Sculpture Commons^™

Curated: The Impact Of Architectural Sequence On The Journey Through The Art Museum, Zairis Padilla

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The museum is a culturally significant institution used for learning, thought, and contemplation from its conceptualization in The Enlightenment Movement of the 17th century. The art museum has the potential to create a powerful relationship between the art and the architecture that houses it. The architecture of an art museum becomes a critical participant in the experience of art and affects the spaces in a dramatic way. If the art or architecture overpowers the other, the user experience is impacted; therefore, the connection created between the two within the museum is one of great importance. When a symbiotic connection, or …

For The Birds, Charlotte L. Middleton

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

For the Birds is a homogenous material exhibition of porcelain pottery that explores the relationships between, expectations of, and roles placed upon women and pottery. Using traditional craft processes, still life imagery, and the language and limits of porcelain, I create arrangements that expose the viewers assumptions of both subjects. Pottery- pitchers, cups, and vases—is a product of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism and can be entirely taken for granted- their role is assumed and unquestionable—to serve. The language and expectations of these objects are the medium I build with.

The title of the show, For the Birds, is both a …

It Is Not Her Fault She Didn’T Know Mary Had A Lamb, Samer Ridikkuluz

Theses and Dissertations

“It is not her fault she didn’t know Mary had a lamb” is not an Arab Queer conflict. It is the genocide of everything they told me art was and the decolonial clarity of what art can be. Whether it be bridging the gap between the East and the West, the straights and the gays, or me and the world—I investigate the human condition, the parts we play, and how identity evolves and hides.

How Eye See, Now I See, Michael Anthony Simon

Theses and Dissertations

Michael Anthony Simon’s paper addresses ideas surrounding the fluid nature of perception, time, and ideas of control, or lack there-of. Creating a symbolic relationship between paintings and sculpture. Simon both embraces and confuses the notion that understanding is never truly stable or secure.

Shapes That Hide Their Shadows, Jennifer Blaine

Theses and Dissertations

shapes that hide their shadows concerns itself with the mutability of memory. The complexities of girlhood to womanhood, and the way we are shaped by place and space, are explored through the artist recounting childhood memories connected to her grandparents' hometowns. Divided into three different sections, the artist discusses drawing as medium, creating a lexicon through using visual symbols, and the logistics of building your own archive.

Blackness And Nineteenth-Century Art In The Atlantic World, Rachel Hooper

Curatorial Publications

No abstract provided.

Glossed Over, Rebecca Oh

Theses and Dissertations

Glossed Over is a collection of interdisciplinary artworks exploring my Korean-American diasporic identity and how gender, queerness, religion, neurodivergence, and internet culture intersect within that experience. Through a blend of painting, woodworking, and sculpture, this installation carries the various elements of undefinable 한 (pronounced: han), a concept I attempt to define and contextualize in the Introduction and throughout this thesis. Each artwork operates through coded language, metaphor, and partial disclosure, offering space for the othered to find recognition through subtle cues and signifiers. Through Glossed Over and this thesis, I scratch the surface of my journey in reconciling generational trauma …

Post Opera, Suzy Lykins

Theses and Dissertations

Post Opera is a spell and work of embodied research which explores medicalization, desire, labor, and belief. Through methods of performance, sound, text and installation, I facilitate encounters of trans-femininity, spiritual power and connectivity. An opening wound, a set of psychic scalpels, sutures and bandages prepare this text for your consumption, take care to digest her well.

Wondering And Wandering, Madeleine Herisson-Leplae

Theses and Dissertations

For my thesis, I have taken the concept of excavation and used it as a visual metaphor for my artistic process. Using my recurring motifs of a hole, ladder, and the gem, I break down the writing into three sections. First, the hole, a metaphor for entering an image; second, the ladder, process as investigation; and lastly, the gem, which represents wonder and delight. This work is influenced by childhood fantasies, video games, and believing in magic.

Hard Edge Expansion, Quinderrious Humphrey

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Hard-edge painting has always been rooted in precision, crisp forms, and the rejection of gestural abstraction. My work builds on this tradition while pushing its boundaries, breaking free from the conventional picture plane, exploring objecthood, and activating space through material and color. By using shaped wood substrates instead of canvas, I transform paintings into physical objects that interact with their environment rather than existing as flat images. The natural grain of the wood plays an integral role in this, creating an organic contrast to the controlled, geometric forms I apply.

Color functions as both a formal and perceptual tool in …

Tenaciously Curious, Joe Mark Taylor

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis paper, I will outline the journey I’ve taken throughout my graduate studies at the University of Montana and how it has culminated in my thesis exhibition, Tenaciously Curious. I’ll begin with an Introduction that speaks to the importance of finding ways to connect to nature, and the benefits we gain by recognizing our bodies as extensions of the organic world.

In the following section, Influences, Theory and Lineage, I’ll explore the themes that drive my research, highlight artists who have influenced my work, and discuss why this inquiry feels vital within our contemporary moment.

In the section …

Theopoetics Prothesis: An Exploration In Faith And Form, Elise Aleman, Elise Aleman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

My work is rooted in the biblical definition of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Like the Bible’s layered complexity—its patterns, metaphors, and cultural references—faith is not merely intellectual but an active trust in what is unseen. It transcends knowledge, anchoring itself in conviction and hope. This intersection of theology and lived experience is at the core of my practice.

Theopoetics—a framework that fuses theology and artistic expression—shapes my approach, allowing faith to be embodied through form rather than merely explained. Two seemingly distinct bodies of work—one centered …

Saints And Syncretism In Global Christian Art, Alexandra Lewis, Andie Near, Charles Mason, Gracie Allen, Signe Bieganski, Shannon Smith, Emma Waldvogel, Lauren Carpenter, Ashley Keltsch, Sophia Funston, Mariam Tiews, Emma Brenny, Anne Heath

Kruizenga Art Museum Exhibition Catalogs

Kruizenga Art Museum, Hope College Catalog for the exhibition: Saints and Syncretism in Global Christian Art. Exhibition dates: January 14 – May 17, 2025. Alexandra Lewis, photographer, designer. Andie Near, photographer.

Kruizenga Art Museum Online Collection - Exhibition Gallery

A New Perspective

DePaul Magazine

The DePaul Art Museum foregrounds inclusiveness, partnership and social justice to reframe the role of cultural institutions.

Uncanny Bodies, Samantha Neu

MFA in Visual Art

In “Uncanny Bodies,” unseemly bits are revealed, sensibilities are questioned, and solid ground morphs into shaky mounds. I delve into how the uncanny challenges traditional views and societal norms about the body. My artwork emphasizes the fluid and often unsettling experiences of physical existence, blurring the boundaries between personal and collective perceptions. Through distortions and manipulation of scale, the familiar is rendered alien in my sculptures, prints, and paintings. Through this ambiguity, I hope to offer space for the viewer to navigate their body’s emotional and physical relationship to the unknown.

8th Annual Chapman Staff Art Exhibition Program, Chapman University Staff

Library Displays and Bibliographies

The Leatherby Libraries Hall of Art was established to showcase the creativity of the Chapman community. It was dedicated for this purpose in 2014 although the space has been available for staff and student exhibits since 2011. While past staff art exhibits featured work by Leatherby Libraries staff members only, this is our sixth year opening up the exhibit to any interested staff member of Chapman University.

The 16 artists represented here demonstrate the wide variety of talent at our university. From photography to painting, weaving to sculpture, the works you see here provide a unique opportunity to view and …

Családi, Joelle Nagy

LSU Master's Theses

Családi (Magyar/Hungarian) adjective: related to the family; related to the home

CSALÁDI is a compendium of paintings and sculpture that narrate and itemize memories, mementos, and feelings from my childhood in relation to the home. It is an autobiographical agglomeration of objects and spaces that I am honoring and remembering through the act of creating. I am effectuating the feminine and maternal instinct of gathering and arranging my memories pertaining to personal history and inherited cultural identity through altar-making. Idiosyncratic items are collected and bound through color association and sensory memory. Constructing interior and exterior spaces of the home in …

Sweet Relief, Aaron Feltman

Masters Theses

Relief holds both an emotional and a physical connotation; both the lifting of a burden or emotional baggage and the description of an object with forms that protrude from a planar surface. This thesis explores the ways in which these connotations can co-mingle and inform each other through the creation of hand-carved wooden reliefs. The relief becomes a vessel through which an emotional connection can be formed between viewer and maker by way of a shared sense of labor.

Wood, a material grown from the earth, is transformed into an entirely human-created form, the car; embodying the just-as-human desire for …

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.

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

Fragmented Bodies, Lauren Careese Alexander

Art Theses and Dissertations

Through Memory Webs and fragmented ceramic vessels, I express what it feels like to grow up living in a biracial body. I utilize mixed media to emulate a mixed-race experience. My Memory Webs are fashioned by painting on scraps of canvas and attaching them with crocheted wire and ribbon to speak to how my memory has impacted my identity. My fragmented ceramic vessels are cut up and stitched back together to represent disjointedness and un-belonging. All of my work is contextualized through the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and what the Monster may represent for people of color. I also …

The Hero’S Journey, Brianna Tolkacz

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

The Hero’s Journey reflects on the continued fascination with fairytales, myths, and legends through time. This project follows the exploration of these stories, themes, and the lessons they can teach one about themselves and the wider world. Such fictional narratives allow one to process and share their lived experiences: the victories and tragedies, losses and growth. This project follows a winged figure as she fights for her freedom and gains her wings. the journey is messy and raw but still beautiful. The project blends classical oil painting and contemporary sculptural elements to compose an evolving narrative culminating in a dynamic, …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Past And Future Winds, Alicia Ehni

Theses and Dissertations

Ehni’s thesis reflects on the role of wind to connect and transform. Looking at science and invisible forces like Earth’s magnetic field, her "Oculus" sculptures evoke old tools for orientation & migration. Birds, insects, plants, roads and sand, appear in a video and an experimental 16mm pinhole film of her bike journey along the Hudson River, NY. “Coordinates”, a magnetic drawing installation, addresses impermanence, attraction to land and fragility. Tracing memories of the Paracas desert in Peru, this thesis follows her interest in alchemy, ecology and the cosmos.

The J In Danger, Zachary Delamater

Theses and Dissertations

“The J in Danger” merges autobiographic and formal concerns in sculpture and installation to describe the existential hazards contemporary life poses to Queer and Disabled individuals. The paper utilizes silent letters as thematic device to connect notions of precarity to a broader sense of contemporary “doomerism.”

In The Performance Of A Lifetime: Pepper Plinkett, Lily Camille Hollinden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This narrative depicts a caricature of the human experience through the eyes of my alter- ego character, Pepper Plinkett. Pepper is a symbol of my personal philosophies of what it means to be human, and serves as a protagonist and guide through an infinite, ambiguous natural world. This exhibition is a celebration of the vibrancy, curiosity, and ridiculousness of a lifetime. The uniqueness of humor as a specifically human trait and its use as a tool of communication, particularly in expressing authenticity, is the driving force behind my use of clowns in my work. I take an absurdist approach to …

Temple Of Familiars, Madeleine Grace Kelly

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My paintings, etchings, and installation explore encounters with mystery in the natural world, especially through the flora, fauna, light, and water of the swamps around the Atchafalaya Basin. My practice explores kinship, reverence, and awe as an antidote to estrangement from the spirit of the land. I am influenced by artists and scholars engaging with the places that they inhabit and that inhabit them with a reverence and mystery of approach. My work invites viewers to engage with the memory that the water carries of our interconnectedness, and to remember that we are not separate from the natural world.

In A State Of Becoming, Benjamin Conley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition titled, In a State of Becoming. The exhibition was on view at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN from February 26 March 8, 2024. In a State of Becoming showcased three large scale paintings, five multimedia prints, two sculptural installations, and a video projection installation. Conley's thesis research and current artistic practice revolve around the interfaces, connections, and relationships of humans and animals. Conley explicitly uses language like "animal" to describe "non-human animals" in his work's context. The exhibited works focused primarily on how the artist and/or the viewer …

Fragments Of Forgiveness, Sarah Hayashi

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Trauma lives in the body, with or without conscious memory of the events that placed it there. To cope with the pain of trauma we might disconnect from our bodies, choosing to view ourselves as some separate entity living within the body. Disconnection offers a sense of protection by allowing compartmentalization of pain, grief, and trauma, but the harder these emotional fragments are fought, the more they demand acknowledgment.

Referencing my torso for size, I handbuild biomorphic sculptures from clay, finishing them with glaze that mimics the dewy texture of raw clay, using a palette derived from my skin tone …

Groundswell, Ursula Gullow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the artwork of her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Groundswell, held at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, March 11 – 22, 2024. The exhibition includes wall pieces, sculpture, plaster, and ceramic objects that explore the traditional parameters of painting and its presentation.

Ideas discussed include the philosophy of history, and the origin of European art tropes such as odalisques, flowers, and birds. Framing devices, deconstructed paintings, fiber arts, ceramics, 18^th Century decorative art, plaster, the studio practice, Walter Benjamin, David Lowenthal, Gustave Courbet, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Titus Kaphar, Valerie Hegarty, and maximalism are also surveyed.