A Chair In The Woods, Victoria Dolloff

Theses and Dissertations

Victoria Dolloff's MFA Thesis considers traces of play and perception in the development of her artwork, exploring the idea of reorientation through subtleties of the absurd. Her installation Untitled (Landscape) questions object as place and place as memory utilizing fragmentation as reconstruction.

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space, Jan Descartes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. …

Prevail: In The Moment..., Nicole Stahl

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This body of work is composed of sculptural mixed media objects and scenes that heavily utilize cast glass. These pieces are physical representations of my quest to seek mental balance by focusing on what brings me happiness and comfort while still honoring mortality.

Moldmaking and repetition of process innate within casting and other aspects of this work makes me focus and revisit an idea, repetitively, like a meditation or a prayer. The intense focus required helps combat my anxiety and translates anxious energy into more positive, productive, balanced way of living.

Part of this balance requires the acknowledgment of the …

Tipping Point, Pang Z. Vang

Theses and Dissertations

What happens to a woman at the tipping point under oppression in a patriarchal society? How does she behave? Pulling from the vagina dentata mythologies, and personal and collective experiences of rape culture, I formed a body of work which problematize the stereotypical narrative of victim/perpetrator. As a visual and conceptual exploration, my work explores the themes of desire, agency/non-agency, and violence [as it manifests within and outside of the body]. Utilizing visual and conceptual quotations from film, pornography and sex toys, these works subvert the exoticized stereotype of the Asian woman as sexual plaything.

Welcome To My Dream – Quasi Queer Fiction, Christian A. Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Roseate and bodacious, the hand formed surfaces of Christian Rogers' paintings explore gay culture and history though a quasi-fictional lens. While utilizing folk like imagery, Christian depicts dramatic moments of love, lust, sex and violence as he takes us to queer realms.

Ten-Der-Ness, Brittany Jasin

Graduate School of Art Theses

Ten-der-ness. The title of this document defines the word, because one can easily forget all the meanings of a word. To be tender is to be compassionate and kind but also can mean to be in pain. “The quality of being easy to cut or chew” is my favorite definition; because to me that says that to be tender makes you vulnerable to being swallowed by reality. It’s a common saying that without suffering we would never know compassion but, within tenderness, compassion and suffering exist simultaneously in a ten letter word. Within my thesis I am exploring tenderness through …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

Sublime Memories: Bones As A Medium For Cyanotype Printing And Indigo Dying; The Strength Derived From Connection To The Environment; And The Power Of The Color Blue, Alexis R. Bernstein

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

This project attempts to portray how connections to the environment provide strength and opportunities for growth. By printing cyanotype images of landscapes and plant life on bones, my work links the ecological world with a representation of mortality. The symbolism of bones provide concepts of strength and life, while the symbolism of blue evokes emotions of distance and longing that create a dreamy memory-inspired image quality throughout the series. The historic processes of cyanotype printing and indigo dying were successfully modified for the medium of bones, allowing both artistic techniques to work together in harmony.

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …

Michio Iwao Interview, Grace Johnson

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Michio Iwao is one of four sons of the parents Kotama and Tomonosuke Iwao. He is known as an Asian American craftsperson that was born on July 12, 1922 in Suisun City, California. During World War II Michio and his family were relocated and held at the Gila River Internment Camp also known as Trulock. This stay lasted from 1942 to 1945 under the War Relocation Authority. This Japanese Internment camp inspired Iwao to spend his idle time learning how to make bird pins. This was the start of Iwao becoming a craftsperson.

Dana Weiser Interview, Julia Boucher

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Education: University of Colorado at Boulder, B.A in Fine Arts, May 2001. Penland School of Crafts, Attended August2001-May 2001, woodworking and blacksmithing. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, B.F.A, Ceramics, May 2003 & Post-Baccalaureate Certificate, Ceramics May 2004 University of California at Los Angeles, M.F.A in Ceramics, June 2007 & M.A in Asian American Studies, December 2016.

Awards: National Scholastic Art Award in Ceramics, 1997. D’Arcy Hayman Award, 2005. Laura Andreson Scholarship, 2006. Elizabeth Heller Mandell Memorial Scholarship, 2006. Laura Andreson Scholarship, 2007. Finalist in Artist Runway.com, 2008.

Exhibitions: National Scholastic Art Exhibition, Corcoran Museum, Washington DC, …

Jun-Jun Sta.Ana Interview, Jackson Hughlett

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Jun-Jun Sta.Ana is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist born on September 19, 1963 to Remigio Benavidez Sta.Ana and Emma Cecilio Catral in Manila, Philippines. He moved to the United States at the age of 24, shortly after finishing a degree in Dentistry. He started his art career late just before he was turning 40- having a solo show of digital works using appropriated images from free porn sites which he deconstructed and embellished with images and symbols culled from Filipino talismans. His practice has become multi-disciplinary, and while still utilizing found images and materials, he also employs the technique of …

Kristine Aono Interview, Maureen Vela

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Kristine Aono is a sculptor and installation artist. She has a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In addition, she has done residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Arts.

She has received numerous grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts (Visual Artist/Public Project Grant), the Maryland State Arts Council, the Painted Bride, the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, and the Prince George’s Arts Council. Kristine Aono has served on the Board of the Washington Project for the Arts, …

Mie Kongo Interview, Mimonna Aljaber

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Mie Kongo grew up in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan and now lives and works in Evanston IL, where she makes multidisciplinary work: ceramic sculptures & installations, 2D work and porcelain designed objects. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions, “Unknown game series” at Dan Devening Projects + editions, Chicago, IL "Beyond Function" Arts and Literature Laboratory, Madison, WI, "Reformat: Digital Fabrication in Clay" Lillstreet Art Gallery, Chicago, IL, “Circle in a Square” Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL. She has been showing her porcelain products at Paul Kotula Projects, Ferndale MI and Room 406, …

Fugitive Fragment, Diana Campuzano

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the fugitive beauty around us and tries to capture and embody it. For my work IC5070 I began with an image of a nebula IC5070, I created a work that hung from the ceiling and was 27 feet square and hung down 8 feet to just above the viewers. I explore the micro and the macro worlds with many of my works crossing back and forth between

Frankenstein's Onion, Chien Tai

CGU MFA Theses

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.

The Prescribed West, Evan M. Hauser

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Skinface, Islam Shehab

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout history, skin manipulation was primarily practiced for cultural, tribal, or religious purposes. In the contemporary landscape, skin manipulation has been objectified and commercialized. This is exemplified through bio-upholstery, foreign materials under our skin and changing the skin structure.

This thesis investigates skin manipulation, with the intent to focus experimentation on the skin’s lines of cleavage, a topographical map drawn on our skin and used to define the direction where skin has the most and least flexibility. The aim is to connect and explore materials that can be used as a second skin, while at the same time examining and …

Sub For More, Chelsea Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This written thesis unpacks the thoughts and motivations behind the decisions I have made in my artistic practice that have ultimately culminated in my M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition: Sub for More. By merging images of my own work as well as internet sourced images of the culture that drives my work, I have created a platform to begin to understand my experience during graduate school. This text examines and explores my belief in the inherent power in pop culture, my obsession with fame, celebrity, and my self-identity as a participant in current pop-culture.

Fear And Nostalgia In Immigration, Daniel A. Matthews

Theses and Dissertations

Fear and Nostalgia in Immigration is a project that uses re-occuring memory and experiential memory to help us understand our common histories. The projects asks individuals to first share a re-occuring memory by writing it on a chalkboard. The next step is to then write an experiential memory about immigration, this can be a story you might have heard or it could be something from your own family history. These two tasks are done on a communal table where several individuals are engage in the same task at the same time. This aim of this exercise is to have something …

Iain Muirhead, Iain Muirhead

CGU MFA Theses

Artist IAIN MUIRHEAD seeks possibility in a world of massive change. His work cultivates instability and chases an ungrounded experience. Systemic complexity and creative destruction are characteristic. Muirhead uses paint, objects, photography, installation, and video to break apart and reconfigure form and space. Terror often looms. Entropy gives way to emergence.

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Pineapple, 022, Conversation – Behind The Cover Art, Jesse W. Standlea

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Many sources date the pit-firing process as a 30,000 plus years-old ceramic firing technique. Every year I take my AP 3D Design class to the beach to fire ceramic pieces using this method. Being a contemporary sculptor who shows in Los Angeles I have always appreciated pit-fired pieces but never used one in my own art practice until now. A connection between the first method of firing ceramics and my art practice seemed unrelated. The title for my piece might add to the disconnect; and yet these seemingly unrelated elements force the work into a place where the artistic process …

Northwest Coast Native American Art: The Relationship Between Museums, Native Americans And Artists, Karrie E. Myers

Museum Studies Theses

Museums today have many responsibilities, including protecting and understanding objects in their care. Many also have relationships with groups of people whose items or artworks are housed within their institutions. This paper explores the relationship between museums and Northwest Coast Native Americans and their artists. Participating museums include those in and out of the Northwest Coast region, such as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Burke Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum. Museum professionals who conducted research for some of these museums included Franz Boas, …

Kimono, Elizabeth D. Hoffman

CGU MFA Theses

Globalization opens up opportunities for the international community to push for freedom of expression. It is precisely because the history of kimonos is a multi-cultural one, invented by the Chinese, then adapted and adopted by the Japanese, then altered by Western colonialists and changed as it permutated from the aristocracy to the middle class and to laborers, that I felt that it was relevant to today and the cross-cultural influences of globalization. This summer, I purchased two authentic Japanese kimonos, (one an everyday cotton one to use as a model for my drawings, and the second, an elaborate silk one …

Meta-Forms, Rickey P. Bump

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Meta-forms, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City. Exhibition dates are from March 14 through March 25, 2016. The artworks on display are a series of drawings made from carving wood panels and sheet metal and are accompanied with a large scaled site-specific installation. The exhibition culminates from research of historic and contemporary figures for non-objective art. The author gives insight to the artistic process while creating his exhibition, as well as their personal connection with the artwork.

Flushed, Virgilia K. Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist describes the process and development of the work throughout her graduate career, relating them to the most recent works of her thesis exhibition. Topics discussed include experiences of beauty and themes of transformation. Contextual influences include the Rococo period as well as ideas and theories of Romanticism and the sublime. Histories and theories on representations of the body are also discussed.

The artist discusses her MFA thesis exhibition Flushed, at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee, from April 13th to April 24th, 2015. Two painting installations, a sculptural installation, and a number of collages are included. Media …

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.