Sculpture Commons^™

Umbrales (Thresholds), Maureen Scally

Masters Theses

Umbrales is Spanish for Thresholds.

Thresholds are by nature ambivalent spaces, inviting two distinct realities into play. As an artist, I materialize my experiences as a migrant into an architectural form. A series of textile walls shape a space that is simultaneously interior and exterior so that the audience circulates in the negative space in between. It is in the construction of this threshold condition — a simultaneous placement, neither here nor there — that a complex narrative of place unfolds.

Place-Conscious Vs. Place-Bound, Julie Avetisyan

Theses and Dissertations

Julie Avetisyan’s installation of sculptures, paintings and printmaking works are driven by an exploration of constructed identity that is not place-bound, but place-conscious. In this paper, she explores how her art practice generates world building under the context of the Armenian Diaspora – considering histories of indigeneity, migration, and assimilation.

Recollection, Shelby Ann Theis-Lukenbill

MSU Graduate Theses

My work is inspired by life's transient nature and objects' enduring capacity to house memories. The delicate sculptures I create combine second-hand objects with paper to capture the essence of moments and possessions that define personal histories. The objects I use represent more than their form or chemistry; they are imbued with fragments of history and memory that I am driven to preserve. In this work, the sentimental nature and purpose of my belongings hold an equal or greater value than the physical nature and purpose of those belongings. I illuminate an object’s sentimentality by combining its form with painted …

Objects And Apparitions: A Portable Museum, Yesuk Seo

Masters Theses

My work transcends the boundaries between painterly printmaking and sculpture. Through hand-pulled silkscreen prints, I create abstract pixelated images depicting our constantly changing relationship with meaning and reality. Memories are often glamorized and distorted whether it is our childhood home, our neighborhood, or the city. My practice archives my family history and traces patterns in memory and space by using invisibility as a phenomena to render newer explorations of abstraction, in time and in urban landscapes. Objects & Apparitions: A Portable Museum, pairs moiré patterns of ghostly printmaking with wooden objects in specific arrangements. It captures my nomadic journey between …

The Hidden Power Of Images: An Allegory Of Chaos And Performance In The Digital Age, Livia Xandersmith

MFA in Visual Art

Within this text, I explore the hidden power of images in American visual culture through painting-based installations. I investigate images of the past and present juxtaposed in a surrealist landscape. Through the use of images in the news, entertainment, advertising, and images within the home, I depict how the problems of the past bleed into our perceptions of the present. I find that this cycle of problem inheritance connects us as humans regardless of time, generation, and place. In my work, I explore the complexity of image culture and its shifting presence within the digital age. Using surrealist collage, I …

I Hear You Now, I See You Then, Quinn Hunter

Art + Design Masters Theses

In the research driven project I Hear You Now, I See You Then, I refer to the contemporary and historical erasure of the labor of African American women using research gathered from the southern plantation economy to create an art installation. The objects in this installation are primarily made with artificial hair integrations and utilizing labor intensive methods that are similar to those used to install the hair on the Black body. The objects I make reference the luxury items in the domestic spaces of historic plantation sites that have been re-branded to be used in the wedding /tourism industry. …

In The Shadows And Folds, Julia Mueller

Senior Projects Spring 2020

In the shadows and folds is the result of a mental scavenger hunt that I began this past year, to uncover myself and find what is hidden in my crevices. It was spurred by my fear of memory loss which had grown to such a size that it sat visible in the back of my mind unaddressed for some time. The reason for this fear is not large but it feels monumental. I have been existing in various states of sadness and disconnect, which have acted like a thick blanket over my mind. This blanket is simultaneously protective and damaging, …