Art and Design Commons^™

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet, Or @The_C_U_R_B, Candace B. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet (The C.U.R.B.) is an interdisciplinary art project consisting of citizen science experiments, community events, and social media storytelling that collectively examine critical issues of environmental, social, and food-based justice as we face oncoming climate crisis. The project explores lessons learned about/with/from Brooklyn's feral edible plant and animal species, many of whom have long and complicated relationships with humanity. Artist Candace Thompson of The C.U.R.B. forages and processes these beings into food and medicine, and conducts DIY remediation experiments with them in an attempt to mitigate any contamination found therein. She shares her fndings via an …

Exploring The Relationship Between Music And Art Through Paint And Performance, Anna Eyink

Honors Projects

This project sought to find methods for translating musical compositions into visual compositions. After thorough analysis of each piece's structure, colors, rhythms, tonality, accompaniment, purpose, and extramusical influences, the goal was to conceptualize appropriate color schemes, shapes, mark making, paint application, and arrangements to create a visual representation of the music. As a result, each painting has elements that make sense from a musician's perspective as well as that of an artist.

Twisted Truths In Memories, Jiyoon Kang

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Memory— fragments of minds that are stored to remember the past and information— plays a huge role in human development. Humans interact with each other based on past experiences. These memories are part of our personalities. Flashbulb memory, a highly detailed snapshot of a moment, can even be life changing, because that memory becomes an essential part of “you.” In Twisted Truths in Memories, my body of work aspires to explore the question: what happens to memory when strong emotions are involved? How does that relate to a photograph, especially when photographs are intended to demonstrate the truth? The body …

Unraveling Memory Through Childhood Relics, Franchesca Rousseas

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

The formation of memory is a universal experience that occurs at an individual level. Memory is intangible and abstract, but it can be tied to physical objects such as photographs. These objects may remain the same throughout the course of our lives, but our memories are subject to change. Information is inevitably lost or altered over time, as our minds are more pliable than they are rigid. These alterations result in the desire to reconstruct and reinterpret past events given the information that is still accessible. Focusing on objects of domesticity that trigger childhood memories, I reveal how the act …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Encumbered By Stage Fright Or I’M Not Sure Why I Did That, Chris Scott

Graduate School of Art Theses

I hope to be as honest as possible. I’m hoping to be the star of the show. This is a series of onanistic musings, a rambling narrative that oscillates between truth and fabrication. There are instances of earnestness paired with ostentatious exaggeration. The frequent leaps from subject to subject, often seemingly unrelated to one another, reflect the ineluctably scatterbrained headspace that dictates how I operate in the studio, in every facet of life. Through this lens of storytelling I delve into a few artists, like Bruce Nauman, and rock and roll musicians, like Lou Reed, who I have been unable …

My Favorite Things, Alexander Klein

Graduate School of Art Theses

In this thesis I discuss my material practice as it relates to a history of still-life painting, and the cyclical recurrence of assemblage in western art history. The traditional still-life object is examined through the lens of my material-gathering process at estate sales. Objects reconstituted at these sales are the impetus for an investigation of the still-life object’s connection to magic, the mutability of meaning, and the fading American middle class. The use of these objects for assemblage sculptures in the studio prompts a discussion of the history of assemblage and found-object sculpture in Dada, Merz, Surrealism, and contemporary practice. …

It's The Funerals I Missed Which Haunt Me The Most, Arno Goetz

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

What makes a photograph great? This is the central question which guides my research, and I answer this question in two parts. The first element is the structure of the photograph, which Robert Adams addresses in his collection of essays, Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. With the guiding principle that structure can provide harmony in an image, I develop a collection of guidelines for composing images and name them the “Rules of Clarity.” The purpose of these rules is to help photographers create harmonious compositions, free from distractions. When a photograph has few distractions, it …

Usage And Effects Of Video Games In Education, Kevin Sagara

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

In modern society, the act of playing games entices certain prejudices towards those who decide to participate in such activities. Those prejudices normally revolve around negative stereotypes where games are meant for non-social adults and are seen as something akin to addiction if gone too far. But how much gaming is needed to be considered as an addiction and what actual effects does it have on mental growth, social capabilities and academics? As a community revolving around technology as much as we are, understanding how video games play a role in our social space is an important aspect to growth. …

Crystal Queer: Fracturing The Binaries Of Matter, Creation, And Landscape, Sarah Knight

Graduate School of Art Theses

In this thesis, I compile a series of fragments consisting an analysis of my artwork in the gendered contexts of landscape, self-identity, mythology, and philosophy. I develop my concept of a “queer mark” in my art that serves as a form of queering, a disruption of visual and conceptual cohesion. I form a picture of how our contemporary selves are influenced by our gendered understanding of the landscape through the analysis of philosophical, artistic, and mythological concepts of creation. I see my sculptures as an atlas to an alternative means of understanding identity, a queering of these historical and exclusionary …

The Darkness Needs To Cry, Damaris Dunham

Graduate School of Art Theses

I construct large-scale, layered, three-dimensional paintings that symbolically allude to both body and landscape. I attempt to use my hands and embodied self to form a space of contemplation for the viewer as she walks alongside the work, experiencing it. The work exists in the realm of the sensed and the sensorial and creates both spaces of excess and of lack that correlate with my thinking of philosophical notions of the grotesque and the void. In a way, I blend elements of psychoanalysis and art making together. I discuss the origins of the term, uncanny, as one of the few …

How Do Video Games Affect The Brain?, Kenneth Lee

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

Video games are a wildly popular past time in not only America, but other countries as well. Its popularity has done nothing but increase in an exponential fashion, engulfing more and more members of society in its reach; however, its gaining traction in combination with behavioral observations and frequent violent events compelled many to question its effects on those who play them. Some attribute tragedies like recent school shootings to the vast array of First Person Shooter(FPS) games, blaming it for engraining in adolescents’ and adults’ brains a sense of increased aggression and violence. Others praise educational games for stimulating …

To Participate In The Image: Reification & Reproduction, Justine Xi

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Spanning sculpture, video, and installation, I develop my work through techniques of collage and (re)appropriation to investigate and criticize Western hegemonic perceptions and representations of the (Asian) Other. I investigate perceptions of Asianness in the Western imagination from Orientalism to Techno-Orientalism, demonization and fetishization, focusing on the circulation of imagery in art, media, and popular culture. Further, I draw attention to the internalization of these standards and what it means to participate in the construction and distribution of the image, its implications and perceptions.

A Drawing A Day Keeps The Pandemic Away: Vol 5, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

A Drawing a Day Keeps the Pandemic Away

The project is called A Drawing a Day Keeps the Pandemic Away. We created it on March 17th, which was the day when we realized that we weren’t going to be able to go back into the museum and continue installing the exhibitions we had been planning to open on March 27th. People were asking us what we, as an art museum, were going to do to reach out to the community during the pandemic shutdown and honestly we were wondering that ourselves, so we had an online brainstorming session and came up with the idea of posting a daily …

Gaming Art History: A Study Of Game-Based Pedagogy And Its Applications In Art History, David Desouto

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Today, high school and college students are likely to be exposed to famous architecture through video games that feature historical settings before learning about it in an academic setting. Architecture plays a fundamental role in these games, and they often include sites that are relevant to art history. This paper investigates how video games can be used as pedagogical tools in art history. Accurately-replicated historical sites in video games are accessible to audiences who may not be interested otherwise, and scholars suggest that their use in the classroom can enhance students’ understanding and push more advanced material. Drawing from the …

Branding On A Budget: Marketing In The Nonprofit Sector, Nicholas Biere

Honors Projects

“Branding on a Budget: Marketing in the Nonprofit Sector” This service learning project combines academic research with experiential service learning. The purpose of this project was to create a strong brand for BeInstrumental, a nonprofit music education organization from Toledo, Ohio through the creation of a graphic branding plan. Principles of visual communication technology, graphic design, marketing strategies, branding, and graphic design are all implemented in this project.

A Drawing A Day Keeps The Pandemic Away: Vol 4, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

A Drawing a Day Keeps the Pandemic Away

The project is called A Drawing a Day Keeps the Pandemic Away. We created it on March 17th, which was the day when we realized that we weren’t going to be able to go back into the museum and continue installing the exhibitions we had been planning to open on March 27th. People were asking us what we, as an art museum, were going to do to reach out to the community during the pandemic shutdown and honestly we were wondering that ourselves, so we had an online brainstorming session and came up with the idea of posting a daily …

Big Girl | Little Girl, Emily Mueller

Graduate School of Art Theses

In my thesis document, I unpack the relationship of my photographs to space, bodies, language, and childhood through a feminist lens. The interaction with these various aspects alludes to larger societal structures that inform identity. I am interested in the negotiation between gender and the way it informs the occupation of space, both photographic and physical. The intersection between subjects and objects is dissected using the definitions of these terms set forth by Judith Butler. Becoming a subject does not indicate that one is free from the power that creates it. The figure in my photographs wonders if attempting to …

Pleasure Is All Mine, Lola Ogbara

Graduate School of Art Theses

One’s identity is shaped by many factors such as race, culture, physical appearance, nationality, and religion—amongst many more. As an artist, the subjugation of identity in the context of race, gender, and sexuality is a world I examine closely. Subverting myths of sexual deviancy and racial inferiority that perpetually pathologizes Black feminine sexuality, I often use and reference my own body to create avenues of power through physical and intellectual pleasure. Through material use of clay, metal, photography, and installation, I emphasize on how contemporary Black social cultures are able to write their own narratives in order to further progressions …

Alternative Methods, Hunter Stabler

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

In the realm of precognitive artmaking, the artist’s role is that of an antenna. One must be receptive to the subtle, invisible flow of creative novelty in order to participate in the involuntary channeling of new ideas, new processes, and alternative methods of creative production. Carving out new territory within the realm of static art is a primary objective for my artistic process. By utilizing digital fabrication tools, paired with my affinity for intricate craft and optical metagrobolization, I have created a body of work that invents alternative processes and unique aesthetic languages.

Digital imaging, digital modeling and digital …

Gaia Bioplastics: A Design Exploration Of Bioplastics Through A Brand Campaign, Kelsey Long

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The world is drowning in petroleum-based plastics. Plastics and their byproducts have created an environmental crisis by polluting our oceans and negatively affecting human health and diverse ecosystems around the world. Alternative bioplastics sourced from plants, especially hemp, seaweed, and lignin (organic polymers in wood and bark), offer promising solutions. Still, bioplastics currently make up only one percent of the global plastics market. My undergraduate scholarship in Graphic Design aims to build a consumer awareness campaign of bioplastics and promote their viability through branding, logos, and advertising designs. Based on research into hemp, seaweed, and lignin-sourced bioplastics, I have developed …

Recreating The Virtual Bullets That Pierces Through The Soul Of Gaming: Video Games And Its Cultural Perception On America’S Violent Homefrontier, Brandon Palomino

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

For the past fifty years, video games have been around as a form of entertainment we consume on a daily basis. Unlike the books and movies seen in pop culture today, video games take us on virtual journeys where people participate in unique gameplay objectives based on player involvement. Because the idea of player engagement was rare at the time, it was inevitable that video games would revolutionize the way we view entertainment onwards. With video games becoming increasingly popular throughout the years, the debate of whether they are truly violent in nature has rubbed many people like myself the …

Chemistry In Art: The Science Of Dye, Madeleine Gray Burland

Honors Projects

Fabric arts, and the practice of dyeing fabric using various resist techniques, is a tradition that goes back centuries, and is unique among art mediums in its relation to science, as the innovations in dye production have directly affected the art form. The development of synthetic dyes in the 1800’s greatly affected the way fabric is dyed, and subsequently the way clothes were made and consumed. As opposed to dyes made of natural materials, synthetic dyes cam in more colors, were brighter, easier to make in large quantities, and lasted longer since they didn’t fade with repeated washings. The practice …

Zentangles For Mental Health Awareness, Rachel Immel

Honors Projects

The world is starting to see the rise of a stress related epidemic. Finding time to balance the struggles of everyday life, like academics, finances, careers and relationships, while also maintaining personal mental health is becoming increasingly difficult. This is what prompted me to use my project as an opportunity to help people relieve stress and create a community through the use of art, especially during a time where social interaction has been severely limited due to COVID-19.

My project is a series of live-streamed Zentangle art classes I hosted personally that were open to the public through Zoom. Zentangle …

Redefining Gender & Gender Expression Through Self-Perceptions & Self-Reflections, Deborah O. Ade

Publications and Research

As societies evolve policies are developed to recognize and formalize these changes. One current context for change is New York City and the concept that has undergone significant change is gender. Many individuals no longer identify with the traditional binary distinction of male or female. Subsequently, new gender categories have emerged (e.g., bi-gender, pan gender, androgynous). Indeed, a total of 31 gender categories have been recognized by the NYC Commission of Human Rights. The goal behind this acknowledgement is to encourage equitable treatment and respect of all individuals within the workplace. NYC businesses that do not accommodate individuals identifying with …

The Always And Never Seen, Linnea Ryshke

Graduate School of Art Theses

In my art practice, I strive to recover the value of non-human animals as fellow beings with whom we are in relation. In the last decade, “the animal question” has gained momentum across disciplines, and I situate myself as part of the effort to challenge the denigration of nonhuman animals that has led to the widespread exploitation of their labor and bodies. In my practice, I create paintings, drawings and mixed-media collages that recover the genesis of the word “animal” as meaning one with breath, one with soul. Through expressionist mark and material tactility, I create intimate and large-scale works …

The Life And Struggles Of Red Cockaded Woodpeckers, Michaela Gay

Honors Theses

This series of paintings focuses on red cockaded woodpeckers, an endangered species of bird and the longleaf pines forests which they live in and are reliant upon. I drew my inspiration mostly from personal experience with my family’s own efforts to restore one of these forests as well as my longstanding belief in the importance of protecting the environment. However, the point of these paintings is not to preach to people, but rather to show them the beauty of these trees and birds, so they can perhaps begin to care about them themselves instead of just being told that they …

Art Of Darkness, Sarah Roper

Honors Theses

This paper describes the process, production, and explanation of Art of Darkness, an artistic expression of the struggle with anxiety. All of the work is inspired by literature and art from the English Romantic and Victorian eras, and focuses on quotes about the mind, emotions, and other thought processes. As each piece highlights a different aspect of anxiety, it also portrays the struggles of anxiety through color palette, printing process, and symbolism. These printed pieces consist of letter-press printed materials, with ink-wiped backgrounds and hand-stitched details. Also included are large-scale prints with silkscreened foregrounds, a selection of bookmarks, a …

Sobremesa: The Time Spent Savoring Food And Friendship, Rosa V. Salas Gonzalez

Honors Theses

Sobremesa is the culmination of five different ceramic sets handcrafted and uniquely made as a way to enhance the experience of eating and sharing food. This work honors the Latino and Hispanic tradition of Sobremesa, which is the time we spend sharing special moments with friends and family after eating. I explore the relevance of sharing meals as a member of a Venezuelan family and how these memories of my childhood before moving away to another country relates to the way in which I approach the creation of my functional vessel’s aesthetic and conceptual background.

The pieces that make up …

Female Leaders Navigate The Arts, Post 'Me Too', Peyton Kennedy

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

As the lights dim and the curtain rises on a theatrical production, there are roles to fill onstage and off. Perhaps the most important roles in modern theatre are those of leadership. Leaders in the arts have the power to influence company communication, shape the culture of the rehearsal room and navigate through a crisis. However, leadership and power can be manipulated, as the world witnessed through the ‘me too’ movement. As allegations rose against prominent leaders, the push for change strengthened. We are now three years past Hollywood’s ignition of the ‘me too’ movement, which prompts the question: have …