Art Practice Commons^™

Holding Pattern: The Making Of An Ep, On Intuition, And Form Becoming The Content, Oscar Larson Phillips

University Honors Theses

This craft essay traces the making of "Holding Pattern," a three-song EP representing the culmination of five years of development in composition, production, lyric writing, and sound engineering. Each song addresses its own distinct emotional territory: the tension between confidence and self-doubt, resistance to creative conformity, and the experience of emotional dissociation. Together they form a single arc: reaching out, holding your ground, and surviving it. This essay moves through each song, examining how production decisions, lyrical construction, and the recording process each served the content of the work. Working intuitively across composition, sampling, collaboration, and recording, what only became …

Art And Critical Thinking, Audrey Nixon

University Honors Theses

The voice of art molds and dictates norms and behaviors of society. Art eases people into sitting with discomfort or alternate ideas of the world. I work with mixed-media collage to respond and react to culture and the current American political climate. Through the act of expressing and working through thoughts and emotions, art teaches people how to process, it teaches histories of resistance, and empathy. Artists have the ability to engage their audience to critically think about what is happening in our world. By channeling expression and passion, art can help people make necessary connections about concepts that lead …

Gianjara's Ribs: The Ecosystem, Body, Animalia, And Politic, Linus Gomez Ellis

University Honors Theses

This work is a series of four six foot tall full-body portraits of people, which are displayed alongside an actual, physical item or garment present in the associated painting. The purpose of this is to blur the line between the fiction of the individuals depicted and the viewer. By creating "portals" through which to view them as equals in stature, Linus Gomez Ellis is taking something that can be seen in the ecosystem of this fiction and making it into an objective reality. The most enduring, well preserved, and eternal pieces of history and anthropology are tall tales. This ecosystem, …

Issue Cover Art: Homecoming Collage, Rhi N. Soto

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

This piece is a found poem/collage made from different magazine cut-outs glued onto red construction paper. What inspired its creation is the book Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. In this book, Gyasi describes colonialism's over 400-year impact on the continent of Africa, the Indigenous people to those lands, and their ancestors. She does this by writing a historical fiction story of a family that started in what is now considered current-day Ghana, taking place from the mid-1700s to the early 2000s. The family starts with the mother of two sisters, Maame, who leaves her first daughter (Effia) while her village …

Mindspace: The Creation And Curation Of An Interactive Art Exhibition On Nostalgia, Memory And Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Emma Wallace

University Honors Theses

MINDSPACE is an autobiographical art exhibition aimed at raising awareness about Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) through a collection of multimedia artworks. The exhibition combines sculpture, video projection, and multimedia installations alongside a compilation of creative writing to immerse viewers in the intricate emotional landscape of C-PTSD. Through a series of installations and carefully curated video and audio, visitors are invited to explore the internal world of an artist affected by C-PTSD and learn how this impacts the artist's life in various ways.

PTSD itself was only formally recognized as a discrete diagnostic category in the 1980s, and as of …

Exploring Gender In Classical Music Through Coded Weaving, Laura Helgeson

University Honors Theses

This paper explores the concept and creation of the thesis artwork Mozart-Symphony No. 1. This work is a woven tapestry that uses a method of translation that converts sheet music into textile. This paper first explores historical examples of textiles being used to encode or archive information and then compares the contrasting historical gender dynamics of classical music and textile arts. Finally, it then breaks down the translation key used to create the final work. By exploring these concepts, this thesis artwork aims to demonstrate how the act of encoding classical composition into woven tapestry demonstrates textiles' ability to be …

Lovesick: An Original Comic Book, Sims C. Vincent

University Honors Theses

Lovesick is a creative thesis in the form an original comic book. Belonging to the genre of action comedy, this 30-page comic is entirely drawn traditionally in black and white ink. The story follows a 20-year-old artist named Dax whose unhealthy mental state prevents him from producing artwork. Feeling desperate, Dax makes a deal with a mysterious salesman named Middleman. In exchange for gaining the ability to effortlessly make all the artwork he wants; Dax will be forced into employment with an evil corporation that is hellbent on enslaving humanity. This paper explains how the story was constructed, and what …

My First Embrace Of The Sea & The Fish Swimming In My Head: A Collection Of Poems, Photographs, And Cultural Artifacts Inspired By My Father And Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Maya Sutriasa

University Honors Theses

This creative thesis reflects the artistic process and influences of Maya Sutriasa's BFA project. This work aims to understand the duality of her biracial and bicultural identity as a second-generation Indonesian-American. This exploration begins with memory, employs time travel, recounts metaphors pertaining to water, and bears witness to her family's cultural hybridity. This paper, and the artwork done for this project, was a means of understanding parts of myself. The artwork shown in this paper mostly takes the form of introspective poetry, journal entries, and textile art.

Ode-Cean: California, Danny-Olivia F. Hanson

University Honors Theses

As a 2D artist from San Jose, California, the overarching themes in this work have been self love, self expression, and interconnectedness. For this thesis project, the author chose to focus specifically on depicting Californian wildlife as a way for them to feel more connected to their home. The hope is for audiences viewing the work to think about the way that they are connected to sea creatures and their ecological impact. Motivations behind the work and process of creation are discussed.

Shaping The Witch: A Visual Art Thesis, Amanda Cobb

University Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the complex and interconnected nature of folklore, personal mythology, and re-enchantment as expressed through the lens of puppetry. I have drawn inspiration from the works of deeply reflective works concerning the psychological nature of mythologies of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, as well as the magical and beautiful work of artists Jim Henson, Brian and Wendy Froud, and Mercer Meyer. Through working in the medium of puppets, I have given consideration to the possibilities and limitations of these forms in expressing the complexity of narrative, personal mythology, the anxiety of disenchantment, lost and reclaimed …

The Needle And The Pen: A Retrospective On Eighteenth Century Life, Consumerism, And Dress In Relation To Modern Garment Production, Madeleine F. Beer

University Honors Theses

Within the realm of feminist scholarship of history, it has been said that "human stories can be told as effectively with the needle as with the pen" -Serena Dyer

Throughout history, craft deemed "women's work" has been undervalued on all levels but aesthetic. Gendered creative practices have been the focus of dress and craft historians; and such works have begun to reverse the emphasis of women as simply consumers and instead push forward the narrative of women as creator and producer.

I strive to make work that is both aesthetically pleasing and informative. Textiles reflect the human experience, weaving linear …

The Wounded Inheritance: Epigenetics And The Family Line, Lisa Banta

University Honors Theses

Through the process of researching, conceptualizing, and creating my honors thesis I have been investigating my previously unknown family history and the events that led into generations of parental abandonment and inflicted trauma, in tandem with learning some basics about the research and science of epigenetics. In my own family line, the traumas endured by and inflicted upon the last five generations have, with no exaggeration, shaped every aspect of my life and history. Epigenetics explains how severe trauma can be passed down many generations through chemical changes in DNA. In other words, individuals may carry within their own bodies …

The Development Of An Art Practice: Reflecting On My Experiences In The Undergraduate Art Programs At Clackamas Community College And Portland State University, Justin M. Taylor

University Honors Theses

In this essay, I will be discussing the content and overall experience of my thesis exhibition, The Development of an Art Practice, on display at the Alexander Gallery, Oregon City, Oregon, from November 6^th through December 6^th 2019. The exhibition showcased my development in the undergraduate art practice programs at Clackamas Community College, and Portland State University. Featured in the exhibition was a selection of two-dimensional visual works, which I produced in the programs.

My work was process driven with an emphasis on experimentation. While the selection of work revealed reoccurring themes, both in process and content, …

Looking To The Future Of Education: A Social Art Practice Pedagogy, Alexis Xochihua

University Honors Theses

This article discusses how the implementation of a social practice arts pedagogy will benefit the American educational system. It discusses methodologies and influences that affect the current system and how this system does not prepare students for higher education or life. The social practice art pedagogy utilized arts-integrated pluralization of topics and integration of social examination in order to develop critical thinking skills, social awareness, and quality of education.

Disrupting The City: Using Urban Screens To Remediate Public Space, Jean Dubois, Dave Colangelo, Claude Fortin

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

For over a decade, human-computer interaction (HCI) research placed a great deal of emphasis on studying interaction, engagement, and appropriative practices in online technology-mediated social environments. Moving forward, however, we see computing systems increasingly designed to support digitally-augmented face-to-face interactions in public settings. As far back as the nineteen seventies, new media artists anticipated this interactive potential of digital public displays to foster new forms of situated interactions in urban space, quite distinct from mobile computing in that they altogether exclude online connections or exchanges. Drawing on examples of practice, this paper discusses and show-cases some of the key creative …

Curating Massive Media, Dave Colangelo

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

The European Union’s media art initiative Connecting Cities and New York-based Streaming Museum are two recent examples of curatorial models that operate through large, networked, digital displays. This growing exhibition category combines expressive media architecture and telecommunication elements to engage ‘trans-local’ sites and diverse publics in complex media spaces. By investigating the confluence of exhibition making, public art and urban experience, this article explores the relationship between spectacle and criticality with respect to shifting notions of space, identity and ‘the common’.

Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with Ryerson University.

Forming A New Art In The Pacific Northwest: Studio Glass In The Puget Sound Region, 1970-2003, Marianne Ryder

Dissertations and Theses

The studio glass movement first arose in the United States in the early 1950s, and was characterized by practitioners who wanted to divorce glass from its industrial associations and promote it as a fine arts medium. This movement began in a few cities in the eastern part of the country, and in Los Angeles, but gradually emerged as an art form strongly associated with the city of Seattle and the Puget Sound region. This research studies the emergence and growth of the studio glass movement in the Puget Sound region from 1970 to 2003. It examines how glass artists and …

Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), Dave Colangelo

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

A review of the 12th Istanbul Biennial, held in 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey, with a focus on curatorial decision making and how this is thematically expressed in the exhibition.

Again, With Feeling! [Exhibition Catalogue], Dave Colangelo

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

Again, With Feeling! presents the work of artists whose visions are injected with properties of pattern, repetition, and appropriation. Taking cues from the everyday, the works displayed show new incarnations or morphs of their originals. This multidisciplinary show explores the ‘re’-mixing, producing, or contextualizing of an original, whether through motif, object or experience. By re-negotiating the terms around their borrowed imagery or performance, these artists present us with a fresh composition of a thing we’ve seen before.

The Car Park, Dave Colangelo

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay uses the work of Marc Augé as a lens through which to view the supermodern urban space, and how the concept of place is manufactured and negotiated. The author focuses on a car park to elucidate these themes, and agrees with Augé, who claims that non-places such as car parks fail to create identity or relations.

Moving Pictures, Melissa Ann Mcclure

Dissertations and Theses

My thesis work includes 10 large drawings that explore the narrative qualities of line movement. I use line in these drawings as a recording device to document both the physical activity of the process and the personal experience that the lines represent. Through this work I attempt to develop a language of visual imagery that is autobiographical in nature. A system of personal symbols and recurring forms make up the structure of this visual vocabulary. Line movement and rhythm provides a sense of the dialog.

An Exploration Of Some Aspects Of Mystery, Terry Foster Thompson

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis project consists of twenty-four paintings, drawings and lithographs dealing with three sub-themes of the larger subject of mystery: the mystery of existence; the mystery of religion; the mystery of the unknown. These themes are explored through manipulations of light, color, compositional arrangement and painting and drawing techniques.

Snake River : A Personal Search, Eva Havas Slinker

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis includes twenty landscape paintings, primarily oil on canvas, inspired by a trip to the Hell's Canyon Country of the Snake River.

The search for a personal idiom necessitated introspection, and the visual interpretation of the recalled experience required that formal issues of painting be synthesized to communicate the essential response to the landscape. The images progress from the depiction of deep space to compositions of the component parts of the landscape: trees, water, and rock.

Torso As Ceramic Vessel, Richard Garrett Masterson

Dissertations and Theses

The ceramic forms in this thesis project represent a study of the sculptural and figurative qualities of the ceramic process. This study includes a search for a personal form language, development of the slab construction technique, and development of a glazed surface appropriate to the work. The subject of the work is the human torso, with the vessel-like forms focusing on the core of the body as a metaphor for the core of the human spirit.

Enhanced Realism In The Development Of My Painting, Zifen Qian

Dissertations and Theses

It is a basic truth that the artist must have independent experience and personality in order to create art from life. Combining a traditional realistic style with some elements of abstract composition fits my personality. My paintings represent a pursuit of this idea that is the enhanced realism in the development of my painting.

Dudelsacks: Sculptural Extensions In Blown Glass, Cristine C. Corcoran

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis project consists of 19 sculptures. The medium is hot blown glass. The work interprets and extends the visual and metaphorical qualities of bagpipes. The utilization of the German dudelsack references the playful improvisational nature of these international and culturally diverse forms.

Some Visual Issues Of Painting : An Exploration Of The Painting Process, Barbara Leedy Branham

Dissertations and Theses

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Art: Painting.

Things Seen And Remembered, Charlien Dee Fitzpatrick

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis project consists of twenty oil paintings and watercolors. It is a series of visual problems based on work from direct observation as opposed to work from imagination. The concern is to show how the works from observed nature affect the imaginary pieces and how the imaginary works lend unexpected elements to the observed works. With a particular interest in color, visual energy, and painterly form, the project shows how these two avenues of exploration start out separately and eventually blend.

Bronze Casting By The Lost Wax Method Employing Mixed Media, Donna M. Pickett

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is for a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture.

Seven Dyads, Donovan Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is for a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture.