Art Practice Commons^™

Kimono, Elizabeth D. Hoffman

CGU MFA Theses

Globalization opens up opportunities for the international community to push for freedom of expression. It is precisely because the history of kimonos is a multi-cultural one, invented by the Chinese, then adapted and adopted by the Japanese, then altered by Western colonialists and changed as it permutated from the aristocracy to the middle class and to laborers, that I felt that it was relevant to today and the cross-cultural influences of globalization. This summer, I purchased two authentic Japanese kimonos, (one an everyday cotton one to use as a model for my drawings, and the second, an elaborate silk one …

A Crocodile Passed By Today, I Said Hello, He Said Hello, That Annoyed Me, Mayra A. Villegas

CGU MFA Theses

The creatures in my paintings are vastly invested in catering to my sensibilities. Emotional cowardice, impulsive politeness: through them, I am relieved of those personal culprits. They lend ropes, take blame, spit in eyes, and color my streams of consciousness. Furthermore, they manifest personal and social arrays of vexing scenarios. Suffocating hierarchies, the monotony of existence, my paintings aim to offer respite from such malaise.

Ultimately, my paintings are resolving, absolving even, personal and societal grievances.

Lili Zhong Artist Statement, Lili Zhong

CGU MFA Theses

Appreciating beauty, the universe’s natural essence, is an innate and indispensable human ability that helps us learn about the world. Everyone has their own definition, even on the degree to which beauty represents something abstract or realistic. It could mean elegance or romance, be from an audio or visual source, pertain to religious wisdom or even human value. Regardless, art always address beauty.

Unfettered, Doraelia Ruiz

CGU MFA Theses

My life has been built on high wire tensions between the two vastly different worlds I live between. I live somewhere between illusions of minority success and harsh realities of not having a trust-fund in an elite world. I’m neither here nor there. Painting is my one refuge where I can combine the vastly different worlds I exist in and between. My works are the only semblance of a home that doesn’t vanish .

Lei Shen Artist Statement, Lei Shen

CGU MFA Theses

I believe that all things have contradictory side, and development is built on contradictions. In fact, the contradiction is the most frequent thing which is in my CGU’s life. Different culture, different habit of life, different learning styles, different educations. These are all contradictory to me. But also let me have a different way to think. I think it is a good thing for me. Because it makes to understand a thing become more comprehensive. So I want reflect this idea in my work. I want tell people contradictory actually can make progress. I want to say there are tow …

Threshold, Kristin King

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the nature of interiority and exteriority, the relationship between the centered inner self and the peripheral, the physicality of occupying the inside of a space or viewing that space from the outside.

Contact Points, Megan A. Mcgrain

CGU MFA Theses

My practice investigates intimacy and connection over time.

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.

Enekas, Shabnam Yousefian

CGU MFA Theses

My works are all a reflection of my own life, beliefs, experiences and goal. For me art is an oasis of opportunities. It allows me to utilize my innate abilities and imaginations without any obstructions.

I am drawn to painting because of its capacity to reflect the world I live in. My goal is to demonstrate the fact that what is done in life has a reflection on us as well as our surrounding environment. My paintings are abstractions of the real places. Reflection implies clarity; however it is unclear at the same time. To me reflection is clearer than …

Creative Connections: Engaging Students And Faculty Through A Library Artist In Residence, Alexandra Chappell

Library Staff Publications and Research

It can be challenging to forge connections between an academic library and undergraduate art students, who are often heavily engaged in beginning studio practice and may only associate the library with the more traditional research done by other disciplines. One way to overcome this challenge is to change their perceptions of the library through programming that demonstrates that the library can be a site for exploration, inspiration, research, and innovation by artists. At the Claremont Colleges Library, we partnered with a member of the art faculty to create a Library Artist in Residence (LAIR) program, which has the twin goals …

Threshold, Kristin King

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the nature of interiority and exteriority, the relationship between the centered inner self and the peripheral, the physicality of occupying the inside of a space or viewing that space from the outside.

The Room Without A View, Antione L. Leonard

CGU MFA Theses

My work excites conversation about the creation of aesthetic sensations on the human eye while confronting ideas about the pervasive effects of beauty on the mind, body, and emotional sensitivities. Imagination is integral to my work, both in terms of how I make paintings and how they demand to be seen by viewers. I create individuality with the use of an anti-institutional spray paint next to institutional oil paint. I search my everyday lived experiences to find information that has been taken for granted to enhance my art, through natural behaviors within and outside of my studio environment, physically drawing …

Hazzar Samman, Hazzar Samman

CGU MFA Theses

If a single object can be transformed to a new or different form, then it’s possible that everything can change. I believe that art is most effective when it is based on re-used or recycled objects. Transformation is built in. It is both literal and poetic.

Victoria Harbour In Hong Kong: 150 Years, Vivian Ngo

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The image depicts the changes to the coastline of Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong in the past 150 years. The historic photo shows a developing commercial harbour during the colonial time; overlaid with a sketch of the current skyscraper filled metropolitan city after 150 years of land reclamation.

Magic Milk – A Moving Picture!, Elizabeth Park

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The art and science behind 'Magic Milk'.

Engaging Many Minds: Nurturing Collaboration In A Steam Context, Mark Dzula

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This field note describes a recent interdisciplinary project facilitated by Jeremy Gercke, an art teacher at the Bishop's School in La Jolla, California. The project creates ceramic tile markers for flora around the Bishop's School campus. The markers feature QR codes linking to websites populated with student content, including: drawings, information, and oral histories. In this project, Mr. Gercke synthesizes his interests as an artist; maximizes his social connections to mentors, peers and students; and bridges disciplines to create opportunities for interdisciplinary (STEAM) inquiry.

Mission Control: A Space Odyssey, Or An Artist Reimagines Nasa Space Center Houston, Dante Kirkman

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Abstract: This work is a series of digitally altered photographs that were taken at NASA Space Center Houston. The artist transforms and reinterprets these iconic themes to meditate on the creative role of the human imagination in so-called techie or "non-fuzzy” endeavors, and also to suggest that we eschew these rigid distinctions. The images explore the role of the human imagination both in solving the technological and engineering challenges for the Apollo missions, as well as in continuing to inspire us today, as we reflect on the meaning of these historic feats to the wider human experience, evoked here through …

Temporary Shelter, Renae Barnard

CGU MFA Theses

My work considers the ways in which gender performance, desire and objectification are inter-related through power structures. I’m interested in indulging in the pleasure and tactility of making while exploring the network of interactions between perception, time and the inadequacy of language.

Many of my sculptures are worked within inches of collapse and reflect my attraction to the imperfect and the aged. These folded, twisted, and sewn objects are both destroyed by and reinforced with the repetitive gestures by which they are made. These works wrestle with demonstrations of femininity and normative methods of valuation while investigating concerns like anxiety, …

Reference Frames And Movement, Michael S. Russell

CGU MFA Theses

The subjects I investigate are often symptomatic of society’s nervousness and its shortage of self-criticality. I search for phenomena that at one time felt strange and new, but have since been accepted and reduced to being commonplace and unchallenged. My drawings take a position of political ambiguity and exemplify the condition of cultural fatigue that arises out of our instant media climate. By not passing judgment on issues that may be present, such as violence, race, our faith in technology, or even the art world, my drawings point to conversations greater than themselves. This level of detachment allows for the …

Hangs Brightly, Yirui Ding

CGU MFA Theses

My works are inextricably related to my life. They create an imaginary world that reflects my actual experiences, emotions, and memories. Also, I never expect every viewer to could discover, but wait for careful viewers to discover it and to free up their own minds and to draw their own conclusions.

Tiktak, Fang Li

CGU MFA Theses

TikTak

My works present the inherent nature of space and light. A chemical process is approached in a way, which has similarly quality to a natural process. I’m interested in how the material can change itself and how I can manipulate that change. Transparency, reflection, pattern, harmony, and movement are engaged.

I use a wide range of materials as much as to match my ideas and the form. They are presented in simple, unified or repeating forms. There is a physical, innermost satisfaction in the activity of working with simple materials. I materialize them and allow them to be both …

Tiktak, Fang Li

CGU MFA Theses

TikTak

My works present the inherent nature of space and light. A chemical process is approached in a way, which has similarly quality to a natural process. I’m interested in how the material can change itself and how I can manipulate that change.

I use a wide range of materials as much as to match my ideas and the form. They are presented in simple, unified or repeating forms. There is a physical, innermost satisfaction in the activity of working with simple materials. I materialize them and allow them to be both real and imaginative: visually compelling, intellectually intriguing and …

2406, Farnaz Sabet

CGU MFA Theses

This paper is experimentation with clay and how it relates to body specially with changes in clay comparing to body and how we adapt to our surrounding.

Standing Still, Young Tseng Wong

CGU MFA Theses

I am drawn to the in-between — to movement at the corners of the eyes, to the moments between one breath and the next. When we want to catch such moments we stand still, we pause, we wait, "with bated breath." At such moments, I believe, the potential exists for taking on different perspectives and for finding other points of view.

Standing still, in a state of stillness, is an action that encapsulates many of my concerns. My work takes form in objects and architecture that collaborate with bodies moving inside them. The space is structured, not as a system, …

Transmogrify, Yehsiming S. Jue

CGU MFA Theses

Teeth are unique to the individual just like fingerprints. I paint human sets of teeth and their stages of mutations to explore the connections between our own naturally occurring inner mutations and our science-enduced rebuilding of these structures from stem cells. These duplicated and mirrored forms originate from teeth stem cells and their ability to regenerate our teeth. I also use teeth in my work because they represent us as a whole yet erase the boundary line of gender; while they still follow a naturally occurring, common process. So we can all relate to teeth, yet they are very personal …

Cribbed, Alice Marie Perreault

CGU MFA Theses

This installation consists of a dozen works of art in mixed and multi media. Materials include stainless, paper, plastic, wood, papier maché, wire, rubber, latex, baby teeth, acrylic paint, glass paint, oil paint, dyes, watercolor, light and video.

The space is divided much like the individual pieces of art in a symmetrical compartmentalized format. Spot lighting provides a vignette experience. Light from the video flickers in the far corner, but the screen is not visible from the entrance. Audio from the video is apparent.

CRIBBED

I chose CRIBBED for the title of the show for its multiple meanings. It is …

Hessah Alajaji, Hessah Alajaji

CGU MFA Theses

My pieces are based on my roots; my culture is embodied in stern traditions eclipsing of emotions and my life journey is reflected in my incorporation of contemporary techniques, and deviation from neutral colors. I think art is not just an element in someone’s life; art is a chance to change someone’s perspective about life. Each piece of my work tells a unique story about a phase of my life or an experience that changed me as a person. I take my ideas from understanding different cultures and different people I encounter in my daily life.

Nothing's Wrong, Christina Mesiti

CGU MFA Theses

I adjust the edges of materials both physically and intellectually. I work with flexible containers. Physically, I push two or more materials together so that they can find their own form, their own edge. I pour the plaster into different kinds of flexible emptinesses like envelopes or discarded gift wrap so that the two materials can exercise their own material agency and vitality, the materials working with themselves and the space to decide their own inevitable shapes. I allow the pieces their own logic.

I want to level the space, the objects, and the viewer so that none of the …

Belly, Evan Trine

CGU MFA Theses

My thesis discusses the ideas from my MFA Exhibition, involving image creation, data and information appropriation in digital media and contemporary fine arts.

Ecotones, Chas Schroeder

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the intersection of pastoral, urban and idiosyncratic visions. It may reveal the aesthetic and emotional possibilities inherent in the broad-ranging subjects I employ: game animals, advertising, colonialism, love, numerals, textiles, drugs, abstraction, competitive sports, displacement, architecture, gender-bending, civil-rights movements, transgressive literature, social media, indigenous peoples, graphic design, glamour, fashion, hip-hop, rock-n-roll, graffiti, cowboy, exhibitionism and other niche cultures in America. Pieces emerge intuitively via personal narrative and lodged memories as guides. The disjunctive compositions are a breed of contemporary formalism mated with abstraction.