Art and Design Commons^™

5010, Clare Hu

Theses and Dissertations

Working with the structure of a table top, Clare Hu churns through digital image and woven cloth, asking how much each medium can bear.

Science, Fiction, James Nick Peelor

Theses and Dissertations

Science, Fiction is about death, mental health, UFOs, and having a mutifaceted art practice rooted in a DIY ethos.

Public Art And Military Technology At The Mexico-U.S. Border: Disrupting Boundaries On Battlegrounds, Anna Luise Kaunert

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary artists Rubén Ortiz Torres, Chico MacMurtrie, rafa esparza, and Cassils transformed military technologies into powerful artworks that interrogate the Mexico-U.S. border as a battlefield. Together, their works illuminate militarization and surveillance technologies at the border and the violent enforcement of U.S. immigration policy.

Into Dust, Olivia Lutz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines charcoal as both material and metaphor, tracing its relationship to grief, memory, light, and transformation.

Voyager, Ben K. Voss

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores painting as a site of meditation, time and (un)knowability.

Containment, Quin Mittelstead

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores “containment" (the act of keeping something within limits) as both oppressive control and a mode of self-regulation, grounded in the author’s experience with epilepsy. Paintings deploy grayscale grounds, restrained palettes, and contrasting rapid/slow gestures; emergent color, texture, and altered substrates map psychological states, bodily impulses, and reactive processes. Research into witchcraft, remedial items, and eugenics (notably Buck v. Bell) informs works that link historical censorship and institutional violence to contemporary stigma. Sculptural installations (nets, jute, flawed Faraday-like enclosures) and cannibalized studio materials probe systems that restrain thought, media, and bodies. By introducing unpredictable variables with found supports, …

New Clubs: Taking Roots, Diorama, 1981

Documents

Article with photographs describing the 1981 introduction of four new campus organizations: Delta Sigma Theta, Ascending Voices, Fashion Forum, and the University of North Alabama Film Society. The article is derived from the Diorama, the student yearbook.

Internalizing Diasporic Peoples: How Do We Keep Native Hawaiians Connected?, Kallie P. Kaaihue-Paopao

Whittier Scholars Program

In the attempt to better understand the grounds for the generation culture disconnect of identity in Native Hawaiians, I study the diaspora of my people. Diaspora is the dispersion of people from their native lands. I find interest in this aspect of my people because the most common studies blame our dispersion on socioeconomic status and as a Native Hawaiian that wishes to do more for her people, I want to express that while it plays a part that there is a disconnection between the social actions and reactions of Hawaiʻi’s people. Common questions that I find unanswered are, why …

Chandu, Ira Satpathy '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Ira is a rising junior majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. They work at The DePauw, and also host a podcast on feminist philosophy. Ira loves to draw portraits, play badminton, and scroll their Substack feed endlessly.

Home, Graciela Salgado '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Graciela Salgado is a Sophomore Computer Science and Design Studies major at DePauw. She loves photography and is inspired by her Mexican culture. She loves scrapbooking, graphic design, and web development.

Biophilia 3, Justine Vandenberg '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Justine Vandenberg is an Environmental Fellow at DePauw University majoring in Global (Environmental) Health and Sustainability. She is also a writer, poet, and photographer who is passionate about using artistic forms to advocate for the health of ecosystems and human communities. To Justine, nature is home, and art is activism.

Mondays At Moore's, Jane Duffy '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Jane Duffy is an English Writing and Studio Art double major at DePauw University. She is a painter, a creative writer, and the Editor-in-chief of A Midwestern Review for her fourth year of involvement. She enjoys hiking, drinking coffee, travelling, and creating things inspired by observation of the world around her.

Mk R/2, Ira Satpathy '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Ira is a rising junior majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. They work at The DePauw, and also host a podcast on feminist philosophy. Ira loves to draw portraits, play badminton, and scroll their Substack feed endlessly.

Angel De La Playa, Graciela Salgado '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Graciela Salgado is a Sophomore Computer Science and Design Studies major at DePauw. She loves photography and is inspired by her Mexican culture. She loves scrapbooking, graphic design, and web development.

Celestial Wings, Rori Mullen '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Rori Mullen is a senior in studio art and psychology at DePauw University. Working with ceramics and textiles, she makes multisensory works that depict nature imagery and is inspired by her studies in psychology.

River House, Jane Duffy '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Jane Duffy is an English Writing and Studio Art double major at DePauw University. She is a painter, a creative writer, and the Editor-in-chief of A Midwestern Review for her fourth year of involvement. She enjoys hiking, drinking coffee, travelling, and creating things inspired by observation of the world around her.

Sensory Garden, Rori Mullen '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Rori Mullen is a senior in studio art and psychology at DePauw University. Working with ceramics and textiles, she makes multisensory works that depict nature imagery and is inspired by her studies in psychology.

Unknowing Connections, Samaira Snow '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Samaira Snow is a senior at DePauw University where she will graduate in May 2026 with double majors in Studio Art and Art History and a minor in Education Studies. Her work is often inspired by procedural efforts and plays with the relationship of layering and texture. She has started to participate in exhibitions.

Untitled, Lindsay Hontz '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Lindsay Hontz is a Senior Creative Writing Major and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Minor. After graduation she plans to seek her graduate degree in Archival Studies. She enjoys photography and typically shoots film. She loves to cook and bake in her free time.

The Queer South, Brylan Cole

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people in the Southern United States are systematically and culturally made invisible, both in historical and contemporary contexts. I founded The Queer South magazine alongside Reid Pinckard, organized the exhibition Prioritizing Pleasure in the Queer South, and created a body of work to amplify LGBTQ+ Southern voices. Through community organizing, writing, and the making of objects, my practice provides representation to an underserved and overlooked community in the region I call home.

Self-Fashioning In Contemporary Figurative Painting, Hal Hardin

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper positions my painting practice as a form of resistance to historical constructions of gender, identity, and visibility, shaped by my experience as a queer, nonbinary person navigating womanhood in the American South. Drawing on Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, I argue that Western figurative painting has long disciplined the feminine body, exploiting it and commodifying it into an easily consumable object.

In response, I appropriate and distort these visual conventions. My figures refuse to behave: they stretch, slouch, and linger in ambiguity, resisting fixed interpretation. Placed in spaces of visibility and …

When Mac Shouldn’T Smile Back: Anthropomorphic Logo And Effect On Consumer Perceptions Of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Ainsley E. Ballard

Honors Scholar Theses

Drawing on prior research suggesting that anthropomorphic design can increase trust, liking, and perceived competence, this research investigates whether these effects extend to generative artificial intelligence logos. A three-group between-subjects study was conducted to examine how varying levels of logo anthropomorphization influenced consumer perceptions of an artificial intelligence brand. In being assigned to one of three logo conditions, humanoid (high anthropomorphism), animalistic (moderate anthropomorphism), or nature/geometric (low anthropomorphism), participants evaluated the new logo across multiple dimensions, including liking, brand fit, trustworthiness, and willingness to buy. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, the low anthropomorphism condition consistently received the most positive ratings, …

Fears Revealed, Rebecca Tirado

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Artist Statement

Fears revealed is about moving through life while dealing with the fears we hide and choose to not face. The artworks I have created are made using acrylic paint, and have unsettling faces to express the battles within many people. My artworks depict some of the things that unsettle me the most. For example the paintings of insects, eyes, and teeth, embody the physical reactions, thoughts, and emotion that doesn't sit right within people. A natural way I tend to deal with negative emotions is to suppress them and not deal with it until it causes further damage. …

Rooted Transformations, Ricardo D. Moctezuma

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In my ventures through art I realized that I underwent an experience that was tailored to my process of release. As I struggled to share my emotions, I became distant and dissociated, I felt detached from others and even from myself. This process was something I visualized in my art from, the Tears, to Self Destruction, to the Release and onto the Garden. I’ve always felt myself in a state of Release, partly healed and partly damaged. All I knew was that the garden represented a new beginning for me, I just never knew what that Garden was. Time passes …

¿Cómo Anda La Chamba?/How’S Work?, Alexander Valdez Jr.

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

¿Cómo Anda La Chamba?/How’s Work? explores the conditions, experiences, and broadness of what labor is and how we see labor currently. Alexander draws on his lived work experiences to question how companies operate and to challenge the way workers are often undervalued and treated as disposable. Raised in a working-class family, Alexander’s view of labor was shaped not only by his lived experiences, but also his parents’. Each artwork communicates a different work environment and experience that he’s had. These places and interactions have influenced his work by making him question the definition of labor and how the working class …

Nasty, Mya L. Correa

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I am exploring artwork about women’s power and sexuality, centering on hair. I’m interested in how hair carries history and how it has been used to control and frighten women. I’ve been reading feminist artists’ books and researching their findings alongside my own work. Drawing on my personal history, my mother’s story, and the experience of raising my daughters, I consider how my children’s lives differ from mine and my mother’s, and what those differences reveal.

Hair has long been wielded as a weapon to enforce expectations on women’s bodies by a society afraid of losing control. As creators of …

Heirlooms Of Virtu, Santos Nunez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Heirlooms of Virtu explores familial history as a mode of self-study. By examining childhood, the more possible it can be to navigate the contemporary. Research into the self becomes the bridge between two states of being, allowing for a better understanding and a more purposeful approach to the future.

As an artist working primarily in photography and video, I am recontextualizing key nostalgic concepts with technology through interactive sculptures and video installations. My research alludes to classic toys and technologies specific to my childhood in an effort to find and understand the self. Nostalgia as an idea not only exists …

Between Chronicle And Legend: A Two-Scene Environment And Visual Effects Examination Of Physical Accuracy And Emotional Exaggeration On The Honey Creek Bridge Collapse, Alison R. Gaddy

All Theses

This thesis explores how truth and dramatization intersect in digital storytelling by comparing realistic and stylized simulations of the Honey Creek bridge collapse within the context of the Kate Shelley animated short. At the core of storytelling lies a tension between factual accuracy and dramatic stylization. We investigate that tension by examining how narrative truth is conveyed, distorted, or enhanced through visual dramatization by focusing on the psychology of audience perception and the motivations behind creative embellishment. The practical contribution of this research is the development of two distinct digital scene setups depicting the same Honey Creek bridge collapse event. …

Desert Ghost, Jessica Downs

All Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and the body through handmade paper installations inspired by the deserts of southwestern Utah. Drawing from personal experience of place and the loss of a childhood home, the work considers how environments are internalized and persist as shifting, sensory impressions rather than fixed geographies. The desert becomes a generative site for examining presence, transformation, and the passage of time, both geologic and personal.

I use handmade paper and installation to translate my experience of place into physical form. Paper serves as both material and metaphor; its fibers, textures, and muted tones emulate …

Weaving Ideology: Textiles In Florentine And Venetian Painting Of The Cinquecento, Ruben Verità

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Renaissance art historical scholarship has largely ignored the political and cultural significance woven into the representation of textiles, as well as their communicative potential in paintings. In this study, I examine how textiles in their various forms carry the potential to go beyond their normative categorization as decoration. Through a comparative analysis of the paintings produced in two politically distinct polities—Florence and Venice—during the sixteenth century, I integrate Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and Michael Baxandall’s period eye to elucidate how painted fabric was not the representation of a passive decorative ornament. Rather, it was an active and legible proxy …