Fine Arts Commons^™

Art Meets Science! Get Over It . . ., Stephen Nowlin

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The news headline, when such projects garner attention, usually goes like this – Art Meets Science! Or perhaps Art Merges with Science! or maybe they combine, or art collides with science, or they fuse, join, bond, or unite. And ‘art’ in the phrase usually precedes ‘science’, perhaps because their integration is more typically initiated from the art side of the equation. But whatever the order of the two terms, and whatever verb is used to link them, the tenor of the declaration is typically the same – this is a story worth reporting on, it announces, because …

David Lucas, David Lucas, Kentucky Folk Art Center

Kentucky Folk Art Center Exhibition Catalogs

2013 Kentucky Folk Art Center exhibition catalog for artist David Lucas.

An Imperial Collection: Exploring The Hammers' Icons, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Changing hands one last time, in the 1950s, for many years the icons at BJU lived as it were incognito, the details of their glamorous origins largely forgotten. Reuniting this core group-the cream of the Hammers' imperial icons--with others that passed into American museums in the 1930s allows us to appreciate the full significance of Armand and Victor Hammer's foray into marketing icons Americans.Viewed in isolation, most of their "imperial icons" are perhaps no mo than a poignant reminder of the vast destruction and dislocation of Orthodox culture during the Soviet Cultural Revolution. Taken together, however, they paint a vivid …

Parietal Dwellings, Krista Heinitz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My work is inspired by the mysterious qualities of our earth, and the beings that inhabit it. I reference nature, biology, architecture, and popular culture to make works which encourage contemplation. I am creating my own personal history through the making, as well as inviting the communal connection. This body of work aims to create a space filled with juxtapositions, optical illusions, and familiar materials. Inspired by lucid dreaming, the work puts a twist on assumed normalcy in our environment.

This Is Not Where You Are, Wesley James Hill

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

A mobile art gallery show that is comprised of stop motion videos and prints relating to out unnoticed conveniences and our ability to take our subconsciously forgotten surroundings for granted.

Incorporating Historic Preservation Into An Accredited Interior Design Program, Reasoning And Application, Jenna M. Woodcox

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Due to the recent decline of the economic situation in the United States, more credibility needs to be established in regard to the professions that are deemed “luxury career paths”. This essay focuses on interior design and historic preservation integration. This literature is intended to bring more credibility and awareness to the interior design field to show outsiders the potential and importance it holds. Most importantly, this proposal is for current designers who are not working in the field, to not give up hope for their design careers and think of ways to reinvent themselves (like choosing a specialty) to …

Romantic Exoticism: The Music Of Elsewhere In The Nineteenth Century, Josiah Raiche

Senior Honors Theses

Western art music has drawn on many sources. One of these is non-western music, which can be integrated into European classical music tradition in the form of exoticism. This paper will highlight musical elements used by composers seeking to create exoticism, examine selected works, and note common elements of western music that have exotic roots. In the nineteenth century, there were three general trends in exoticism. The first, non-musical exoticism, utilizes conventional western music alongside extra-musical exotic elements. Romantic exoticism portrays distant lands using musical elements, drawing these from the audience’s perceptions of the music represented. Realistic exoticism attempts to …

Everyday Arrangements, Rachel Janette Compart

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

These set of works are an arrangement of forms. I am interested in making a simplified version of my subject by limiting the amount of information that is present while still suggesting a space. My subject matter began as a pile of dirty clothes that were lying on my bathroom floor. I first noticed the contrast between the organic clumps of fabric against the vertical lines of the white panel wall. I then realized that this subject matter was much deeper and said a lot about my domestic life as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend and a …

Ruminate, Violet L. Goode

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Work and research conducted by Violet Love Goode between 2011-2013 as part of the Master of Arts curriculum for the Department of Art at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Precious Commodities, Colin John Klimesh

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My process mimics the production of goods and commodities in the industrial and commercial sector. It begins with the conception of a design, which I translate to the fabrication of a matrix, a means for replication and reproduction. I find the aesthetics of systematic production visually appealing. Store shelves speak of repetition and duplication, a society of productivity, efficiency and economy, industrialization and commercialism. Though I despise the underlying values that consumerism promotes, I love the clean, geometric, organized and modular aesthetic that it conveys. I often work between ceramics and print media, letting one process inform the other. Ceramic …

Can't Get A Date, Date A Dog, Dana Marie Sikkila

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My work is about redefining a space, taking away the idea of the white cube that is known as the gallery. I want to take my viewer to another space without having them leave the room. My work overtakes the gallery and gives it a new meaning. The use of wallpaper and house hold appliances transforms the viewer to an era that no longer exists. The use of repetition and female imagery overwhelms the viewer. Over thousands of individually silkscreened and hand cut prints are combined with household appliances to create a three-dimensional sculpture. It takes a two dimensional thing …

Mythology Of Control, Allison Ann Roberts

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Mythology of Control is a personal, visual account of reacting to the turmoil of life and relationships, recognizing the inherent fragility often disguised by a façade of strength. Layering and obscuring imagery creates a metaphor for coping- constantly redefining perceptions, plans, and expectations. The printed imagery evokes a vague recognition or familiarity, alluding to unassembled schematics that are fictional but suggest credibility, rather than specific, identifiable forms. Cloth, in the form of blankets or quilts handed down within families, absorbs history and memory, becoming a material archive. My link between personal history and impermanent states is supported by senses of …

Zoomorphic Penannular Brooches In 6th And 7th Century Ireland, Esther G. Ward

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

In this thesis the author examines the evolution, manufacture, and societal significance of zoomorphic penannular brooches, a type of metal dress fastener used in early medieval Ireland that is often decorated. The brooches examined are dated to the 6^th and 7^th centuries, during which the Irish underwent a process of religious conversion from Celtic paganism to Christianity, and social rank was paramount. It is in this social context that the brooches are examined. Despite the significance of this time of social change, brooches from this period tend to be overlooked by scholarship in favor of the more ornate …

Photography Whatever We Want It To Be, Jyl A. Kelley

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Contemporary photography has evolved from an orphaned art into a mainstay for global imaging culture. Today anyone can make a picture or image, manipulate it, montage it, and publish it on the Internet. Photographic art practice will always answer back to its history but more importantly and inherent in its digital form and distribution, photographic art is responding to the modern ubiquity of the digital image and digital age.

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 …

Re-Purposing The Elderly Body, Charlotte H. Wellman

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

In cross-disciplinary scholarship, an emerging “trash” discourse considers the implications of excessive production and consumption and their inevitable corollary—the sense that all things are disposable. Nature has been reconfigured as a landfill, an artificial landscape of discarded matter. Objects possess a shrinking lifespan, quickly replaced by a newer upgrade. Driven by a need for constant rejuvenation, consumers fetishize the new and dismiss obsolescent products. I wish to posit aging – more specifically, the elderly female body—against the “landscape” of trash in order to engage its vocabulary of entropy and decay as well as to deploy the repurposing of discarded materials …

Revitalizing Cities: Adaptive Reuse Of Historic Structures, Sara E. Sharpe

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Adaptive reuse is employed when revitalizing an existing infrastructure while maintaining important aspects of the cultural architectural heritage and promoting sustainability. The option to turn away from older structures and build new is a large problem in cities such as Detroit. Historic preservationists are trained to observe a structure’s potential before walking away. Meanwhile interior designers obtain the skills to rejuvenate such buildings for a new use. Case studies have shown the benefits of these two professions teaming up to apply adaptive reuse on historic structures for modern purposes. By studying the creative space planning methods and historic preservations standards …

Intimate Distance: Negotiating The Urban/Suburban Divide, Whitney L. Sage

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

As a native of Farmington Hills, a suburb thirty minutes outside of Detroit, I have always had a peculiar relationship with the city. As a child I visited Detroit often for family outings to the DIA and Tiger Stadium. Hours later we would be driving on I-96 returning west. All of my early memories of Detroit are happy and warm, however they are seen through the rose-colored glass of wide cultural and geographic separation from the city. In this way, my artwork, which discusses Detroit’s past and present through literal representation, radiates nostalgia and expresses both a sense of intimacy …

The Prosthetic Aesthetic: An Art Of Anxious Extensions, Tiffany Funk

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

The difficulty in ascertaining how the “prosthetic” functions across disciplines derives from the sometimes parallel, and often antithetical definitions given for what it constitutes. Many art historians use the prosthetic to illustrate psychoanalytical methodologies, largely ignoring physical technological devices, cybernetic body augmentation and its social effects – subjects expounded upon by many influential media and cybernetic theorists such as Norbert Wiener, Marshall McLuhan, Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles. Prosthetics are not merely psychic trauma nor virtual signifier, but material artifacts marking autonomy, ability and disability, amputation and extension. A re-evaluation of prosthetics in contemporary aesthetics brings us closer to …

How To Produce Articulate Artists, Peter J. Barr Phd, Christine Reising

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

This twenty-minute Powerpoint presentation will describe the team-taught, year-long Foundations Core Concepts Program at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. It has been in place since 2006 and has successfully integrated a course previously called "Language of Art" (taught by an art historian) with hands-on studio assignments previously taught in a stand-alone design course (taught by a studio professor). We have found that this hybrid approach is extremely effective in developing sensitive and articulate art majors who are prepared to integrate design concepts into all of their artworks and to analyze and describe eloquently both personal and historical works of …

Snapshots, Clichés And Simulacra, Millee Tibbs

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

In his essay “Photography,” Kracauer critiques the abundance of photographic images in illustrated newspapers stating, “The blizzard of photographs betrays an indifference toward what the things mean.”[i] Current digital imaging technologies have turned this blizzard into a complete whiteout. Never before have people had such access to image-making technologies and the ease with which the images are now disseminated. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the snapshot has evolved little and remains a visual cliché - a banal vessel of personal sentimentality.

In this paper I will discuss the use and fetishization of snapshot images in both my …

A Sketch Of The Affective Classroom: Abject Art, Patrick Kinsman

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Abject art is highly affective, meaning that it generates strong sensations and feelings in viewers. In a classroom, high affect art demands that these reactions be integrated into the relationships between instructor, students and artwork. The affective classroom is then a classroom which summons high affects and walks a careful line between non-dialogic "shock" and a group therapy session, in order to understand affective relationships as proper material for learning. Affect is interactive and communicative by definition, but is unpredictable and uneven. Using my 2012 seminar in Abject Art, I outline the development and experience of teaching a semester of …

Show Me The Semiosis: Grounding Post Structural Theory In Physiological Experience, Michael T. Arrigo

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Most of my art students experience a very down to earth epistemological relationship to the world. There is what there is. Middle America is a land of dualisms: matter and spirit, mind and body, good and evil. In this uncluttered black and white world, post-structural theory seemingly has little to offer but a range of unnecessary and unattractive grays. This presentation describes how I overcome my students’ resistance to intellectualizing perception and art making. I use a physiological perspective that grounds students’ investigation of art and meaning in an investigation of themselves, their bodies, their perceptual responses, emotional reactions and …

Dreaming In Analog: The Marriage Of Vintage Photographic Process And The Contemporary World., Lynn M. Lee

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

"Dreaming in Analog: the marriage of vintage photographic process and the contemporary world" discusses a choice in the photographic arts. That choice is, by many contemporary artists, to take a step back. Slow down. Revisit analog photography as it was originally used. However, because of the fast-paced world in which we live, even these slow, lovely processes are able to be created, completed and shared globally via digital technology and the Internet.

Female Flesh And Medieval Practice In The Later Middle Ages, Megan E. Marzec

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

My work explores the importance and presence of the female body in medieval religious practice as exemplified in medieval art, religious texts and hagiographies. My research shows that while the reasoning behind female imagery and imagery of the nude is disputed, the prevalence of mandorla-like images, images of the female nude, and images displaying the femininity of Christ suggest the meaningfulness to the medieval viewer. I discuss extensively Julia Kristeva’s writing on the woman as abject and the artistic experience as an element of religiosity. For this research I analyzed works by various artists including Robert Campin, Jan Gossaert and …

Classic French Modern, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

This conference paper presented at Art Without History symposium sponsored by the Oskar Reinhart Collection, September 2012, explores the development of modern house museums devoted to collections of 'classic French modern,' works primarily by the Post-Impressionist artists Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, and van Gogh. These museums largely reflect the collecting activities of an international group of collectors that includes the Clark brothers, Duncan Phillips, Chester Dale, and Albert Barnes among the Americans, Samuel Courtauld in Britain, and the Swiss collectors Emil Bührle and Oscar Reinhart. The collections offer an alternative view of Post-Impressionism, one leading not toward the 20th-century avant-gardes, …

Remembering Rms Titanic A Century Later, Margaret (Peg) A. Van_Patten Ms.

Wrack Lines

A century after the historic ship sank in the Atlantic Ocean with massive loss of life, the memory still looms large in our imaginations. Marshall Drew, a local artist, was one of the survivors and is remembered by the author. The new Titanic exhibit at Mystic Aquarium offers a way to learn about undersea exploration technology. See this undersea museum as explorer Bob Ballard and the crew first did when they found the remains, and learn about the event, the culture of the time, and the people.

Der Zauber Der Musik: E.T.A. Hoffmann Und Das Erleben Des Sublimen, Katelin M. Richter

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Die Werke von E.T.A. Hoffmann konzentrieren sich auf ein bestimmtes romantisches Konzept: auf die Sehnsucht nach dem Unendlichen und auf das Erlebnis dieses sublimen romantischen Reiches. Um Hoffmanns romantische Ästhetik besser zu begreifen, lohnt es sich seine Werke (Novellen, musikalische Schriften, Aufsätze und Kompositionen) heranzuziehen, um festzustellen, wie seine Figuren vor allem durch die Musik das romantische Reich erleben und wie und aus welcher Perspektive der Zuschauer auf dieses Reich reagieren kann. Diese Arbeit wird untersuchen, wie sich Hoffmanns romantische Ästhetik in den Erzählungen, den theoretischen Schriften und in der Oper Undine offenbart, wie seine Charaktere durch die Musik danach …

American Made: Ansel Adams And The Bishop National Bank's "The Islands Of Hawaii", Lauren Walton

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

"La Venus Se Fue De Juerga Por Los Barrios Bajos": Nacho López, Mass Culture, And Modernity, Jenifer L. Caneschi

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.