Art and Design Commons^™

Quiet Moments, Deitra Charles

CGU MFA Theses

I am a figurative artist who focuses on ordinary people and everyday objects. I paint moments. A moment of peace, a moment of tranquility, a moment of contemplation. It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of day-to-day life – that they give you the opportunity to experience life differently, stirring within you some sense of peace.

It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of …

Sculpture As Souvenir: Reportable And Repeatable, Ashlyn Lee

Art Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, an analysis of the site as material, process, and concept for an artwork results in an understanding of the art object as a souvenir. Reportable and repeatable experiences are discussed and remembered in the six works of the Qualifying Thesis Exhibition at the Pollock Gallery. Of the six works is an installation, Catfish Fence, and five small works displayed on the gallery window sill: Bundle, Posted: No Trespassing, Sling, Right Recipe, and Margie Ruth’s Swing Where the Wasp Bit Me. Susan Stewart’s discussion of souvenirs from On Longing (1984) serves as a tool for considering the art …

Promoting Resilience In Economically Disadvantaged Adolescents Through School-Based Expressive Arts Groups, Bailey Knox

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Since 2013, the majority of students served by the public school system in the United States have been considered “low-income” by the federal government. The stressors associated with low socioeconomic status significantly increase risk for social, emotional and behavioral challenges at all age levels, but can be particularly damaging to adolescents coping with heightened stress levels related to the intense multi-dimensional changes that define this developmental period. As the correlation between economic disadvantage and negative socio-emotional and academic outcomes is increasingly evidenced, schools have begun to recognize their responsibility for providing preventative mental health care to high-risk students. Over the …

Expressive Mindfulness: A Trauma-Sensitive Expressive Arts Therapy Group Method, Meghan Daly

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Mindfulness and expressive arts therapy are both supportive of directing attention in a manner that promotes integration and function of a person. In this paper, a trauma-sensitive method was created for use in a day treatment setting for adults with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI). This method utilized expressive movement, visual art making with three different materials, and creative writing to encourage mindful, non-judgmental acceptance of the present moment; a sense of relaxation; and an overall increase in quality of life. During development of the method arts-based research informed the choice of materials, music, and structure of the group. …

A Tale Of Two Dogs Fine Art Exhibit, Jeff Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is a formal examination of the fine art exhibit titled A Tale of Two Dogs by Jeffrey A. Harris as a partial fulfillment of requirements for a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stephen F. Austin State University.

By examining the multiple established points of view within his artwork, the author questions these establishments and asks if this approach leads to a relevant way of seeing. Using expanded polystyrene foam as a sculpture medium, a series of artworks created during the MFA research process are conceptually analyzed to explore the value of maintaining a multiplicity …

A Journey Into My Mind, Shen Chen Hsieh

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

During my time as a student in the MFA in Visual Study Program, I have been interested in creating imagery that expresses my inner world that is based on my emotional experience. I believe my identity is influenced by my multi-cultural background, relationships, daily moments and my own introverted personality. I continue to experiment with various mediums and visual styles to communicate these feelings. Drawing, silk-screen printing, mixed media, and three-dimensional sculpture are the main mediums in my artwork. Exploring diverse mediums provides me opportunities to develop my self exploration in my images. I seek to express and understand the …

Journey To My Roots, Ainura Ashirova Barron

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This autobiographical body of work is a visual journey that involved the investigation of my personal identity and roots as well as the exploration of my cultural history through a process that relied on photographs, stories and family traditions, such as crafting. I consider this process and practice to be my passage into a globalized society while simultaneously finding my niche in my newly adopted country of America.

My Work - My Diary - My Inner Thoughts, My Que Luu

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

My work is about my self-discovery. Upon my move to the United States to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies, I took the opportunity to explore the concept of “self-image” and tell my life story, which I rarely discuss in real life conversations. rough my body of work, I intend to identify and expose my true-self.

A Vestige Of The Ultimate Force Of Time And Space, Jiyoung Megan Lee

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This art statement is rooted in an idea that the existential quality is independent of absence and presence (synonymous to appearing and disappearing, and real and recognition) and distilled physicality of human body creates a parallel relationship between the two. In search of a proof and logic for articulating the central idea, –that the absence does not define evanescence of existence— the application of physical interactivity in my art, also known as relational aesthetic, enables the work to invite viewers in a way that the interactors leave their traces by physically interacting with the work. These individual traces are eventually …

Spring 2019

In The Loop

Lab Life: New and improved School of Computing labs inspire research in robotics and engineering; A Festival to Remember: Students thrive in film festival environments; Next Gen Data Scientists: Data Science Academy introduces high school students to the big world of data; A Well-Designed Design Colloquium; Game Face: "Sausage Sports Club: creator and CDM alumnus Chris Wade shares the story behind his playful Nintendo Switch game: Connected from Afar: Graduate student Sierra Sellman makes the most of her online degree program; Seen and Heard; Bravo! Bravo!

Her Anticipation, Cora Rozencohn

Graduate School of Art Theses

My thesis paper will explore my artistic practice by analyzing my thesis video project,Her Anticipation. I will accomplish this by examining three main topics: The essential elements of the video, the video’s relationship to my earlier work, and a discussion of the video and its structure with representative examples.

The first essential element of the video springs from my relationship with my husband, especially the aspect of the relationship that is tied up with our nearly forty-year age difference. The second element is my personal experience filtered through a deep reading of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. The third element …

Breaking The Fourth Wall: Avenues For Empathy Through Participation And Interaction, Grace Zajdel

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Abstract:

Theater is used as a lens through which I view the act of role play in participatory and interaction based artworks. I examine the elements of Action – in participatory or performance works—and Set—in immersive installation works – for their effectiveness in creating avenues for empathetic relations in my own work and that of contemporary artists. I distinguish between the overblown spectacle of Peter Brook’s Deadly Theater and connect the mission of the Holy Theater to that of my own art practice. Performance, immersive installation, participation and interaction thereby serve to allow the artwork’s participants to engage in role-taking …

Material Memory, Merry Sun

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Memory may be implicitly embedded into an artwork through explicit material triggers. Materials can evoke memory through material past life and through physical denotations of the past. The former carries with it the weight of existence; the latter demonstrates tangibly what cannot be captured by words. The material triggers act as semantic memories that can be used to construct an experiential, episodic memory in the mental faculties of the viewer. The memory that is contained within the work must be implicit in nature to carry experience, for explicit memory can only be read semantically. As the viewer strives to reach …

Black Stereotype, Rashonda Daniels, Blaize'b Daniels

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my work, I create my own narrative regarding the stereotyping of Black people. The body of work that is discussed focuses in on the history of the Black stereotypes that dates as far back as the slavery era. Through my art practice, I address how the contemporary mistreatment of Black people stems from the historical foundation of negative Black stereotypes that were imposed upon us by Europeans. My hope is that by confrontingour history we can eliminate so called “Black behavior” or bad behavior and accept it as simply normal human behavior.

Grids Within Grids, Lingrong Wang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Combined with my art practice, this thesis acts as a lens for the universe within the little grids I create. Instead of using brushes and pigments, I’m searching for a different way to represent strokes to form abstract images. I’m interested in using a folding method to make one page of printed paper into multiple layers. It is fascinating to transform single sheets of paper from magazines. The magazines that I have collected show people’s personal interests. These everyday items give hints and first impressions of meaning to the viewer, but I fold the magazines to make them unreadable in …

The Psychos, Paula N. Stevenson

Graduate School of Art Theses

My current body of work is a series of drawings that juxtapose characters of fiction and reality in an attempt to explore the relationship between horror film and contemporary social issues. I strive to render an accurate portrayal of the face to draw the viewer into questioning the troubling narrative these characters illuminate. I focus on retelling stories of fear and horror, and crime and infamy. I want my work to convey ethical dilemmas as they are present within the relationship between horror movie antagonists and the audience (all of us). It is these concerns I attempt to visualize in, …

Dialogical Practice, Meenakshi Jha

Graduate School of Art Theses

Within an interdisciplinary and dialogical practice where process is as significant as final form/s, I delve in matters not to resolve but to explore them. Digging deep in my studio practice over my philosophical yearnings to talking loud and clear about my life in performances, I venture out in the geographical expanse to connect with self and others. In fact, the more I practice my craft, I feel a lesser and lesser gap between my ‘self’ and others. The walk outwards brings me closer to my internal realizations as a human being. In short, my practice is based on the …

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Feeling Blue, Katherine Ewald

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

“Feeling Blue” discusses the intersection between art and science as it relates to my thesis body of work entitled Bed/Room. I delve into the sensory world of art, diving into how our environment can have an effect on our neurological and emotional state of being. This is explored through different pathways, namely the color blue, seasonal affective disorder, and the senses. The artwork reflects these ideas, providing a multi sensory environment with the goal of promoting tranquility. Through my process of creating the piece, my intentions shifted to removing Bed/Room from the fine arts context and transferring it into the …

Skin, Bones + Bags: Investigating The Death Of Marine Ecosystems, Rylie Walter

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Plastic has become ubiquitous in the oceans. Although a convenient and cheap way to distribute goods around the world, plastic is also a leading cause for the death of many marine ecosystems. Walter explores her personal connection to the ocean, researches the relationship between plastic pollution and the ocean, and examines art as a means for inciting social change to protect and restore ocean environments. By using plastic as her main material for making art, Walter transforms the material from one that harms into one that can be calming and peaceful, while still representing the destruction it causes.

Clash Of The Titans, Kevin Mccoy

Graduate School of Art Theses

My artistic practice utilizes a hybrid of media such as serigraphs, lithographs, hand-made publications, installations, archival documents and video-based works to address master narratives and to challenge historical records. I closely examine the relationship between archived information and redacted histories and their effects on the collective and historical consciousness. I am interested in creating counter-archives to challenge the authority behind archival systems and interrogate their mutability. I also borrow from the same visual language of traditional archival systems to reveal institutional and historical skeletons. Due to my personal research, I have morphed into an archivist myself collecting bodies of hidden …

Concrete Poetry, Sara Ghazi Asadollahi

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text addresses my work as an artist and defines it in the context of the following subjects: The concept of ruins, which highlights the relationship between architecture and landscape; the formal and metaphorical dialectic between absence and presence in abandoned places; and the idea of dystopia, which emerges from that in-between space where the real dissolves into the imaginary. At the same time, my work is inspired by the visual culture of cinema and literature, principally within the science-fiction genre, and draws upon my observation of abandoned buildings in Tehran, my native city. These urban ruins are products of …

For Cheryl: The Long And The Short Of It, Rachel Lebo

Graduate School of Art Theses

Short stories are an indirect way of creating a truth by showing instead of telling. They are a way to observe and communicate a single idea. A short story for me is a vehicle for hiding my truth behind a character, exploring myself in the safety of an identity that is not my own. When I read Chunky in Heat, author A.M. Homes and I hide together behind her character, Cheryl, and find solidarity.

The following writings, paintings, and sculptures are collaborations between myself and the women of short story fiction. Those women being the authors, the subjects, and …

Through The Looking Glass: Marie Antoinette, The Mafia And The Buddha, Craig G. Foisy

Theses and Dissertations

Through the Looking Glass: Marie Antoinette, the Mafia & the Buddhais a short documentary film that recounts six chapters from the autobiography of Marie Antoinette. No, not that last Queen of France who got her head chopped off. This Marie Antoinette lives in Woodstock, NY (“but I do like cake!” says Marie from inside her shop). And yes, Marie Antoinette is her real name. She is 78 years old and she sells what she calls “wearable art” out of a ramshackle and overstuffed boutique in town. Marie is facing the possible closure of her shop: her 100-year-old …

Aer-075, Yasmin Soliman

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Anticipating the potential future changes of airport design and expansion along with city planning for the purpose of bringing the two entities in closer alignment with one another is the main purpose of this book.

By conducting a timeline analysis of five different US cities and their airports, conclusions were drawn from tracking the relationship between the growth patterns of both. This allowed for a discovery of methods to increase connectivity with one another. These conclusions were followed by an overview of the jet industry and its possible future impacts on the way airports are designed, considering future adaptations of …

[In]Hospitable, Pedro Borquez, Taylor Wolak

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Through comparative analysis of existing development in this region, this project identifies archetypes of ranging scale and magnitude which will influence evidence-based adaptive reuse design strategies and prototypical responses. With such a vast infrastructure, many opportunities exist to subvert paradigm shifts of thinking in terms of desert living, resource management, and utility distribution.

Artscape, Emylanie Carnate, Ronald Cano

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

In this thesis, three design opportunities are presented. The first design iteration looks at the micro scale. Public infrastructure along the length of the strip serves as canvases for public art. By expressing art on posts, utility boxes, guardrails, and bollards, a consistent rhythm of public art along the strip links together the separated attractions and properties. To emphasize this connection, the second design iteration implements intermittent hooks. Here, the meso scale reinforces public art interventions on medium-scale sites, such as street medians. The third design iteration is in the macro scale, which involves artscape anchors at either end of …

Confronting The Uncomfortable, Kathryn Clapsaddle

Honors Projects

With this Honors Project, I wanted to explore some issues that might be uncomfortable through the design and creation of jewelry. The Confronting the Uncomfortable section of the project accomplished this goal. These pieces explored themes such as issues with society and the world today. I also wanted to complete a project that combines jewelry with technology to improve some aspects of the health field. The Jewelry Design in the Medical Field section of the honors project accomplished this goal. This part of the project focused on updating the medical alert bracelet design and technological integration to make these tools …

I Like To Watch: A Literal Rendering Of My Own Gaze, Jenna R. Gribbon

Theses and Dissertations

Much of the pleasure of encountering the human form in paint derives from the access granted by the artist to their subject. My work highlights my own role in looking, and aims to make the the viewer aware of the ways in which they are implicated when consuming figurative work.

The Dream Of Being Totally Open, Frederick Greis

Theses and Dissertations

This essay details four major themes in the paintings of Frederick Greis: spiritual experience, nature, pleasure, and humor. These themes are described within the context of the artist's main goal, which is to create an experience of profound unburdening.