Art and Design Commons^™

Ceramics And Life In Tandem, Katharine Lee Robbins

LSU Master's Theses

From the ground up, my work emerges slowly. As each coil is added, I am conscious of how my body is interacting with the rich red clay body. Each time I press clay between my hands, the material reacts and changes. It gives me comfort to feel a tangible response as I push my body into the clay. The cyclical process of art making becomes my daily ritual. Each step is repeated over and over again until it becomes ingrained in my body’s existence.

As I add coils to my work, particularly the large sculptures, I continuously circle around each …

Growthlines, Alexandra Saunders

LSU Master's Theses

The work in Growthlines is a collection of ceramic objects that are characterized by floral pattern and their potential for use. I make ceramic work that is functional and designed to be in the home. I think that the way something looks is an integral part of function and I seek to make objects that function well. The surface of my pottery is rich with images of flowers and I hope that the surface both draws in the user and highlights flowers and how important they are for the preservation of the natural world. My work functions as a surrogate …

Sweet Nothing, Austin Riddle

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

These pots were made as companions for you and your home. A vase for your table, full of freshly picked flowers as you and your partner eat breakfast and plan your day's activities. Large platters and compartment trays to present home-cooked meals with friends on a warm summer evening. Whiskey sippers that nestle in warm hands, topped off as needed from a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

As a maker, I play these moments on repeat in my mind. As a designer, these scenarios direct the formal elements I develop for each piece. Pushing out an exaggerated belly on a …

The Weight Of It All, Amythest Warrington

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

The impetus for this exhibition is to visualize the weight of loss and to focus attention on the need to recognize the inherent dichotomy between life’s beauty and loss. My mobile upbringing taught me that details may differ from group to group, but the core experiences of loss, empathy and belonging are a universal language that connects us. I utilize clay’s unique physical properties of malleability, recyclability and permanence once fired, to explore the dichotomy between strength and frailty associated with these universal connectors. The meticulously crafted beautiful objects draw one into serious and often taboo subjects. The work comforts …

Between And Beyond, Noah F. Heil

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Between and Beyond is a series of handbuilt and wheel-thrown ceramic objects which explore intimate queer relationships through the human figure. I assemble slabs of clay to create openings and negative spaces within the sculptures, implying the ways in which the human form also acts as a vessel. The sculptures as well as the figures themselves remain open and vulnerable, literally and metaphorically. The body is depicted through fragmented sections, alluding to the ways in which society and culture break up gender and sexuality into limiting binaries. These intimate, private moments are meant to conjure an imagined future free of …

Constructions, Sean Ryan Larson

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

I have always been drawn to investigating the nature of ambiguous objects; objects whose role is unclear; objects that fall between distinct categories, and that exist in what appears to be transitional stages. The pieces I make provoke the imagination by building in experimental self-defined systems that refer to contemporary architecture, as well as comment on the ceramic and non-ceramic process. My pieces vary in form and intention just as the skyline carries changes in form and order. I want to make experimental objects that develop in front of me from the ground up, without a pre-planned result. Using fundamental …

Foliage And Fabrication, Carrie Rosicky Garvey

Theses and Dissertations

In my photographic work, I contrast natural and man-made objects abstracted by manipulation of scale. Details of the objects are blown up to proportions larger than life. By distorting the scale, I aim to allow the audience to view the image out of context, enabling the viewer to see it for its aesthetic value rather than the object's functional purpose.