Art Practice Commons^™

Pulse Flow, Hollis Moore

MFA Thesis Exhibit Catalogs

My urgency to celebrate "pulse flow" and unfold knowledge and power surrounding water resources in the delta is emphasized through preformative field research in place, dialogue with local community members, and the presentation of maps as layered, fluid and permeable.

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …

Power Suit, Clarice Cuda

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The focus of this project began in utilizing hair as a vehicle to investigate rituals associated with mourning, grief, and the liminal space that exists between life and death. After an in depth search into the cultural, physical, spiritual, and material aspects of hair, I enacted process and labor to create a sculptural form that performs in response to grief.

I chose to work with acrylic hair, as it exists in a space between the real and unreal, and visually is absorbed as the uncanny representation of the separated body. I wanted to discuss the body, while emphasizing its absence. …

Laminated Paint, Travis R. Austin

Theses and Dissertations

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.

Path, Evan Galbicka

Theses and Dissertations

Path is a collaborative system that developed over the course of five months of studio activity and continued through the duration of the exhibition. The system’s main collaborators were a land snail native to eastern North America (Neohelix albolabris), myself, and a digital cellular automaton. These prime agents interwove processes and exchanges between one another into a complex network of folded fractal feedback loops. Cyclic processes produced artifacts and infrastructures to support communication between the components and agents of Path. As a whole, Path spoke to the possibilities for interspecies, cyber-physical, and ecological collaboration to create an …

Passing, Paul Kelley

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Passing is a Site-specific public installation assembled with plastic and an iPad. At its center, the iPad displays a video loop of a human image repeatedly walking in and out of the frame. The work maintains my foundational interest in having the viewer slow down to have a more thoughtful and absorptive experience with the work and surrounding space – continuing my practice of challenging viewer’s expectations and putting them in a position to stop and question.

Art & Ecology In The West Of Ireland: Finding, Understanding, & Creating Relationships Between Artistic Practice And The Burren, Eileen C. Hutton

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

In this essay I describe how my engagement with the Burren in the west of Ireland became the foundation for my doctoral research and subsequently the development of an Art & Ecology Masters in Fine Art. I present a brief overview of the unique ecology of the Burren, including its geological, archaeological and agricultural history, so as to provide a context for both my artistic inquiry and the Burren College of Art students’ immersive experience. I then discuss my collaborative practice with small birds and honeybees as a means for exploring and expanding the traditional notion of ecology through artistic …

Untitled Sculpture, P Aycock

Fine Arts

No abstract provided.

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Ephemeral Permanence, Emily Reason

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

Traditional pottery forms and images of flora, fauna and rural architecture in Ephemeral Permanence awaken memory through the sensations and associations they suggest. These works are memorials to beauty, craft, culture and nature. I capture what is fleeting, make it tangible and endow it with longevity. Graceful movement paired with an element of danger reveals the complicated nature of beauty, waning culture is depicted with meticulous stability to conjure nostalgia, and form and surface celebrate craft and beauty. Icons of nature and culture in this work play a metaphoric role and serve to ignite memories.

I am fascinated with the …

Untitled Sculpture, K Dietz

Fine Arts

No abstract provided.

Dana Weiser Interview, Julia Boucher

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Education: University of Colorado at Boulder, B.A in Fine Arts, May 2001. Penland School of Crafts, Attended August2001-May 2001, woodworking and blacksmithing. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, B.F.A, Ceramics, May 2003 & Post-Baccalaureate Certificate, Ceramics May 2004 University of California at Los Angeles, M.F.A in Ceramics, June 2007 & M.A in Asian American Studies, December 2016.

Awards: National Scholastic Art Award in Ceramics, 1997. D’Arcy Hayman Award, 2005. Laura Andreson Scholarship, 2006. Elizabeth Heller Mandell Memorial Scholarship, 2006. Laura Andreson Scholarship, 2007. Finalist in Artist Runway.com, 2008.

Exhibitions: National Scholastic Art Exhibition, Corcoran Museum, Washington DC, …

Kristine Aono Interview, Maureen Vela

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Kristine Aono is a sculptor and installation artist. She has a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In addition, she has done residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Arts.

She has received numerous grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts (Visual Artist/Public Project Grant), the Maryland State Arts Council, the Painted Bride, the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, and the Prince George’s Arts Council. Kristine Aono has served on the Board of the Washington Project for the Arts, …

Mie Kongo Interview, Mimonna Aljaber

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Mie Kongo grew up in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan and now lives and works in Evanston IL, where she makes multidisciplinary work: ceramic sculptures & installations, 2D work and porcelain designed objects. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions, “Unknown game series” at Dan Devening Projects + editions, Chicago, IL "Beyond Function" Arts and Literature Laboratory, Madison, WI, "Reformat: Digital Fabrication in Clay" Lillstreet Art Gallery, Chicago, IL, “Circle in a Square” Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL. She has been showing her porcelain products at Paul Kotula Projects, Ferndale MI and Room 406, …

Gas Lamps, Laura Wilde

CGU MFA Theses

My work investigates the role and dynamic of society, culture, and familial influence on the masculinity and femininity within our individuality. It specifically deals with my on going discovery of the masculine side of my personality, and how the feminine roll is influenced, or not influenced, by this. I have been applying Jungian psychology and the theory of individuation, archetypes, and so forth, to my process. I have made several bodies of work in a quest to understand the fundamental roles that femininity and masculinity have affected my choices and individual understanding. Documenting old and new relationships, I make puppets, …

Cozy Mart: Convenient Aesthetics, Eric John Edvalson

Theses and Dissertations

Convenience stores in their various forms are not only commercial outlets of foodstuffs and sundry items but are also experiential in nature; the act of going to a convenience store is a culturally shared experience. In homage to these spaces, Cozy Mart is a public art installation and performance which recreates this shared experience in an idealized form. Based on do-it-yourself culture, appropriation of public space, and artistic traditions of sculpture and printmaking, Cozy Mart invites interaction with art outside of the traditional gallery space and capitalizes on alternative methods of art distribution.

Cold Hard Facts, Paul Kelley

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

COLD HARD FACTS is an ephemeral installation composed of a projector, digital images and ice. The work continues my interest in having the viewer slow down to have a more thoughtful and absorptive experience with the work and surrounding space. With a short-lived duration, the piece considers the transitory nature of things and how truths can be misconstrued as facts, whereas truths are malleable and facts are not. They are cold, hard and indifferent.

Stratum, Raneem Fadul

CGU MFA Theses

My work is an expression of the relationship between my own culture, and the American culture and way of life that I have had a chance to interact with, observe, and reflect on throughout the past few years. My concepts were inspired by the industrial nature of the area that I live in, where I gradually realized that I was surrounded by dozens of workshops and garages. Given that my home is the spiritually-rich, fairly traditional, and non-industrial Saudi Arabia, this typical American experience has been, to me, one with much room for reflection, due to the extreme contrast. The …

An Aesthetic Theory Of Gamesmanship, Derek A. Fordjour

Theses and Dissertations

An Aesthetic Theory of Gamesmanship is an in-depth analysis of the personal, sociological, and historical elements contained within the art of Derek Fordjour with considerations given to artistic and literary influences that inform his intention and goals in the work. Also included are illustrations of specific art works and descriptions.

Symbiosis Now, Priscilla Fusco

Theses and Dissertations

As we narrow the world’s parameters with our activities, we crowd other organisms that support us. Scientists and philosophers including Charles Sanders Peirce, Lynn Margulis, Thomas Khun and Dave Goulson articulate the role of the biomass, an intelligence that offers fertile dialogue for sculptors.

Aesthesia, Cindy G. Garcia

CGU MFA Theses

My art practice in itself, is first and foremost about me as a Human on this planet. Second, I am drawn to the cognitive dissonance that happens within each individual, this is key to the majority of my work. For this show I really wanted to emphasize; A: The textural, corporal involvement that I personally really enjoy and get satisfaction out of. B: The color of Life. C: The beauty in very introspective particular instances that happen in day to day life.

Alejandro Acierto Interview, Madeline Bolton

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Alejandro T. Acierto is an artist and musician working in time-based media. He has exhibited his work at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Issue Project Room, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Salisbury University, SOMArts and presented performance works at the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Center for Performance Research, and Center for New Music and Technology. Acierto has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Banff Centre, High Concept Laboratories, and Chicago Artists' Coalition. He is currently a FT/FN/FG Consortium Fellow, a Center Program Artist …

Build-Up, Kate Lund

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Build-up is based in an appreciation for quietude within the landscape that is interrupted by a sense of urgency and distress. The renderings, gestural drawings, and sculptural work are the result of allowing my studio process to mimic my analytical decision making and sensory observation as a wildland firefighter. The research investigates my work in relation to Romantic painters such as JMW Turner and Sublime philosophy, particularly Edmund Burke’s 1757 Sublime theory. Burke emphasized the emotional and psychological response to the Sublime experience of terror and awe. My research also discovers connections with contemporary artists, Robert Smithson, John Peña, and …

So Much Apparent Nothing, Emily Mcbride

Theses and Dissertations

This document contains reflections on motivations behind selected works leading up to and including my thesis exhibition so much apparent nothing. Through journal excerpts and analysis of my own psychology, I attempt to put into words my thoughts concurrent to my making, indirect as they may be. The following text shares my personal conflicts and ideologies surrounding art-making, the permanence of objects, and the acceptance of an identity in flux.

Amassing Subsistence: Creating An Environment Through Objects And Time, Matilda J. Alexander

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

The Curiosity Of Con, Petrified Breath, And An Accident Known As Blue., Steven Randall

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis installation emerged from an interest in visualizing breath. The resulting work came to exist at the intersection between art, biology, and performance.

The unicorn tapestries were used as a generative point of departure to explore the preservation and transformation of images through time, by time, and with time. Reproductions of the six tapestries were each etched into paper and then submerged into solutions of Phenol Red dye, Ferric Ferrocyanide (also known as Prussian Blue), and various forms of sodium chloride. Exhaled breath was used to encrust these images of the tapestries into physical objects which gradually crystallized and …

Cold Lapse, Tressa Jones

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

cold lapse addresses the abstract notions of time and loss while conveying the value of observing the present. The postmodern view of time, the grid’s vernacular, and the aesthetics of postminimalism are my foundation for communicating time’s passage and its consequential sensations of absence. The duration of a slow drip, the cycle of breath and the sequential motion of a hand folding paper each mark passing moments. By observing these signs the phenomenon of time may be appreciated. Care and ephemerality in the work require the viewer’s sensitivity when encountering and witnessing it, much like the demands of observing the …

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 …

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.

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.