, …

Women And Video Games: Pigeonholing The Past, Allison Perry

Scripps Senior Theses

Academic work dealing with the overlap between video games and female representation is limited in both volume and proper research. Most texts agree on three supposed flaws with video games: they alienate female participants, there are no games for female players, and female players cannot relate to female characters. This thesis sheds light on these points, not only citing specific counter-examples, but also showing how many of these issues reflect on a larger societal problems.

Adenine Uracil Guanine: An Exploration Of Certainty In Science, Alicia M. Hendrix

Scripps Senior Theses

Collaboration and communication between conventionally diverse fields can allow for deeper understanding and clearer analysis of the concepts within each. Two fields traditionally seen as dichotomous are those of art and science. Historically they approach problems in opposite ways. However, I would argue that they in fact investigate very similar questions, hoping to discover the ways that the world works. It makes sense, then, that historically these fields have sometimes been able to interact. Artists have engaged with science by creating work through scientific processes including crossbreeding flowers, genetically modifying organisms, and sequencing nucleotides. Others have referenced scientific ideas, like …

Bleach, Kim E. Alexander Jr.

CGU MFA Theses

The work in this exhibition investigates the unique potential for drawing to articulate the ideas and attitudes of architecture and objects. Accepting drawing as operating in conceptual space, I explore experimental loops within the visual logic of that territory. The work asserts the material fact of drawing and its connection to forms of fabrication in other materials like wood, paint, metal, and plastic. Like painting and sculpting, the drawings occupy an intangible state between objects and ideas. I embrace this irresolution. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Since 1980, Sookyung Bae

CGU MFA Theses

Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Apparent Fate, 2010: Dismantling The Notion Of Photographic Truth, Kelsey M. Macdonald

Scripps Senior Theses

When creating a current work, artists cannot ignore the images that have preceded theirs. The history of a medium and the related history of subject matter is vital to the meaning of a new art work. Each sign and symbol has a connotation out of the artists’ control. The developed meaning of a symbol is inseparable for the viewer regardless of the acknowledgment of that meaning by the artist. To work with imagery and not address it’s historical context is to perpetuate it’s meaning. The only way to not state what has already been stated is to critically engage with …

Portrait: A Graphic Novel And Artist's Book, Rosalie Edholm

Scripps Senior Theses

At this exact moment, graphic novels are enjoying a heyday of popularity, profusion and attention. As the graphic novel medium matures and detaches itself from the “non-serious” reputation of comics, it is becoming clear that graphic novels are a powerful and effective art form, using the both verbal and the visual to relay their narratives. Portrait, the short graphic novel that is my senior art project, is intended to emphasize the artist’s book character of the graphic novel, and serve as an example of how a graphic novel’s artist’s book characteristics allow communication of the artist’s message effectively.

The Evolution Of Craft In Contemporary Feminist Art, Carolyn E. Packer

Scripps Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

The Feminine Ideal, Rosalena L. Miller

Scripps Senior Theses

While footwear was originally meant to protect the feet and enable the wearer to span larger distances and rough materials, today shoes are often seen as a fashion statement and a sex symbol for women. In his book, Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things, Marcel Danesi examines how high heels have moved away from the original purpose of shoes and now “seem to contravene this function. They are uncomfortable and yet millions of women wear them." They have moved from practicality to a sign of femininity, sexuality, and power.

How Can We Grow If We Destroy Our Roots? An Analysis Of Roots As Metaphor For Growth And Urban Change, Alexis Vaughn

Scripps Senior Theses

Roots: They take hold; they grow, expand and change, creating networks and sub-networks as they start to break above the earth's surface and stretch up higher towards the sky day by day. Roots can be taken out (the stock, stem or trunk removed), but both the memory and the evidence of the roots' existence will continue to remain for a while to come. The idea of "roots" applies to so much: from artists taking inspiration from previous artists, even at times to mirror the change in the world which one artist had previously documented; from the places we establish our …

Visualizing The Nation: Constructing A Czech National Art In The Prague Biennale, Carrie Dedon

Pomona Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Vantage Point: The Representation Of Place And The Visual Experience, Jennifer A. Cohen

Scripps Senior Theses

We, as human beings, are unique creatures that have a need to form places. This obsession with claiming spaces and turning them into places starts at a young age. Maybe it is the first time a child goes to the park and claims a corner of the sand pit, because they think the sand is better on the right side. Perhaps it is a specific seat in the bleachers a person sits in at every home football game. Or maybe it is much more significant, like the spot on the path by the curved tree, next to the bike shed …

Relating To Relational Aesthetics, Anne Hollinger Lindley

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis will examine the practice of relational aesthetics as it involves the viewer, as well as the way in which it plays out within and outside of the institutional setting of the museum. I will focus primarily on two unique projects: that of The Machine Project Field Guide at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 15, 2008, produced by Machine Project, a social project operated out of a storefront gallery in Echo Park; and David Michalek's Slow Dancing at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City, July 12-29 2007.

Examining The Stigmatization And Psychological Consequences Of The Overweight Body With Art, "B(Eats) Being There", Neena Laufer

Scripps Senior Theses

Contents: Body dissatisfaction; Discharge of emotion through art; Stigmas' consequences as captured through photography; Lauren Greenfield; The perceptions of others; This is beautiful; Psychological consequences; Thesis project: "Being There"; Artistic influences; "Being There" revisited; Past endeavors in mixed media; Artistic influences: everyday materials and structural art; Conclusion; Honors in Studio Art thesis extension; Works cited. Includes 21 images.

Analyzing The Interconnectedness Between Space, Place, And Human Interaction With The Natural Environment: "Ecological Reawakening: Organic Dna And Evolution", Sarah Moos

Scripps Senior Theses

I have organized this paper into four chapters: "The Environmental Situation," "Space and Place," "Art and the Natural Environment," and "Creating Work of My Own." Chapter 1 explains human beings' intrinsic interconnection to the natural environment, outlining why humans should be concerned about the current degraded state of the natural world. Chapter 2 discusses the concepts of space and place. It analyzes how human beings interact with and experience spaces, developing their sense of place - within physical, theoretical, and spiritual realms. It finally illustrates the importance that spaces and places have in humans' lives. Chapter 3 describes the Land …

Real Life, Invented Selves: An Analysis Of Online Self-Portraiture, Nicole E. Greene

Scripps Senior Theses

The Internet has been a mystifying and nebulous concept since its birth in the early 90s (Kelly). Just two years ago in an infamous public address, former Senator Ted Stevens attempted to explain the internet to the masses, calling it a series of tubes (Doctorow). This statement was followed by a flurry of blog postings, YouTube videos and general mockery from the computer savvy communities, thus confirming the fact that most people, besides the geeks, still don't fully comprehend what the Internet is. At its inception, PHDs, scientists and professors of anthropology alike hailed the Internet as a potential "gaia …

The Role Of The Viewer In The Gallery Space, Meghan Berliner

Scripps Senior Theses

My installation, "The Viewers", consists of three life-sized figures and a projected video feed. The figures are placed in and around the gallery space, and the video originates from a hidden camera installed in one of the figures eyes. The first figure that the viewer encounters upon entering the gallery space is hyper-realistic security guard. His position behind the gallery circulation desk, a space which is traditionally assumed not to be an 'art space' allows him to view those entering the gallery while remaining relatively unnoticed. A camera that is installed in his one of his eye sockets and hidden …

Dancescape: A Work In Thetranslation Of Bodies And Movement, Julia Allisson Cost

Scripps Senior Theses

Translation is inevitably challenging work. When the human body and its movement are the subjects translated, the work may be particularly difficult, as questions both technical and ethical may arise about the representation in the second medium. Yet the exercise can also be very illuminating, creating space for insights that may not have been possible without the translation. For my Scripps College art thesis, I have created a series of paintings of Western dancers and researched four artists whose work involves bodies, movement, or dance and whose approaches differ tremendously. These artists are Edgar Degas (1834-1917), an impressionist painter known …

Textual Apparitions: Power, Language, And Site In The Work Of Jenny Holzer, Peter Holden Fox

Pomona Senior Theses

Jenny Holzer's text-based projects have attracted the attention of critics, historians, and curators from Des Moines to Dresden. An understanding of the complex interplay between language, gender, power, and site within Holzer's work demonstrates how a singular interpretive approach is insufficient for discussing the multitude of meanings her projects produce. Perhaps most significantly, a fresh analysis of Holzer's work and critical reactions to it challenges the story of modernism and postmodernism and the relationship between these two terms.