Art Practice Commons^™

Maelstrom, Gertrude L. Teijink

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My work is a confrontation with the conflict between our everyday activities, and the fleetingness of our existence. We are dragged through time and through space, but ultimately we are unavoidably lost in a swirl of oblivion. Given this dissonance, I question the meaning of our everyday activities. Can we find satisfaction with what we do? And why are we compelled to do it? The case I try to make for the meaning of life’s repetitive or renewal actions is made largely in reference to myself, which gives my work an undeniable autobiographical component.

For my thesis work, I photograph …

Breathe... Keep Breathing., Shaun C. Kiel

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I work with short-duration seamless video loops. My work simultaneously depicts and emulates the material composition of time, specifically how action composes time and how time can compose or construct objects.

My work is self-reflexive. Self-reflexive means that a product actively considers or examines its own production. In video this means breaking either the illusion of depicted time as real time or the illusion of the depicted image as real space. Video loops are self-reflexive by function. Their periodic recurrence points out the artifact of the medium.

The periodic recurrence of video loops also changes the narrative quality of the …

From "Stalinkas" To "Khrushchevkas": The Transition To Minimalism In Urban Residential Interiors In The Soviet Union From 1953 To 1964, Ksenia Choate

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

During the shift from the rule of Joseph Stalin to that of Nikita Khrushchev, people in the Soviet Union witnessed dramatic political, economic, and social changes, evident even in such private aspects of life as residential home interiors.

The major architectural style of Stalin's era, known as Stalin's Empire Style, was characterized by grandeur and rich embellishments. The buildings' interiors were similarly grandiose and ornate. By endorsing this kind of design, Stalin attempted to position himself as an heir of classical traditions, to encourage respect for his regime, and to signal his power. When Nikita Khrushchev became the country's leader …

Cell(F), Nicole Lynn Herden

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

I see the human experience as composed of both objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity in that science has helped us better understand our physicality, such as defining biological processes within our body. Empirical knowledge has provided a level of truth in explaining a foundation for our existence.

Subjective experiences materialize as we engage within the environment. Walking in the park or purchasing food seem to be similar experiences for everyone in that we can envision the process of doing it; however, that process is an individual process composed of unique characteristics and perspectives. A subjective experience is as unique as one’s …

Fabricating Womanhood, Emily Fox

Theses and Dissertations

The exhibit, Fabricating Womanhood, was an attempt to explore the construction of gender and identity. While the artwork addressed well researched and documented feminist themes the artwork also stemmed from personal experiences and my coming-of-age process. The resulting installation included video, prints, painting, ceramics and found objects arranged in a set-like house construction of life-size proportions.

Color Psychology And Graphic Design Applications, Rose M. Rider

Senior Honors Theses

Color filters humanity’s perception of the world and alters people’s relationship with their surroundings. It influences human perception, preference, and psychology throughout the lifespan. Color preferences appear in infants as young as three months old, and typically change with age. Some responses to color may be innate, and some may be learned from nature or culture. Cool hues are relaxants, and are generally preferred over their more arousing warm counterparts. Color is a subtle but pervasively influential element in graphic design. It permeates graphic representations in packaging, advertising, and branding. Slight variations in color can advance or devastate design effectiveness …

Wunderkammer, Dai Toyofuku

CGU MFA Theses

I manufacture objects that confuse classification and cross boundaries. Part unicorn horn and part Narwhal tusk, these objects straddle categorical containers. My sculptures attempt to break free from inherited structures of knowledge and modes of seeing. The boxes and pedestals are akin to these imposed structures, though these traditional structures always fall just short of fulfilling their supposed function; these categorical containers slowly leak.

Bestiary, Rebecca N. Tice

CGU MFA Theses

My work focuses on the fantastic and the peculiar. It grows out of an interest in animals, myth, and the human tendency to anthropomorphize.

Doubting Thomas, Michael K. Carter

CGU MFA Theses

My work is a deliberate attempt at a personal sense of wrongness. I believe that encountering this wrongness is more sincere and revealing of myself and my audience then any attempt at correctness could be. I feel there is a vulnerability and exposure in being the first to speak up, to leap before looking, to react without thinking, analyze or process experience.

Ba/Bfa Senior Critique Honors, Joyce Eichhorn Ames School Of Art

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Yarell Castellanos, Artist Statement, Yarell Castellanos

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the beautiful aspects of the grotesque elements in nature. My goal is to make conflicted and contradictory pieces in which abstraction and representation interact. I find that contradictions and extreme behaviors in nature to be stimulating.

Cut, Bryan Drew

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The act of cutting is to sever, to divide an object or even an idea into separate parts of its original state. Non-tangibles can also in a sense be ‘cut’, like gaps in memories or modifications of beliefs or ideas. My work encompasses these definitions of cutting. Working mostly from photos, I use imagery from personal experience, such as meat from my hunting experience, patterns from nostalgic blankets, or photos of people in my life. Other times, I choose imagery simply because I feel compelled to paint it, or it feels somehow needed within the composition. My process begins by …

Blanket Statements, Issue 99, Spring 2010

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 99, Spring 2010

Black, White, Brown, Aisha S. Harrison

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

BLACK, WHITE, BROWN Aisha Shani Harrison, M.F.A University of Nebraska, 2010

Adviser: Gail Kendall

I address emotions and perceptions that are complex and multifaceted. My goal is for the work to communicate these emotions in a way that makes them accessible to others. Most people have felt disconnected, longing, anticipation, relief, anger, frustration and have experienced internal conflict. While this work touches on these emotions, there is, because of who I am, a set of questions I am asking regarding racial identity.

This autobiographical work is a series of ceramic figures that are engaged with symbolic objects which together form …

Taking In: The Best Of Aib Photography 2010, Aib Students

Taking In

Taking In is a student run project featuring a selection of work created by students attending the Art Institute of Boston. The project focuses on the business of promoting art and culminates each year with a juried exhibition, publication, and website all designed to promote selected works of AIB artists. The selected pieces were chosen anonymously by a jury of distinguished members of the Boston art community to represent the best of AIB Photography, 2010. The book in your hand is the end result of a collective effort by those in the class.

El Muralismo: El Papel De Los Murales En La Lucha De Los Organismos Sociales En La Ciudad De Buenos Aires = Muralism: The Role Of Murals In Social Organizations, Loren Crosier

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

There are an ever-growing number of social movements in the city of Buenos Aires, and a number of these groups are using art in the streets in an attempt to “recuperate” urban neighborhoods. Muralism is an art form and a concept that has a long legacy of militancy and vanguardism. This paper will address the breach between art as a product and a social reality by analyzing the meaning of muralism. What is the role of the muralist and what is the social function of the mural? Or more importantly, what is the social function a social organization or movement …

I'Ve Fallen In Love With Every One Of You..., Kayleigh L. Speck

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Photographs best show and describe the world, capturing a split second in time without necessarily providing the viewer with any sort of explanation or answer as to why something looks the way it does. Although the camera captures images of the “real,” it has the ability to tell lies. It changes our perception of space, the color of light, and the way things look overall. This is the reason I have chosen this medium; I want to see what my world looks like in a photograph.

Through these photographs of the every day lives of my subjects and myself, I …

Which Is Not One, Alex C. Moore

CGU MFA Theses

Specific yet anonymous, my paintings allow the viewer to sit within what would normally be a fleeting moment of intimacy.

Igolf: Contemporary Sculptures Exhibition 2009, King Lun Kisslan Chan

Theses and Dissertations

Why "igolf"? I love golfing, especially enjoying the gigantic space of the golf course. More importantly, this is the place where I dream and get inspiration for my art. I imagine filling my own global golf course with monumental golf sculptures in the future. This motivation and enthusiasm has modified my direction in creating sculpture. I named my final MFA exhibition "igolf". The idea of the name comes from modern terms we find in popular devices, such as the iPhone, iPod, and the iMac that reflect our technological world. In addition, the sound for "i" shares the same sound of …

Leland F. Prince's Earth Divers, Leland Fred Prince

Theses and Dissertations

My stoneware sculptures in my MFA final project were named Earth Divers because clay as a material is earth and clay is also symbolic of the Earth. The way that I physically dive into clay up to my elbows is a poetic performance. The sculptures were built in sections horizontally and then stacked vertically. I began the process by first making life size plaster molds of the human figure taken from live people. Earth Divers take their architectural structure specifically from the organic curves of the negative voids that are characteristic of the plaster figure molds. I built into these …

The Nature Of Making Sense, Allison Alford

CGU MFA Theses

My interest is to breed the mystical with the mundane, producing informational systems that coalesce knowledge, ambiguity, logic and fantasy. The species that populate my imagery are totems that could function as heroines, monsters or shapes that elude and inform us. The work functions as a stage upon which, pixels, paint and mystical figures coexist. Each panel acts as a composite of multiple frames of a video: figures combine with paintings, drawings, symbols, and landscape. Though ultimately singular in image, the pictures imply multiplicity. The lineage of the work can be traced to influences such as François Dufrêne, Max Ernst’s …

The Observer Effect, Azadeh Tajpour

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the gray area and the shifting border between "us" and "other." It investigates the helplessness and the submissiveness on both sides of this spectrum and one's passivity that makes the "pain of others" inevitable. Moreover, it examines the individual and collective experiences of guilt and complicity in relation to world events. I am interested in the selective and repressed memories of individuals and nations, the reluctance to look and the ability to forget.

Gamespace, Kevin M. Scianni

CGU MFA Theses

My work uses gameplay, the experience of interacting with a gaming system, as a strategy to generate paintings. I interact with a set of rules, challenges and goals loosely derived from the structure of early videogames as a method to compose a painting. I am interested in how game strategies can address formal aspects of painting. I am also interested in how gameplay as an indicator of game quality or the desire to continually be challenged will continually advance the paintings.

Juvenescence: Photographs By Jordan Lutes, Jordan Lutes

Art and Design

Shot entirely on expired 35mm film, Juvenescence explores the life of youths on the central coast of California. Research was done on how to alter film and gain color-shifts to better depict moods and lifestyles in the images.

Nor Sanavongsay Interview, Sittha Abhay

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Nor's Biography:

My name is Nor, pronounce Naw, I was born in Thailand. My family moved to the US when I was four years old. We landed in Kingport, TN and stayed with our sponsors for about six months before heading up to Illinois.

I grew up watching Transformers, Bruce Lee movies, Thundercats, and all the great 80's cartoons. I also have a facination with comic books and graphic novels. I began drawing at the age of six with my uncle as a mentor. I honed my artistic skills as the years pass by.

Nor's Websites:

http://www.nawdsign.com/

http://xiengmieng.com/

Lani Montreal Interview, Thi Navi Thach

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with Filipina teacher, writer, performer Lani T. Montreal by Thi Navi Thach

Tatsu Aoki Interview, Brian Callahan

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with musician Tatsu Aoki

Ann Poochareon Interview, Christina Yang

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with new media artist Ann Poochareon by Christina Yang

Li Lin Lee Interview, Barry Au

Asian American Art Oral History Project

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Artist Biography
Li Lin Lee is a self-taught painter who over the years has attended many exhibitions. Many of his earlier exhibitions had his group panel paintings while later ones displayed solo works. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, he studied biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. He has traveled many places in Southeast Asia. Among his solo exhibitions: Symbiology and Urban Archaeology was displayed at Walsh Gallery in Chicago in 2001 and 2008 respectively.

Tina Ramirez Interview, Karina Lopez

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with poet Tina Ramirez