Ceramic Arts Commons^™

Eat My Quartz, Neil Celani-Morrell

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Pottery has a remarkable ability to tap into the human collective experience, so it is no surprise I express my own understanding of the world by working within the boundaries of “the pot”. With the capacity to communicate conceptual meaning and to serve as objects of utility, pottery not only dances in the notorious territory between art and craft, it embodies the human spirit.

My pots are totems of my existence and this work is an authentic representation of my creative journey. They are an homage to the key influences in my life which have informed and encouraged my creativity …

Cornucopia, Patrick Hargraves

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I navigate the uncertain times we live in by creating positive, playful sculptures because focusing on joy is not only possible in times of hardship, I believe it is necessary in order to thrive. I go through life with a watchful reverence, finding beauty and hope in the abundance of life in the natural world. Using this inspiration, I reinvent and intentionally exaggerate landscapes and plant forms in clay with a freeing sense of whimsy. My fantasized pieces are an invitation to extend imagination to the joyous moments in the world around us, and to return to an innocent sense …

Journey & Connections, Aldo Ornelas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Journey & Connections is a series of work comprised of ceramic sculptures that explore my personal experiences in relation to the human figure, immigration, and nature, as well as experiences influenced by my continuous travels between my country of origin and the United States.

This exhibition is composed of an Installation titled “A Line on the Wall” and a series of six sculptures that resemble monoliths, strong and expressive figures of spiritual origin that represent important figures in life, sources of wisdom and stelae that connect to the earth.

Capacity, Rachel Baydian

CGU MFA Theses

This Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition by Rachel Baydian is an installation of ceramic sculptures that function as a stand-in for the human body, touching on relationship, interconnectivity, and imperfection. Using abstracted forms that derive from the earth, these art objects are sculpted to mimic nature and its processes. The work highlights our human connection to nature as integrative and vital. Through experience and tactility, there is more of an awareness of space and heightened senses. The work taps into the awe and seduction of the mystery of nature through seemingly ordinary elements of the physical world.

An Open Bag, Matilde Benmayor

Theses and Dissertations

What do we take with us? How much space should we leave in the bag for what we might find? This paper is a journey from under the rug and onto the pavement. Sowing spiderweb maps I try to make a new city my own.

Permutation, Ryan K. Caldwell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Caldwell, Ryan, M.F.A, Spring 2020 Ceramics

Abstract:

Chairperson: Trey Hill

Permutation, is an exploitation of utilitarian pottery and domesticity within the gallery setting through the use of handmade tables and cabinetry. The gallery is transformed into a more comfortable environment and exhibits a casual essence. This paper explores the thoughts, interpretations, influences, reflections, and definitions of his most recent work created for his Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition. Caldwell presents his work as an ongoing continuum of conceptual research and physical exploration of form and surface.

Accumulation, Erin Mccarty

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written Thesis is the supporting documentation for Accumulation, a Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at West Virginia University. This exhibition creates an environment in which a viewer can enter. This installation environment is created based on formal elements combined with fantastical elements from the imagination of the artist. The formal choices in the work provoke a positive otherworldly and whimsical response in the viewer. The environment is designed to provide relief from problems in the everyday world through patterns, forms, colors and surfaces. These elements are harvested from the natural world and recombined in a fantastical way. …

Nonautomata, Jeremy Haynes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is a formal examination of the exhibition titled “NonAutomata” by Jeremy Haynes, as partial fulfillment of requirements for a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stephen F. Austin State University.

By examining the psychological influences within my artwork, I question the assumption that we are all just organic machines built with the same parts although we are all assembled and wired differently to perform specific tasks in society. I recall my personal experiences and how these influence my reactions to everyday life. While using clay with traditional and non-traditional processes, I have been …

Say Luv: Reimagining The Black Female Body, Jer'lisa Devezin

Art Theses and Dissertations

From hottentot venus to Cardi B, the influence of the white representation and the treatment of the black female body has shaped a culture of oppression amongst Black women, having surpassed the white community and trickled into the black community. In hip hop culture, reality television, and social media, black women are portrayed as angry and are stereotyped as ghetto and ignorant. On the music scene woman are always sexualized under the male gaze, however now that we are in the twerk era Cardi B is giving a new perspective to the representation of women in hip hop. By using …

Seeing Through Feeling, Christopher Mitchell Rodgers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to describe both the inherent formal qualities and conceptual framework that are addressed within the exhibition, Seeing Through Feeling. The exhibition is centered around the methodology of making, collection, and display all through the one singular positioning, the object. The objects within the exhibition are either handmade or collected fragments that weave together around the singular position of craft and history under the pretense of how our understanding of time may not always be true. The thesis breaks down key components through specific themes into the categories of the hand, eye, symbol, object, value, …

Finding Balance, Quinn Maher

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Exhibition Statement

Finding Balance is my exploration into the relationship between form, firing, and utility.

In the studio I pay close attention the silhouette of each piece, looking for strong continuous lines in both the positive and negative space accentuating the volume created on the potter’s wheel. I spend time with each piece combing the surface to create texture and reveal the course particles below the surface. As I apply white slip to this textures surface, the high points allow the fluid slip to break and pool in recessed areas creating a layer of depth and variety. The white slip …

Entangled, Katherine Cox

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I create objects to incite wonder through their exuberance, inviting one to explore the beauty found in the strange and offering the viewer a way to interact with the discomfort of the unknown. Mysculptures are an assembly of engaging surfaces and forms revealing varying texturesandvibrant colors referencing natural and fabricated worlds. Each sculpture is entangled within its own environment or narrative and each is adorned for its own role, finding a balance between discord and harmony, captivation and repulsion.

Each is an individual exploration of the distinct qualities inherent within each object. They are precious in scale and stimulate …

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Generative Movements, Cabbage Juice, & Habitats Of Selfhood, Jason Michael Rondinelli

Theses and Dissertations

The content of this essay is a reflection on my practice as an artist. A summary of text includes an analysis of my attraction to certain materials such as drywall, cabbage juice and coconut oil, all materials are the extensions of my memory, intention and pleasure. From warm memories of bathhouses and the flesh of others to managing illness at home, my artwork distills a lived experience into material reality. These materials take the shape of sculptural networks that serve as biographical biomes. The architectural and organic components of the work are sourced from my own experience and the surreal …

The Alchemical Vessel, River Soma

MFA Statements

My work comes from a place of deep feeling on a bodily level. Amidst the decorative play, there is a sense of the primitive and primordial, and also a certain humanity and clumsiness through struggle. Through the hermetic tradition I relate the alchemical vessel and its symbolic process of interior development to my artistic practice. Focusing in mixed media sculpture, I discovered a concentrated accumulation of symbolism specific to my practice, but also the full recognition of my practice as a ritualized psychological undertaking.

Narratives Of Place: Reasons To Look Up, Dean Justice Leeper, Dean J. Leeper

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Narratives of Place: Reasons to Look Up, is and exploration and reflection of Dean Leeper's personal interaction and relationship to the landscape of Missoula Montana, while as a graduate student at the University of Montana. This paper explores his thoughts, definitions, influences, reflections and descriptions of his most recent work created for his Masters of Fine Art Thesis Exhibition. Leeper presents his work and ideas as a small part of a lager ongoing dialog of how humans understand ideas of place as they relate to finding a sense of self identity.

A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King

Theses and Dissertations

Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the …

In Between, Wansoo Kim

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In my eyes, the world is composed of both revealed things and hidden things. I interpret my surroundings based on this idea, seeking to realize my ignorance and awareness. With this in mind, I create objects in which dichotomous ideas are present, and use their physically revealed and hidden aspects in order to represent the greater human struggle to see and understand what is hidden from us.

The notion of inside and outside is one of my particular subjects. Upon observing an object or a structure, we see only its external reality. I aim to present the unobservable, often presenting …

2018 Forces, Scott Yarbrough

Forces

No abstract provided.

From 3d To 3d, Erik O. Lozano, Lauren B. Selden, Robert Z. Selden Jr.

CRHR: Archaeology

From 3D to 3D is a research project that involves traditional ceramics and technology to re-create a clay vessel at different scales and in different materials while trying to understand aesthetic and perceptions of value. With a background in Industrial Design, I have always been interested in technology and fabrication methods, three-dimensional (3D) printing being one of them. However, this often implies repetition and standardization, and as an artist I strive to create one-of-a-kind objects that include evidence associated with the making process. Part of my work is based on traditional forms that incorporate small alterations. I use one or …

On The Cover: Artist’S Statement For B-Phone, Brenda Roveda

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Ceramic Vessel: Blue Binary 1, Brenda Roveda

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Ceramic Vessel: All Blue Binary, Brenda Roveda

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Ceramic Vessel: Color Binary, Brenda Roveda

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Ceramic Vessel: Connected Ii, Brenda Roveda

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Misfits, Hanna Newman

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My figurative ceramic sculptures are comprised of deconstructed, fragmented and simplified renderings of the human form. Within these sculptures I integrate materials such as human hair, fabric, wood and plaster cast body parts to mimic limbs and body mass, creating diversity in the tactile surface quality. The pastel tones, bright colors and additions of hair further obscures the realistic appearance of these beings. Clay's malleability fuels my intuitive creative process and allows me to replicate the human form in ranges from anatomical accuracy to biomorphic abstraction.

I am inspired by the relationship between interiority and exteriority, between the mind and …

Indirect Measure, Nicholas Boismenu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is in support of my thesis exhibition “Indirect Measure” May 5th – June 3rd 2017, at the Reece Museum, located on the campus of East Tennessee State University. This document is an account of my examination into what constitutes art and the change in my perception of the utilitarian ceramic vessel during my research into the perceived difference between craft and art. Using broad definitions, I define what I believe art to be and how it is different from, and the same as craft.

Anthropo-Scenes, Ibel M. Sinohuiz

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ARTIST

My work is a melding of mythology and personal experience. Growing up in the harsh desert of the Coachella Valley, I found refuge in music and art. My desire to become a drummer has leaded me to create a persona called Baby Lamb. Baby Lamb is a symbolic representation, as well as a physical manifestation of this desire and she is slowly evolving, eventually becoming my alter ego. Currently, the artwork that I create is a chapter in the life story of Baby Lamb.

BABY LAMB

Baby Lamb's art shows have included a collection of relics that have been …

The Difference Between A Duck, Shelby D. Meier

Art Theses and Dissertations

. In this paper I will address each work from my exhibition the difference between a duck individually to address concepts and references in each work to elucidate some of the connections I have made between the all the works. Concepts and references range from the irony of the 19^th century arts and crafts movement, the possibilities of a blackholes, the subjective value of souvenirs, Tibetan prayer wheels and much more. And they all seem to add up to nothing, which for me is a respite in the comedy of trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t …

2017 Forces, R. Scott Yarbrough

Forces

No abstract provided.