Art Practice Commons^™

Untitled: Study., Annabela Cockrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Untitled: Study is an exploration into “The Work”, which is a constant evolution of the idea of the same piece. Every new work is an evolution of the one before. Previous works are often reworked and self-cannibalized into the next generation. The Work will never be presented the same way twice. There is a temporality in making and installing the work this way, what with the form, the space, the ness of it never being the same. All the while conflicting by being viewed as being the same in the same breath.

Some Things Askew: Cautionary Quips And Satirical Scenarios, David C. Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Some Things Askew: Cautionary Quips and Satirical Scenarios is a collection of sculptures and drawings that depict objects from a dreamlike, dystopian world. Each piece contributes to a larger narrative that illustrates the presumed inhabitants of this skewed landscape, chronicling their journeys, interactions, and existence within it. Faux paint treatments conceal the diverse materials employed in the creation of these works. This self-reflective story conveys themes of perseverance and hope as the characters strive to survive—and even flourish—amidst the dark and unusual circumstances they face. A hint of sarcastic humor and whimsy permeates the collection, offering comic relief and emphasizing …

In A State Of Becoming, Benjamin Conley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition titled, In a State of Becoming. The exhibition was on view at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN from February 26 March 8, 2024. In a State of Becoming showcased three large scale paintings, five multimedia prints, two sculptural installations, and a video projection installation. Conley's thesis research and current artistic practice revolve around the interfaces, connections, and relationships of humans and animals. Conley explicitly uses language like "animal" to describe "non-human animals" in his work's context. The exhibited works focused primarily on how the artist and/or the viewer …

Reclamation: The Towns Of The Virginia Coalfields, Craig Owens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses his work in Reclamation: The Towns of the Virginia Coalfields, a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibit held at the Tipton Gallery from February 12th through February 23, 2024. The exhibition focuses on coal towns located in the southwestern part of Virginia. The exhibition consists of 20 framed, archival inkjet prints. Each framed work is 36” x 24” and is representative of the artist’s exploration of the towns. A catalog of the exhibit is included at the end of this thesis.

Owens examines formal and conceptual artistic influences, both historical and contemporary. Historic and contemporary photographic …

Groundswell, Ursula Gullow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the artwork of her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Groundswell, held at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, March 11 – 22, 2024. The exhibition includes wall pieces, sculpture, plaster, and ceramic objects that explore the traditional parameters of painting and its presentation.

Ideas discussed include the philosophy of history, and the origin of European art tropes such as odalisques, flowers, and birds. Framing devices, deconstructed paintings, fiber arts, ceramics, 18^th Century decorative art, plaster, the studio practice, Walter Benjamin, David Lowenthal, Gustave Courbet, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Titus Kaphar, Valerie Hegarty, and maximalism are also surveyed.

The Great Unlearning, Catherine Mccrory Pears

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Great Unlearning is a conceptual exploration: sifting through experiences and objects to overcome psychological pain, expectations of society, individual upbringing, and outside influences in an ongoing quest for authenticity. To both embrace personal history and honor loved ones while letting go of lingering negativity is challenging. Using objects culled from my life, examining the past, and incorporating items gathered along my path through nature, the work seeks personal healing while promoting the power of all people to break from indoctrination, group think, and mob mentality to make better choices to live a satisfying and peaceful existence…hopefully in a democratic …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

Second Nature: Impressions Of Place., Trish Korte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For my art practice, I grow and forage my art materials for eco printing, a direct contact printing method that reveals leaf shapes and hidden imagery through heat and pressure. I take specific cues from surrounding materials, objects, and environments. Tree systems and compelling textures of fungus are interpreted through ceramic and fiber. With an ongoing collaboration of natural materials and eco printing processes, my art speaks symbolically and metaphorically through imagery and materials. This thesis and accompanying exhibition present an examination of current work in context with an ongoing investigation of natural materials and eco printing.

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

It's All Fun And—: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Space In The Pandemic., Erica Von Proctor Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This exhibition and document explore spatial rhetoric during the pandemic, utilizing materiality and relational aesthetics to reflect on the different ways in which the public and private are made distinct from one another. In doing so, Lewis addresses new cultural navigations of shared spaces, both digital and corporeal, public and private. In addition, the artist also examines the faulty social and institutional systems that the pandemic brought to light, such as socioeconomic dynamics and voter suppression, while utilizing Kenneth Burke’s concept of the terministic screen. Games are a central theme throughout the exhibition, as they are often coded as “home” …

Echoes Of Home, Hanna Traynham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Echoes of Home, held at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee on display March 15 through April 8, 2022. The author provides insight into concepts and influences relating to the creation of the exhibition with perspective on her intimate connection with place and memory.

The exhibit features five installations addressing home, elusive memory, and the change and continuity of cultural traditions over time. The works consist of a series of large-scale wild clay vessels, gestural clay bookends, a wall installation of cups with a line drawing, suspended porcelain slabs, …

But Also Full Of Seeds For A Future That Could Have Turned Out Differently., Megan Marie Bickel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between "illusion," "allusion," and their relationship to contemporary images which announce, shield, or reference information. Beginning by discussing Casualist and Post-Digital Painting discourse, two styles I work within, we see connecting tissue in announcing and shielding of meaning. We look at the meaning of marks, and in the parallel exhibition, marks that utilize camouflage strategies appear as a metaphor for illuding to information which appears as conveying depth when there is none, and using paintings' symbols in objects that are not paintings. The work 'alludes' to what the viewer has seen before and relies on …

Coherence, Travis Walthall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

COHERENCE is a series of oil paintings and pen drawings that explores open narratives, or different ways to read artwork. The paintings and drawings showcase harmony, or tension, between ambiguous and representational forms. The visual experience requires the viewer to create their own narrative and decipher forms to do so. COHERENCE is a psychological and aesthetic exhibition fueled from human experience— one of fragility, uncertainty, imperfection, beauty, faith and memories.

-Rhiza., Katherine E. Watts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

-rhiza is a collection of work that focuses on an immersive experience of local ecology and the dichotomous relationship of humanity and nature, presented through the artist's eyes, ecophilosophy, mycology, ecofeminism, and metaphor. An installation of experiential work, -rhiza consists of videography, printmaking, photography, musical elements, both found object and natural item sculptures, and poetry. This compendium of work addresses humanity's apathy towards the ecological imbalance and how this affects our fundamental interconnectedness with all life. Based on explorations of local waterways and the recognition of human consumerism's pressing issues, -rhiza attempts to present the urgent matter of rising …

Love Labor: Literal Symbols And True Abstractions., Karen Weeks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

If the home can be a metaphor for our own interiors, then the things that collect there can be similarly thought of, performing as punctuated moments within that interior, giving it shape, creating contours. Within the domestic setting, macro social forces such as global capitalism as well as the more immediate experience of meeting our children’s demands can push and pull us, equally informing the experience of being in the home. Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions is comprised of images sourced from common ephemera of the home meant to represent the everyday: notes, discarded letters, open envelopes, unfinished …

An Exploration Of Provenance And Ownership History And The Critique Of Curatorial Practice., Sacra J. Fallen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the art world, the artwork is under evaluation to determine its worth from its historic value to its monetary value. One of the primary strategies used to evaluate the artwork is the work's provenance which can be broken down into the work's collector history and the authenticity of its authorship. The first question to be addressed is: does knowing an artwork's collector history and provenance add to its historic value? The second question to be addressed is: does knowing an artwork's collector history and provenance add to its monetary value? These questions will be supported by two case studies …

The Emotional Plague, Nicholas Raynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition “the emotional plague” held at the Reese Museum in Johnson City, Tennessee from March 2nd through March 27th, 2020 in which he examines a number of literary and invented narrative subjects influenced by science fiction, Surrealism and the current political climate in an attempt to reconcile the social and the personal through the creative act.

Largely improvisational in their conception, the paintings and drawings in this exhibition reflect ideas derived from writers, thinkers and artists including Wilhelm Reich, J.G. Ballard, W.S. Burroughs and Goya, all distilled through the uncertain territory …

Holler, Ashley Gregg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition Holler, held at Tipton Gallery March 2^ndto March 13^th, 2020. The exhibition features an installation of works on fiber, paper, and found objects tied to her upbringing in Southern Appalachia. A variety of collected materials including bedsheets, chalkboards, and barbwire are taken out of their traditional contexts and brought into a new vantage point through the artist’s alterations.

Gregg re-contextualizes materials, language, and signifiers as a process of decoding formative experiences in domestic and academic spaces. Themes examined in the work include rote learning, tradition, …

Dunidedcudigunadie, Lawrence Reid

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibit, titled DUNIDEDCUDIGUNADIE. The exhibit is to be held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN, from April 2nd to April 10th, 2020. A live reception will be held the evening of April 3rd, featuring a performance with the work, titled Look at You!

The following thesis explores the artist’s formative years – investigating how childhood experiences combine with artistic and theoretical influences to inform his art-making process.

Waiting Room., Helen Payne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Waiting Room is an installation of drawings and monotypes that re-envision everyday printed materials common in medical offices. The brochures, poster, bulletin board and children’s ABC book in this Waiting Room offer guidance suggest invasive and dysfunctional policy. A door opens onto a further room, where a hundred ultrasound images cascade onto the floor. This work, called Transducer Phosphene is the product of a fictional character’s encounter with a cruel (and not fictive) abortion policy. Waiting Room is the fruit of an inquiry that spanned my three years of study at the Hite Art Institute, a probing into the politics …

Trace., Kcj Szwedzinski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trace utilizes autoethnography to investigate aspects of Judaism to discover how one decides what to embrace, embody, or deny from inherited legacies. Autoethnography attempts to combine quantitative and qualitative data in order to systematically analyze and describe personal experience. The artist acting as Ba’alei Kushiah, or question bearer, uses Talmudic philosophy as a methodology and approach to art making. This research is self-referential; using Jewish thought to ask questions about Judaism. Judaism, often existing in an in between place with outward characteristics that reflect regional influences, facilitates a dialogue about whether there are relative or absolute delineations within and between …

A Shift In Silence, Bailey Idom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Shift in Silence is a body of work that emerged because of a key shift in my life. Using the formal components of line, shape, and value, I create a space representing an intimate moment in time. Physically, the medium can be any material, but I process all of this as an expression of line. Each piece shares the commonality of lines and lineage, while the layering embodies the record of my relationships from the past that directly affect the present. The abstraction and unpredictability within my own relationships require openness and vulnerability. This honest dialogue sustains and informs …

Title., Douglas Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Title is a series of drawings that explores the aspects of failed projects and the complications of representation within literary and visual practices. This series is informed by preliminary drawings, marginalia, and written notations that are inherent in the formulation processes of both visual and literary compositions. Through an investigation of the 19th Century Russian author Nikolai Gogol’s unfinished novel Dead Souls, I situate this series of drawings as a means to conflate literary theories with visual representation. In this way, the Title series presents fragmentary images, texts, and digressive narratives that demonstrate intermediaries between propositional states and reconciled …

Challenging The Self : An Examination Of The Media's Role In Creating Idealized Bodies And The Artists That Challenge Them., Jessica Oberdick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Seeking to understand the media’s influence over society, and the way the media motivate us to conform to specific ideals, this thesis focuses on how female bodies in particular are consistently idealized and objectified in mainstream media. Through television, print, and the internet, the media serve as our world’s main means of mass communication. Noting this, this text seeks to understand the female body’s historical objectification through art history and genres of the nude, how this has transferred to contemporary media, and finally states that these stereotypes and norms can be challenged through the work of contemporary artists. By reclaiming …

Es-Sen-Tial, Lyn A. Govette

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is in support of the exhibition entitled ES-SEN-TIAL on display in Tipton Gallery located in Downtown Johnson City from February 27, 2017 to March 10, 2017.

The exhibition is a presentation in fiber medium of the human impact on the landscape, specifically using the extractive industry of coal mining as example. This is accomplished through the use of digital imagery printed on textiles, hand and machine embroidery, and surface design techniques of dyeing and layering. This body of work reflects the artist’s interest in art activism and the utilization of photography, fiber arts, ideas and techniques, as creative …

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …

Let's Keep In Touch : Conversations About Access And Tactility., Whitney E. B. Mashburn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Let’s Keep in Touch: Conversations about Tactility, a project collaboratively organized by social practice artist Carmen Papalia and curator Whitney Mashburn, presents conversations between Papalia and artists selected by Mashburn, in regard to tactile access of the chosen artists’ works. The project aims to challenge visual biases in museum engagement, through dialogue with living artists.

Carmen Papalia takes social practice in a new direction as he applies it to the topic of accessibility. Using the tool of conversation, he creates strategic infrastructural activism and prompts exploration of non-visual perception.

In this thesis, Papalia’s work will be examined and discussed …

Online Education: The Relationship Between The Perceptions Of Online High School Teachers Compared To Traditional Classroom Teachers Regarding The Visual Arts, Karen A. Fine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The incorporation of the arts as an academic subject in the high school distance education delivery method is being reinvented as something new. Most of the current research is focused on college courses. Online high school curricula are most often placed in research studies as an afterthought. Perceptions of faculty members from high schools with traditional instructional delivery models as well as public online schools concerning online education as it relates to the arts in 5 different areas was the focus of this research; mentor, delivery method, satisfaction, student learning, and curriculum. Examining the perceptions of teachers gives a blueprint …

Meta-Forms, Rickey P. Bump

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Meta-forms, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City. Exhibition dates are from March 14 through March 25, 2016. The artworks on display are a series of drawings made from carving wood panels and sheet metal and are accompanied with a large scaled site-specific installation. The exhibition culminates from research of historic and contemporary figures for non-objective art. The author gives insight to the artistic process while creating his exhibition, as well as their personal connection with the artwork.

Flushed, Virgilia K. Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist describes the process and development of the work throughout her graduate career, relating them to the most recent works of her thesis exhibition. Topics discussed include experiences of beauty and themes of transformation. Contextual influences include the Rococo period as well as ideas and theories of Romanticism and the sublime. Histories and theories on representations of the body are also discussed.

The artist discusses her MFA thesis exhibition Flushed, at the Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, Tennessee, from April 13th to April 24th, 2015. Two painting installations, a sculptural installation, and a number of collages are included. Media …