Art Practice Commons^™

Invisible Invisibility, Eugina Song

Theses and Dissertations

White America assumes its culture is the default, and Asian culture as foreign and irrelevant. I address Asian invisibility by using canvas structure as a Western framing device of painting, and make this cultural barrier visible by breaking out of the frame. Deriving from Dansaekhwa, I challenge the Western painting structure with materiality.

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 …

An Exotic Journey Into The Commonplace, Linda Weintraub

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Standardized mass-produced commodities, reliance upon electronic data-gathering, and sanitized material manipulations are so pervasive in contemporary industrialized societies that today, ‘exotic’ experiences activate sensory interactions with the substances and conditions of planet Earth. ‘Plugging in’ to the international flow of goods and information commonly results in ‘tuning out’ connections with the immediate surroundings. This essay highlights the capacity of the un-aided mind and body to explore the wondrous complexity of planet Earth. The first part presents four artists who, by engaging geological, biological, and meteorological components of their surroundings, exchange dematerialized surfing activities offered by the World Wide Web, for …

Au-Delà De La Nature : The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories De Julian Charrière, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou

The Goose

In this short article - case study, I explore the question of how art may help us reflect on the new conception of nature that the Anthropocene confronts us with. I focus on the photographic series The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories I,II,III (2013) by Swiss artist Julian Charrière and its reassessment of an idea of nature inherited from the romantic period. I analyse the way in which these pictures reinterpret romantic landscape painting in order to suggest an equal relation of human and nature, where human and non-human entities hold equal sway. My theoretical framework is based on Timothy Morton’s …

Summer Light, Sara Dolatabadi

Theses and Dissertations

"Summer Light" is a film about family dynamics. Using light as a defining factor, it looks at the relationship between the director’s parents and her daughter. It is the her response to a desire to record and safeguard intimate moments of an ordinary day before they disappear.

Kaveri Raina Interview, Eva Swiecki

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Kaveri Raina is an artist working in Chicago, IL. She was born and raised in New Delhi, India and moved to the States at the age of eleven. In 2011 she received her BFA in Painting and Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and in 2016 her MFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Raina was a 2016 recipient of the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship, Fred and Joanna Lazarus Scholarship, amongst others. In fall 2016 she completed a five-week residency at Ox-Bow, in Saugatuck, MI. Raina has exhibited in Chicago, New …

Renluka Maharaj Interview, Steven Zych

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Renluka Maharaj grew up in the country of Trinidad and Tobago and moved to New York as a child where spent most of her life. Her Eastern and Western background wrapped with modern sensibilities is evident in her bodies of work. Her interests are centered on gender roles, sexuality, colonialism, mythology, iconography and fetishism. Some of the artists that have influenced her work are Yinka Shonibare and Yasumasa Morimura.

Ms. Maharaj completed her BFA at the University of Colorado Boulder and is currently completing her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received the …

Raeleen Kao Interview, Beena Patel

Asian American Art Oral History Project

BIO: Raeleen Kao is a drawer, printmaker, and amateur competitive eater aka glutton residing in Chicago with a Charles Brand etching press, a red tabby, and forty plants.

Her prints and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country most notably at the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Monmouth Museum of Art, Bert Green Fine Art, the Smith College Museum of Art, Tory Folliard Gallery, Firecat Projects, and Normal Editions Workshop. Her work has been represented at SELECT Fair New York, the Editions and Artist Books Fair in New York, the Cleveland Fine Print Fair, the …

Sarah Nishiura Interview, Larry Villanueva

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Sarah Nishiura grew up in Detroit and now lives in Chicago, where she makes paintings, drawings, prints and quilts. She learned to sew from her mother and learned to love geometry from her father. From her grandparents, who were great builders, painters, stitchers, weavers and gardeners, she learned that making things is one of the greatest imperatives, privileges and pleasures in life.

Spreading Seeds: Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds And His Performative Personality Received In The West, Wei Wu

Scripps Senior Theses

In 2010, Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds made its debut in Tate Modern, which promoted Ai to be one of the most famous and respected contemporary Chinese artists. This Conceptual art work has multiple layers of meanings, which all corresponds to the Western expectations for a successful contemporary Chinese artist. In fact, the Western art world has long held bias and stereotypes towards international artists. Ai chose to perform his personality to conform to the expectations and Western ideologies, which brought him international fame. On the other hand, other Chinese artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhou Chunya, don't totally agree with …

Pineapple, 022, Conversation – Behind The Cover Art, Jesse W. Standlea

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Many sources date the pit-firing process as a 30,000 plus years-old ceramic firing technique. Every year I take my AP 3D Design class to the beach to fire ceramic pieces using this method. Being a contemporary sculptor who shows in Los Angeles I have always appreciated pit-fired pieces but never used one in my own art practice until now. A connection between the first method of firing ceramics and my art practice seemed unrelated. The title for my piece might add to the disconnect; and yet these seemingly unrelated elements force the work into a place where the artistic process …

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 …

Viewer-, Author-, And Ownership In The Work Of Andrea Zittel, Amanda M. York

Theses and Dissertations

Andrea Zittel invites others to collapse the distinctions between artist, viewer, and collaborator by interacting with her usable works. This thesis explores the process of interacting with Zittel's works, and how it affects viewer-, author- and ownership.

Tailoring Student Learning: Inquiry-Based Learning In The Elementary Art Classroom, Jeffrey Melvin Cornwall

Theses and Dissertations

This research study explored the role of the elementary art educator in facilitating individualized learning experiences for students in contrast to a standardized culture of education. The methodology of a/r/tography was used to investigate the role of the teacher, as well as artist and researcher, within an inquiry-based art curriculum for a fifth grade class. Inspired by contemporary art practices, students used inquiry to investigate, research and experiment with their ideas around an integrated topic of compare and contrast as found within the fifth grade science and language arts standards. Students created a work of art as a means to …

New Genres In The Art Classroom: Shifting Ideas And Identities, Alyssa Grant Ridge

Theses and Dissertations

Secondary art education programs primarily offer courses in traditional mediums like drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics. In addition to valuing these traditional art forms, art education research supports integrating new technologies and media in the classroom. However, the possibilities of creating an exclusively contemporary, new genres curriculum have yet to be explored. This study examines the affordances and limitations of a high school-level new genre curriculum and describes how students reacted to these new genres and how their perceptions of art, student-peer relationships, and artist identities changed over time. By introducing students to new genres, the author found students expanded …

Digital Space Art (History?), France Languérand

Artl@s Bulletin

Invited by ARTL@S Bulletin as visual artist, France Languérand opted for a first-person text introducing her artworks—which develop into the digital sphere, questionning their own sustainability— and recounting the evolution of her relationship the digital space. This walkthrough is guided by her current thoughts about numbers and coding system as creative tools. Languérand’s pieces are only partially visible in the physical world but exist entirely in the digital space.

The Specific Object, Jared Lindsay Clark, Brian Christensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

“The history of painting may be characterized in terms of the gradual withdrawal of painting from the task of representing reality – or of reality from the power of painting to represent it – in favor of an increasing preoccupation with problems intrinsic to painting itself…painting and sculpture became free to pursue concerns intrinsic to themselves.”

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.

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.

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.

Elke Krystufek And The Obessive Production Of Person, Melanie E. Emerson

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Elke Krystufek’s artistic practice has centered almost wholly on duplicate and substitute images of herself, specifically emphasizing the female body and its position within the discourses of art history and gendered identity. While an earlier generation of feminist artists used their bodies as subject and object of their work in order to critique stereotypes and forcefully dismantle barriers that excluded women from the public sphere or labeled them objects of desire, Krystufek uses similar tactics to point to the fact there is no longer a private space. Identity is not solely the property of an individual, but rather an open …

Gabriel Bizen Akigawa Interview, Joe Ondrey

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Gabriel Bizen Akagawa is the Assistant Director of Academic Advising and recently former Academic Advisor in the Office of Student Affairs and Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Sculpture department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibits regularly as a Chicago-based artist. He has been awarded Artist-in-Residencies at the Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, British Columbia, at Crabtree Farm in Lake Bluff, Illinois, and at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, Michigan. His curatorial projects include an ongoing and changing series he initiated in 2005 called “Faketure” (fake nature), which lead to founding the Faketure Consortium …

Bleach, Kim E. Alexander Jr.

CGU MFA Theses

The work in this exhibition investigates the unique potential for drawing to articulate the ideas and attitudes of architecture and objects. Accepting drawing as operating in conceptual space, I explore experimental loops within the visual logic of that territory. The work asserts the material fact of drawing and its connection to forms of fabrication in other materials like wood, paint, metal, and plastic. Like painting and sculpting, the drawings occupy an intangible state between objects and ideas. I embrace this irresolution. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Representaciones De Figuras Feministas En La Muestra Despierta!, Kathryn Lane

Pitzer Senior Theses

Elizabeth Waltenburg es una artista contemporánea argentina. En su muestra, despierta!, las obras en óleo sobre tela representan a mujeres, niños y animales en fondos extraños y deprimidos. Ella utilize simbolismo de animales y figuras femeninas para discutir el feminismo actual. Ella trabaja en un tiempo complicado por el feminismo, el postfeminismo, la critica de ambos, y un sistema de comunicación global. Su trabajo marca una tendencia hecho por la confusión de todos estos movimientos. Esta tesis discute su trabajo en el contexto de la historia de representaciones de mujeres, de niños y de animales para llegar a una mejor …