Art Practice Commons^™

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …

Contemporary Family Portrait: The Hidden Uncomfortable Truth Of Family Dynamics, Ji Won Park

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

This thesis examines the hidden aspect of family dynamic and questions the idealized convention of family portraits. Based on Erving Goffman’s theatrical theory of community, family as a relaxing intimate group in the backstage, the underlying tensions, conflicts, and power play are discussed. This thesis draws upon the familial issues and treatments of Leon J. Saul and Rhee Dong Shick to evaluate the family dynamic present in our domestic settings. As the lineage of family portraits from history changed reflecting the differing family values and uncomfortable truths, the idealized family portraits are re-evaluated and questioned to offer a truer description …

The Girl Who Didn’T Know She Wasn’T Singing, Rebecca M. Lothan

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

I am interested what is obscured by the mundane, diurnal nature of objects that surround us which uphold a comfortable rhythm that easily resists close observation. My thesis work examines states of flux, a body of work that is neither here nor there, but hovers in an in between area: in existing between painting and sculpture, in revealing transcendent qualities of the everyday, raising questions about value, and fundamental acts of seeing and considering artwork. context becomes key in framing the experience of the work, each piece is perceptually contingent on external factors; in viewership and the individual viewer experience …

Process As Practice : Expressions Of The Numinous, Morgan Dowty

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

This statement explores the ways in which language and art making approach description of spiritual and largely ineffable experiences. Through the lens of Rudolf Otto’s discussion of the numinous, visual languages, including darkness, scale and silence, are explored as methods for expression of the spiritual. Throughout the exploration of material and process, an emphasis is placed on exploring a relationship between the transcendental and the everyday, between the physical and spiritual world. The making process is highlighted for its ability to create space and time to reflect on these questions. Printmaking as a translator of both object and image plays …

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Through this essay I describe the theoretical and anthropological ideas that led to the creation of the Cushing Series. An interest in the obsession with photography in popular culture leads to an understanding of the permeation of structured reasoning beyond scientific research and into everyday life. Taking evidence from photography, and philosophy of science I establish the limitations of structured reasoning, both as a way of perceiving the world and as an understanding of identity, and define surface and frame as its physical representation. Using Sartre’s existential theory and phenomenological anthropology I then describe the infinite subjective existence of …

Ghosts In The Garden: Cultural Critique Through The Lens Of The Absurd, Andrew T. Catanese

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

The primary lens by which I deconstruct my work is the absurd and “lucidity” of the absurd as developed by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus’ absurd grows out of the tension between human desire for establishing order with the impossibility of doing so in a universe that continually resists our abstractions. The absurd then becomes a means to understanding the criticisms in my work of consumerism, behavior, and spaces which attempt to control or constrict people. I approach my art as an “other” or “outsider” from the system of Protestant moral dichotomy in which I grew up. …

Black Culture: A Societal Problem, Quamesha Brown

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

American society, regardless of what history has been told, has never been a society that is truly free of social prejudices especially for its black community. The many depictions of black people in America has caused a number of psychological and physical difficulties for black communities. In this paper, the main topic is the ways in which black culture is portrayed in American society and how that representation has affected the black community and the black experience. Although there are common experiences shared between people in the black community, the black experience is highly individualized; there is no singular definition …

Talking To Boxes, Hugging Robots, Vita Eruhimovitz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Relationships between humans and technology are at the core of my artistic research. Human-machine communication is defined by the technological level of the machines, but even more so by the way they are perceived by humans. Concepts of artificial life and artificial intelligence gradually have become part of the everyday life of growing numbers of people, and while there is an ongoing effort to design an increasingly anthropocentric technology, our minds also adapt to the new technological reality. Through immersive installations and sculptural objects my practice explores this reality. My artwork is designed to communicate with and stimulate the viewers, …

Art And..., Dayna J. Kriz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Almost anything goes in this time of contemporary artistic production as long as an artist can ‘back’ their ideas and the position they operate from. This expanding territory of production and engagement is an exciting potential for working artists, providing freedom to self-determine ones modus operandi within an expanding support system to engage the world with. While this is an exciting growth it is also potentially dangerous. The un-named and historically ambiguous position that Art1 operates from has created a rootless position to the production of culture. This rootlessness or, universal position has historically established itself as the gatekeeper and …

Clairvoyant Learning: The Strangeness Of Playing Games, Jeremy Shipley

Graduate School of Art Theses

In retelling multiple stories of my research, this document serves as a quest to archive my interest in games as evolved systems of play that continue to manipulate the way we view literacy. In describing the subtly of these terms while examining the folkloric histories that contextualize the language of this media, I have doubly manipulated the form of my paper to be like a choose-your-own-adventure tale, reflecting the estrangement of time and authorship unique to the narrative space in games. Unlike the formal structures found in literature or cinema, games animate collaborative and nonlinear systems that return the craft …

It Begins With You And Me, Sea A Joung

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis conceptualizes the conditions of the Korean division, including the realization of the political and cultural gap between North and South Korea, lack of education about the Korean division and the role of media. The Korean War, also known as the “Forgotten War,” is erased from the consciousness of contemporary societies. This thesis describes a history about how the artificial division created during the Korean War continuously affects the lives of modern Koreans. For more than sixty years, North and South Korea did not have any form of communication except through government negotiations and regulated media. As a result, …

Beauty Within Destruction, Julia Rindal Kron

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Beauty within Destruction represents the culmination of my body of work for my Senior Honors Thesis. My paintings are an exploration of the environmental impact and visual beauty of petroleum. Petroleum is a versatile substance, and comes in many types serving a variety of applications. My thesis focuses on petroleum because of its impact on my childhood home, using acrylic paint (a petroleum byproduct).

When I was a sophomore in High School, my family was notified that our neighbor’s oil tank had leaked 1,000 gallons of petroleum underneath our home. This incident turned into a five-year legal and emotional battle …

The Misconception Of Knowing, The Invention Of Time; Curiosities & Introspections Of Vernacular Photography, Patricia D. Drummond

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Misconception of Knowing, the Invention of Time; Curiosities & Introspections of Vernacular Photography is a body of work that combines photography, artist books, and alternative processes in a series of pieces that explore the synergy between the act of creating vernacular or common photography, the photograph in its many forms, and the interaction with the photographic image at all the stages of its existence. It also exists in conjunction with this written monograph, which supports and gives insight into the work. Through the use of poems, sketchbook musings, the history of photography, critical theory and social norms within photography, …

Digital Innovations, Environment And Fashion, Avery Gray

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Digital Innovations, Environment and Fashion is the title of my senior Capstone thesis project for the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Fashion Design at Syracuse University. For this project, I designed a collection of six complete outfits that explore the theme of the natural environment and technology. The thesis project was presented in a public fashion show at Syracuse University at the end of April 2015.

In this creative reflective essay, a brief history of technology in fashion design will be explored. In chapter two, my inspirations and research in fashion design, art, and photography all support my decisions …

Critical Mass: An Exhibition Competition, Allison Kirsch

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I organized Critical Mass: An Exhibition Competition for my Honors Capstone Project. This was a juried art exhibition for undergraduate visual artists in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. Ten artists were selected from student applications to represent a broad range of artistic achievement.

Standing Still, Young Tseng Wong

CGU MFA Theses

I am drawn to the in-between — to movement at the corners of the eyes, to the moments between one breath and the next. When we want to catch such moments we stand still, we pause, we wait, "with bated breath." At such moments, I believe, the potential exists for taking on different perspectives and for finding other points of view.

Standing still, in a state of stillness, is an action that encapsulates many of my concerns. My work takes form in objects and architecture that collaborate with bodies moving inside them. The space is structured, not as a system, …

Transmogrify, Yehsiming S. Jue

CGU MFA Theses

Teeth are unique to the individual just like fingerprints. I paint human sets of teeth and their stages of mutations to explore the connections between our own naturally occurring inner mutations and our science-enduced rebuilding of these structures from stem cells. These duplicated and mirrored forms originate from teeth stem cells and their ability to regenerate our teeth. I also use teeth in my work because they represent us as a whole yet erase the boundary line of gender; while they still follow a naturally occurring, common process. So we can all relate to teeth, yet they are very personal …

Unknown, Gabrielle E. Valdez

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

As somebody who spent a considerable amount of time coming to terms with my own identity, I would often look to other people to try and see what makes them who they are. This is obviously impossible to ascertain from a quick glance or brief observation I make in a public space. I know almost nothing about the subjects of my paintings — and the viewer of my paintings is provided the limited information that I take away from this interaction. These brief encounters are documented as photographs taken with my phone. This body of work is a progression. As …

The Experiences Of African-Born Women Faculty And Administrators At Colleges And Universities In The United States, Oyibo H. Afoaku

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to document the experiences of African-born women faculty and administrators at colleges and universities in the United States. The study explored the factors that motivated African-born women to immigrate to and extend their stay in the United States beyond completion of their education; factors they perceive as constraint on their quest for self-empowerment and identity as foreign students, college instructors, and/or administrators, and parents; and factors that have enabled them to adapt to their host culture and achieve their educational and professional goals even though they had to contend with multiple challenges associated with …

Oh, Lazarus…Whom God Has Helped, Wala Ka Bang Hiya!, Lazaro Juan

Theses and Dissertations

Art as a means and a vehicle towards a higher form of consciousness, and state of awareness to communicate complex issues and a way of healing. Within the context of the decolonization process.

Fostering The Efficacious Adolescent Artist, Regina Beltowski

Masters Theses

Low self-esteem and insecurity is common among adolescents. In the secondary-school art room, students often stop engaging in art practice, believing that they lack talent, when the truth is that they lack specific skills. Students who are fortunate to have teachers who help them develop their skills experience a boost in feelings of self-efficacy, and often reengage with art production. This thesis project focuses on strengthening students’ self-efficacy in the visual arts at the secondary level. Clarifying the differences between related terms – self-esteem, self-concept, and perceived control – I focus on self-efficacy as a characteristic that plays a significant …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Mfa15 (Mfa 2015), Sam Fox School Of Design & Visual Arts, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Heather Corcoran, Patricia Olynyk, Andrea Coates, Margaux Crump, Brandon Daniels, Addoley Dzegede, Vita Eruhimovitz, Carling Hale, Amanda C F Helman, Michael A. Helms, Ming Y. Hong, Sea A Joung, Stephanie E. Kang, Dayna J. Kriz, Thomas C. Moore, Jacob Muldowney, Laurel Panella, Caitlin Penny, Eric Lyle Schultz, Jeremy Shipley, Emmeline Solomon, Kellie Spano, Michael A. Williams, Austin R. Wolf

Books and Monographs

Catalogue of a culminating student exhibition held at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, May 1 - August 2, 2015 . Introduction / Heather Corcoran and Patricia Olynyk -- Diana Casanova / Emily J. Hanson -- Andrea M. Coates : in the operating theater / Stephanie Dering -- Margaux Crump -- Brandon Daniels -- Addoley Dzegede : do you prefer answers or truth? / Aaron Coleman -- Vita Eruhimovitz -- Carling Hale -- Amanda Helman -- Mike Helms / Ming Ying Hong -- Ming Ying Hong / Emily J. Hanson -- Sea A Joung / Ervin Malakaj -- Stephanie Kang …

The Artist, The Workhorse: Labor In The Sculpture Of Anna Hyatt Huntington, Brooke Baerman

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973) was an American sculptor of animals who founded the nation’s first sculpture garden, Brookgreen Gardens, in 1932. Hyatt Huntington, whose personal papers are housed at Syracuse University, is an important yet understudied artist. Focusing on Hyatt Huntington’s sculptures in Brookgreen Gardens and on the gardens themselves, which also included a zoo, this paper will examine themes of labor in the artist’s oeuvre.

Hyatt Huntington placed an emphasis on hard work as she fought to distinguish herself as a sculptor in a male-dominated field. The products of her labor often venerate the work of animals, from bulls …

Enduring Peripheries, Anna Yeroshenko

MFA in Photography and Integrated Media Theses

In the 80s when Russian state-sanctioned architectural production consisted of standardized buildings that deplored any unnecessary ornament or decoration, an architect functioned only as an interpreter of numerous limiting factors. As an act of protest against the stagnation in architecture, a group of young architects began to create projects that existed only on paper. For them ‘Paper Architecture‘ became a way of bypassing restrictions and dissenting, a way to critique the dehumanizing nature of the architectural style that prevailed at that time. Spatial compositions, which were hard to comprehend visually, elements of inverse perspective, and impractical, idealistic environments depicted a …

Tales From The Fells, Anne Elder

MFA in Photography and Integrated Media Theses

Our relationship with the natural world is complicated and under scrutiny as we make irrevocable changes to the earth. We enter the woods to get lost, and to find ourselves. We walk there to find thrills, peace, inspiration; to hear ourselves think, to be surprised, to make profit. Our childish fears may have changed from bears, monsters and getting lost, replaced by adult fears (bears, unsavory humans, getting lost). The woods may frighten us or be a place of comfort, but it is rarely a neutral experience. When we lose access to these spaces, it affects our ability to find …

Into The Fold: Deleuze, Desire, And Art, Madeline Wells

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

The purpose of this essay is to understand how I, as a visual artist, understand and utilize the fold. I will trace the many ways in which a fold functions, oscillating between my own practice and those of other contemporary artists, including Orlan and Shana Moulton. From twentieth century baroque to spiritual cleansing, theatrical staging to suggestive metonymy, the fold invites the desire to transform—for something more than what the everyday offers. Through photography, video, or sculpture, we have the ability to express an expanded, more accurate understanding of the real and the virtual, the human and the nonhuman. For …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

The Representation Of Non-Traditional Bodies, Elizabeth J. Perkins

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

My work largely addresses the close-minded Western ideals of the human body, particularly those related to females. Stemming from struggles with my own sense of security, I strive to create accessible works of art that both challenge and expand these ideals by representing figural imagery beyond such social constraints. Though my works may seem to serve the purpose of mockery at first, the urgency of the issues portrayed becomes apparent as the pieces are studied more carefully. I explore how exposure, vulnerability, grotesqueness, and intimacy within my work serve as a means to expand our cultural ideals for the human …

In-Betweeness On Stage, Qiyuan Liu

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

It all started with the question of “where are you from”. Coming from China and making art in America, I have been confused by people’s question about where am I from and, more importantly, where I identify myself belong. By using installation as the main format, I created works with strong theatrical quality to restage and reenact my social and cultural experiences that finally led to my understanding of the “in-betweeness” of myself: I reside in neither of the two cultures but rather moving back and forth between them. I carry influences from both sides with me and present them …