Art and Design Commons^™

Inner Portraits, Bethany Salisbury

Graduate Theses

This paper investigates the many interconnected layers of women’s mental health through portraiture and how animal and plant symbolism can represent the way women's hormones and bodily health affect their mental health. I reveal how the artwork created presents these connections and inner mental health narratives to the viewer, creating a space of empathy, destigmatization, and self-reflection. This body of portraiture art connects five women through a series of both two-and three-dimensional portraits based on interviews using my own adaptation of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoots’ (1983) portrait methodology.

Women and non-binary individuals have always dealt with difficult interactions of bodily and mental …

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

Community Through Commonality: Growth Beyond The Academic While In College, Lekesha Parkman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

I’ve drawn on the knowledge I have gained while attending The University of Akron to complete this project. Before I became a student, I carried myself differently but in my years here I have grown in a variety of areas and have also had the privilege of seeing some of my classmates grow in similar ways. My project is multifaceted and each piece is necessary to the other components. It consists of an essay, interviews, photography and full size portraits. During this process I hoped to convey an appreciation for people and their experiences. The participants included in my project …

The Medieval Genesis Of A Mythology Of Painting, Colin Dorward

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract: The Medieval Genesis of a Mythology of Painting.

Author: Colin Dorward

Principal Advisor: Sky Glabush.

Advisory Committee: Dr. Kathryn Brush, Patrick Mahon.

This dissertation attempts to enrich awareness of the late antique and early medieval preconditions of art which fortified today’s capacity for painted representations to fulfill a demand for the presence of absent individuals, such as in the case of portraiture. Chapter one contextualizes this program of research in terms of my practice as an oil painter, where figuration plays a prominent role. Key aspects of my studio work are introduced, such as my commitment to working from …

Quiet Moments, Deitra Charles

CGU MFA Theses

I am a figurative artist who focuses on ordinary people and everyday objects. I paint moments. A moment of peace, a moment of tranquility, a moment of contemplation. It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of day-to-day life – that they give you the opportunity to experience life differently, stirring within you some sense of peace.

It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of …

Destierro And Desengaño: The Disabled Body In Golden Age Spanish Portraiture, Colin C. Sanborn

Honors Papers

This paper analyzes the role of the disabled body in Golden Age Spanish court portraiture, focusing in particular on Diego Velázquez's work for Philip IV. Although this body of work has been examined extensively, few scholars have investigated what it implies about 17th-century Spaniards' conception of human divergence, and fewer still have done so without falling back on outdated models of disability. I thus hope to demonstrate through this thesis both disability's continued cultural importance and the utility of an analysis grounded in contemporary disability theory. Expanding upon Tobin Siebers' concept of "disability aesthetics" and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of "misfitting," …

Consumption, Aurora Blake-Jennings Abzug

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This body of work is neither a chronicle of my eating disorder, nor a record of my recovery. The oil paintings and graphite drawings that make up this exhibition, seek to explore my difficult, complicated, and often self-contradictory relationship with food, and how it affects my relationships with my friends and with myself.

I am particularly interested in eating rituals. These are the sets of cultural prescriptions for the ways in which food and the process of eating can define a social interaction. Ice cream picnics, brunch dates, and Instagram snapshots all lie at the heart of my culture's social …

Haunted By Solitude: Isolation And Communal Representation In Zanele Muholi's Archive, Michelle Marie Fikrig

Honors Papers

This paper focuses on contemporary South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s (b. 1972) extensive photographic archival project, Faces and Phases, which documents South Africa’s black queer community. The series exists not only as a book published in 2014, but as an exhibition that has been shown globally. In the introduction to their book of the Faces and Phases series Muholi states their goal as “[articulating] the collective pain [black lesbians] as a community experience” (emphasis mine). Yet the series, composed of over two hundred black and white portraits, is made up of photographs of individual black lesbians. This paper explores the …

Same Stuff, Just Packaged A Different Way (Maybe It's Not So Bad?), Kyle Strobel

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Who Would You Be? examines the interplay between person and persona, relationship building, and artist-sitter dynamics. By placing contemporary sitters in the context of historical portraiture conventions, it seeks to lead viewers to consider the issue of self-absorption and vanity in social media profiles from a different angle. Additionally, this project became a way to enhance the quality of my personal relationships with those involved through providing a space to interact and creating a link for them between myself and each other.

Fragmentation Of Thought, Thomas Seay

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement expounds on my thesis exhibition, a series of four sculptures that explore the contemporary expanding field of sculpture through the fusion of non-traditional or unmonumental materials with portrait painting and collage techniques. The works are built on questions of form, and references historical art movements: Renaissance and Baroque, Cubism, and Post- Modernism. The first is present in the classical portraiture I include in the pieces; the second, in the fragmented style; the third, in the multiple narrative voices of viewers, in the use of non-traditional or unmonumental materials, and in the unexpected groupings of objects, both made …

A Looking Of Another, Grace Anne Caiazza

Senior Projects Spring 2016

A woman walks from one portrait to another. Meditations on grief, portraiture, and the female body.

Work It: A Study In Fashion Photography Portraiture, Dominic J. Iudiciani

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Fashion is a device with which the perception of one’s appearance is manipulated. It is a device that is used across all cultures to identify, symbolize, isolate, and appropriate. It is figuratively and literally woven into the fabric of humankind as a whole. Fashion has the ability to reinforce gender or create dissonance within it through androgynous silhouettes. It can express strength and confidence or emphasize vulnerability.

Through this study, the use of specific studio lighting techniques accentuates design elements of a highly curated collection of avant-garde, 21^st century garments. Drape, texture, form, and luster are but a few …

The Misconception Of Knowing, The Invention Of Time; Curiosities & Introspections Of Vernacular Photography, Patricia D. Drummond

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Misconception of Knowing, the Invention of Time; Curiosities & Introspections of Vernacular Photography is a body of work that combines photography, artist books, and alternative processes in a series of pieces that explore the synergy between the act of creating vernacular or common photography, the photograph in its many forms, and the interaction with the photographic image at all the stages of its existence. It also exists in conjunction with this written monograph, which supports and gives insight into the work. Through the use of poems, sketchbook musings, the history of photography, critical theory and social norms within photography, …

Portraiture And Text In African-American Illustrated Biographical Dictionaries, 1876 To 1917, Dennis Williams Ii

Theses and Dissertations

Containing portraiture and biography as well as protest text and affirmative text, African- American Illustrated biographical dictionaries made from 1876 to 1917 present Social Gospel ideology and are examples of Afro-Protestantism. They are similar to the first American illustrated biographical dictionaries of the 1810s in that they formed social identity after national conflict while contesting concepts of social inferiority. The production of these books occurred during the early years of Jim Crow, a period of momentous change to the legal and social fabric of the United States, and because of momentous changes in modern American print industries. While portraits within …

Perceptions Of Life And Death Through The Metaphor Of Paint: Construction And Deconstruction Of Form, Nannette Cherry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper will explore classical and contemporary methods of painting applied to the portrait. It will emphasize the metaphor of paint as flesh and the connotations of the breakdown of the painted form that stands in for flesh as it relates to our preoccupations with our own mortality. Borrowing from influences like Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, and Francis Bacon, the artwork explores the creation of a form that is physical and confrontational, and is intended to provoke a psychological response in the viewer. This series of figuration bases its processes on traditional methods, while borrowing from modern art devices to …

Romaine Brooks: Embracing Diversity, Ronda Lea Ensor

Art and Design Theses

While the majority of literature written in regard to artist Romaine Brooks has focused on her portraiture of cross-dressing women, I intend to focus on other aspects of her oeuvre which are often neglected. Therefore, I will examine works depicting women produced or exhibited by Brooks during the years 1910 and 1911 when her output was at its most varied. I have divided these works into four different categories: nudes, interior scenes, balcony scenes, and portraits. These paintings prove that while Brooks painted in a traditional fashion, she also subtly challenged the role of women in art and society.

Marking Time: A Figurative Humanist Approach To Drawing., Donna Michele Wilt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This document is a supportive paper for the M.F.A. Graduate Exhibition "Marking Time" held at the B. Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, in fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree. Within this paper, I discuss the subjective nature of my drawings and claim my role as a figurative humanist. Through drawing, I explore the emotive qualities of my own form. Rather than depicting actual spaces, I place myself in psychological spaces that reflect specific moods. Chiaroscuro creates an altered reality where visual tension is implicated through the physicality of my movements.

This paper also briefly discusses the …

Self-Image, Tammy Jean Wymer

Theses and Dissertations

Many current media images of women have underlying messages that affect our psyche in a negative way, whether or not we are aware. These images convey an unrealistic, distorted view of ideals and perfection, which create an unattainable model to live up to. As women, we should be cherishing our uniqueness, but, rather than celebrating and accepting ourselves, we are taught to judge and conceal. This project seeks to address inner beauty as a reflection of our energy, vitality, wisdom and the mental, as well as emotional, engagement in our lives. The terms perfection and imperfection will be redefined and …

A Series Of Paintings Investigating Certain Specified Space Concepts, Michael C. Jackson

All Master's Theses

This thesis is devoted only to that work considered completely investigated: a portrait/figure series of seven paintings. In addition, the series of works with which this thesis is devoted essentially follow this format: large areas of architectural space and color versus a natural object- -a portrait figure. A play or conflict was set up between these two things; the success of the play determined the success of the painting. The factors used to judge success are basically those classical rules of composition dealing with balance: visual weight of areas, complexity, and color. The only areas manipulated were: (1) shape of …