Art and Design Commons^™

Nurture, Lauren Taylor League

Graduate Theses

Nurture is a series of sculptural and performative works created to explore the emotional and psychological effects of objects as they relate to familial memory and the various processes one uses to nurture and express love. These moments incapsulate the need for comfort and connection, the need to be nourished, the need for protection, and the need to remember. The filmed interactions with each individual sculpture evoke the natural relationship of emotional release to the processes of remembering and healing.

By using sculpture as a residue of performance and creating work that serves as a memory of interaction and experience, …

Dust And Shadow, Anna Grant Dean

Graduate Theses

Dust and Shadow is an investigation into systems of order and chaos that exist within the natural and manmade worlds. Human constructs (such as grids) and manmade systems (such as social media) abide in a space that is tangential to the structures and systems that choreograph the functions of the natural world. Exploring how these two very different worlds weave in and out of human existence allows me to examine my relationship to the complex facets of this twenty-first century experience.

My research into chaos and entropy serves as a catalyst for this body of work. Examining the parallels between …

Unhinged: Anthology, Elizabeth Shepard

Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

Unhinged explores women in mythology and religion that are perceived as “evil,” but in my telling, are reincarnated as modern, everyday female leads. The theme of Unhinged: Anthology is how women fight oppressive forces, not shying away from female identity and power. I’ve adapted my stories from myths and folklore from other cultures. The first three stories in Unhinged: Anthology are: “The Huldra“ (Norse), “The Rangda” (Balinese) and “The Maenad” (Greek). I’ve written these stories in the form of scripts, approved by my committee members. Because traditional black-and-white high contrast adds to the horror aesthetic, the medium for the pages …

Vern Multilingual Font System, Nathan Zawadzki

Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

Vern is designed in Latin, Cyrillic, and Hebrew for a total of roughly 160 characters or glyphs in this writing system. Based on the research of these systems, a reverse contrast style fits Cyrillic and Hebrew, while normal contrast has more difficulty in adjusting to them. This slab serif, reverse contrast style keeps the look of a traditional serif font in Latin. Vern’s unified design across multiple languages works in media such as book text or large-scale signage.

A Guide To African Princesses, Makayla Ray

Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

A Guide to African Princesses inspires young Black/African American girls and will encourage Black/African American storylines in Hollywood. It includes Princess Yennenga, Queen of Sheba, Queen Amina of Zazzau Kingdom, Kandake, the empress of Ethiopia, and Yaa Asantewa. To achieve this, the guide focuses on having text including each princess’s name, lifespan, legacy, and appropriate phonetic transcription. Phonetic transcription is important because the spelling of a word or name does not always tell someone how to pronounce it. The guide also includes decorative elements; the decorative elements, linking back to the culture of each African princess. Research methods include, but …

Wild Apparel: A Sustainable Clothing Line, Jogvan Andreas A. Jacobsen

Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

The fashion industry has increasingly contributed to environmental waste through production and distrubution of crops, fibers, and garments that are dumped every day, polluting our water, soil, and air. My sustainable clothing line does the opposite, with clothes and packages built from recycled materials. With Wild Apparel, I will create casual streetware clothes with a subconcsious focus on being sustainable, contributing to bettering our earth, although not in a protesting or reprimanding way. The clothes are made from recycled plastic, driven by solar powered machines and fair wages to the employees. Wild Apparel will be working with organizations around the …

A Sensual Exploration Of Melancholy, Rachel Blumer

Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

What does it mean to be melancholy? It is a distinct and personal emotion—a type of sadness and a feeling all its own. Melancholy is not something people usually seek out, but it can be a comfortable, pensive, and creative space to sit in. The beautiful thing about melancholy is how one is able to be both joyful and sorrowful at the same time. I began the project by conducting a survey about what others think sadness smells, tastes, and sounds like. I have also researched poetry and music. I explore melancholy in different mediums and creative techniques, including a …

Disguysed, Margaret Feltman-Ruiz

Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

Throughout history, women had to change themselves in order to accomplish their goals. My thesis brings attention to these often forgotten or dismissed women of the past. Disguysed is a nonfiction children’s book that focuses on 12 women from history who disguised themselves as men to further their careers or lives. Each spread contains an illustration of the woman, along with a biography from the research I collected. Separate from the biographies, the book contains extra historical context to shed light on the social climates that these women experienced. The design of the illustrations isn’t masculine or feminine, in the …