Art Practice Commons^™

Tomorrow Is The Worst Day Since Yesterday, Matthew Carlson

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

Susan Sontag wrote: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other space”.

This work addresses aspects of that citizenship. I used my experiences as a person living with a disability and as a parent to a son with Autism to explore the dichotomy of this dual citizenship. The …

Arabesque, Zafirah Ahmed

CGU MFA Theses

This paper talks about my MFA Thesis Exhibition : Arabesque. It discusses my usage of pattern and how I am exploring pattern in its historical context, against the repetition of societal patterns in various spaces. Through the use of created symbols in paintings, and installation work.

Difficult Paintings, Hao (Damien) Ding

Theses and Dissertations

The sublime as a concept has a fraught and racist history. However, it remains the single most helpful idea in describing the deeply felt state of being when one comes across something ineffably powerful. From an art-making perspective, this thesis, and the accompanying exhibition of installations and paintings, proposes an alternative construction of the concept of the sublime. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a conceptual point of departure, a painter can manipulate the relationship of the viewer and paintings to create paradoxical moments of simultaneous intimacy and distance, which interact to create an alternative path towards the sublime. Through descriptions of …

Ex-Tensions: Material Entanglement And Intensities, Zohreh Galdizadeh Garmeh

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the intrinsic capacity of matter and material formations and utilization of art as a mode of inquiry. Ex-tensions: Material Entanglement and Intensities investigates the animism and vibrancy of objects and the hidden interplay between materials and intensities that flow through and around within the spaces that confine us. In this body of work, all forms of material configurations are understood as animated and agential and as different representations of the same substance that are only formally diverse.

Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around using a specialized blend of art, design, and craft to interpret political narratives through fabricated products. These objects weave contemporary commentary and consumer indulgences into sculptural cultures. Each product is designed to mimic its own marketed culture—offering an enticingly tactile, interactive experience that is equal parts confusing, concerning, and delightful. The products are accompanied by investment opportunities in the form of popular, limited released merchandized objects, such as hats and patches. Using humor and subtlety, my gamelike installations explore arenas such as agency, autonomy, intimacy, and dueling realities in a time of ecological collapse and cultural …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Rhythms Of Light, Jessica R. Csanky

CGU MFA Theses

My works are visual expressions of a true love for movement, rhythm, and saturated color. In making art, I present lived experiences that are rendered abstract. These formal representations originate from an energetic space or sensory association and express a connection to places I have been, whether physically or emotionally.

Integral to my practice is the uninhibited exploration of materials and tools. I am committed to deepening my understanding of what paint can do when combined with drawing and installation techniques.

My compositions address architecture, landscape, memory, as well as psychological and physical spaces that we move through during our …

...A Placebo, An Embryo, A Mosquito, My Libido, Andy Ralph

Theses and Dissertations

This blood-sucking song and dance is a trivial example of an absurd imbalance. In my universe, though, trivial and momentous are equally unranked qualities.

Fear Not The Harsh Winter, Emily D. Janowick

Theses and Dissertations

With rhythmic contraction and relaxation, blood vessels propel our life force through miles of mazes to the heart. This (peristaltic) rhythm moves us in waves. We mirror our insides outside, vessels carrying what matters, instinctively drawn to carry the patterns of those who came before us.

Memory Bread, Nisiqi

Art + Design Masters Theses

Memory Bread, constituting a daily performance ritual and the post-action objects, seeks to address the generational decline of mother language use in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a post-colonized province of China. I chose to eat sliced white bread in the performance and later casted concrete sculptures as the extension of the action for both substances’ capitalistic nature. Being an invasive material that took over the traditional architectural lifestyle, the use of concrete mirrors the pervasive cultural and ethnic assimilation in China. Meanwhile, the materiality of concrete being a mixture of various substances also metaphors the mixed culture that Chinese-Mongolians …

(Re)Forming And (Re)Fusing The Sub-Divided Self, Laura Boban

Theses and Dissertations

The split between the individual and being part of a social body is addressed in this paper. I begin with my suburban upbringing; applying notions of separate and sub-divided to the construction of one’s aspirations, gender expression(s), and one’s ideological alignment. I contemplate the forces directing individual and shared desires and the persistent messaging of individual pursuits over efforts that benefit many. What does it mean to participate in a collective dreaming of one’s own wealth, happiness, and power? Can one cultivate an integrated art practice and sense of self? In the studio, I layer and abstract figures, stack household …

Devyn Mañibo Interview, Daniel Bugliarello-Wondrich

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Devyn Lorelei Mañibo is a Brooklyn-based maker, feeder, organizer, and educator. Through poems, art objects, and gesture, she thinks intimately about the language and texture of death & desire, fullness & loss. Mañibo has had video, performance, installation, and academic work shown, published, and presented internationally in festivals, museums, and conferences including the MIX Queer Experimental Film Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, the Berlin Porn Festival, the Queens Museum, and the Allied Media Conference. Mañibo is a 2013 Princess Grace Foundation Undergraduate Film Award Recipient, an alum of Cycle III of the Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship with the …

Reflected Dispositions, Taylor Hedum

MFA Thesis Exhibit Catalogs

My MFA Thesis Exhibition, Reflected Dispositions, features an installation of sculptural objects and light projections in an unconventionally dark gallery setting. Spotlights shine onto the reflective sculptures, and the light is cast onto the surrounding environment. Motors or water deform the sculptures to create dynamic motion in the projections, with the cyclical changes and tempo meant to evoke a state of reflection in the audience. The percepts magnify the nuances of the material; to reveal the previously unseen.

My interest to control light stems from experiments with materials and the unexpected reflections that they produce. Since then, I have learned …

Enmesh: The Art Of Trauma And Recovery, Joanna Pottle

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Liminal Space is an artistic installation within the ongoing, interdisciplinary creative/research project "Enmesh: The Art of Trauma and Recovery.” Utilizing a combination of research methods, creative processes, and cultural inspirations, this project asks the following questions: how can the artistic process (this project serving as a preliminary case study) parallel various modes of recovery and healing? How can this objective be visually communicated through a mixed media approach of drawing, painting, and printmaking and how can this approach be an effective tool of communication? What can we conclude from both modes of work (solitarily or collectively)? How do they accomplish …

Kiddush Levana, The Moon Is Your Handheld Mirror, Noa Ginzburg

Theses and Dissertations

Noa Ginzburg is weaving cast-off and hand-made objects, lights, reflections, spells, drawings, and an abundance of knots into site-responsive installations. In her thesis, Ginzburg addresses Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, the synergy of assemblages, repurposing of materials in the era of Anthropocene, and how notions of solidarity and indeterminacy influence her work.

North American Data, Joseph A. Burwell

Theses and Dissertations

North American Data fractures and reconfigures pre-existing narratives into new, unauthorized forms of storytelling. Core samples extracted from various narrative sources are reassigned new roles according to their proximity to each other. This paper functions as an introduction to the essential actors and their dramatic inclinations within fluctuating scenarios.

Generative Movements, Cabbage Juice, & Habitats Of Selfhood, Jason Michael Rondinelli

Theses and Dissertations

The content of this essay is a reflection on my practice as an artist. A summary of text includes an analysis of my attraction to certain materials such as drywall, cabbage juice and coconut oil, all materials are the extensions of my memory, intention and pleasure. From warm memories of bathhouses and the flesh of others to managing illness at home, my artwork distills a lived experience into material reality. These materials take the shape of sculptural networks that serve as biographical biomes. The architectural and organic components of the work are sourced from my own experience and the surreal …

Pass Away, Jessica Li

Theses and Dissertations

This project is about a familial history and takes the form of a sculptural installation. How do you pack to go to a place you know nothing about? Bags enable mobility by providing a sense of home in unfamiliar terrain. What is carried on a trip to the grocery store? To California? To the other side of the world? To the moon? Into the afterlife? What choices are made out of necessity versus what is carried out of desire or fear?

Greetings From..., Casey Mae Schachner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Greetings from... is a reflection of my roots in the tropical vacationland of Florida, a place for which I feel both nostalgic and conflicted. Growing up in southern tourist destinations, I was confronted daily with the extreme contrasts of living in paradise. In my artwork, I am translating the cacophony of Florida through the lens of materiality. By re-configuring commodified objects of the tourism industry, the sculptural works in this show exhibit my consideration for the paradoxical relationships that exist between materials and place. Much like the avant-garde Surrealist object, or the assemblage of found materials in provocative combinations that …

Between The Bars, Unique Shaw-Smith Dr, Eliese Maxwell, Victoria Otero, Catherine Trujillo, Habib Placencia Adissi

Creative Works

“Between the Bars” is a senior project exhibition, in collaboration with Cal Poly Sociology Professor Dr. Unique Shaw-Smith. Featuring artwork produced by incarcerated artists, the goal is to undo negative stereotypes and to empower the rehabilitation of incarcerated artists individually and collectively through art.The exhibit demonstrates that rehabilitation does occur in prison and emphasizes that art has the power to transcend all social differences and divisions. The exhibit features more than 60 works in diverse mediums including sculpture, painting, and poetry by 34 incarcerated artists from California Men’s Colony.

This catalog represents the onsite exhibit of the same name, which …

Migiwa Orimo Interview, Jessica Ruiz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Migiwa Orimo is an artist whose primary work takes the form of installation. Orimo was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving her degree in literature and studying graphic design, she immigrated to the US in the early eighties.

In her process of creating installations, she begins by entering a space of language. Often her installations consist of disparate elements--text, painting, drawing, objects, video and sound. In attempting to establish relationships and tension between those elements, similar to constructing sentences, she explores the notions of gap, slippage, and “a realm of disjunction.”

She exhibits her work nationally; …

Kioto Aoki Interview, Austin Sandifer

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Kioto Aoki is a conceptual photographer and experimental filmmaker who also makes books and installations engaging the material specificity of the analogue image and image-making process. Her work explores modes of perception via nuances of the mundane, with recent focusing on perceptions of movement between the still and the moving image. She received MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a 2017-2018 HATCH artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition.

https://kiotoaoki.com/

Nirmal Raja Interview, Dalton Campbell

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee, WI. Born in India, she has lived and traveled in several countries. Raja received a Bachelor’s of Arts in English Literature in India, a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and a Master’s of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her work deals with concepts of displacement, cultural negotiation and memory. http://nirmalraja.com

Murmur/Murmuro, Paola M. Di Tolla

Theses and Dissertations

By using repetition or misplacing intonations and accents, etc. one can imitate the slipperiness of spoken language. However, it is the accidental slippage that I find most revealing and exciting because it allows for two conversations to exist in one. Once spoken language is transcribed as text, it is put through another filter and the risk of [accidental] slippage increases by a different measure. Fingers don’t keep up or autocorrect insists on taking matters into its own hands.

Profanation, Tsahi Zac H. Hacmon

Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to provoke an Israeli American dialogue that comes through profanity of conventional architecture. I am creating this dialogue by displaying two main subjects in proximity to each other: border architecture from Israel and institutional architecture or non-places in New York.

A Chair In The Woods, Victoria Dolloff

Theses and Dissertations

Victoria Dolloff's MFA Thesis considers traces of play and perception in the development of her artwork, exploring the idea of reorientation through subtleties of the absurd. Her installation Untitled (Landscape) questions object as place and place as memory utilizing fragmentation as reconstruction.

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 …

Absence Is Presence With Distance, James Bayard

Theses and Dissertations

Prompting obvious considerations for freedom and nationalism, language and race, time, and decay, the work asks not only what it means to be an American today, but also, more broadly, what it means to be human—to breathe and act, to live and die.

Artist Statement, Chaoyi Wu

CGU MFA Theses

I make my work to create an experience for the viewer, so that they can have their own experience of their world. Their bodies interact with my pieces to re-recognize themselves and their lives. In this experience their body is independent of everything else but their awareness. Their sense of movement, their vision and their tactile sensations come together into my artwork for them to have their own experience. This is what I call self-body awareness.

I Promise, Maya Luque

CGU MFA Theses

This exhibition is about Chinese burial sites and the practices that accompany the loss of a loved one. The Chinese have a practice where they build large earthen mounds as burial sites; they then visit the sites of their ancestors once a year. I have made my own burial site out of beeswax-dipped paper, which I have then stitched together, like a quilt, to form a hollow version of this mound. In traditional Western home economics quilt making is important; in my installation I use the stitch work to represent a home. In this installation my aim is for the …