Art Practice Commons^™

Strange Stranger: A Visceral Skin Glaze Exploration Into The Neurodivergent Sensory Experience, Sam J. Lucas

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Sam Lucas

Sam creates ambiguous figurative objects predominantly in clay. Her creative practice draws on her experience of being a neurodivergent woman today, by exploring aspects of her own unique neurotype.

The visceral glaze exploration pieces were the precursor to the final forms for her body of work called ‘Strange stranger’ where she is exploring the weight and awkwardness of being in the body, the pain this alienation can cause, and ironically the beauty and humour that results from this diversity.

The surfaces of the pieces were attempting to describe the interoceptive, exteroceptive and alexithymic confusion that can occur at …

Fine Arts Gallery: Dylan Mackenzie, Dylan Mackenzie

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Dylan has a diagnosis of ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder]. This impacts his ability to communicate - he is (mostly) non-verbal, and as a result this affects his learning and emotional development. Dylan will likely require support throughout his life. Nonetheless, he is physically fit and active, loving and good humoured.

His love of the outdoors inspires his artistic practice, and he attends regular classes and workshops at Project Ability - a Glasgow-based visual arts organisation which creates artistic opportunities for people of all ages with disabilities and people with lived experience of mental ill-health.

He explores experiences through lyrical and …

Exploring The Effects Of Trance States Through Ritual, Kriya Yoga, And Expressive Arts For Adults With Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Alexandra (Lexi) Faith Traub

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

struggling with substance abuse often have complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and seek altered states beyond the mundane via substances. What if expressive art therapies and ancient spiritual practices creating trance states could meet this need to alter states, while healing CPTSD symptoms by developing self-awareness, affect regulation, and reprogramming the subconscious mind through imaginal realm parts work? This capstone thesis explores this using yogic philosophy, shamanic drumming, Himalayan singing bowls, aboriginal grief rituals, and expressive art therapies rooted in transcendental theater, bilateral stimulation, and natural materials like clay therapy. A methodology combining ancient wisdom, arts, and modern psychological theory …

Glue Gun Stories: Public Art Educators’ Perceptions Of Trauma And Its Impact On Their Pedagogy And Praxis, Alicia Gray

Educational Studies Dissertations

Public School visual arts educators play a vital role in implementing trauma-sensitive practices within schools. Through a collaborative arts-based research design the researcher worked alongside four public school visual art educators to portray their knowledge, beliefs, and values surrounding trauma while also gaining a nuanced and in depth understanding of how perceptions of trauma influence their pedagogy and praxis. Data collection methods included interviews, focus groups, participant and research observations, photo documentation, and art-based data. Participants viewed trauma as chronic adverse events that lead to maladaptive responses within students. They felt these responses had widespread impacts on the entire school …

The Diorama Of Coexistence Hypnagogia: The Liminal Space Between Dream And Reality, Yunseok Song

Master's Theses

The “Diorama of Coexistence” explores the imagined spaces where humans and animals share the same environments, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. This year-long photographic project is inspired by my Christian faith and the Genesis creation narrative, where the world was originally harmonious and unspoiled. Through my work, I aim to reimagine the natural world, not as it is, but as it could be a place where animals and humans coexist peacefully.

In researching human development and its impact on nature, I found that animals are often confined to spaces like zoo, far from their natural habitats. This led …

[W]Hole: Journey To Fullness, Joni P. Gordon

MFA in Visual Art

My work raises critical questions about Black history, race, gender, beauty, and privilege. My practice also highlights the intersectionality of colorism and racism. I use materials such as cardboard rectangles with handwritten words, brown paper, doors defaced by scratches, fire, printed images, newspaper, and projected photographs to ask and answer those questions. I also use Work and Travel documents, broom and brush bristle, mop fiber, towels, and audio recordings of oral histories to exhibit invisible scars wrought by racist actions as physical and material manifestations.

My practice began after experiencing racial discrimination for the first time on a US work …

We Came From The Sea, L. Alexis St. John

CGU MFA Theses

This paper contains a summary of the thesis exhibition, including an artist statement, exhibition flyer, images of the artwork with descriptions, and images of the gallery. The descriptions of the images are excerpted from the exhibition program, and include artwork titles in a constructed language called Ponder.

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 …

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 …

Omnipresence And An Outlier, Cheyenne Monk

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In this thesis, I explore the possibility of existence outside the confines of labeled identity through the lens of art, drawing inspiration from personal experiences of racial alienation and the desire to transcend societal labels. Through figurations and world-building, I challenge the notion that one's identity must be defined by categories such as race and gender. By removing categorical physicalities and portraying violence as a means to confront bias-motivated aggression, I aim to provoke dialogue on prejudice without further alienation. Through a blend of surrealism, abstraction, and neo-expressionism, I create tense yet playful presentations of bodies to communicate themes of …

Cliffhanger, Micah Mickles

MFA in Visual Art

I am Micah Mickles, a mixed-media visual artist in St. Louis, Missouri. My artwork is deeply rooted in my personal experiences and serves as a memorial and monument to counteract the enduring effects of grief and loss. What sets my work apart is the transformative impact of my everyday encounters, inspired by my 14 years of experience working at Trader Joe's. These encounters have led me to reflect on my profound connections with diverse communities. By delving into the hidden narratives of mundane materials encountered in the workplace, I prompt a reexamination of convenience and supply chain origins. Inspired by …

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 Fuller The Bucket Is, The Harder It Is To Fly, Jacob Littlejohn

Theses and Dissertations

My abstract paintings are informed by the momentary sublime rooted in the vastness of the natural world. Based on imagined and real landscapes, the work evokes minutia and phenomena that affect our perceptions of reality, and signifies a longing to reconnect with the natural world.

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.

Feeble Transmitters, Indranil Choudhury

Theses and Dissertations

Feeble Transmitters is a series of electroacoustic sculptures made using ceramics, plexiglass, and home audio components like speakers, transducers, and amplifiers. The sculptures occupy a space between manufactured objects and organic forms. Drawing on the material culture of industrial design in audio, the series explores people’s relationships and rituals with consumer technology. When installed together in temporary installations, the sculptures activate their environment with a spatial soundscape.

Time's Radiant Keepers, Tara Aliya Kesavan

Theses and Dissertations

Time’s Radiant Keepers is a body of work comprising paintings, ceramic sculptures and video. Through these materials, my work emphasizes a tactile, embodied relationship between people and the virtual worlds they inhabit. I build on the idea of contending with the screen as a sculptural surface - one whose texture, form and objecthood we may look at, rather than simply look through. My formal inquiries are anchored in a rich narrative world. Drawing from state sponsored documentary films, feature films, and familial anecdotes from the 1950’s-1970’s in India, my paintings chronicle the emergence of the image of the urban, working …

Container Film, Dena Kopolovich

Theses and Dissertations

Container Film is an experimental nonfiction short film that explores the theme of carrying. Drawing inspiration from a blend of anthropological, religious, and artistic sources, the film is guided by an unknown narrator who contemplates the origins of humanity. Unlike conventional storytelling, the narrator’s uncertainty and inner dialogue punctuate the narrative, challenging a traditional linear structure. Jumping between diverse thoughts, she resists depicting human history with a singular hero or linear trajectory. Visually, the film unfolds through vivid tableaux vivants, dance sequences, and curious object arrangements, illustrating the subtle relationship between human cognition and materiality. Through its nuanced, tactile approach, …

間, Lele Dai

Theses and Dissertations

LeLe Dai makes contingent participatory public interventions using sensory materials such as sound, flickering light, and water. This paper examines their works through the lens of Chinese character Jian (間), meaning “gap/slit/incision,” to investigate the concept of “in-betweenness.”

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 …

The Frimpong Case, Vincent Frimpong

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Frimpong Case is the gathering of skills and voices of Africans and African artists. My collaborators from my Ghanaian family and neighbors to my colleagues in the United States have influenced my practice, allowing me to expand the history I have learned from the African musicians who have deeply influenced me to my heritage and the research I am able to expand upon to promote my vision of my culture and legacy. This paper describes the body of work and speaks to the themes of collaboration, migration, assemblage, and installation. The Frimpong Case is the root of my visions …

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 …

Reclamation: The Towns Of The Virginia Coalfields, Craig Owens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses his work in Reclamation: The Towns of the Virginia Coalfields, a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibit held at the Tipton Gallery from February 12th through February 23, 2024. The exhibition focuses on coal towns located in the southwestern part of Virginia. The exhibition consists of 20 framed, archival inkjet prints. Each framed work is 36” x 24” and is representative of the artist’s exploration of the towns. A catalog of the exhibit is included at the end of this thesis.

Owens examines formal and conceptual artistic influences, both historical and contemporary. Historic and contemporary photographic …

Double Exposed Perspectives, Michael J. Leeson

Student Projects

Humans have always stumbled through time, whether each person lived or not is another question. Connecting, experiencing, and feeling dissolve existence into living. Inspired by artists Richard Mosse and Cara Romero who use alternative methods to present perspectives, Michael Leeson uses 35mm film in collaboration with friends from around the United States to do the same.

Leeson ships a variety of black and white film types and a film camera if they do not have one to his collaborators (some who have never shot film before) giving them a wide direction of “shoot your everyday life and vulnerability”. Leeson refuses …

From Field To Fashion: A Journey In Sustainable Design And Regional Understanding, Lily Turner

Individually Designed Interdepartmental Major Honors Project

As the fashion industry became globalized over the past century, it has become a major environment polluter and exposed laborers to hazardous conditions. This honors project considers sustainability in the textile industry at large and at the regional scale of the Upper Midwest. Its scholarly component offers an overview of the current textile production, details how the industry may become sustainable, and suggests practices of environmentally-conscious and ethical design. The creative component is a soil-to-soil seasonless capsule collection titled From Field View that incorporates biomimicry and interrogates the concept of place by referencing the Midwest’s flora, wool, and linen fibers.

How Do We Craft Autoethnography? A Modest Review, Niroj Dahal

The Qualitative Report

I am writing this review as an essential reading for readers and writers of the book—Crafting Autoethnography: Processes and Practices of Making Self and Culture, edited by Jackie Goode, Karen Lumsden, and Jan Bradford, which explores the art of crafting autoethnography (Goode et al., 2023). As a novice autoethnographer, I have grappled with challenges and explored borders while shaping my narrative as a self-narrator of autoethnographic writing. So, in this review, I have attempted to engage readers by offering the invitation, encouraging initial reading as entry to the book, subsequent re-entry, and eventual exit as my evaluation of the …

Earth/Unearth [On The Nature Of G-D And Creation], Macs Herdrich

Honors Projects

Inspired by creative research, EARTH/UNEARTH explores the nature of the divine and the act of creation. This triptych of poetry features poems such as “EXPERIENCE OF A TREE (AND SKY)”, “RITUAL/SENSUAL”, and “THE THING THAT DOESN’T COME FROM THINKING” as meditations on the following questions: Is there a hierarchy that exists from G-d to dirt? How does inspiration flow through the hands to creation? And in the strain of creation, how do we care for our bodies? Each section concludes with an opportunity for visual meditation and reflection.

Primordial, Fel Nikoli Mccoy

CGU MFA Theses

The culmination of my desire to reconcile with my existence through art is to create myths. Mythology, however fantastical it may be, was once how people conveyed their deepest experiences to one another. I became a mythmaker because I needed to communicate my experience: my efforts to reclaim my indigenous Mexican heritage, my anxieties about surveillance and judgment, and my belief in preserving the lands I live on. The myths I create are mashups of the cultural influences in my life with the intent of understanding my identity and positionality in contemporary society. PRIMORDIAL is a collection of my work …

As I Wander, Michelle Lum

CGU MFA Theses

My work highlights moments of wonder from my everyday life to give a more holistic view of reality. To me, experiences of wonder are spaces where a person feels God’s presence, where the spiritual reality of our world becomes visible. Sacraments in the Christian tradition are visible signs of a divine reality. I think of my work as sacramental: heightening moments where the visible gives way to the invisible—not by denying their physical characteristics but through them. The heart of my work is in the intersection between that which is deeply ordinary and that which is deeply extraordinary.