Art and Design Commons^™

Less Water, More Holy: Tools For Sustainable Ablution, Faheem Khan

Theses and Dissertations

Prayer is an important part of life for many people, whether it takes the form of meditation or talking to God. Muslims pray five times a day, and before each prayer, they first clean themselves by performing ritual ablution (wudu). The eight-step purification process of wudu cleanses the body from head to toe. The Hadiths of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim tell us the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ needed just one mudd of water (650ml) to complete wudu, but most people consume many times that amount—four-to-seven liters is more common today.

To visualize and better understand the nature …

Roots And Webs And Nets And Branches And Bulletin Boards And Banners And Newsletters And Mutual Aid Text Threads And Kin And Caretakers And Porches And Poems Of Today And Spaces Of Survival, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo

Theses and Dissertations

As I welcome Richmond, VA into my family, I find myself needing to make roots and webs and nets and branches that ground me, that place myself as a Black, queer, mixed race, artist, activist, educator, storyteller, and cultural worker in this city. I am called to the streets before I am called to my studio. I question what it means to be a part of an institution that is slowly eating this city up. I become a story collector. I need to know where I am and whose land I now call home.

Metamosque – Envisioning The Mosque As A Virtual Public Space, Alaa Albarazy

Theses and Dissertations

Historically, the mosque was not only a space for a communal prayer but also a place for building a community. Today, however, with conflicts and diseases fragmenting society, people are less able to gather physically in large spaces. Out of necessity, people rely on technology to get together and interact virtually. In this context, my research challenges the notion of the mosque as a physical space, proposing, instead, its extension into virtual space. Recent global events pose the question: Can the metaverse offer an opportunity for the mosque to reassert itself as a public space. I propose that a MetaMosque …

Reclaiming The Appropriated Space Through Care, William P. Glaser

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis navigates the complex and (at times) frustrating experience of balancing caregiving and art making while attempting to converge both practices into one. The collaboration of caregiving and art making serves as a potential solution for those that struggle with the seemingly unreconcilable stratification of both activities.

Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen

Theses and Dissertations

Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …

Flourish: Exploring Healing Environments In A Residential Treatment Setting, Emily D. Kalafian

Theses and Dissertations

The following project explores the ways in which our environments promote healing and support recovery through the design of a residential center for eating disorder recovery. The center will serve 8-10 young women as they seek recovery from restrictive forms of eating disorders. The center will accommodate the necessary staff personnel as well as spaces for supporting activities and wraparound services. The project intends to create a place for healing that feels safe, warm, and considers patients’ needs for autonomy, dignity, and a sense of control amidst disorder. This is a place to create meaningful relationships and to participate in …

Cadent Diffusion: Permeating The Membrane, Isabella M. Kubo

Theses and Dissertations

cadent diffusion: permeating the membrane explores and documents KUBO's journey of cultivating a sustainable and curious artistic practice during their Master’s program in Richmond, Virginia (Powhatan Land) from the Fall of 2020 to the Spring of 2022.

KUBO's practice is the affirmation between life and change in an attempt to work along the forces of singularity; to free lines, scores, concepts, and events from structures that otherwise bind them.The cadent diffusion is the rhythm in this force. Or perhaps, it is the force itself.

Until Its Calmness Can Claim You, Gabrielle Mchugh

Theses and Dissertations

This is an invitation to pause //

This is an externalization of my inner landscape, a highlight of what I value in my everyday and what comprises my lexicon of a sacred space. The following is a journey of nets, quiet, the sacred, space, and the in-between; where I share research and questions that are the foundation for my thesis work, Until Its calmness can claim you.

// This is an invitation to find moments of quiet in the noise

Until One Resembles The Other, Chad E. Mundie Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

A written accompaniment to Chad Mundie’s thesis exhibition titled Until One Resembles the Other, conceived during the years 2021-22 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from April 9-22nd.

The following writing explores themes of labor within the home, generational knowledge, interiority, exteriority, and emotional residue through a series of essays surrounding areas of interest within my practice. The writing concludes with documentation of the show and an accompanying explanatory text.

Dregs / Lessons From The Things Around Us, Juan-Manuel Pinzon

Theses and Dissertations

The writing in Lessons From the Things Around Us is in support of the work in my MFA thesis show, dregs. I detail the progression of my making and thinking over the last two years. I expand on the material and personal relationships that have manifested themselves in the work and influenced my approach to the things that surround me. Finally, I point to a more expansive definition of Craft, rooted in its material sensibilities, and the possibilities already present in the field that this definition creates.

Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines an alternative processing mechanism surrounding the act of healing after traumatic experiences in life. Using a methodology of iterative patterning and tool-pathing, a collection of inflatable garments and wooden mannequins analyzes defense mechanisms learned in early childhood development. This work highlights an essential body of recent scholarship that takes cuteification seriously to restore a childlike approach to mastering fear. This paper will review the definitions of cuteness and childlike humor and then describe how visual culture has implemented these components to subvert established power.

Connections Exposed | A Library For The People, Stephanie Wilburn

Theses and Dissertations

MOTIVATION

The U.S. economy, democracy, and the health and happiness of citizens depends on maintaining social capital, the networks of bonds between community members. Social capital creates the trust that facilitates action and cooperation for mutual benefit. Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in-person socialization and social bonds both within and between demographic groups in the US resulting in reduced social capital (Putnam, 2000).

One measure to combat declining social capital is to create third places where incidental and repeated social interactions build and reinforce bonds between community members (Oldenburg, 1997).

With the reduction of accessible and inclusive …

It Takes A Muscle: Wholes, Holes, And Other Voids, Saar Shemesh

Theses and Dissertations

IT TAKES A MUSCLE¹

In the BELLY of the BEAST, the HUMAN

in the deep end of a SWIMMING POOL

in a GRAVE, looking up/out from within

at the base of a CRATER, ABYSS, PIT

the room as a CRADLE, INCUBATOR

architecture as MOTHER MOULD.²

____________________________

¹ Title is borrowed and abbreviated: Spectral Display, “It Takes A Muscle To Fall In Love,” 1982.

² For what American-English delineates as ‘mold,’ British-English uses ‘mould’ and is more specific in its technicality. The former doesn’t distinguish in spelling between mold (fungus) and mold (mould). I’m not particularly a fan of …

Connected: Exploring Automation To Activate Aging In Place Success, Hallie W. Gillespie

Theses and Dissertations

MOTIVATION: There’s no place like home. Technological advances are now allowing us to live and work from anywhere. Spatial divides are disappearing through remote connections, creating a dispersion of the nuclear family, traditionally the prevailing caregivers for seniors. Older adults are projected to outnumber children under eighteen by 2034, a first in U.S. history (Census Bureau, 2019). This is not specific to America; “globally the population is aging. Since 1980, the number of people aged over 60 has more than doubled in size and is projected to do so again by 2050 to 2.1 billion” (United Nations, 2017).

ISSUE: There …

Afroam: A Virtual Film Production Group, Bill Taylor Jr.

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Because of the gatekeeping practices of the Hollywood film industry, and the high cost of both filmmaking and distribution in general, Afro-American filmmakers have struggled to produce films with “global reach.” This study visits the possibility of Afro-American filmmakers using alternative technologies and infrastructures to produce high-quality films, thereby bypassing the high cost and exclusionary practices of Hollywood studios. Using new 21st-century digital technology, this study involved the creation of a small geographically dispersed virtual film production team. The study’s foundational framework was a constructivist qualitative research paradigm, using Action Research, and supported by 24 months of triangulated data from …

Reframing Leadership Narratives Through The African American Lens, Marion Missy Mcgee

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Reframing Leadership Narratives through the African American Lens explores the context-rich experiences of Black Museum executives to challenge dominant cultural perspectives of what constitutes a leader. Using critical narrative discourse analysis, this research foregrounds under-told narratives and reveals the leadership practices used to proliferate Black Museums to contrast the lack of racially diverse perspectives in the pedagogy of leadership studies. This was accomplished by investigating the origin stories of African American executives using organizational leadership and social movement theories as analytical lenses for making sense of leaders’ tactics and strategies. Commentary from Black Museum leaders were interspersed with sentiments of …

Culture For Sale, Jessica L. Cartwright

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In a post-colonial world, one would expect much of the servitude of the past to have ended, but this is not the case. In places such as the Bahamas new forms of or neo- colonialism has come to exist specifically under the guise of tourism. Writing amidst the end of colonialism in the twentieth century, Franz Fanon argues that sblack person exists in a liminal state. They must assimilate to the white society in order to be accepted, but not so much so thatbecause that it threatens whiteness. It is through Fanon’s writing on race that I have developed a …

Stil-Life, Yi Xiong

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written thesis is the supporting documentation for Still-Life, my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition. I use handmade ceramic still-life objects to depict my specific memories and experiences about my life before and after the pandemic. Death, hope, time, and emotion are the themes explored in this exhibition.

This installation of ceramic sculptures not only recreates a historical moment in the pandemic but also captures the current times that we live in. It records the artist's life and time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The selection of still-life objects for the exhibition often has special significance on a personal, cultural, …