Sculpture Commons^™

Tiempo De Hibridos, Paul Acevedo Gomez

LSU Master's Theses

Tiempo De Hibridos is a body of work that celebrates the multiplicity of my shifting identity. It navigates back and forth between two different worlds, each packing different experiences that become a crossbreed or hybrid of information. Using historical references, pop culture, and personal experiences, I create a narrative story that maneuvers through familiar and foreign spaces.

The images suggest a celebration of cultural identity, vitality, but also psychological pain. I purposely combine objects that can be perceived as conflicting, altering their function to reference elements that are both playful and painful. The viewer should question the combination of objects …

Cultural Formation Of Place: Making Yourself At Home, Olivia Arratia

Art Theses and Dissertations

The environment you grow up in can become a pivotal part of your existence. The sights, smells, people, and places you experience every day can transform the way you see the world. Growing up in a Mexican-American household has brought its own set of experiences that have made me the artist I am today. I am one of many contemporary artists building on the foundations of their heritage and the Chicano movement. I am also a Mexican-American artist expanding the identity and extending the legacy in the 21st century. This paper will investigate how Mexican-American heritage has influenced my artistic …

Bare: The Modern Female Nude Uncovered, Tasha A. Determan

Honors Thesis

My honors thesis criticizes representations of the female nude and advocates for diverse expression of the female body. The research encompasses two series of artwork and a written component examining and reflecting upon the artwork. The first series is Venus of Fruit, which assesses past depictions and associations of the female nude specifically objectification and sexualization in western art. The sculptures are four cast bronze nude figures within an apple, a banana, and a pineapple. The figures are Venuses trapped within nature, beauty, fertility, and sexualization. The second series is Venus Anew, which examines the naked and the …

Toys Are For Adults, John Wippler

Theses

This paper explores the concept of toys, what they are and for whom they are made. The paper also provides a brief history of designer toys and pop culture, and how pop culture helped fuel the designer toy industry. The psychology of collecting is also referenced, and a direct correlation is made between the act of collecting toys and toy popularity.

The book I wrote is also mentioned and is a vital part of the purpose for the thesis. The book is an introductory guide to resin toymaking and is integral to the expansion of the designer toy community.

Water Bearer, Whitney Harris

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores fantasy and mythological archetypes. The exhibition features works on paper depicting mermaids, and a fountain featuring two figures submerged in water, one spitting into the other's mouth. I use black ink and glazes to create variegated surfaces. In these works, I reimagine ideas about power and intimacy.

Wound-Dwelling: Empowerment Through Masochistic Experiences, Nizlyn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

The psychoanalytic concept of the Skin Ego Theory describes the skin as a passage for pain and pleasure to travel through. Remnants of external experiences as well as internal struggles affect the penetrable barrier of the somatic wrapping and leave inscriptions on the flesh. Through my work, I have been exploring the skin’s ability to protect, envelope, and inscribe meaning through my papercuts, oil paintings, and clay sculptures. I procure the marks on my body through kink and BDSM, which then influence the work. Though my bruises may fade with time, my skin becomes tougher. By recontextualizing Skin Ego Theory …

Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen

Theses and Dissertations

Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …

The Mvohc Project, Brooke Day

All Theses

ABSTRACT

A Mvohc is a Morphic Vessel of Human Consciousness. The Mvohc Project traverses' theories of spatial identity in tandem with creative world-building as a method for examining the intricacies of the human condition and reimagining reality. My creations are designed to promote autonomy over the contemporary world's ever-evolving societal complexities to empower individuals, foster imagination and communication, and create space for positive change. This body of work incorporates fleshy biomorphic sculptures inspired by science fiction, deep-sea marine life, and the human body. The abject creatures are partnered with constructed audio-scapes that encompass the frenzy of an overarching internal monologue, …

The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience Of Vulnerable Immigrants, Eric Andre

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience of Vulnerable Immigrants" focuses on the impact of systems of state control such as immigration laws, policies, and practices that have been institutionalized and that have marginalized immigrants. In my thesis, I pay specific attention to inhuman acts of exclusion and discrimination resulting from the systemic barriers perpetuated by xenophobic and nationalist ideologies.

From this standpoint, my thesis exhibition employs interactive space, which includes visual art (drawing, sculpture ceramics), projection, video, and sound, as a means to explore the effects of the exclusive and discriminatory immigration policies and practices. Furthermore, it is designed to explore …

Hello Again يا اهلا A Study Of Grief, Diana Abouchacra

LSU Master's Theses

Grief is an unwanted visitor who we all come to know throughout our lifetime. Although every person reacts differently to bereavement of a loved one, almost always the lost other becomes etched into our being for the remainder of our lives (McClocklin & Lengelle, 2017). In today’s society, we are encouraged to say “Good-bye”, but what if instead, we allow ourselves to keep those who have passed on close to our hearts and say hello again? Hello Again يا اهلا is a body of work that explores my experience with grief. The artworks made for this exhibition investigate my process …

Coping With Burdens, Jennifer Rose Wolken

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

How to carry and cope with burdensome circumstances beyond my control is the main theme I am currently exploring in my artistic practice. I create art objects and experiences that can elicit an empathetic connection to the realities of living with burdens like grief and chronic illness, or help you to process your own relationship to a wide variety of burdens. Individual pieces explore aspects of how I or close family members cope. My practice is multi-disciplinary and the forms focus on reinterpretation of the book as a sculptural art object or artists’ book. The processes I use are overwhelmingly …

In The Garden, Clare Samani

LSU Master's Theses

My work has focused largely on identity and self-expression, primarily through clothing, pattern, and color as a symbolic content. Having heavily investigated historical costume and clothing from various periods, my attention is drawn to the highly sculptural and ornamented garments of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the rococo, and the baroque. In these colorful and puffed garments, I am attracted to the similarities that I see in nature. How we adorn ourselves mimics various flowers, plants and animals in the pursuit of desire and procreation. Focusing on fabric manipulation, printmaking and sculpture, In the Garden coalesces into ambiguous sculptures that …

Paper Making: Finding The Scaffold, Tino Ward

Art Theses and Dissertations

Paper making combines my proclivity towards using found materials and the need to produce my own painting supports. This first part of this thesis chronicles the reasons I arrived at paper as my chosen medium, the objects I began to produce, and the projects that stemmed from those early experiments. The second half outlines my final work, a 1:4 scale model in paper of the 1966 exhibition 10, held in New York at the Dwan Gallery, which showcased the early minimal works of Carl Andre, Jo Baer, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Ad Reinhardt, …

Books / Vessels / Hours, Lara Head

Graduate School of Art Theses

My thesis works two vessels, book : 300 hours and book : terrain explore and enact states of meditation, focusing on the process of making and the specificity of materials used. The meditative aspects of my process of making correlate to an anticipated meditation in the observer's time spent viewing. I hope to spark in the viewer the same response and state that I myself was in while making. In this text I explore my artistic process and what I hope for the viewer to experience while they are spending time with my works. I discuss how spending time making …

Making Visible: More Of The Picture, Sarah Slavick

Lesley University Community of Scholars Day

In Linda Nochlin’s essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, “ she demonstrates how, for centuries, institutional and societal structures had made it “impossible for women to achieve artistic excellence, or success, on the same footing as men, no matter what the potency of their so-called talent, or genius.” As the Guerilla Girls noted, only 1 woman had a solo museum show in NY in 1985, and, in 2015, 30 years later, it wasn’t much better with 1 at the Guggenheim, Met and Whitney, and 2 at MOMA. On International Women’s Day, March 1, 2017, I began a …

Living Tradition: Contemporary Ethiopian Christian Art From The Sobania Collection, Neal Sobania, Charles Mason, Nina Kay, Andie Near, Raymond Silverman, Tom Wagner

Kruizenga Art Museum Exhibition Catalogs

Produced by Storming the Castle Pictures for the Kruizenga Art Museum as a catalog for the exhibition “Living Tradition: Contemporary Ethiopian Contemporary Art from the Sobania Collection,” September 21 – December 15, 2018. Photography by the Kruizenga Art Museum, Neal Sobania, Raymond Silverman and Tom Wagner. Design by Tom Wagner.

Kruizenga Art Museum Online Collection - Exhibition Gallery

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

Going Home, Emily Susannah Budd

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

I continue to explore the space that exists between worlds and ideology in an attempt to blur the demarcation between them. Using the everyday, I attempt to show features of the uncanny and sublime nature of common objects by including fantastic elements while maintaining an illusion of reality. Rather than showing the audience one true meaning, I offer them a lens to one of the infinite possibilities. The story is left for the observer to complete, each narrative unique and valid. As the Western viewer tends to seek out absolutes and categorical placements, I try to create a venue that …

Cycles Of Growth And Decay, And Changing The Beautiful To The Grotesque: Installation Through The Lens Of Printmaking, Madeline R. Cochran

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

The intention of this project is to create an installation informed by printmaking processes and to explore the tension between what is fragile and delicate and what is decaying and visceral. Specifically, I am working with materials I find delicate and beautiful including: fine Japanese paper, lace, yarn and embroidery floss. I am coating and manipulating these materials with wax, epoxy-resin and baby oil to give the work a fleshy and unsettling feel. Through the process of working with these materials, I have created paper sculptures made from a mold cast from my own torso, miniature books made from monoprints …

A Hazy Bliss, Anna Joo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: "I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table." And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids …

A Portrait Of Mental Illness: Cast Ceramic And Plastic Heads, Kristin Donato

The Graduate Review

This body of artwork uses 3D forms to visualize the impact of mental illness. Altered forms of cast heads and personal stories depicted through artist books examines how mental illness affects those suffering from an illness, as well as those acting as support systems.

On The Cover: Artist's Statement For Portrait Of Mental Illness, Kristin Donato

The Graduate Review

This body of artwork uses 3D forms to visualize the impact of mental illness. Altered forms of cast heads and personal stories depicted through artist books examines how mental illness affects those suffering from an illness, as well as those acting as support systems.

A Portrait Of Mental Illness: Artist Notebook I, Kristin Donato

The Graduate Review

This body of artwork uses 3D forms to visualize the impact of mental illness. Altered forms of cast heads and personal stories depicted through artist books examines how mental illness affects those suffering from an illness, as well as those acting as support systems.

A Portrait Of Mental Illness: Artist Notebook Ii, Kristin Donato

The Graduate Review

This body of artwork uses 3D forms to visualize the impact of mental illness. Altered forms of cast heads and personal stories depicted through artist books examines how mental illness affects those suffering from an illness, as well as those acting as support systems.

A Portrait Of Mental Illness: Artist Notebook Iii, Kristin Donato

The Graduate Review

This body of artwork uses 3D forms to visualize the impact of mental illness. Altered forms of cast heads and personal stories depicted through artist books examines how mental illness affects those suffering from an illness, as well as those acting as support systems.

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …

Full Issue, The Anthology

The Anthology

This is the entirety of the 2015 Winthrop Anthology issue.

Full Issue, The Anthology

The Anthology

This is the entirety of the 2016 Winthrop Anthology issue.

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.

On Art: By Lydia Douce, 1990 [Dawn And David Latané], David E. Latane, Dawn E. Latané

English Publications

"On Art: by Lydia Douce" provides coverage of a year (1990) in the life of the visual arts in Richmond, Virginia. Artists reviewed include VCU faculty such as Christopher Silliman and Javier Tapia; many notable fixtures of the Richmond scene (Wolfgang Jasper, Andras Bality, Diana Detamore, Davi Det Hompson); and national and international artists who exhibited in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and VCU's Anderson Gallery. Authorship was at the time anonymous.