Art Practice Commons^™

Writing About Art - Sample Papers, Ana Marjanovic, Leslie Epps

Open Educational Resources

The sample papers facilitate understanding of the following assignments:

Short Paper #2 (Outline and Final Draft) and

Short Paper #3 (Outline and Final Draft)

Interface: Fringe Landscapes And Identity, Elizabeth T. Lewin

Theses and Dissertations

An MFA thesis that weaves together: virtual landscapes, escapism, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, utopia, family, and identity.

Fear And Nostalgia In Immigration, Daniel A. Matthews

Theses and Dissertations

Fear and Nostalgia in Immigration is a project that uses re-occuring memory and experiential memory to help us understand our common histories. The projects asks individuals to first share a re-occuring memory by writing it on a chalkboard. The next step is to then write an experiential memory about immigration, this can be a story you might have heard or it could be something from your own family history. These two tasks are done on a communal table where several individuals are engage in the same task at the same time. This aim of this exercise is to have something …

Deaccessioning The Studio, Ayla Rexroth

Theses and Dissertations

I have created several micro-businesses that provide tools and facilitate experiences to help people meet their potential. The form of the businesses has ranged from a street based art gallery inside the drawers of a modern dresser to a business that sews more and bigger pockets into women’s outerwear.

Private Conversation, Gahee Park

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis paper "Private Conversation" discusses the themes, contexts, and influences relevant to paintings and drawings I made during my MFA studies.

Art Beyond The Object? Art Beyond Grad School? (A Kickstarter Fundraiser): Help Me Complete My Mfa And Kickstart My Life As An Artist., Hsini D. Leary

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this paper and Kickstarter project is to enable the production of my last semester’s work and thesis exhibition, and also to aid in the post-graduation transition to a sustainable art practice that does not rely on the current gallery structure.

The New York With Instance, Or Abject In The Personal Environment, Liam Kirby

Theses and Dissertations

This paper was produced by an artificial neural network. An algorithm iteratively taught itself how to write by studying the text of thesis papers from the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 MFA semesters. After hundreds of generations of self-education, the program can produce endless thesis papers, writing letter-by-letter. The images were created through an identical process, using 8000 installation photographs from the website Contemporary Art Daily as a dataset.

Becoming Serpent: Mapping Coils Of Paranoia In A Neocolonial Security State, Rachel J. Liebert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What follows is a feminist, decolonial experiment to map the un/settling circulation of paranoia – how it is done, what it does, what it could do – within contemporary conditions of US white supremacy. Drawing on participant observation, interviewing, scientific artifacts, reflexive journaling, and a public art project, I enter white supremacy through a burgeoning form of pre-emptive psy to capture ‘the prodrome’ – a stage-cum-population-cum-figure at the center of a transnational program of research to identify and intervene on ‘pre-psychosis’. I argue that this nascent, contested, and accelerating movement is enacting a contemporary transition from …

An Aesthetic Theory Of Gamesmanship, Derek A. Fordjour

Theses and Dissertations

An Aesthetic Theory of Gamesmanship is an in-depth analysis of the personal, sociological, and historical elements contained within the art of Derek Fordjour with considerations given to artistic and literary influences that inform his intention and goals in the work. Also included are illustrations of specific art works and descriptions.

Symbiosis Now, Priscilla Fusco

Theses and Dissertations

As we narrow the world’s parameters with our activities, we crowd other organisms that support us. Scientists and philosophers including Charles Sanders Peirce, Lynn Margulis, Thomas Khun and Dave Goulson articulate the role of the biomass, an intelligence that offers fertile dialogue for sculptors.

Bodies In Repose, Christopher Aque

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines my artistic practice and its intersection with histories of homosexual desire and exclusion, contemporary surveillance, political complicity, and the legacies of Minimalism. As the cultural landscape has shifted post-AIDS, so too have the strategies to police, regulate, and control bodies.

Departing From Photography. Place, Space, Non-Place, And The Quotidian: Painting From Pictures Of The Everyday, Mathew A. Tucker

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates the relationship between photography and painting. It explores the way in which Mathew Tucker's paintings have been informed by his photographs of everyday places and the ways that they depart from those images and express new and different meanings.

Digital Photography As Experience Artifact, Ryan V. Brennan

Theses and Dissertations

Through the screen interface, the boundary between personal and collective experience is being redefined both spatially and temporally. Here, memories are given independent mediated existence, taking form in digital photographic artifacts that can be communally shared and manipulated into a synthetic continuum.

On Negotiating Between The Virtual And Material In Art Historical Reproduction, Zorawar S. Sidhu

Theses and Dissertations

A discussion of the role of art historical reproduction in the works of Nicholas Poussin and the theories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, in relation to artworks by Zorawar Sidhu.

Navel Gazing, Andrew J. Macasil

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to present work that disrupts the heteronormative binary that has dominated the representation of the human form in painting. The navel is employed as a bodily metaphor to address the universality of unique bodily experiences, which are tied to one’s identity.

A Performative Script: Play With(In) Me, Erik Patton

Theses and Dissertations

Patton continues his interest in the body, its relation to material, the notion of abstraction (specifically related to queerness), and the phenomenological with this performative script. Enter the bath first; you must wash your dirty asshole, as you shat only two hours ago. Collect your body in the Silver Pond.

Moving From The Gray Area : What Is (My) Art [{At Hunter} Right Now]?, Rachel Schragis

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis at Hunter College is a culmination of three years of investigation of the potential to create an artistic practice in service of popular organizing in NYC. In my thesis paper, I trace the history, and challenges of this work during my time in the Hunter MFA program. I lay out goals and core questions of my thesis exhibition in relationship to both my political life and my studio practice.

David Alfaro Siqueiros’S Pivotal Endeavor: Realizing The “Manifiesto De New York” In The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop Of 1936, Emily Schlemowitz

Theses and Dissertations

The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop, initiated by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) in 1936, is often considered a pivotal moment for the artist. This thesis unveils new documentation about the Workshop, illuminating heretofore-unobserved aspects of the group’s governance, political aims, and theoretical framework put forth by Siqueiros in his critical “Manifiesto de New York.”

I Don't Want You To Work As Me, I Want You To Work For Me, Emma Hedditch

Publications and Research

Performance, video scripts, and other writings, 2008 - 2015. This self-published ebook collects together performance and video scripts made by artist Emma Hedditch. These scripts take a poetic and informative form. They were performed at Flat-time House, London, Kunsthaus, Bregenz, Musee de Montmatre, Paris amongst other venues between 2008 and 2015.

Transitors, Sarah B. Crofts

Theses and Dissertations

As an expression of integrated languages and an extension of my art practice, Transitors operates at the intersection of data, photography and language to explore the fragmentation and disintegration of the human psyche and bodily awareness through the effects of digital technology and contemporary social dissociation. Elements of the text simultaneously function as formulas, facts, and data interspersed with expository and narrative writing, all relating mimetically to various registers of this dissociation. The text moves amongst these levels, shifting from the personal to hints of a technological sublime to exemplify the predicament of the individual in relation to systems of …

Nothing Behind The Sun, Sebastian Fierro Castro

Theses and Dissertations

painting as a containment exercise, and as such, a tool that allows us to interiorize the world

Viewer-, Author-, And Ownership In The Work Of Andrea Zittel, Amanda M. York

Theses and Dissertations

Andrea Zittel invites others to collapse the distinctions between artist, viewer, and collaborator by interacting with her usable works. This thesis explores the process of interacting with Zittel's works, and how it affects viewer-, author- and ownership.

Claudio Perna, Ca. 1970: The Impossibility Of Wholeness, Silvia Benedetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis identifies two main themes in Claudio Perna’s (1938–1997) work: his use of technology to explore self-representation and his interrogation of mapping as means of knowledge. This study also situates Perna’s conceptual work in relation to his field of human geography, in the specific Venezuelan context.

Please Read, Joseph W. Anthony-Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This is a semi-fictional story told through a series of fake found documents. It describes my work and thoughts through metaphor. Machines have the potential to gain self-consciousness through accumulation of errors. Creativity can be confused with randomly generated variety. The acceptance of chaos and loss of control can provide a path to enlightenment.

A Statement, Cein Watson

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis paper is a map of my studio practice. It is meant to be a resource to help the viewer read my artwork. By laying out the tools of my practice the paper gives the reader a context on how I digest and synthesis works of art. These tools range from references to art history, architecture, and a grounding in traditional craftsmanship. The result is a culmination of influences that situate the work and give the reader an intimate understanding of the final art exhibition. With this map, the viewer can navigate the processes and contexts of the artwork.

Oh, Lazarus…Whom God Has Helped, Wala Ka Bang Hiya!, Lazaro Juan

Theses and Dissertations

Art as a means and a vehicle towards a higher form of consciousness, and state of awareness to communicate complex issues and a way of healing. Within the context of the decolonization process.

Place-Making, Mobility, And Identity: The Politics And Poetics Of Urban Mass Rapid Systems In Taiwan, Anru Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Your Brain On Art: Art Therapy In A Museum Setting And Its Potential At The Rubin Musuem Of Art, Laura Sloan

Dissertations and Theses

Art therapy-based programs could open the doors of the museum to another population of visitors with disabilities, particularly those suffering from mental illness and in need of healing and wellness. The above statement serves as the core of this thesis with the ultimate goal to analyze and research the place of art therapy in a museum setting. Investigation of existing literature, interviews with professionals, and case studies, reveal the ways in which art therapy can be facilitated in a museum setting in order to better reach this population. Furthermore this thesis explores how collaboration between museum educators and art therapists …

Assessing (Multi)Culturalism Through Public Art Practices, Anru Lee, Perng-Juh Peter Shyong

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

An Activist's Guide To Lesbian History: A Companion To The Video Not Just Passing Through, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This guide, designed to accompany the video Not Just Passing Through, contains guidelines for conducting oral history, forms for donating material to mainstream and community based archives, and lessons for engaging lesbian history with activism.