Art and Design Commons^™

As I Wander, Michelle Lum

CGU MFA Theses

My work highlights moments of wonder from my everyday life to give a more holistic view of reality. To me, experiences of wonder are spaces where a person feels God’s presence, where the spiritual reality of our world becomes visible. Sacraments in the Christian tradition are visible signs of a divine reality. I think of my work as sacramental: heightening moments where the visible gives way to the invisible—not by denying their physical characteristics but through them. The heart of my work is in the intersection between that which is deeply ordinary and that which is deeply extraordinary.

Design For Social Imagination, Qian Sun, Mary Loveday

IASDR Conference Series

This paper reports findings from a research project, ‘Connecting Roots’, funded by the AHRC UK. Based on the learning from delivering six co-creation workshops to local communities, this paper discusses how design can be applied to support communities to collaboratively imagine future possibilities of health and wellbeing. It sits within the context of scaling up nature and nature based activities (e.g. park runs, community gardens) as a non-clinical approach for better health and wellbeing. These workshops aimed to address the challenge of inequality of access focusing on Walsall, a metropolitan borough in the UK exhibiting some extremes of deprivation, a …

Living In Nature & Design With Nature, Yuya Zhou

Masters Theses

“Each material has its own personality. What we need to do, as a co-worker, is to understand the material characteristics, negotiate with these materials and find a common space to create a beautiful design along with the materials.”------ Yuya Zhou

From the flexible use of biodegradable materials by the Yanomami people, to the brief introduction of the concept of biodesign, and to the organic combination of biodesign and furniture design, it is clear to see that furniture not only undertakes the functionalities as a product, but also plays an important role in constructing a harmonious environment and improving people’s mental …

A Study Of Dwelling, Julia Mcarthur

Masters Theses

In teasing out natural phenomena in the unbuilt environment, through admiring beauty, and emphasizing the ordinary, meaningful moments can be brought about that can cause you to be more present with yourself and the world we live in. It is important to qualify that these spaces that encompass “ordinary” moments are not intended to be “idealized spaces,” but a domain that reconciles the chaos from the peaceful and the stress from the calm that is ever apparent in our daily lives. My thesis asks: Through critiquing the modernist condition of a prescriptive ideal space, how can we better understand how …

Step 10, Jinhong Cai

Masters Theses

Step 10 is an experiment on provoking empathy through

abstracted elements within my studio practice. I am

proposing to craft an emotional piece without leaning

on my identity. This written thesis consists of two parts:

narrative prose and an explanation of my studio practice.

While the installation is entirely devoid of cultural or

personal references, this text-based thesis is full of them

because it is intended to inform whoever is interested in

learning more about the motive behind this creation.

The questions I bought into the thought and creation

process are: Can a piece of art still successfully bring

out …

My Kinship With The Trees, C. Daniela Shapiro

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This paper explores facets of patriarchy affecting women and the natural world. The paper suggests a cultivation of allyship and relationality between women and nature due to a shared experience of objectification within patriarchy. The separation of women from nature through origin stories, science, religion, language, and advertisement will be discussed. Examples from the graphic memoir Running without Moving are employed to emphasize this philosophy, including first person accounts.

Transcendence: Exploring The Connections Between Transgender/Gender Non-Conforming Identities And Experiences Of Nature Through Art, Mc Jackson

Undergraduate Theses

“Transcendence: Exploring the connections between transgender/gender non-conforming identities and experiences of nature through art” is the written portion of a creative thesis revolving around an immersive art installation and short film. Transcendence, the installation, was created to promote connection by exploring the overlap between transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) experiences and experiences of nature. Part of this installation is a short film of interviews conducted with transgender and GNC individuals about nature, their gender experiences, and the transcendent nature of the two. The written thesis analyzes existing literature on nature as a restorative, therapeutic, spiritual setting, offers insight into …

Entropy, Chaimae Oualid

be Still

As an artist, I find myself constantly drawn to the theme of life's unpredictability and how it shapes us. My painting "Entropy" explores these ideas by presenting a complex web of interwoven threads that represent the randomness of life. The imagery of a single body with multiple dispersed people and things, along with the extra floating head, speaks to the chaos and unpredictability that we all experience.

For me, the painting also relates to the idea of "The Teacher" in my own life. I've often found that my greatest lessons have come from unexpected sources, and the randomness of life …

Tree Line, Eric Joseph Jensen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I was raised under a doctrine of extreme truth that cast a shadow over all reality. Upon rejecting that dogma, my life became a search to replace that truth. I’ve looked for it by immersing myself in the natural world and exploring my relationship with it through paint. My landscape painting practice has brought me a wealth of experiences; however, it has not given me an answer that fills the void of my upbringing. My thesis paper is an account of the questions, research, and paintings that surround my search. Nothing, it turns out, is absolute. There is a beauty …

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

MSU Graduate Theses

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Half In Dream: The Tangle In The Grid, Abbey L. Paccia

Masters Theses

Half in Dream: The Tangle in the Grid discusses the form and content of a physical art installation by the same name. The site-specific installation is a large three-dimensional collage of natural ephemera collected from the area around Amherst, Massachusetts, which interacts with natural lighting conditions to illuminate a gallery-facing image of ever-moving light and shadow. The written work elaborates some of the many details within the structure of the artwork, and reveals the philosophies, embodied practices, and methodologies that informed the visual work's creation. Woven throughout are reflections on phenomenology, walking practice, General Systems Theory, collective making, narrative arts, …

Tree Box: Designing Embedded And Embodied Interaction For Contemplative Experiences In Nature-Rich Environments, Sónia Matos, Daniel Sousa

DRS Biennial Conference Series

We present Tree Box, an interactive artefact designed to connect users to nature-rich environments through contemplation. The object draws on recent debates that juxtapose the benefits of meditation and mindfulness practices with exposure to nature-rich environments. Combining both with embedded and embodied interaction, we hope to add to the growing importance of designing for human well-being and planetary health. Technically, Tree Box uses Bluetooth wireless technology to locate spots for contemplation in natural surroundings. The prototype also uses a vibrating motor and an accelerometer sensor to invite users to stop in each location. By drawing on the literature that informed …

Birds, Bees And Bats: Exploring Possibilities For Cohabitation In The More-Than-Human City, Ferne Edwards, Ida Maria Corsepius Melen, Anna Caroline Syse, Ida Nilstad Pettersen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Urbanization pressures are creating conditions for greater urban density. However, cities are home for both humans and a diversity of nonhuman natures, where heightened proximity between species can cause friction and conflict. This paper explores possibilities for convivial multispecies cohabitation in more-than-human cities. It grounds more-than-human theory through the application of three case studies – birds, bees and bats – based in the city of Trondheim, Norway. Drawing on three related studies, these creatures help illuminate what kind of spaces, needs and considerations are required beyond a human-centric focus in the urban environment. Issues to consider include disease, insecure land …

Soundscape Gardens: An Evaluation On Use Of The Northern Ireland Hospice’S Sound Garden Installation, Isaac Gibson, Pedro Rebelo, Craig Jackson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The purpose of this paper is to share the results of an evaluation of the Northern Ireland (NI) Hospice’s Sound Garden installation placed at the Somerton Road site in Belfast. The sound gardens are an immersive installation split into three separate garden spaces, each using a combination of outdoor loudspeakers. The Sound Garden is designed to project a growing collection of soundscapes composed by both students, doctoral candidates, and staff from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast. This evaluation, which took place in late 2019 as part of a Master of Research, uses both pseudonymised questionnaires …

A Perfect Escape: Fantasy, Place And Narrative In Adolescence, Cydney Cherepak

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the realms of special places, the literary genre of fantasy, narrative, and comics. These topics are traversed alongside subjects of adolescence and the creation of stories for middle-grade readers. Framed with personal stories, as well as peaks into my process, I investigate these subjects through the lens of my own life and work, specifically my thesis project, a comic for middle-grade readers titled Beyond the Castle Walls. Beginning with adolescence in association with special places, I consider the work of developmental psychologists David Sobel and Edith Cobb as they pin-point the role of secret forts, nature, …

Fictitious Ecology, Paulina Zuckerman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

My thesis project, The Mountain Fog, is a children’s picture book pitch that tells a light-hearted story of two dogs who must face an environmental disaster. In this accompanying critical essay, I break down the process of crafting a fictional relationship between author-illustrator, animal characters, and the environment. It begins through the context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories,” which identifies seeing the world through two lenses - the Primary world and the Secondary world. From these terms, I navigate the idea of a fictitious ecology, an encapsulated anthropomorphic world governed by the creator’s personal experience with nature. This …

Current(S), Austin Raye Navrkal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Current(s) addresses my perspective of the subtle changes that happen as the seasons slowly transition to act as a metaphor for the subtle changes that have happened to me over the course of my time in graduate school.

Non-Fungible Tokens On The Blockchain, Talyssa Janae Cruz

Graphic Communication

The premise of this project is to see how rising artists would perform in this new method of sharing and selling art. With the skills learned in Graphic Communication, the deliverables would be a well-marketed artistic brand and cohesive art collection that will be launched on the Cardano blockchain. Whether the collection succeeds or not, it would be an excellent learning experience to see if the collection will sell. If it succeeds, the information and findings would be gathered to conclude if it is feasible for rising creators to put Non-fungible Tokens on the blockchain.

In-Between The Wind, Victoria L. Vontz

LSU Master's Theses

In-between the Wind is a compilation of poems, short stories, theories, photographs, and drawings that reveal my relationship and connection with nature. Through prose, I expose and question my place in the world, how I see it and how I am connected to it, while photographic images and drawings leave space for thoughtful and reflective meditation. The work draws upon memories, discusses theories of connection, and aims to record ephemeral moments that often seem to be too easily forgotten.

Dissonant Forms: Landscape, Nature-Love, And Art, Taylor F. Benoit

Masters Theses

As artists continue the long and storied lineage of Landscape, are there aesthetic responsibilities that come with representing the forces that afford you the capacity to do so? As we delineate spaces into places, endless interconnectivity into knowable “systems”, and living matter into thing based taxonomies, who do these delineations serve and with what intentions do we proceed? My studio art practice explores what it means to give form to our Former—the Former being that from which we came, the here and now, our explicit ecological reality, the stuff of what we call nature. …

Listening To The Unhearable, Ollie Rosario

Masters Theses

My work lives in the world of trees, lakes, oceans, sunrises, starlight, hurricanes, and mountains, the world centered on the rumbling sounds of the earth and water, the quiet roars of silence in the air, in space, in the depths beneath, and all that lives in between. In approaching this world, I have found myself unable to hear everything it shares. The hard to perceive, often soundless parts of environments — those facets of climate, the ground we stand on, the subtle changes in noise - are often unobserved, or under-observed, and underappreciated. I have cultivated a practice of seeking …

Out Of Bounds, Luciana Iwamoto

Masters Theses

Humans have an inescapable desire for rationality, structure, and order. We seek efficiency and certainty in our individual and communal lives. We have been encouraged to believe that most things are under our control until something strikes us and brings to consciousness the limits of our knowledge. It’s usually nature’s wild power that overwhelms our faculty of reason and reminds us of our limits. Philosophers called this sensation of overwhelm in the face of nature the sublime experience. In modern cities, surrounded by skyscrapers, we are reminded of our own technological achievements, while nature feels disconnected and distant. Yet, if …

Like Water Taught By Thirst, Emily Wilker

Masters Theses

I am interested in the practice of painting as a way to deepen one’s relationship with nature and its many ecosystems. To me, art not only illustrates these experiences of entanglement, but also is a realm for a sensorial engagement that surpasses representation. During my time at RISD, I have learned that painting can act as a generative tool, a therapeutic ritual, a release of energy, and a place to bridge connections to other facets of my life. It is through the conception, envelopment, and evolution of materials and their relationship to an anthropocentric society that I continue to investigate …

Among The Flowers, Micah Neeld

TYGR: Student Art and Literary Magazine 2018-present

Photograph of woman walking past flowers.

Butterfly Away, Micah Neeld

TYGR: Student Art and Literary Magazine 2018-present

Photograph of butterfly among from spring flowers.

Forgotten Things: A Historian's Tale, Mary Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Forgotten Things: A Historian’s Tale is a story of a post-human world where magic and creatures of lore have taken sovereignty over the land, following the adventures of Aster, a small flower elf whose job is to travel and document the residual traces of humanity. Every crumbling building, decaying record, and seemingly useless bauble of humanity tells a story, one that Aster is trying to find the conclusion to. One day, rumors start to circulate. Whispers that there might still be humans hidden away somewhere. Aster is thrilled about this, hoping that she might be able to talk with a …

Woven Landscapes. Audrey Shreiner, Snc Senior Art Exhibition 2021, Audrey Shreiner

Senior Art Portfolios

This video installation was created for the SNC Senior Art Capstone that was exhibited in the SNC Bush Art Center Galleries in the spring of 2021.

De La Nature Au Processus D’Artification. Matière [Forme/Objet] Sens, Alexandre Melay

The Goose

Les progrès technologiques modifient radicalement ce qui nous était autrefois familier. Ce sentiment troublant venu de l’ère Anthropocène met en lumière l’impact humain sur la nature. Mais la perte d’un monde naturel nous oblige à gérer notre environnement en tant qu’environnement artificiel. Face à cette mutation profonde du concept même de nature, l’art opère un processus d’artification, renouvelant la nature dans de nouvelles formes néoarchéologiques et de nouvelles esthétiques, par le « passage du non-art en art ».

Earth 2020: We Were Here, Devin Kelly

2020 MFA Visual Arts

No abstract provided.

Painting Ecological Change In Pacific Northwest Bird Populations, Rachel Rothberg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The following four oil paintings are part of an ongoing series that visually explores bird populations and behavior in Northwest Washington, particularly in Bellingham and Whatcom County. I combine biological, detailed illustration with painterly practices to communicate fragile ecological balances to my audience through a medium seen less frequently in the field of conservation. My work examines the tension between life and death in the natural world to provoke conversations about environmental issues and to encourage compassion for local scenery. The work illuminates how birds, humans, and the ecosystems we inhabit are intertwined, inspiring a sense of wonder for our …