Sculpture Commons^™

My Head Is This Animal, Paula De Martino

Theses and Dissertations

De Martino’s paper explores the dynamics of control in human interaction by discussing her relationship with animals. The author's life experiences serve to construct a narrative, but she lies. She becomes an unreliable narrator who aims to blur the threshold between art and real life throughout the performative gesture of appropriating identities. She steals from the ancient myth of Medusa through her stone sculptures (her offspring), in an egoistic attempt to excuse her fear and longing for motherhood.

Folds, Bayan Abukiwan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the fold as an orienting metaphor and material gesture to linger on the minor details of intimacy that are severed by occupation and political violence. Through painting, drawing and ceramics, the work traces the more implicit modes of dehumanization—particularly in relation to Palestine—while engaging the domestic as a site of quiet and complexity. Influenced by artists like Jennifer Packer and Beatriz González, the practice embraces slowness, touch, and opacity to fold the viewer into a haptic encounter with the work.

4 In 10 Tiktok Users Find Their ‘For You’ Page Extremely Or Very Interesting, Aashish Gadani

Theses and Dissertations

Using video supercuts, sculptural forms, and digital prints on textiles in my work, I explore how images/videos can be used to reflect on cultural and personal trends. In this paper, I discuss how the structure of software recommendation systems combines with ideas of the post-internet image and creates unintended cultural consequences.

Fountain, Sadaf Azadehfar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the intersections of water, power, identity, and architecture through the lens of colonial and postcolonial landscapes, focusing particularly on Persian gardens and fountain sculptures. Drawing on historical, cultural, and symbolic frameworks, the study explores how water systems embody both practical and spiritual roles, positioning water as a force of control, resistance, and regeneration. Central to this work are analyses of arches and garden designs, which serve as architectural metaphors for cosmic harmony, community gathering, and contested space. Through a combination of visual analysis, historical research, and personal artistic practice—including ceramic sculptures and multimedia installations—this thesis traces the …

An Archeology Of Looking, Marco G. Dasilva

Theses and Dissertations

Marco DaSilva’s mosaics explore camouflage and syncretism, blending symbols from American culture, Catholic saints, Afro-Brazilian deities and queer spaces. His work examines objects as relics, where identity is hidden and revealed. By integrating simple materials and transforming them into unique compositions, DaSilva creates hybrid objects where all of his worlds intersect, crafting his own mythology.

The Hand Reaches Out, Martin John Miller Iv

Theses and Dissertations

Through a combination of narrative description and in-depth explication, I will detail the physical experience of navigating the thesis work while tying those motions directly to personal writing. My hope is that, through this installation, I can establish a framework for relating to these systems through the felt and physical, through the suggested and implied, through the appearance of the ordinary, and on through to the interruption of the absurd.

Hemispheres Of Faith: Mapping The Global Journey Of An Ivory Rosary Bead At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Mary M. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Hemispheres of Faith reattributes a carved ivory rosary bead in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Quito School in 18th-century Ecuador. Through examining the trade history of the Manila Galleons, material analysis, and iconographic study, Hemispheres of Faith challenges the bead's European origins and reveals the object as a product of global exchange, devotional practice, and colonial artistic collaboration within the Spanish Empire.

A Limit That Recedes, Chloe Wilcox

Theses and Dissertations

In "A Limit that Recedes", I discuss my art practice in terms of accumulation and techniques of reproduction, such as casting, printing, and repetitive actions. I contextualize my work among artists such as H.C. Westermann, Isa Genzken, and Paul Thek. The work featured in this thesis explores ideas of aspiration, longing, and failure, and explores themes of the fraught relationship of the human and nature.

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 …

Moments In The Making, Paige M. Harper

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

Gathering around a table with good company, sharing stories and food, creates lasting memories. These moments of warmth, laughter, and connection stay with us long after a meal is over. These experiences are the driving force that inspire the vessels | create. These vessels serve as conduits for connection, helping to shape and enhance the shared experience. These objects are not only individual pieces, but also components of broader compositions. I consider how they are related in space. Using repetition, contrast, proportion, and negative space, I strive to create cohesive visual experiences that invite curiosity.

These Things Happen, Keleigh E. Mcmullen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My artwork emerges from moments of emotional and physical violence—both small and large. Although rooted in my lived experience, the truths I tell in my work are far from unique. Violence often hides in plain sight, buried in the mundane spaces of daily life. Through ceramic sculpture, I spotlight these moments, inviting viewers into a world that is familiar and simultaneously unsettling.

Scale plays a crucial role in this narrative—objects shrink or expand based on their emotional gravity, their object authority, or my own relationship to them. By amplifying the small and shrinking the overwhelming, I reshape how viewers interact …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Inner Bonds, Caitlin M. Maltbie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Cait Maltbie, discusses their Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Inner Bonds, which was installed at Slocumb Galleries in Johnson City, TN, from March 24, 2025, through April 4, 2025, with a public reception held on March 27, 2025. The exhibition consisted of multi-disciplinary work: zines, screenprints, and a sculptural installation mimicking the scenery and emotional environment of the imaginary Inner Bonds world. Inner Bonds refers to their comic series about feelings and how they are handled, from which all the content for this exhibition is derived. The work is focused on deconstructing the artist’s feelings so that they …

Untitled: Study., Annabela Cockrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Untitled: Study is an exploration into “The Work”, which is a constant evolution of the idea of the same piece. Every new work is an evolution of the one before. Previous works are often reworked and self-cannibalized into the next generation. The Work will never be presented the same way twice. There is a temporality in making and installing the work this way, what with the form, the space, the ness of it never being the same. All the while conflicting by being viewed as being the same in the same breath.

The Light Farm., John Wrestling Brewster Clay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Light Farm is a creative examination of the convergence and divergence of truth and meaning, told in a collection of three short stories that both supplements, and is supplemented by a thesis exhibition of fine art. These stories are told using an episodic format that facilitates world building across time periods, while the sculptures, photographs, and text within the exhibition function as a physical entry point into a space in which the line between fact and fiction is tested. The impetus for this project was a lifelong interest in the disorderly confluence of corporatism, power, mortality, morality, human potential, …

Working To Achieve Flow, Vincente D.A. Fischer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This paper is a thesis for the body of work I created over the last 3 years called Working To Achieve Flow. In the following pages, I will discuss what inspired me to create this body of work, which entailed personal reflection on my own mental health and how it affects my art practice. I will also go over who my influences are: Eva Hesse, Willem De Kooning, and Jenny Saville. Each of these artists inspires me to think about my work in different ways, which has helped me develop into the artist I am today. Finally, I will break …

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 …

Syncretic Spirits / Espíritus Sincréticos, Angelica Tapia - Estrada

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

Syncretic Spirits / Espíritus Sincréticos is a multimedia exhibition that invites viewers into a fantastical space where cultural identity and perception intertwine. Colorful shaped panels, sculptural installations, prints, and drawings bridge physical and metaphysical realms. Personal archetypes intuitively inspired by natural forms drive the work.

Influenced by the dualities of my upbringing as a first-generation Mexican American, I was immersed in Mexican culture through my family traditions while finding a home in the nurturing embrace of the heartland. The work has become a means of reclaiming a new layered sense of self, disentangling from my Catholic upbringing, embracing indigenous healing …

An Essay Of Images From Playlab Inc., Playlab Inc., Archie Lee Coates Iv

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

A series of images depicting the illustrious Playlab Inc. as a collection of projects in different mediums. The LA-based design studio has contributed to fashion, art, and urban culture through collaborations with major institutions and emerging artists. The photo essay highlights Playlab Inc.’s diverse projects and installations, embodying its core philosophy: no focus. This principle guides the studio to the cutting-edge of contemporary culture, where innovation meets execution. The creative powerhouse has demonstrated a capacity to engage with contemporary cultural movements through its projects. For instance, in the OTW Vans project, the firm acquired images from notable skate photographers Atiba …

Towards The Non-Spectacle: Responses To Necropolitics In The Artwork Of Teresa Margolles And Maya Watanabe, Leslie Anne Condon

Masters Theses

How do we engage with artwork that addresses complicated histories

of colonialism and political violence, specifically intangible and

incomprehensible violence? Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ 2005 work, Lote

Bravo, is named after and composed of the soil from a mass grave site

discovered in 1995 in the southeastern corner of Ciudad Juárez, a city known

internationally for the femicide that has continued to haunt its streets and

peripheries since the 1990s. Peruvian filmmaker Maya Watanabe’s 2019 film

Liminal cinematically documents the official exhumation of two mass graves

in the Ayacucho and Huánuco regions of the Andes highlands, where

thousands of …

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.

Xxx, Samuel Tucker Claxton

Theses and Dissertations

In XXX Tucker correlates the rise in online hookup apps and the fall of queer nightlife spaces to show how the internet has affected gay cruising spaces. They relate their installation-based work to the ideas of liminal spaces and Jean Baudrillard's

hyperreal. Further, they contextualize their practice within the scope of Robert Grober's work.

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

Curatorial Publications

No abstract provided.

The Chesapeake Pearl: A Proposal For An Environmental Public Art Installation, Samuel I. Reichard

Pitzer Senior Theses

In this thesis, I lay the foundation for an environmental art project along Chesapeake Bay. It includes an analysis of relevant literature and case studies, as well as a proposal for the project. The Chesapeake Pearl (working title) would be a 20-foot spherical aquarium that will visually display the water filtration capacity of eastern oysters and native seagrass, aiming to inspire curiosity around these organisms and the greater Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The project exists at the intersection of environmental art and environmental education and seeks to promote learning and public engagement through visually demonstrating a scientific process, the water filtration …

In Praise Of Dust, Hasler Gomez-Perez

Theses and Dissertations

A desire path is a physical manifestation of where a system has failed, but also where it has been refused, where a new path has been made. The wake exists in the post, it is not a singular, untethered event, but a subtle double entendre that lives in the post-death, but also in the pre-life—not a liminal limbo, but a superposition of dying and waking.

This collection was assembled and composed over the course of two years as I navigated my practice, myself, and others. Present here are my thoughts, my experiences, and in many ways my beliefs. IN PRAISE …

How To Remain A Stranger / Encountering, In A Basement, Hannah Rotwein

Theses and Dissertations

How to Remain a Stranger / Encountering, in a Basement consists of two parallel essays. On the lefthand side of the page, How to Remain a Stranger explores the ways that the legend of the Wandering Jew, the Tradescantia genus of plants, peddlers, and exile relate to my practice of collecting, sorting, and combining found objects. On the righthand side, Encountering, in a Basement describes my thesis exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Focusing on the idea of the encounter, I detail the materials, considerations, and processes behind four of the ten sculptures in the …

The Paradox Of Value, David Enrique Guarnizo

Theses and Dissertations

The present thesis project examines how, in the United States, and especially in the state of Virginia, archetypes of "wealth," "value," and "identity" have been constructed in relation to land and territory. This analysis explores the tension between the inherent value of life on the land and the economic value that can be derived from it. This tension is exemplified by a theory known as the "paradox of value", also referred to as the "paradox of water and diamonds", which was developed by the renowned Scottish economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. This theoretical framework serves as a fundamental axis for …

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 …