Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

Getting Located: Queer Semiotics In Dress, Callen Zimmerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The body, a long contested site of identity construction, has been used by historically by queers to convey desire, build affinity and transgress norms. Looking at the fashioned queer body, this capstone takes the form of a proposal for an art exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Seeking to engage with objects, performance and film which approximate, provide proxy for or depart from the body as a site, it explores the social and political quagmire of getting dressed. Comprised of contemporary art that looks at the rupture of legible bodily semiotics, this show wonders what …

Weaving Modern Forms: Fiber Design In The United States, 1939–1959, Sarah Mills

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the emergence and development of modern weaving in the United States. In a series of case studies, it follows the paths of three weavers: Anni Albers, Marianne Strengell and Dorothy Liebes, who make inroads in the field of American textile design from the late 1930s to the late 1950s through their teaching, writing and weaving practices. In the 1930s, these women, alongside other professional weavers in the United States, retooled hand weaving in a practice of prototype designing for power loom (machine) production. In adapting their skills to the design of machine-loomed textiles, their artistic agency expands. …

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 …

Kiddush Levana, The Moon Is Your Handheld Mirror, Noa Ginzburg

Theses and Dissertations

Noa Ginzburg is weaving cast-off and hand-made objects, lights, reflections, spells, drawings, and an abundance of knots into site-responsive installations. In her thesis, Ginzburg addresses Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, the synergy of assemblages, repurposing of materials in the era of Anthropocene, and how notions of solidarity and indeterminacy influence her work.

Affordances In The Work Of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Pedagogies Of Writing, Reading, And Making, T. Meyerhoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For many who have been transformed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick through reading her books and essays, by being a student of hers, or in friendship with her, the question "What does Eve do?" is often a mystery with no precise answer. These transformations can be highly varied in their manifestations. In his essay for the 30th Anniversary edition of Between Men, Wayne Koestenbaum discusses an "Eve effect" which makes "her listeners more curious, more intelligent, more consecrated to the vocation of being thrilled" (emphasis in original, xiv). This dissertation unravels some of these mysteries by tracing how the …

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.

Behind Closet Doors: Horror And Dislocation In The Queer Closet, Corey C. Allen

Theses and Dissertations

“Behind Closet Doors: Horror and Dislocation in the Queer Closet,” is composed of a collection of sculptures, videos, and sound works that are directly associated with themes of horror and anxiety derived from the precarious space of the queer closet as detailed in this thesis of the same name.

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 …

Dress Up, Ye'ela B. Wilschanski

Theses and Dissertations

Dress Up (Performance, 40 minutes) is a dress that functions as a floor, blanket, tablecloth, book and walls. It tells a visual story about domestic care giving rituals, referencing different times and places.

Archaeology Of Social Patterning, Chase Bray

Theses and Dissertations

The episteme that created the grid as a structure for logic has been usurped. We compose meaning from an adulterated grid, or pattern. I process meaning through the abuse of acrid patterns and the grid, the reduction of imagery to silhouettes and by referencing both cultural and classical mythology.

Alternative Futures: The Creative Reconsideration Of Fashion Objects, Kathryn Roberts

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is the beginning of what I intend to be a larger, evolving work that seeks to marry the theoretical with the practical when considering fashion objects that have “served their purpose”. The object at the project’s focal point: a worn out pair of blue jeans. My particular focus on jeans is based on the fact that they, alongside the t-shirt, are one of the most ubiquitous and commonly owned pieces of clothing for people all over the world. This wardrobe staple transcends age, race, and class, as it occupies an iconic status that has made them invulnerable to …

"Hippie Acid Freak Drag Queens:" Situating The Cockettes Within An Art Historical Context, Scott Dow

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis situates the Cockettes – a performance group rarely referenced in art historical discourse - within Bay Area performance art, second-wave feminist art, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Contextualizing the Cockettes within their contemporary art movements provides a new understanding of the group and emphasizes their significance to art history.

I Like America: Painting In The Expanded Field, Isaac Aden

Theses and Dissertations

Using Structuralist theory, Krauss created a Klein group diagram. the diagram included site sculpture, construction, marked sites, and axiomatic structures.Could the same strategy be applied to painting? As I attempted to engage painting from a critical perspective, I formed of a body of work entitled Painting in the Expanded Field.

An Examination Of "Lookism" In Scholarly Literature, Diana Saiki, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Gundlach Jessica

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Learning Styles Of Students Enrolled In Fashion Classes: Academic Level, Geographic Region, And Major, Harrison Qiu, Diana Saiki, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Emergence Of The Bird In Andean Paracas Art. C. 900 Bce - 200 Ce, Mary B. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first millennium BCE, an enigmatic cultural group now known as Paracas inhabited the remote desert coast of southern Peru. Following its disappearance, Paracas culture did not emerge in the historical record until 1927, when three burial centers were scientifically excavated on the arid Paracas peninsula that gave the culture its name. The burials contained over 400 mummy bundles that preserved the only physical remnants of this culture and its unique art forms. When unwrapped, mummy bundles of elite males revealed multiple layers of finely woven and elaborately embroidered textiles and painted ceramics, along with gold objects, feathers, and …

Apparel And Textiles Education: A Case For Rural- Urban Interface, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Diana Saiki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Donning The Cloak: Safavid Figural Silks And The Display Of Identity, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Publications and Research

Introduction

In a red world bathed in shimmering gold light, a man sits with his head in his hand as wild beasts encircle him. He is emaciated, has unkempt hair, and wears only a waistcloth—but he has a dreamy smile on his face. Nearby, a camel bears a palanquin carrying a stately woman, her head tipped to one side, arm outstretched from the window of her traveling abode toward her lover. Beneath her, the signature “Work of Ghiyath” is woven in Kufic script inside an eightpointed star on the palanquin (Fig. 1).

This depiction of the literary characters Layla and …