Art Practice Commons^™

Le Corps Propre, Andrea M. Breiling

CGU MFA Theses

Le Corpse Propre, is a series of large scaled paintings; performative archaeological stripteases through which layers of material stratigraphy reveal themselves through a deliberate process of revealing and concealing.

Patch Wright, Patch Wright

CGU MFA Theses

Wright is a contemporary sculptor whose work focuses on history, symbolism, and the experience of materials and objects.

Downing, Joseph Dudley, 1925-2007 (Mss 565), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 565. Correspondence, articles, news clippings, photographs, exhibit invitations and catalogs, and miscellaneous materials documenting the artistic works and personal life of native Kentuckian artist Joe Downing during his career in the United States and abroad. Includes records of exhibits and patrons of Downing’s work.

Labor, Vera Bauluz

CGU MFA Theses

I make sacred objects from scratch, from ready mades, from industrial materials, and sometimes from trash or recycling. I treat those objects with love and reverence to embed them with essence and soul. I propose conversations with objects exquisitely executed, that question our social order and the machine, easily understood by everybody, although still challenging our understanding of contemporary art.

The placement of the work and the lighting, as fundamental part of the installation, attempts to generate strokes of conscience that enhance human understanding and capabilities beyond a specific discourse.

Humor and sacred coexist in my installation and in my …

Sally Bruno, Sally Bruno

CGU MFA Theses

My investigation starts with an examination of color, form and line. It continues with an examination of how these elements collide and collude to form objects both abstract and representational. What interests me is the intersection between formal abstraction and representational imagery. My goal is to combine these practices in a rigorous, epistemological inquiry into how human beings make sense of their surroundings, using our minds and our bodies, our perceptions and our expectations, to come to understand the visible world and our embodied relationship to it.

Making Rich Use Of "Leisure", Augusto Sandroni

CGU MFA Theses

I make paintings, drawings, installations and sculptures using oils, acrylics and everyday materials such as burlap, reclaimed wood, cardboard and duct tape. More than any other, Matisse’s work was always a point of reference. Everything I do is partially informed, even if not directly by the work of my predecessors, with Matisse toping the list: the element of joy, play and expression of visual beauty is something I’m not ashamed to strive for. I also embrace risk taking, not conforming with establish norms or methodology; I’m always hoping for novel ideas and methods to infiltrate my workflow.

Projectordinary, Paul M. Kelley

CGU MFA Theses

These works are slices, reflections and projections of life. They celebrate what seems humdrum and humble. With stripped-down almost deadpan effects that are nearly as dull as the objects, my works lie somewhere between 2D and 3D, blurring the lines of physical space with the digital. The spatial and sculptural qualities that they attain induce a playful illusion in the moment of trying to make sense of what the eye sees. With a bit of precision, it is vital to make use of the negative space and align animations and digitally repeated forms with objects to retain believability, normality and …

Capstone 2014 Art And Art History Senior Projects, Art And Art History Department

Student Publications

It gives us great pleasure to introduce the Gettysburg College Art and Art History senior Capstone projects for 2014. These projects serve as the culmination of the Studio Art and Art History majors. They are as rich and varied as the students themselves and exemplify the commitment the Department of Art and Art History places on creativity and scholarship in a liberal arts education. [excerpt]

This booklet profiles Art Senior Projects by Bailey K. Beardsley, Lisa R. Del Padre, Tobi C. Goss, Rebecca A. Grill, Anna B. Heck, Japh-O'Mar A. Hickson, Danielle T. Janela, Lauren E. Kauffman, Megan P. Quigg, …

The Sublime & The Picturesque In Art, James M. Chleboun

Theses

Is it possible to create "classical'' landscape pictures of today? The genre of drawing and painting landscapes is the subject for this thesis. For comparing for relevancy, the binary topic is two aesthetic terms, the Sublime and the Picturesque. I will show what the art critics and artists say about those terms with several historical and contemporary artists a<; examples. I will explain what I did with some of my drawings and paintings in relation to the terms within the "classical" composition format.

The challenge for my work is to compose the contemporary landscape using the classical composing principles used by Old Masters. A contemporary German artist has succeeded very well in composing the '·classical·' landscapes of today with modern cultural attributes, but they …

K-12 Students See Steam Everyday, Meghan Reilly Michaud

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Today’s students exist in a visual world. A new semiotic language has emerged in the digital age. It consists of an ever-evolving vocabulary of signs and symbols that one can rapidly decipher. Icons represent applications and functions on a plethora of modern devices. Sounds indicate changes and the start and end of activity. The exposure of new audio and visual media are part of everyday communication, now more than ever. The Arts teach our students to better perceive these cues and the information that they deliver.

Mana & Ea, Dan Taulapapa Mcmullin

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This work, Mana and Ea, expresses Polynesian indigenous sovereignty struggles with colonialism and globalism in the Pacific Islands.

Big Horned, Juniper Harrower

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Tinta y tinto (Spanish for black ink and red wine)
Through a process of oxidation, reduction, and light manipulation, Juniper stains and colors paper with red wine and a rich black pigment made of the wild harvested mushroom Coprinopsis atramentaria.

Design In Nature, Farhana Azim

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Floral Designs are a combination of, line, form and space. By creating balance while incorporating all these three elements in proportion to the space allowed, with an eye on the use of color and contrast, enabling the smooth visual flow of the design one produces the perfect arrangement.

"Mr. Lee", Bin Li

CGU MFA Theses

My paintings are a territory where I express, fight, question and discover what is happening around me. Each element in them struggles with others. They reveal a world almost entirely comprised by conflict and confusion. My goal is to build a connection between my work and myself, to communicate with viewers and to question myself and my audience by representing my personal experience in ways that are revealing and new to me. Somehow, this also offers viewers the opportunity to rethink their relationships to the world around them.

Dark Inventory, Abdul Mazid

CGU MFA Theses

Using a conceptual framework to explore the presence of conflicting ideologies, power structures, and paradigms; Mazid transforms well-known materials and imagery into unexpected and charged artistic declarations, working across a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, video, installation, and sculpture. Pulling freely from a range of sources—personal, historical, social, economic and political—his visual language is simultaneously layered, sensitive, controversial, radical, and banal. His art addresses the underlying cause and effects of globalized society on the individual, often using his own personal circumstances as a point of departure.

All The Things Left Unsaid, Philip Kim

CGU MFA Theses

I search in my paintings a state of constant glide; meditational state by flooding my senses as my eyes wander from scene to scene onto a daze of perpetual visual stimuli.

They are the frozen amalgamation of its transient state – A crosscut of fog condensing into honey. And the burning shadows of a golden hour vaporizing into electric haze. I try to keep the image in perpetual limbo, confused by their nature, wondering if they will be pickled in the vinegar of the web as digital ghosts or finally disintegrate from being a substance. I want to capture in …

Spragga, Johnny Guerrero

CGU MFA Theses

I produce experience generators: mystifying, quirky entities capable of creating their own atmosphere, making subtle but implacable demands for recognition and interaction. In order to cultivate work as evocative as it is provocative, I hybridize, bastardize and stylize any and everything I find interesting with special attention given to objects that have been discarded, forgotten or broken. These become hybrid creatures--not quite paintings, not quite sculptures--that teeter between form and formlessness, between coming together and falling apart, between blind hubris and aching vulnerability.

Rope-A-Dope, Gabriel L. Perez

CGU MFA Theses

I create from everyday items, coming from everyday people. I do not think that what I create is too difficult for anyone to understand but I know that although I created it, it eludes me. Plastic containers, disposables, and clothing reach out to eyes that see them differently. I’m not trying to make people see things differently; I’m just trying to make you look. Call it theatrics but with a history of various performance experiences, I am not above pulling a cheap trick to get your attention. Nor will I shun the lingo and logic of decoration since I am …

The White Room Disruption, Jamaal Hasef Tolbert

CGU MFA Theses

My artistic practices range from sculpture, video art, performance, and painting. Streaming most of my ideas from the African Diaspora and the American Social Structure, I introduce my viewers to a world of topics that are not often discussed in society. I invite viewers to think about how they have been trained to stereotype and label skin tones. This opens up conversation on everyone’s unconscious minds and socially structured beliefs, which often touch up on the topic of race issues. I also use the media whether it is the internet or social media to reach viewers globally and to engage …

Borders, Anwar I. Alzeer

CGU MFA Theses

Abstraction provides me with great freedom. Mixing abstraction and imagery introduces emotions and feelings. Color plays a vitally important role in my paintings. It can sway your thinking, change your actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite, when used in the right ways.

The Artist In The Library: Research Services For Creators, Kristina Keogh, John Glover

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

At Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries we serve a variety of disciplines. This poster session focuses on outreach initiatives by the Visual Arts Research Librarian and the Humanities Research Librarian to provide research services to a unique group: students and faculty who create new and unique objects and texts. The needs of artistic researchers in such diverse areas as interior design, painting, and creative writing overlap in many ways, both expected and unexpected.

Our efforts to reach out to creators and offer support for their distinctive research needs have included such activities as taking classes within particular programs and embedding ourselves …

Art And Symbolism: The Technique Of Applying Hidden Meaning And Communicating Specific Ideas Through Art, Andrea C. Macbean

Senior Honors Theses

Symbolism is an artistic style frequently used in the arts. Through the course of art history, it was its own artistic movement as well. The incorporation of specific symbols, shapes, colors, or identifiable images communicates to the viewer an intended message or statement. Frequently, symbolism appears to be hidden or initially unperceived by the intended audience. In some works, symbolism is so abstract that it needs explanation or clarification to be understood completely by the viewer. This thesis will analyze a few techniques of symbolism that can be incorporated in a work of art to communicate truth, entice thought, point …

Convocation 2013 Address By Denise Pelletier, Denise Pelletier

Convocation Addresses

No abstract provided.

Falling Apart While Awake, Crystal Erlendson

CGU MFA Theses

Crystal Erlendson conceals surfaces with irreverent, ornamental gestures to reveal a daft logic in space.

Find additional websites of the artist's work here and here.

Paradise Maintenance Department, Dan Taulapapa Mcmullin

CGU MFA Theses

Based on personal and artistic research in Samoa, Polynesia, Oceania, and the South Pacific Islands, "Paradise Maintenance Department" investigates the contemporary colonial relationship between the U.S. Territory of American Samoa and the United States, while engaging in a poetic expression of f'a'afafine queer Samoan life.

Path - Loss, Gregory S. Cook

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

The term “path loss” could be considered somewhat idiomatic – it refers at once to a very specific technical definition and an easily relatable conceptualization, but perhaps its most immediate read is one of defeat, literally “a path, lost.” I find this beautifully problematic. In its original end as a term in radio-engineering, it’s used to describe the attenuation of a signal through physical space on its way to a receiver – that is, “path loss” describes some kind of thin-ness of intensity, the parts of something snagged along the way; parts caught in bedrock, lost in soil, or tangled …

Bearing Likeness, Christine M. Salama

CGU MFA Theses

The world is saturated with images and things. I have chosen to put more images and things into the world. In doing so, I complicate and further saturate these connections, but I also find clarity and answers through the mark, the gesture, the image, and material. I make marks with materials that are closely related to the meanings of the things I depict. The images and objects I make are ones that I know and understand because they are close to me, but the process of making leaves room for inquiry and unfamiliarity with these same objects.

I am guided …

Isolated Infinite, Kelsey M. Kimmel

CGU MFA Theses

I explore the relationship between human borders and digital space. The porous borders between these entities shape contemporary culture and identity. Amid the digital current, I find myself over-stimulated, fighting to stay afloat through multitasking, immediacy and cramming. My sculptural installations investigate how I see, experience, interact with and react to digital space.

Verdurous, Adrian R. Culverson

CGU MFA Theses

Adrian Culverson is a painter and sculptor who uses mixed media to create installations that focus on splices of real and imagined worlds.

The End Of All Learning, Maddison Carole Colvin

Theses and Dissertations

Science and religion are systems that work to organize experience into a manageable understanding of the world. Both of these systems gather information - one through mental/spiritual experience and the other through empirical/physical evidence - and then reorder it within a structured framework. They both work under the premise that truth is both existent and attainable within the context of their system. This separation is viewed as necessary in the knowledge/experience-gathering process, but when that knowledge is accumulated, neither science nor religion has the ability to access or communicate truth in its entirety. Plainly speaking, truth is vast and knowledge …