Sculpture Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Hidden In Humor: Redefining Abjection Through Implication, Maddy Kish

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Abjection can whisper. It lies beneath the joke; you will find it there if you spend the time. Look at me. Come closer. Are you willing to discover? If you listen, I will confess, I will air out my dirty laundry, I will show you the inside of my body and its evidence.

My thesis is a consideration of my waste, an analysis of the bodily trail I leave behind. I explore indecency as a persistent feature of my art practice and a tactic I use to stimulate interest. My overarching unladylike sensibility is broken down into three categories – …

Or To Be Eaten Alive, Christopher Williams

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

“or to be eaten alive'' is a multimedia exhibition in which I merge my own coming of age story with a mythological ecology. In this work I reclaim my queer identity by communing with my past selves in a fantasy world created through the lens of Queer Ecology and Queer Eco-Futurism. The visuals in this exhibition obscure reality. They are abstractions of the landscapes I occupy—particularly the Tallgrass prairie and Ozark ecoregions. Through a speculative, fantasy world the exhibition introduces moments of adoration, death, fracturing, growth, joy, and failure. I form, draw, color and arrange the work embracing mistakes and …

Suffering Juicebox, Janelle O'Malley

Graduate Artistry Projects and Performances

Suffering Juicebox investigates the confluences of nostalgia, trauma and identity making by means of sculpture and performance. Creating pieces with built layers of material and found objects Suffering Juicebox takes shape through collecting, forming, layering, petrifying, erasing and reimagining. Pieces are assembled into scenes attempting to rebuild what cannot be obtained. The objects collected and used are metaphors for the memories we accumulate.

Suffering Juicebox explores how gender and identity are created through layers of memory, nostalgia and trauma. Nostalgia’s etymology comes from the greek words nostos meaning “return home” and algos meaning “pain”, and together the word means homesickness. …

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.