Art and Design Commons^™

Sulfur And Sage, John Swincinski

LSU Master's Theses

Sulfur and Sage is a body of abstract paintings created out of memories of time spent immersed in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains and the Yellowstone Caldera during the summer of 2020. The paintings reflect specific places, experiences, and insights, which occurred as I sought solitude by returning to the one place where I feel most at peace with the universe – the woods.

Each painting is augmented by a written vignette, describing the occurrence it is based on. Should the viewer choose to include these short stories as they encounter the artwork, they provide the jumping off point …

Visiting The Garden By Ryan Guptil, Ryan Guptil

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Visiting the Garden

Winter is gone
The sun is out

I open right up
I come right out.

My bright red complexion
My powerful aroma

Creatures come to see me,
Without a doubt.

They know my smell
They know my name

They know what I am
Not ever a doubt.

Every year I am the same,
But they always change.

Till next year my friends
Please stay the same.

I feel you looking
I never move, always still
Frozen like a rock.

I am as bright as a flame
And catch the shining sun.

You’re drawn to me
Like a …

We, Three By Ginny Majka, Ginny Majka

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

We, Three

I am the soil, the mountains and oceans of life.
Mycellium colonies beneath my surface plunge up
up, up through the peat and the moss, the decaying leaves. They pray for the rain, the fruit of my earth.
Plantae nestle in, fragile and comfortable,
seeds sprout to eagerly gulp rain,
animalia flourish, consuming what I provide
only to come home, at the end, to me
to rejoin my earth;
we are one
I am the atmosphere, the sunny clouds and storms producing bounty to those below
I am the chaos in the lightning
I am the rainbow after …

Floral Beauty By Sophia Squire, Sophia Squire

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Floral Beauty

An appreciation for chrysanthemum
Took bloom within her soul during
Her early years of life and began
To flourish as time went on

Passing slowly, the years whisked
By and things would grow all around
Her as her hair drifted down past
Her slim shoulders – long brown

“I wish to grow my roots, soon,
In one place where I can stay
Becoming stronger within myself
Until it is time for me to wither away

I’ll make this body a lovely space
For my spirit of flora to grow and
Thrive, with windows all around to
Let sunshine …

Three Garden Visitors By Vivien Russe, Vivien Russe

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Three Garden Visitors

Beside a cup of tea, I am a spotted leopard on pajamas.
Outside in the garden, this early summer morning,
Staying sly, quiet, not wanting to draw any attention from the neighbors.

A birdie is hidden in the Emerald Green Arborvitae,
After lunch, Owen comes over, asking politely if he can come into the yard to find it.
I reply, “Certainly, you can retrieve anything that lands in the yard without asking”.

Coming unannounced, no matter when, full of presumption
It comes with the lightest, gentle touch or the hardest hit, knocking flowers off center.
Below the …

Dandy/Robin/Gardener By Sadie Pressman, Sadie Pressman

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Dandy

I’ll be so direct by saying, if I may, that here is simply, absolutely, the best place to be. Here,
where the rolling hill plunges towards the ocean. Here, where the sight of the Bavarian blue sky
makes my insides feel endless. Here, where, watching as I so often do, as the white cotton
shape-shifts before my eyes, summer-time in suspense. The sun’s rays suspend from the sky,
dangling like the hands of time. They caress me. A pocket watch in the sky, the sky's the best
accessory. Here, where I am more popular than I could ever have …

A Short Stay By Rachel Milne, Rachel Milne

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

A Short Stay

Gracefully, she leaps over the fence.
Slowly, she walks through the yard,
Plucking low-hanging leaves for breakfast.
She lingers, as she eats
And suddenly –
Nails skittering on wood, a rush of air through the grass,
Her visit is cut short
She sends herself back into the woods
Just as the dog reaches the top of the hill

Their nest may be elsewhere,
But the pair frequently visit this place.
His little, crimson body darts over the yard,
Her subtle, tawny feathers hide away in a tree.
A constant in the garden,
They are a pleasant sight …

Visitors By Lindsey Bosk, Lindsey Bosk

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Visitors

There is a need within us all,
just like this garden,
for water to replenish what is dry and wilted.
One drop falls from the grey-blue sky onto a leaf.
Another hits my brow, I smile.
Like me, the rain does not stay forever,
we are both visitors here.

The droplets of water pick up speed,
as if sensing urgency.
Thirsty plants lap up water,
the rain is welcome.

Unlike the rain, I serve no purpose.
I quench no one’s thirst.
Nonetheless, I sit in the center of it all,
as If I matter most.

Admirers Of The Garden By Tabitha Burgess, Tabitha Burgess

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Admirers of the Garden

I fly in as the sun rises
Fluttering to the beaming light
Of golden and red velvety petals
I touch down on the layers of the lilies
Admiring their similar colors
Breaking my concentration
A chirping sound in the distance

I feel the wind beneath my wings
As I fly to an area I’m familiar with
I land on the nearby fence post
My black and white feathers
Illuminated by sunlight
I look down at the nearby botany
The rows of greens growing from the soil
I seek out my next destination and take flight
As …

Objects And Images, Jack Lovell

Masters Theses

My work often involves photographic source material as well as surrealistic forms. Two primary influences, René Magritte and Gerhard Richter, can be seen as at odds with each other in many respects. Drawing parallels and distinctions, I explore relationships in the work of Magritte, Richter and myself.

Dive, Aparna Sarkar

Masters Theses

In my thesis paintings, abstracted bodies collide with sticky shapes and residues in otherworldly spaces to form a queer, diasporic mythology. Bodies are slick, crusty, diaphanous, partial, chunky, other—they vary in legibility, suspended in emergence and expulsion from the environment. Multiple selves make these works. One asks sensorial questions of painting: what feelings, memories, and experiences can I transmit through color and material? I embed the smell of marigolds, the swi!t temperature change of the California desert, or the thick haze of a three a.m. dance floor make-out. My trusting self follows visions of color and shape, believing that they …

Records Of (Un)Learning, Gregory Deddo

Masters Theses

The internal processes by which we remember and learn (mnēmē) are in tension with the exterior mnemonic devices of writing, photography, and archives (hypomnēsis). Attempts to accurately record and document our lives often disrupt the living, intersubjective memory it is meant to aid. This dichotomy plays out in both the interpersonal sphere of relationships and identity, and in the socio-political sphere of history, governance, and economics. Our contemporary postmodern condition, as shaped by technologic developments, is marked by an increased skepticism about testimony, witness, and experience and a greater reliance on data-driven information and the structure …

Blue Loops, Rebecca Senn

Masters Theses

I started threading wires between objects in an attempt at connecting the fragments of my life, winding forms into spiraling webs of meaning. Bluebirds, cartoon toys, Jewish kitsch, 90’s teen angst, immaterial feeling. Wires are squeezed with plaster and smothered in paint, tightly wound, mummified, squeezed to death, or post-death, suspended in an oxygenless void, as if time stopped and all at once we could feel the simultaneity of things — the star hurtling through space, a swimmer falling into water, raindrops sliding off a pair of glasses. I spin wires, squeeze them with wet plaster, mummify them, until they …

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 …

The Broken Thought Machine [Broh-Kuhn Thawt Muh-Sheen], Michael Dispensa

Masters Theses

A bulky, inflamed, excess volume of overactive targeted neuron choking nonsense that profits off creating fear-induced high-speed bowel movements.

My current work seeks to create space for intrusive thoughts and images that repeat, disturb, distress, and contaminate. The source of these intrusions is called the Broken Thought Machine(BTM). I use multimedia practices of drawing, sculpture, performance, and video to unearth the origins and properties of the BTM to then perpetuate its product to an absurd degree. This obsessive reiteration brings negativity to a threshold where horror and detachment can spontaneously metamorphose into humor and compassion.

The BTM can be an …

Things That Ignore, Sean Walker Hutton

Masters Theses

I make landscape and figurative paintings and prints that explore the symbiosis between the sublime and the quotidian. My work is guided by a theory of the sublime that is rooted in divine indifference, the notion that the divine attracts what it initially repels and that absence is presence. Much of my imagery is pulled from a cross country archive of personal photographs and a no-brow collection of film stills. Drawing comparisons between these sources and the ongoing history of landscape, I denaturalize subjects through a painterly appropriation of cinematic sensibilities in order to destabilize a fixed gaze, foster a …

The Beauty Of Collision, Yixuan Pan

Masters Theses

As a Chinese artist living in the United States, I’m researching the integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics, as well as the loss of identity that can occur when visual cultures begin to assimilate. My work endeavors to locate the connection between Eastern and Western arts through my own memories and experiences. From the age of five, I have studied calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting with my grandfather, who was a calligraphy professor. Today, I use the shapes of traditional Chinese hand fans as symbols of youth, drawing from memories of my mother and grandmother brandishing the fans to help …

Hard Work / Soft Work, Nicole Schonitzer

Masters Theses

I have never eaten a blancmange, or seen one in the flesh, or even talked to anyone about having eaten one, but the Blancmange, I’ve decided, is the mascot of my thesis. (You might say, “why does a thesis need a mascot?”, but I’ll tell you right now, this is already a better thesis for having one.) A pastel blob of a dessert originating from medieval Europe, it’s a gelatinous creamy mixture, chilled in a mold, that you can put nuts in or serve with cookies. It looks terrible, really truly. I mean, it looks great, the pinnacle of fancy—decked …

In The Muck And The Mire, Orli Swergold

Masters Theses

At the core of my practice lies my fascination with my body; how I exist in relation to others and my surroundings, how much space I take up, how close I am to others, how much distance exists between us. I am interested in intimacy and bodily contact, which I explore through objects that bridge the gap between human embodiment and otherness. My works, made out of paper pulp, simultaneously stimulate a hyperawareness of one’s own body and a dissolution of the self. Their human scale immediately places them in relation to the viewer and creates space for empathy. As …

The Undiscovered Country, Luke A. Atkinson

LSU Master's Theses

The Undiscovered Country is a compendium of paintings, prose, and poetry that defines the place of creation. This work is a response to life as I find it, in as honest and truthful a way as my ability allows. Sergei Prokofiev said, “The more the sea rages, the more precious a hard rock among the waves becomes.” My paintings are solid rocks that I cling to. Hopefully, someone else can too.

[Thoughts On] The Painter & The Act Of Painting, Samantha Rosado

LSU Master's Theses

In the satirical manifesto that accompanies my work, humor, and sarcasm play an important role in understanding the narrator’s tone. The information included is both factual and imagined, pulled from stories and experiences of a group of painters. My hope is to help aspiring painters develop their own rules and philosophies based on what they learn through the canon of art history. As a writer I aim to motivate those who feel under-represented in the world of fine art and craft to reject feelings of inadequacy. As an artist I make with the intention of being vulnerable and honest.

Dog Leading A Dog, Ariel Ld Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the artist's relationship with paint and painting, and maps it out in a semi-chronological way. It includes fragment of memories, a breakdown of her process, and other painters she relates to.

Creating Home, Ludovic Nkoth

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores and conceptualizes the idea of a world where my people were never colonized, a world where we are still existing with our culture, our powers and the idea of voodoo. I place myself, friends, and family in positions of power, in spaces the world took away from us due to the color our skin. This is the world my practice aims to create.

Meditations, Adrian D. Mosby

Theses and Dissertations

Adrian Demarco Mosby (b. 1991, Bronx, Ny) is a figurative painter focused on the use of allegory and narrative. His stone like figures depict a modern day apathy and disillusion. The narrative content is meant to formulate a moral philosophy that might combat such apathy.

Missing, Murdered, Indigenous, Matthew Bollinger

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

The missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic is an issue currently affecting Indigenous people in North America. To articulate my concept visually, old photographs that showcase American culture (predominantly white) are drawn on, cut-up, and recomposed into portraits of missing Navajo women.

To The Studio, In The Studio, Home, Miquel R. Veldkamp

Theses and Dissertations

A curated series of poems and mini essays that reflect on personal life, politics, art history, folklore, science, identity and race. It addresses the questions that inform my work, and echoes its ethos of play, exploration, curiosity, vulnerability.

Memories As Old As Outer Space, Nicholas Benfey

Theses and Dissertations

My paintings draw from personal memory, as well as the nostalgic longing and nightmarish foreboding of the irrational psyche. Cosmic ruptures, cliffs, cemeteries, and parking lots appear alongside snowglobes and canopy beds. I aim to suggest things to be wary of, while giving space for optimistic fantasy and reflective wonder.

Painting The City In Flux, Simon S. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, Simon Smith describes the way in which the cityscapes of New York serve as a source of inspiration for his painting process. The paper focuses on New York City's warping of time and space, and lays out how Smith sees abstract painting, grounded in a kind of not knowing, as an apt extension of or response to the experience of the city.

Paintings By Anita O. Rodríguez, Anita O. Rodriguez Ms

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

No abstract provided.

Ethereal Axiom Paintings, Ophelia Cornet

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

Ophelia Cornet is a painter, illustrator, and installation artist. She was born in Belgium to a family of musicians and designers. After a life-threatening car accident in her early 20’s, Ophelia moved to New Mexico for the dry climate which would assist her recovery. Equipped with knowledge in photography and painting from Rutgers University, she continued her artwork. Today, Ophelia pairs photographed images and oil paint to fête female protagonists in an intimate otherworldliness, creating dreamlike snapshots of the human experience.

Ophelia has been Lead Art Instructor at the Albuquerque Museum for the past 20 years. She has facilitated many …