Art and Materials Conservation Commons^™

Uncovering The Story Of Sally Maria Johnson: Revealing The History Of The Portrait Of A Painting, Yuanzhen Song

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Portrait of Sally Maria Johnson by the artist James Johnson is a 19^th century oval shaped portrait in the collection of the Buffalo History Museum.  It suffered from structural damages and paint loss resulting from surface alterations and previous restoration campaigns.  This study combines art historical research with scientific analysis to explore both the biography of the subject and the materiality of the painting.  Through local research including historical newspaper articles in Buffalo, the story of Sally Maria Johnson (the wife of Buffalo’s first mayor) was uncovered.  High-resolution imaging techniques were used to document the surface condition and identify …

Instalasi Sebagai Ruang Traumatis: Estetika Partisipatoris Dan Pengalaman Fenomenologis Dalam Karya Jompet Kuswidananto, Muhammad Majid Amanulloh Kusmadi, A. Syaifuddin Rohman

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

This study examines Jompet Kuswidananto’s installation artworks as spaces that represent traumatic memory through bodily engagement and audience participation. The study employs a descriptive qualitative approach informed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and Claire Bishop’s perspective on participatory aesthetics. Data were collected through interviews with the artist and participants and through document analysis. The analysis focuses on two works, On Paradise #2 and Subterranean Thunder #1, selected for their relevance to traumatic memory, aesthetic experience, and audience participation. The findings show that both works construct experiences through relationships among objects, space, sound, light, and the audience’s body. Merleau-Ponty’s perspective demonstrates …

On Canvas: The Origins And Implications Of A Common Phrase, Kerr Houston

Art Inquiries

Why do modern art historians and conservators describe paintings executed on cloth in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as works on canvas, when late medieval and early Renaissance sources never do the same? This article answers that question by tracing and analyzing the evolution of canvas as a term in the history of painting. Until the late 1400s, it will be argued, the term canvas and its regional variants connoted coarse woven fabrics made of hemp that were associated with rugged, utilitarian needs and rural poverty—but not with painting. By contrast, artists and related texts relied on …

Until The Ground Breaks, Annie Hu

Masters Theses

Until the Ground Breaks explores the complex relationship between personal memory, embodied experience, and internalized "archival logic." By examining long-term cross-cultural diasporic experiences and the shifting dynamics of family narratives—including the sensory experiences and fading memory of a grandmother, a father's correspondence that acts as a textual record of emotional logic, and the continuous revision of family history—this thesis dissects the psychological tremors that occur when the illusion of a singular, stable memory archive collapses. This research rejects the view of memory as a static container of truth, revealing it instead as a dynamic, unstable, and constantly rewritten living system. …

Jewelry As A Portable Sanctuary, Yuhao Li

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how individuals remain intact in the presence of emotional difficulty. Rather than treating protection as withdrawal, the research proposes that stability emerges through the construction of an interior structure capable of holding vulnerability without collapse. Drawing on psychological theory, philosophy, and spatial thinking, it frames emotional repair as a spatial condition: an interior that can contain experience and be returned to when external conditions become unstable.
Within this framework, jewelry is redefined as a material extension of this interior. Positioned between body and world, it operates as a structure of containment, functioning as a portable …

Care As Method: Sound, Duration, Relation In Contemporary Art Practice, Violet L. White

MFA in Visual Art

Abstract Care as Method: Sound, Duration, and Multispecies Relation in Contemporary Art Practice

This thesis proposes care as a method of artmaking, not a subject, theme, or aesthetic position, but the actual structural logic through which a body of work is built, sustained, and understood. Working at the intersection of ecological art practice and relational aesthetics, it asks what happens when the encounter at the center of the work is not between two people but between species, infrastructures, and histories of use and what obligations that encounter generates.

The argument is developed through six interconnected works: installations, sound compositions, sculptures, …

Cannibalizing The American Dream: Memory, Materials, And Manifesting, Juan Hinojosa

Theses and Dissertations

Juan Hinojosa’s thesis explores collage and assemblage through discarded materials, pop culture, and personal history. He transforms found objects into layered works that reflect consumption, memory, and American identity. Moving between sculpture, painting, and installation, his practice examines excess, nostalgia, and the tension between what is consumed and what consumes him.

Weathered, Haylee A. Dyess

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Weathered focuses on themes of change, accumulation, time, and acceptance. Each artwork holds layers of information and experiences that form a unique narrative for all its viewers. The construction of each piece is a symbol of the physical ability it takes to create each painting. After my mobility was hindered due to my medical conditions, a new appreciation for physical health and the world I live in was gained. Striving to pack this sense of appreciation into my work, my method became a way for me to cope with my illness and to enjoy being creative, freely.

My art is …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Space For New History: Stony Island Arts Bank, Seb Taylor

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

The Stony Island Arts Bank (SIAB) in Southside Chicago was designed and founded as a piece of art itself, with the organizational structure being a museum of Black cultural production. This article examines how the institution constructs an epistemology of Blackness through its archival practices, community programming, and spatial claims on the South Side. Founded by artist Theaster Gates through the Rebuild Foundation, the SIAB positions institutional design as an art medium, operating in productive tension with orthodox museum methods. The permanent collections—including the Johnson Publishing Company archives and Frankie Knuckles vinyl collection—function as epistemological records of Black self-documentation unmediated …

,, Yujia Gong

Masters Theses

I am still learning how to understand the world.

As I moved through different countries, cultures, and communities, I often found myself unlearning and rebuilding what I thought I knew. At times I felt unanchored, floating without a sense of safety or belonging. So I began to walk.

Walking became my way of reconnecting. With each step, I used my senses to notice the details around me: shadows cast by sunlight; life growing from soil; the presence of buildings and objects as quiet evidence of human existence. These elements — scent, light, sound, size, temperature — shape our perception of …

The Blue Below Still Breathes, Yiyi Wang

Masters Theses

The Blue Below Still Breathes explores disappearance transformation rather than loss—a shift in visibility that reveals the pressures, absences, and structures shaping perception. Across interactive installations and print works, I examine how power operates through omission, fragility, and formal control. At the heart of this practice is printmaking, reimagined as a responsive, impermanent medium that challenges its historical association with fixedness.

The thesis installation features a 5x5 grid of thermochromic screenprints of a concrete wall, where viewer proximity activates a randomized sequence of heating panels. As heat raises the temperature of the surface, a field of blue gradually emerges, breaking …

Considering The Ethics Of Conserving American Art: White Nationalism And The Evolving Meanings Of Nineteenth-Century Genre And Landscape Painting, Evan M. Crocker

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the stylistic and conceptual qualities of American genre and landscape painting from the antebellum period and how these qualities acted in service to establishing white nationalism before the Civil War. The intricate and calculated system of typing in genre painting presented carefully crafted idealizations of quintessential Americans, defined by their whiteness and maleness. Landscape painters of the early- to mid-nineteenth century endowed their compositions with a sense of wondrous opportunity which justified and upheld westward expansion under Manifest Destiny. At the intersection of genre and landscape practices sits plantation paintings—specifically house portraits—in which the plantation serves as …

Trans-Pacific Connections: Chinese Porcelain And Aztec Motifs In Colonial Mexico, Natalia Ramirez

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This research explores artworks within the Global Baroque as visual and ideological evidence through which colonial power, trade, and cross-cultural influence shaped the material culture of the early modern world. Centering on blue and white ceramics as a key medium of transcultural and trans-local exchange, the study analyzes how global motifs, particularly those drawn from Aztec and Chinese traditions, were reinterpreted, aestheticized, and circulated in Aztec and Novohispanic artistic practices.

Through a close observational comparison of Aztec and Chinese decorative systems, the study recognizes contrasting systems of cultural documentation embedded within similar visual forms. Aztec motifs, rooted in ritual, calendrical, …

Veils Of The Unseen, Shinwoo Song

Art Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the dynamic interplay between consciousness and unconsciousness and how this relationship influences visual language in my art practice. My research investigates how unconscious impulses and conscious choices intersect in the creative process, shaping artistic expression and viewer interpretation. I examine how visual art can serve as a medium through which hidden emotional and psychological states, such as memory, desire, and internal conflict, emerge and take form. Rooted in the practice of automatism and influenced by Surrealist strategies, my work engages with theories by Jacques Lacan, particularly his notion of the gaze, and Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of extraction …

Held On By A Thread, Annie M. Hutchins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Annie Hutchins, discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Held on by a Thread, which was installed at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, TN, from March 6, 2025, through March 28, 2025, with a public reception held on March 7, 2025. The exhibition is a collection of textile works containing repurposed material artifacts of the life she shared with her maternal family since childhood. The artwork incorporates found objects from the artist’s home, including domestic textiles, clothing, handmade sewing projects, family photographs, and sewing notions. The artworks are made using the printmaking technique of photo emulsion screen …

Caring For Public Art On Campus: A Case Study In Archives, Conservation And Curation For Public Art At The City University Of New York At York College In South Jamaica, Queens (2025 Cuny Research In The Classroom Grant Project), Emily Verla Bovino

Open Educational Resources

The City University of New York (CUNY) hosts public art at many of its colleges. The practice of funding public art through the CUNY Construction Fund and the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) began after a 1966 New York State Law created a financing and construction partnership between the two entities.

As these collections of museum-quality contemporary art on CUNY campuses age and increase in value, how can care and conservation be ensured? Conceived in response to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the projected 11% growth of employment for archivists, curators, museum technicians, …

Vessels Of Spirituality: Merging Faith And Form, Maryam Al-Tajer

Theses and Dissertations

According to traditional Islamic teachings, natural materials like frankincense, black sesame seeds, and sidr (jujube) leaves are valuable both physically and spiritually. Historically, they have been used for healing and purification. Nowadays, influenced by contemporary science, people tend to overlook their metaphysical value, focusing on their medicinal uses. Similarly, Muslims assign spiritual qualities to the Muqatta’at, the disconnected letters that preface several surahs of the Holy Quran, believing them to contain sacred power. In both of these cases, the material leads to the spiritual.

Through material experimentation, informed by religious texts, my thesis combines revered materials with sacred letter forms …

The Creative Front, Aleksandr O. Barrett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss my thesis exhibition, The Creative Front, focusing on my materials, content, and context as they relate to each piece or body of work. This exhibition is the culmination of my work, which centers on my experience with the Russo-Ukrainian war. My work can be interpreted metaphorically, poetically, and directly through sculpture, installation, sound, and film. I am portraying very human stories and experiences from a full-scale war raging in Europe. My work is immersive, placing the viewer in an atmosphere of war, and conveying a sense of urgency and compassion for those who …

Technical Study And Conservation Treatment Of A Victorian-Era Taxidermy Bird Group, Daisy Greenwell

Art Conservation Master's Projects

During the Victorian era, taxidermy objects played the roles of educational tools, decoration, and personal adornment. The object at the center of this paper falls into the second category: decoration. It is a taxidermy bird life group, made up of six bird specimens, papier mâché rockwork, and dried plant material mounted on and around a faux tree armature. Owned by the Buffalo Museum of Science, it came to the Garman Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State University with no provenance record or attributions to a known maker. Two goals were developed at the onset of this project: to flesh out …

Not So Cavalier: Technical Study And Conservation Treatment Of A Potential 17th Century Anglo-Dutch Military Portrait Painting, Josephine Ren

Art Conservation Master's Projects

A potential 17^th century Anglo-Dutch military portrait painting from the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York arrived at the Garman Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State University for conservation research and treatment in 2022. The painting’s title, date, and artist were unknown and the subject was initially referred to as a “17^th Century Dutch Cavalier.” Little information existed on the provenance and history of the artwork. The painting was in a state of structural instability and aesthetic disfigurement and showed evidence of a past restoration campaign. This master’s project attempted to broadly …

A Conversation With Joe Horner (Internet Journal, Issue 001, 7-15, 2024), Joe Horner, Seb Taylor

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

A conversation with Joe Horner, the Artist and Founder of @art_as_chairs on Instagram. The cultural competency of Joe Horner ever-present, with a strong influence from the dialogue between art versus artifact. Horner finds his artwork hiding within the mundane aspects of the contemporary cultural landscape.

Strange Stranger: A Visceral Skin Glaze Exploration Into The Neurodivergent Sensory Experience, Sam J. Lucas

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Sam Lucas

Sam creates ambiguous figurative objects predominantly in clay. Her creative practice draws on her experience of being a neurodivergent woman today, by exploring aspects of her own unique neurotype.

The visceral glaze exploration pieces were the precursor to the final forms for her body of work called ‘Strange stranger’ where she is exploring the weight and awkwardness of being in the body, the pain this alienation can cause, and ironically the beauty and humour that results from this diversity.

The surfaces of the pieces were attempting to describe the interoceptive, exteroceptive and alexithymic confusion that can occur at …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Cliffhanger, Micah Mickles

MFA in Visual Art

I am Micah Mickles, a mixed-media visual artist in St. Louis, Missouri. My artwork is deeply rooted in my personal experiences and serves as a memorial and monument to counteract the enduring effects of grief and loss. What sets my work apart is the transformative impact of my everyday encounters, inspired by my 14 years of experience working at Trader Joe's. These encounters have led me to reflect on my profound connections with diverse communities. By delving into the hidden narratives of mundane materials encountered in the workplace, I prompt a reexamination of convenience and supply chain origins. Inspired by …

The Fuller The Bucket Is, The Harder It Is To Fly, Jacob Littlejohn

Theses and Dissertations

My abstract paintings are informed by the momentary sublime rooted in the vastness of the natural world. Based on imagined and real landscapes, the work evokes minutia and phenomena that affect our perceptions of reality, and signifies a longing to reconnect with the natural world.

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.

Unveiling Existentialism And Self-Expression: Utilizing The Arts, Raquel Eduardo Nunez

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This analysis is an exploration of identity through the examination of art as a means of self-expression and societal critique. It delves into existentialism to explain the impacts of art on both positive societal experiences and negative interactions unique to the immigrant and Mexican American community. The artist, Raquel Eduardo Nuñez, examines their own art to dissect their position in life as a Mexican-born individual living in a foreign country. This method was chosen to allow a space of self-reflection and awareness to explore the components that shape identity and reveal art as a medium for interpretation of links between …

From Field To Fashion: A Journey In Sustainable Design And Regional Understanding, Lily Turner

Individually Designed Interdepartmental Major Honors Project

As the fashion industry became globalized over the past century, it has become a major environment polluter and exposed laborers to hazardous conditions. This honors project considers sustainability in the textile industry at large and at the regional scale of the Upper Midwest. Its scholarly component offers an overview of the current textile production, details how the industry may become sustainable, and suggests practices of environmentally-conscious and ethical design. The creative component is a soil-to-soil seasonless capsule collection titled From Field View that incorporates biomimicry and interrogates the concept of place by referencing the Midwest’s flora, wool, and linen fibers.

Strands Of Repair: Textile Treasures As Sustainable Pathways To Reconnect With The Lost Past, Sareekah Agarwaal, Ruby Kashyap Sood

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles, fundamental to all human experiences, are meaning-laden objects that possess a remarkable ability to evoke emotions and memories, serving as powerful mnemonic devices.

Almost everyone experiences unplanned encounters with textiles in their lifetime and in different contexts. Hence, most every piece is loaded with personal, cultural, or historical data, fostering a deep emotional connection between the owner and the object. Consequently, these textiles are cared for, preserved, and often repurposed. But not much literature exists on how textiles and their stories can be used to augment the understanding of the identity of an individual, a group, a region, or …