Art Practice Commons^™

A.F.M., Adam P. Mason

CGU MFA Theses

Sculpture happens.

Mapping Community Mindscapes: Visualizing Social Autobiography As Political Transformation And Mobilization, Emily C. Bluck

Scripps Senior Theses

Historically, autobiography has been used to perpetuate neo-liberal ideologies. Yet, when autobiography becomes social and is used to engage political communities of color, political transformation is possible. This project, through the collaborative visualization of Asian American social biography using pedagogical and relational methods as a means for engagement, seeks to destabilize dominant notions of time and space, and provide a mechanism for the retention of and documentation of institutional, and social histories using the Asian American Student Union at Scripps College as the site for political praxis.

The Threes, Clifford Eberly

CGU MFA Theses

In the physical world I explore and gather regenerative clues that vivify the installations I build. The harshness and unforgiving power of nature’s nature, combined with the infinity of the cosmos, inspires me to cobble together sculptures that defy absorption into a finite, descriptive category. Like our beings change from second to second, I work diachronically, chugging along, shifting the purposes of supplies until they manifest like organisms that pulled themselves together from shiny and dirty matter or arrived from an extraterrestrial playground. By reusing and layering a complex blend of materials, I blur the ambiguous origins of the objects …

G-Plex Psi, Jacques Louis David

CGU MFA Theses

Monumental metal sculpture that incidentally creates sound. Heaviness and lightness displayed via large, heavy, metal sculptures of abstract geometric forms suspended from the ceiling by seemingly fragile wires that not only appear to defy gravity but provide tonal expression when plucked, hammered, or bowed. Further conversation associated with the micro to the macro is easily revealed when the sounds and shapes are compared to the vibration of life identified with imagined subatomic movement.

Spatial Phases, Eric Schott

CGU MFA Theses

No abstract provided.

Travis Novak, Travis Novak

CGU MFA Theses

Flawed memory is a tool that allows an altered reality to exist in the disconnect between a past reality and a present fiction. My work starts with scenarios that evolve into things bigger than themselves, going beyond nostalgia to become celebrations, landmarks, or memorials. Exaggeration, embellishment, adornment, stylization, modification, and customization are methods I use to move through these scenarios and often arrive at a transformative shift...

This preservation process begins the moment a thing dies. Its optimum resides in the past allowing the function of the memory to operate as a preserver. This is the human longing for greater …

Stephen Chang Kim Mfa Thesis Statement, Stephen C. Kim

CGU MFA Theses

Stephen Chang Kim Thesis

Perry B Marks • Artist Statement, Perry B. Marks

CGU MFA Theses

My work cuts through the distractions and travesties of modern American life, revealing the nonsense that multinational corporations spew. Consumption as a way of life is now a familiar part of the global culture. Political and corporate icons have made their way into individual identity by means of branding, product placement and crossover promotion. They are ubiquitous, embedded in myriad experiences to attract, entertain and satisfy artificially stimulated appetites. Similar to placating drugs, they function like the bread and circuses of the Roman Empire.

My process breaks down elements and symbols from the past and present, remixing old and new …

Go Big Or Go Home, Concepcion M. Sanford

CGU MFA Theses

My work embodies my response to the American Dream. Big houses, flashy cars and glamorous lifestyles are what many of us work for. Coming from a military family, I grew up moving often without an idealized connection to a single structure. In response to this, I use artwork to create translucent, ephemeral sculptures of these items, revealing them as tangible, hollow shells of their former selves. Clear plastic and packing tape sculptures leave a ghostlike reflection of what was. These shells of inanimate objects are personified through their creation, a process similar to what I compare to mummification or embalming. …

Mihyang Kim - Mfa Thesis Show, Mihyang Kim

CGU MFA Theses

My works are a sort of journal, which is truly personal but at the same time belongs to the public. All of my experiences are connected to the outside world and each piece is connected to a story. I paint abstract emblems that stem from my interactions with people expecting their deaths, living as immigrants, or being disconnected from their pasts. My work represents my sympathy and compassion for the pain they have. I record my emotional and experiential individuality, based on the situations in which I have found myself. The precarious state of nature and the human environment are …

Flotsam & Jetsam, Nicolas S. Shake

CGU MFA Theses

My work is pastoral and post-apocalyptic with one foot firmly planted in historical painting and the other in traditional still-life, so it is entropic and sanguine, gleeful, despondent, and matter of fact. It comes at a point in time when the fiction of Nature as a refuge is no longer viable, persuasive or convincing. But rather than rehash this fact, my work celebrates the pastoral’s everyday ordinariness, the capacity for the viewer to experience something wondrous amidst decline. I focus on the cast-off household and utilitarian items that show up in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The …

Potential Space, Jocelyn R. Grau

CGU MFA Theses

No abstract provided.

Dislocation, Kevin E. Moore

CGU MFA Theses

No abstract provided.

Tangled Up In Blue, Bryan E. Miller

CGU MFA Theses

No abstract provided.

Front, Jennifer Mitchell

CGU MFA Theses

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Climate Change, Mfa On Ice, Christy Roberts

CGU MFA Theses

Within the confines of the body there is a longing to connect. I believe that this is a longing to connect to place and often to the others who occupy it. When this longing is not satisfied, either by place or people, tension arises. I create experiences, images, and objects that explore the tension between the body and its social, physical, and natural environment.Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Stories Of Loss And Gain, Amy L. Huynh

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about the inevitability of change and the concomitant longing for stability. It explores various manifestations of loss – death, physical distance, erasure – and the desire to hold tight to something that is already passing. The videos in this body of work convey intensely personal narratives about cultural assimilation, sexual orientation, and departure, in hopes that my own vulnerability can reveal something that is not identity-specific but human. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Nano Rubio Mfa Thesis, Armando Rubio Jr.

CGU MFA Theses

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Bleach, Kim E. Alexander Jr.

CGU MFA Theses

The work in this exhibition investigates the unique potential for drawing to articulate the ideas and attitudes of architecture and objects. Accepting drawing as operating in conceptual space, I explore experimental loops within the visual logic of that territory. The work asserts the material fact of drawing and its connection to forms of fabrication in other materials like wood, paint, metal, and plastic. Like painting and sculpting, the drawings occupy an intangible state between objects and ideas. I embrace this irresolution. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Andre Goeritz Mfa Thesis Statement, Andre M. Goeritz

CGU MFA Theses

I strive to make objects of no complicity--arranging smaller parts to create larger forms, or allowing the combination of parts to allude to narratives without linearity, foreshadowing, point of entry, point of attack, conflict, context, or catharsis; a state of sustained stillness until equilibrium is no longer a desired result, at which point the parts of the whole can be dismantled, reconfigured, made anew. I think about words, rhythm, inflection, resonance or timbre, vocal dissonance, dismembered disjointed utterances, and repetition--somatic impulses guided by intent. Intention translates into action--an act of will, a willful act, an act of willful intent--a marker …

Here's Looking When, Erica Ryan Stallones

CGU MFA Theses

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Back From Port-Au-Prince, Kerry L. Rodgers

CGU MFA Theses

In this body of work I aim to bring the possibility of intimacy and empathy to a city reeling from recent devastation. Before last year’s earthquake, Port-Au-Prince had been famous for its bright splashy colors; vibrant shades coated the homes, shacks, buildings and buses. But everything lost its color when it crumbled. The ubiquitous gray rubble is a constant reminder of the immense human suffering that the quake set into motion: death, displacement, and disease. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Echoes, Justin Huffman

CGU MFA Theses

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Push The Button//Start The Show, Davin K. Knight

CGU MFA Theses

My work is based in mediation and simulation via machines. The pieces in this exhibition are hybrids of object and image, dealing directly with the process of rearranging information. They are frenetic optical renderings of time, space, light, and motion. They are signs without clear indication, formal without express composition and flat without abandoning illusionistic space. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Domestic, Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski

CGU MFA Theses

Los Angeles based painter Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski works in oil on linen. Using saturated colors and lush textures, she processes daily life, exploring emotional undercurrents, inevitable loss, and the instinct to protect what is loved.Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Claudia Carballada Mfa Thesis Statement, Claudia Carballada

CGU MFA Theses

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Thinh Nguyen Mfa Thesis Statement, Thinh Nguyen

CGU MFA Theses

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Jane Gillespie Pryor Mfa Thesis Statement, Jane Gillespie Pryor

CGU MFA Theses

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Jacob Fowler Mfa Thesis Statement, Jacob Fowler

CGU MFA Theses

I am invested in mindless activity, repetitive actions, and hasty production. Performance and completion are at the forefront of my hurried work habits. Practicality has directed my selection of materials and decision-making process toward meaningful and intentional outcomes. However the outcome is reminiscent of goal-oriented activities that are misplaced, in essence, a pragmatic process of customization gone astray. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Since 1980, Sookyung Bae

CGU MFA Theses

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