Art Practice Commons^™

An Essay Of Images From Playlab Inc., Playlab Inc., Archie Lee Coates Iv

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

A series of images depicting the illustrious Playlab Inc. as a collection of projects in different mediums. The LA-based design studio has contributed to fashion, art, and urban culture through collaborations with major institutions and emerging artists. The photo essay highlights Playlab Inc.’s diverse projects and installations, embodying its core philosophy: no focus. This principle guides the studio to the cutting-edge of contemporary culture, where innovation meets execution. The creative powerhouse has demonstrated a capacity to engage with contemporary cultural movements through its projects. For instance, in the OTW Vans project, the firm acquired images from notable skate photographers Atiba …

Museum Funding As Critical Practice, Camille-Mary Sharp, Samantha Summers

Visual Arts Publications

While museums face an unprecedented amount of public backlash over their financial partnerships with donors and sponsors from harmful industries, the administrative practices of funding and fundraising remain understudied in museum scholarship. Responding to growing polarization between museums and stakeholder groups like artists, activists, and cultural workers, this article highlights findings from recent interviews with museum professionals about their funding-related practices to explore how professional perspectives can enrich current debates over ethical funding. Despite the structural difficulties posed by neoliberal museum models and government austerity, we argue that museum studies can work towards improving the field’s financial challenges by considering …

Mining Waste In The Himalayas, Leslie Leong

The Goose

Materiality is a key aspect of the fourteen artworks I created over one month as Artist-in-Residence at Sagarmatha Next, the experience centre for sustainable tourism in the Khumbu region of Nepal. My intention with the residency is to create work from the human discards that accumulate in the area around Mount Everest, known as Sagarmatha in Nepali. The artwork I created during this residency are deeply rooted in the materiality of their components and serve as powerful commentaries on environmental issues, the passage of time, and the potential for transformation inherent in discarded materials. Through the deliberate use of waste, …

My Art Is Garbage, Beth Shepherd

The Goose

In “My Art is Garbage,” I describe three recent art projects where garbage is both a theme and an artistic medium used to critique the overuse of and inability to reuse or safely dispose of plastics we use every day. The first work, Untitled (Plastic Film Balls), uses non-recyclable single-use household plastic made to form an installation of shimmering balls and alludes to the environmental footprint of the artworld. Plastic Shores, a series of monotype prints, reminds us that plastics in the environment are deleterious to species that we see every day. Finally Plastic Pests, a series …

Beach Finds, Gina M. Granter

The Goose

This photo series, Beach Finds, is all from the beach of my hometown in Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland, from walks I took in the early spring of 2021. Particularly after storms, there would be an abundance of garbage washed ashore. I found a stick from a Buried Treasure ice cream treat that I had not seen since the 1980s; fabric flowers that had blown from the town’s seaside cemeteries into the water and back to land; hand-woven fishing nets that were now grounded; a tampon applicator that reminded me of the first one I ever saw as a child, on …

Fostering Inclusivity Through Community Arts Programs, Courtney Mayberry

CAFE Symposium 2025

The utilization of community arts projects to build diverse and prosperous communities is vital in fostering inclusion rather than isolation within participating communities. Community arts projects can be built to offer individuals a means to connect with their community through self-expression and the celebration of their individuality. This is especially important in giving marginalized groups a voice, such as people with disabilities.

Navigating Climate Action: The River As Teacher For Eco-Literacy, Educational Regeneration And Creative Participation, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultures' engagements with land and its more-than-human elements reveal their attitudes toward these dimensions, spanning a spectrum from reciprocal to transactional practices. In time, these engagements form a body of knowledges that nurtures the culture and its land, or arrests their vital and diverse qualities. This research project aims to bring to light how the different ways of engaging with and relating to land are embedded in knowledge production, distribution and communication—in short, in general educational endeavors and their philosophies—to promote a better understanding of the principles of eco-literacy. Additionally, a purpose of this project is to provide insights into …

Sandy Soil Stabilization Using Paper Waste Ash As A Supplementary Cement Material, Noor H Jaber, Muna Al- Al-Kafaji, Manar Ghaleb Abbas, Shakir Al-Busaltan, Mustafa Amoori Kadhim

Al-Bahir

Soil stabilization is one of the processes that have used widely to enhance pavement structure. Using natural and man-made resources as efficiently as possible while inflicting little environmental harm is known as sustainable roadway building. Reducing energy consumption during construction and making optimal use of materials to reduce waste are two approaches to make roads more sustainable. This project work is concern in chemical soil stabilization with a waste or by-product material. The experiential work included improve sandy soil by using Paper Waste Ash (PWA) and ordinary Portland cement (OPC). laboratory tests included sieve analysis, standard proctor compaction test, California …

Visual Mindful Autoethnography In Practice: Integrating Visual Expressive Art And Self-Compassion Into The Research Process, Jennifer Bentley

Mindfulness Studies Theses

This thesis introduces the framework of Visual Mindful Autoethnography (VmAE) which integrates mindfulness, self-compassion, and creative visual expression as tools for reflexive self-inquiry within the research process. Grounded in the principles of autoethnography and mindfulness, VmAE fosters a deep engagement with personal narratives, biases, and cultural contexts while encouraging emotional resilience, self-awareness, and ethical integrity. By utilizing techniques such as expressive art and visual process journalling, this approach re-presents the inner emotional landscape while facilitating a balanced exploration of subjective experience. The framework is supported by the “P.A.C.E. Research with C.A.R.E.” model, which establishes mindfulness and self-compassion as foundational principles …

Mindful Art Curriculum: Teaching Towards Transformational Change, Ashley Riemann

Mindfulness Studies Theses

With the recent influx of American public school diversity, art educators must establish an art curriculum that nurtures students' cultural awareness and creates a more equitable and inclusive learning environment. This paper responds to the increasingly diverse classroom and proposes the need for the implimentation of a mindful, culturally responsive art curriculum. Mindfulness paired with culturally responsive teaching is a transformative tool for art educators. These teaching techniques unite and create an inclusive and inquisitive learning environment. Through mindful exploration students learn to cultivate awareness and focus, forming a deeper connection with art and one another. As Jon Kabat-Zinn expressed, …

Examining The Creative Process Of Visual Artists: A Phenomenological Study, Filiberto Vargas

Dissertations

Creativity fuels problem solving and innovation, driving both economic growth and individual success. Yet, many schools and organizations fail to nurture it. Today, there is a decline in creativity scores among U.S. students. This is concerning since many of these students will be the future leaders of organizations and communities. For this reason, this dissertation explores the creative process of visual artists to better understand how creativity can be cultivated. Visual artists' perspectives and sense-and-meaning-making processes offer a unique view of innovation and creativity. However, there is limited research on the creative processes of contemporary visual artists from culturally diverse …

It Is Not Her Fault She Didn’T Know Mary Had A Lamb, Samer Ridikkuluz

Theses and Dissertations

“It is not her fault she didn’t know Mary had a lamb” is not an Arab Queer conflict. It is the genocide of everything they told me art was and the decolonial clarity of what art can be. Whether it be bridging the gap between the East and the West, the straights and the gays, or me and the world—I investigate the human condition, the parts we play, and how identity evolves and hides.

Ultraviolent, Jin Mateo Kim

Theses and Dissertations

How do you reconceive yourself in a society that has failed you? Jin Mateo Kim's works examine the reckoning of self-conception in postwar youth subculture of the 1960s.

The Epiphany, Maja-Lisa Flodin-Ali

Theses and Dissertations

Maja-Lisa Flodin-Ali explores her interest in constructing spaces and occupying sets, while navigating the complexities of living with a mood disorder. She draws parallels between the multilayered nature of New York City and the layers of her own identity, retracing her personal history and examining its impact on her art practice. By engaging with classic narratives, such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, Flodin-Ali reframes her journey and personal history, using these stories as a lens to explore healthier and more sustainable approaches to making.

The Farthest I Can Sense Time, Danielle Alhassid

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the experiences of immigration, identity, and language through the lens of diasporic memory and intergenerational storytelling. At its core lies Communion of Empty Mouths (2024), a multi-channel video installation exploring the physical, communal, and ephemeral dimensions of language development and loss. The work juxtaposes live animation, tactile materials like ceramics, and experimental soundscapes to delve into the ancestral and embodied nature of linguistic expression.

Anchored in Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin’s text My Hands and inspired by familial narratives, the thesis critiques hierarchical and gendered dimensions of language, focusing on Yiddish as a diasporic medium of resistance and …

You Get That From Me, Robyn Duncan

Theses and Dissertations

You Get That From Me is a mixed-media, collage-based film that integrates personal portraits, allegorical maps, and digital collages with spoken narration to craft a stylistic memoir of a pivotal period in my life: the transition from childhood to motherhood.

The Air Of The Now And Gone, Sarah E.K. Smith, Kirsty Robertson

FIMS Publications

This publication accompanies the 2025 exhibition The Air of the Now and Gone, curated by Kirsty Robertson and Sarah E.K. Smith. They ask: in the face of the “wicked problem” of climate change, which precludes easy solutions, how can we move forward? How can we address a crisis that prompts apathy and disconnect? In their introductory essay, Robertson and Smith discuss the works of the artists, who refuse detachment and simultaneously complicate idealism. Like the artists, the curators seek to encourage diverse responses to the realities of climate change, moving beyond apathy and despair to engage empathy, wonder, joy, …

Ethereal, Nickolas Strohm

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Creation Myth, Sarah Lee

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Betty Should Have Shot Those Birds, Sarah Lee

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Art Along The Pages, Lily A. Soto

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Cruel Fate, Pieper Gabbard

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Civil Blood, Civil Hands, Jessica Conatser

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Half A Pillow Gone Cold, Jessica Conatser

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Reading Secondhand Books Makes Me Sad, Mikaela Westlund

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My Day Is Rain / My Life The Sun / Shining On My Face, Mikaela Westlund

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Something About A Rat, I. Slaven

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Backwater, Alexia Rardin

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You Think, Carrie Mckinney

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Hair Of The Dog, Mahal Wright

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