Art Practice Commons^™

Bearing Likeness, Christine M. Salama

CGU MFA Theses

The world is saturated with images and things. I have chosen to put more images and things into the world. In doing so, I complicate and further saturate these connections, but I also find clarity and answers through the mark, the gesture, the image, and material. I make marks with materials that are closely related to the meanings of the things I depict. The images and objects I make are ones that I know and understand because they are close to me, but the process of making leaves room for inquiry and unfamiliarity with these same objects.

I am guided …

Isolated Infinite, Kelsey M. Kimmel

CGU MFA Theses

I explore the relationship between human borders and digital space. The porous borders between these entities shape contemporary culture and identity. Amid the digital current, I find myself over-stimulated, fighting to stay afloat through multitasking, immediacy and cramming. My sculptural installations investigate how I see, experience, interact with and react to digital space.

These Things Happen: New American Landscapes, Clarke Latta Henry Iii

CGU MFA Theses

i take pictures in order to learn through confrontation how to be a better person. won't you shamble gaily forward with me. Rainbow warriors FTW.

Verdurous, Adrian R. Culverson

CGU MFA Theses

Adrian Culverson is a painter and sculptor who uses mixed media to create installations that focus on splices of real and imagined worlds.

The Bollywood Item Number: From Mujra To Modern Day Ramifications, Avantika Saraogi

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis deals with the “item number” genre of Bollywood song and dance sequences. I argue that the item song has evolved from a combination of the historically rich culture of prostitution in old India and the western influence of modern times; and that it contributes highly to the male dominated patriarchal society perpetuated by Hindi films by means of the voyeuristic male gaze and objectification of the female body. In conjunction with this research I choreographed a dance called Item No. 3 that was performed in Scripps Dances 2013. A discussion of the significance and decisions behind the …

Bringing Back Color, Bringing Back Emotion: Exploring Phenomenological Empathy In The Reclamation Of The Female Nude In Painting, Sophia R. Forman

Scripps Senior Theses

At the nexus of the seemingly disparate art-theoretical topics of color and the female nude is a critical consideration of phenomenology in both one of its most basic senses—as the first-person experience of perceived phenomena—and as a larger philosophical position which, through its abstraction of perception to subject-object relationships, implicates the painted figure. Specifically, this paper conflates the phenomenology of color with the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in investigating empathy. Structured as a dialectic, it establishes the most prominent views of both color and the female nude—the nude as a symbolic figure, color as perceptual experience—before …

Art Meets Science! Get Over It . . ., Stephen Nowlin

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The news headline, when such projects garner attention, usually goes like this – Art Meets Science! Or perhaps Art Merges with Science! or maybe they combine, or art collides with science, or they fuse, join, bond, or unite. And ‘art’ in the phrase usually precedes ‘science’, perhaps because their integration is more typically initiated from the art side of the equation. But whatever the order of the two terms, and whatever verb is used to link them, the tenor of the declaration is typically the same – this is a story worth reporting on, it announces, because …

A Reflection: Art And Science In A Museum Gallery, Kaileena Flores-Emnace

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Art education in a public space can be a venue for the blending of art and science. As a Contemporary Art Start educator for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, I have experienced the many ways in which transdisciplinary education creates deeper student understanding and engagement. At MOCA we use Visual Thinking Strategies for student tours, a research-based teaching method that invites students to direct gallery discussions. We visit a few artworks for ten to fifteen minutes each to foster critical thinking and encourage students to bring personal knowledge and experience to the conversation.

Steam With A Capital A: Learning Frenzy, David Rufo

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

A student dipped a brush into a bowl of viscous tempera paint and in a few quick strokes formed thick magenta letters on a large display board. Nearby a handful of students were working together to attach string to paper cups and balloons. Across the room a small group of girls were lying on the floor carefully adding multi-colored text to a poster. Two others created characters out of Popsicle sticks for a puppet show...This is how the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Math (S.T.E.A.M.) happened with the fourth and fifth graders during the first few weeks of …

Keeping Abreast With Liberal Arts And Science Through Steam, Tanya Rivas, Gregory Knotts

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The integrated unit on breast cancer described here includes biological science and visual art standards and was targeted at high school juniors and seniors. The goal was to make a potentially controversial and taboo subject relatable through an art-science approach

Reflections ~ How Stem Becomes Steam, Ruth Catchen

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Reflections from designing a STEAM class for high-risk students.

Merging Science And Art: The Bigger Picture, Natasha Hall

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

It has been stated that artists comprehend and chronicle the completeness of the visible world (Wallach & Bret, 1987), defining Art as the creative expression of knowledge about the visual world. But to what extent does that awareness extend into a scientific appreciation of the world? The acronym STEAM is an abbreviation of Science, Technology, Electronics, Arts and Mathematics. Weaving interactions between Science and Art, have been shown by Clarke and Button (Clarke & Button, 2011), to intensify interconnections between nature, with Landscape, and ultimately with sustainability.

All Cats Are Grey In The Dark, Kristen Bradford

CGU MFA Theses

No abstract provided.

Outlier, Or A Statistical Explanation Of Fear, Erika Dyquisto

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Postscript

As a seventh grader, I would sit in algebra class thinking I understood what my teacher had explained -- the order of operations or how to factor a polynomial -- but I would get home, try to do my homework, and my “knowledge” was gone. I had a vague idea that these formulas were about complicated relationships: the division and commonalities of beings. But just as I didn’t have the experience to allow me to discern the true nature of the human relationships these abstract concepts could represent, I didn’t know how to apply these new calculations to anything …

Water Riot Territory, Dominique Ovalle

CGU MFA Theses

The old world has fallen away; we look for the New World now. I entreat you with symbols, signs and code-talking—a new language I’ve learned while prowling the jungles of angst in this “Romantic Life,” which is utterly unromantic. Sometimes I run away, and enter into emptiness. Inside darkness cannot comprehend the light that searches for us. On the bottom of the ocean, light must be generated from within. But something does not come from nothing. What was something born of?

My paintings operate as a map to strange destinations—charting weird trips through swampy, melancholic emptiness, as well as encounters …

Reflexions, Takeshi Kanemura

CGU MFA Theses

Through my art, I offer viewers environments that function in a manner similar to public parks. People visit parks not to talk about the park and its elements, but to have their own time and space to interact with themselves and/or others. Although each of my offerings is distinct, all are united by the way they function: to create the possibility of human interaction. Even when I am not present, the spaces I have created are interactive performances. After visitors leave, my art again becomes incomplete, and an invitation for other viewers. The whole process encompasses the production of the …

Working Title, Nathanael Thomas Little

CGU MFA Theses

(Working Title) is an exploration into the interaction of the idea spaces of installation art and the theme park, through Nate Little's narrative environment of Arboria. Plush Characters populate an environment that fills the gallery space.

Dab Shunt Spoor, Jen Grabarczyk

CGU MFA Theses

My work functions as an act of bearing witness. In it, I process consciousness, memory, narrative and time through the choreographed integration of cerebral representations and bodily movement. Through forms both strange and elegant, I seek to activate a viewer’s memory and consciousness–psychologically and corporeally.

Spelling Gratitude: An Aesthetic Exploration, Lily Anna Burgess

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is founded in the positive psychological theory of gratitude, the experience of thankfulness and its benefits on both the individual and the community. My explorations via personal journaling, careful reflection, and engaging in craft, led me to cultivate a new definition for gratitude: present moment awareness. Using sheer fabric and the meditative act of embroidering, the language of gratitude was relearned and cultivated. My piece aims to incite further explorations in thanks.

Walking Los Angeles, Zoe R. Carlberg

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper is about my experience walking through Los Angeles County. My principal motivations were to explore what it means to be a pedestrian in an urban landscape that generally does not recognize walkers and to give value to often overlooked spaces. The paper includes a brief history of the Los Angeles region, methodology, an analysis of some other art projects that have been done about walking, and a vignette of the experience.

Kyla Hansen Mfa Thesis Statement, Kyla M. Hansen

CGU MFA Theses

My work traces the migration of meaning, mashing up cultural signifiers of place to create absurd objects and physical spaces that employ the hazy nature of belief, memory, and nostalgia. I’m interested in the exportability and malleability of experiences both culturally (through objects in movies, music, and media) and personally (through memories that change over time). My work explores the elusiveness of realness, creating slippery spaces, where the real and fake overlap, and certainty and uncertainty intermingle.

Lumen Essence, Brian Thomas Jones

CGU MFA Theses

I am intrigued by power relationships among the physical, psychological and political realms of experience. The various ways we respond to both the voluntary and involuntary restrictions of power ignite the ideas behind my investigations. The examination of power dynamics utilizing scale, spectacle and theatricality is what excites my process.

By providing an environment for immersive visceral participation, I invite the visitor to collaborate in the process of art-making through their human interaction with the formal constructions of the exhibition. Engaging the visitor in an activated, sensate experience is the artistic objective. The visitor's willingness to slow down the art …

Being-There, Atilio A. Pernisco

CGU MFA Theses

I blend figures with backgrounds to define pensive areas of focus and delve between figuration and abstraction. These paintings connect the viewer with the strangeness of the ordinary world. This is the moment of unconsciousness. It is then where elements of a narrative emerge. I depict the figure in movements of awkwardness. Images of the familiar environments of children involved in some kind of work-play activity, the inheritors of generational trauma, reoccur in my work--a parade of daydreamers in direction to witness the uncertain.

White Light, Tessie Whitmore

CGU MFA Theses

The work is about nothing and everything. It is about belief systems engaged with everyday, monotonous theories of repetitious acts that will deliver freedom and freewill or acceptance and enlightenment. These acts become systems, which are bought into with ridiculous dedication. What is left is the void, potential death, fleeting mortality.

I use the highway as a place of investigation and motivation building a relationship between its physical and psychological aspects. I focus on moments from the drive: tension, the possible crash, monotony, and the trance state. I use materials from high culture and low culture to form a cultural …

Harbor Island, Joe Lloyd

CGU MFA Theses

Paintings within this body of work evolve from themselves. Looking at the previous painting, I start a new painting. I stopped using photo references because I realized that I already knew what I wanted to paint and that my intuition is more important than images that already exist in the world. As a result, the paintings continue to move away from observational space towards something more artificial. The paintings become about the two-dimensional place on the canvas rather than some real place out in the world. This transition is seamless for me because geometry equally exists in two-dimensional and three-dimensional …

Don't Mess With Magic, Anna K. Nieman

CGU MFA Theses

The art is more of an event than a discrete object. The gallery is a set. It is one large piece, not a collection of sculptures. It’s very clear what is going on but the connections are vague and misleading.The room feels smaller but the projections feel expansive. The images have been recorded and re-cut and copied so many times that it’s barely a film. It becomes just a shifting image. An intoxicating scent fills the room. It’s a bit of a spectacle. The moment is memorable but in a deceiving kind of way. The piece is most effective as …

Kathleen Melian Mfa Thesis - Lalaland, Kathleen Melian

CGU MFA Theses

I am interested in the struggle in our culture to project an image and the burden of that endeavor. This preoccupation with image creation permeates our society as a whole and is not bound by social or economic status. In this body of work, I wish to expose a sense of the emotional fallout of such existence, and the truth beneath the fiction.

A twist to this narrative, is that the falsity is also a source of pleasure and enjoyment. This creative reinvention of self, although fraught with desperation and anxiety, offers intense satisfaction as participants take roles like actors …

The Darkness Is Passing, Grace Heeeun Park

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about the interplay of light, darkness and space. I express illumination of space and penetrating light with abstract painting. I use the white of canvas and thick application of black paint to create frames and to break rules of defined dimensions. Through my paintings, I challenge the perception of space and question the boundaries between two and three dimensions.

Women And Video Games: Pigeonholing The Past, Allison Perry

Scripps Senior Theses

Academic work dealing with the overlap between video games and female representation is limited in both volume and proper research. Most texts agree on three supposed flaws with video games: they alienate female participants, there are no games for female players, and female players cannot relate to female characters. This thesis sheds light on these points, not only citing specific counter-examples, but also showing how many of these issues reflect on a larger societal problems.

Tutti Frutti, Damaris G. Rivera

CGU MFA Theses

Mark making is equivalent with making a place one's own. Demarcation of a site is not solely a negative act. The negation of a space is pre-transcribed, presupposed. The point is to take the negative and invert it. It’s not a one-way street. In order to change the building you have to move through the building and let the building move through you. Once the building lives in the occupant the experience of the building can be altered. Total absorption of architecture and its environment can provide a means to live in a unified expressive way. It’s about the person. …