Catharsis, Matthew Barton

LSU Master's Theses

Catharsis is a series of eight works that highlight the spiritual and emotional benefits I receive from repetitive manual action. Pulling loosely from Catholic iconography and practices, my work discusses the personal solutions I’ve found to the adverse effects that organized religion can have on the psyche. Using both ceramic and found object sculptures, I aim to discuss both the internal and external results of this catharsis.

Altar To Uncertainty, Kelly Stombaugh

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

I have always been in awe of great storytellers. Like an alchemist, the masterful storyteller can take the most mundane of tales and transmute it into an enrapturing experience. The best of these, however, are the stories which seem very otherworldly but, in the end, can reveal deep and relatable truths to the listener.

For this exhibition, “Altar to Uncertainty,” I have undertaken the creation of a single book and story which surrounds and visually extends itself through printed etchings upon the walls to tell a transformative tale of redemption through trauma, hopelessness and loss.

My intention with this …

Yes We Can Can, Eliseo Angel Casiano

LSU Master's Theses

Yes We Can Can is a compilation of paintings and short stories that depict my placement and role among substantially white rural communities in the South. Through portraiture in painting, I interpret family and biographical events that examine representations of race, family relationships, and my maneuverability through a space of otherness.

Casiano, 2018

Scavenge, Jessica B. Thames

LSU Master's Theses

Scavenge is an installment that blurs the boundaries of found and altered materials. What I define as "Left-overs" are abandoned materials taken from an enigmatic history. These Left-over objects are minimally altered, stacked or placed carefully pertaining to visual characteristics of the object, as well as the spatial relationship between each object inside the gallery. My work refuses to settle. Transporting an object from a large outdoor grouping into a gallery space changes our perception of the object. The newly created interior arrangement in the gallery space contrasts the arbitrariness of objects found in nature or discarded, inviting a viewer …

In-Between: The Spaces Of Modernity, Elisa Fabris Valenti

LSU Master's Theses

During the past three years as a graduate student, I have experienced loneliness. Having recently emigrated from Italy, I have often asked myself why I am experiencing such hard times adjusting to a different country. My thesis explores this question. Referring to Marc Augé’s idea of non-place, I have chosen a geographical and spatial starting point to approach my work. Italian cities are built around the central piazza where social, political, and economic life revolves. In my thesis, I depict American spaces that lack specific location and create solitude within the urban corridors. Private feelings, such as loneliness, are paradoxes …

Scattered Feathers, Dason Sebastian Pettit

LSU Master's Theses

Scattered Feathers is the story of a ghost that lives in the imagination now: the ivory-billed woodpecker. Those that know this bird call it the God Bird or Grail Bird because of its mythic stature. This thesis is also a story about the loss and obsession that can fuel human pursuits. It is a study in observation and subsequent mythmaking, an examination of extinction and preservation. Perhaps most of all it is a chronicle of entropy and the cyclical nature of our existence. The visual work herein examines the mythos of the ivory-billed woodpecker, its once pristine environment and the …

The Truth About Your Monsters, Cassidy Creek

LSU Master's Theses

The Truth About Your Monsters is an immersive and dialogical exhibition formatted as a walk-through storybook environment. Viewers are transported into a child’s make believe world through hands-on stations. By building on the skeleton of an archetypal narrative, audience members are encouraged to tap into their own experience as they contribute imagery and action to the narrative. I call on audience members to discuss personal or universal fears by prompting them to draw images of monsters that represent their fear.

Lines, Tina Korani

LSU Master's Theses

Sometimes one is unaware of one thing: a rule, a boundary, a difference — all of which we cannot see with our eyes, but learning certainly present. When one rcognizes the reality of it, decisions are made. Those decisions shape the world as we know it. “Beyond the Lines” is an exploratory project that aims to increase one’s awareness and reveal that humans are whole beings that can surpass barriers that life places in front of them. This thesis explores human connections and separations, by using the concept of dots and lines, in ways both literally and metaphorical. Through visual …

Dislocation, Brian Randall Deppe

LSU Master's Theses

This photographic project, Dislocation, seeks to document the current state and decline of Cortana Mall in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The mall was built in 1976 during the height of shopping mall construction and was one of the largest shopping centers in the country with five anchor stores and 139 retail spaces. Now, just 48 stores and two anchor stores remain open. This high vacancy rate and deterioration of the mall is due to suburban flight, the building of new shopping centers in southern Baton Rouge, and changing consumer trends, which has led to malls closing across the country. My photographs …

Reach, Abigail Lauretta Smithson

LSU Master's Theses

During the past three years, I have asked the same two questions over and over again: What is a photograph capable of communicating? What is a document of a place? My thesis exhibition and paper explore these questions using basketball, an art form and creative outlet that I have loved since childhood, as a starting point. Basketball is the lens that I have chosen to look through when approaching my work and a metaphor for larger societal issues, such as racism and gun violence.

Oblivion, Michael Stumbras

LSU Master's Theses

I am fascinated by the myriad ways humans construct meaning in the face of existential uncertainty. For the exhibition Oblivion, I endeavor to provide a gallery experience, a body of metaphorically charged functional vessels, and a number of ritualistic accoutrements that address death, futility, and the passage of time as it inexorably flows toward obsolescence. The process of handcraft and the method of firing that I employ highlights the absurdity of the endeavor of the handmade: the seemingly futile and interminable quest for perfection and meaning. This futilitarian pottery exaggerates the errors of the hand and flaunts artifacts of the …

Chronicle & Character, Taryn Moller Nicoll

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis paper, I argue that the works in the exhibition 'Chronicle & Character' aim to demonstrate artistic citizenship and can contribute positively to society by provoking conversation about universally applicable (but often uncomfortable) topics. Experts such as David J. Elliot state that being an artistic citizen means that one’s concerns as an artist must shift from issues constrained to the artist alone to those of the artist’s surrounding community. The exhibition 'Chronicle & Character' contains works that serve as detailed chronicles of the medical or physiological experiences of my loved ones. This body of work presents how three …

Collecting And Selecting, Masy Hebert

LSU Master's Theses

In Collecting and Selecting, I am exploring the way others adorn their lives and how these elements add up to emblematize the keeper of the treasures. With linoleum relief prints and drawings, I compose a unique type of portraiture that reveals the parallel identity between the way we dress ourselves and our living spaces. Within my process, I capture moments with photographs, draw, carve, print, and cut out the elements that hold a presence of the owner. Utilizing a heightened sense of contrast with black and white images, the textures and details of these objects come alive. Each gallery wall …

Coasteering, Adam James Meistrell

LSU Master's Theses

Coasteering: (noun) An adventure sport tasked with defining and exploring boundaries and coastlines. Adam Meistrell’s artwork is an invitation to interpret evidence and inspiration through making, investigation, and utility. He utilizes a variety of working methods to interpret evidence and share his understanding.

Damon Hill, Elizabeth Welch

LSU Master's Theses

“Damon Hill” acts as a physical record of the family folklore of a group of people formed by landscape and kinship. As a member of this group, I have translated my family’s stories into a visual narrative as a way to process my own identity in relation to our shared identity. The focus of “Damon Hill” rests primarily on the lives of my female predecessors, as a way for me to contribute their unique voice to the overarching feminine narrative. I incorporate the visual representation of traditionally feminine handicrafts in order to relay their stories through the primary means of …

Dig, Spin, Repeat, Brittany Anne Sievers

LSU Master's Theses

Dig, Spin, Repeat, is a body of process based installation objects that uses minimalistic aesthetics placed strategically in the gallery to highlight the architecture of the room. By connecting these unique architectural elements, the work aims to achieve mindfulness similar to the research of Ellen Langer: encouraging active observation. Drawing from my background in sports and factory work, I create multiple repetitive forms out of hand-spun yarn and sourced clay. The room-sized installation objects produced from these raw materials explore the value of staying in the present moment for both the viewer and myself.

After;Life, Morgan Lynn Anderson

LSU Master's Theses

After;life is an exploration of the time and space between life and death. The installation, created from dozens of woodcut prints, creates this imaginary place, and encompasses viewers through sight, smell, sound, and touch. All elements of this installation are heavily influenced by Southern Louisiana culture and wildlife, and are meant to be familiar enough to provoke personal memory and experience. A set of rituals in the form of three poems, corresponding to three different spirit guides: The Black Dog, The Alligator, and The Opossum, lead the reader through the space from life, through liminal, into death.

Baby's Day Out, Andrea Nicole Berg

LSU Master's Theses

Baby's Day Out explores the world through a phenomenological newness that is expressed within abstract figurative painting. Fact and fiction blend in this fantastical array of emotions and real-world referents. I relied on quick mark-making, intuition, and gestural brushwork to explore representations of psychic and emotional states. The results are reminiscent of dreams, poems, secret whispers, unconscious fantasies, and delusions. The viewer is left to navigate the aporia of the space, by gingerly extending each limb forward and backward, to wander from piece to piece. Meaning is relative as the content of each painting is dependent on the interpretive lens …

Trace, Naomi Katy Louise Clement

LSU Master's Theses

The pots in the exhibition Trace speak both to my desire to belong, to connect to my beginnings, and yet to still trace my own path forward; they are about making connections and missing connections. Through these pots I ask questions of myself and the world around me in an attempt to negotiate the edges of my life. How do I feel connected and present in my own life and relationships? How do I feel connected to my family and my roots, while still finding my own path? What does it mean to belong in a family that is divided …

Urban Illusions, Haley R. Hatfield

LSU Master's Theses

Urban Illusions is an immersive and interactive documentary experience that curates moments of reality in virtual environments to educate and expose viewers to a string of social and political issues that have been exposed in Baton Rouge. These moments also reflect a transformative time across the United States. The research and exhibition experiments with 360-degree videos and virtual reality to document issues occurring from racial tension stemming from prejudicial police violence and residual segregation that is still present in Baton Rouge. The intent of this work is to establish a methodology benefiting from modern technology in order to document real …

One Two One, Brianna Morgan Ozanne

LSU Master's Theses

These things, they speak in whispers. Come close, lean in, listen up. Whisper back. Tell me everything. I know you’ve been here, too. I know you’ll understand. I know you have a shoebox full of memories just like these hidden deep inside your closet. I know.

Gotta Catch 'Em All, Jennifer Lynn Lombardi

LSU Master's Theses

The ability to imagine is essential to shaping who we are, and is an important part of our humanity. Children have the ability to use aspects of their environment as their playthings, becoming the characters in their world through their sense of imagination. We lose this ability as we grow, leaving us with only memories and sentimentality. I have come to realize that my art is an expression of the longing and search to regain that ability to become fused with my imagination and my environment. I allow myself to become lost in a world of fantasy once more, and …

Intimate Immensities, Jonathan Walker Wright

LSU Master's Theses

The works in the “Intimate Immensities” series of landscape paintings function as “aporia,” or irresolvable contradictions. Using two aspects of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic designations of the sign: the “icon” and “index,” these paintings function as both iconographic representations of mankind’s spiritual connection with nature and indexical relics of the creative process as ritual. The foundational view out of which the work emerges is grounded in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. This thesis correlates Vajrayana Buddhism, ritual and the creative process, by explaining the parallels between ritual and the cognition that occurs during the creative process. To do …

Co-Ward: Records Of A Fugitive Heart, Melodie Serena Reay

LSU Master's Theses

Co-ward: Records of a Fugitive Heart is a collection of objects that are themselves collections of events both internal and external. Each object, hand-made and/or un-made, is a record of a moment of vulnerability, in regards to moving away from, or towards, another.

Truss Damage, Hira Tariq

LSU Master's Theses

Truss Damage examines negative cultural restrictions are imposed on family structures. It is an exploration of experimental and interactive narratives formed within virtual and real spaces. My research and implementation includes creating multisensory experiences through immersive technologies. With the use of devices such as Microsoft's Kinect controller, large LCD panels, and framed digital prints I am to bringing forth fragments of my past in order to create an interactive experience through movement and discovery of symbolic features.

Momentary Eddies, Leah Marie Hamel

LSU Master's Theses

Our lives are in a constant state of change, from the most intimate scale physically and emotionally to the world surrounding us externally. The relationships we build with ourselves, others, and the world surrounding us are important structures we carry with us throughout life. Momentary Eddies is a visual poem about the interconnectedness of our inner and outer landscapes. I have created a hauntingly dreamlike space that explores a landscape of emotions that are an entangled part of personal intimate relationships and how the emotional and physical topographies of these relationships connect to the environment surrounding us. These paper sculptures …

This Is Only Temporary, Melanie Robyn Wall

LSU Master's Theses

This is only Temporary examines my personal history of homes as reimagined spaces. The series of prints in the exhibition depicts reconstructed memories of houses. These visual narratives give context to the installation constructed from handmade paper and raw materials. The framework is reminiscent of housing plans that converge into a labyrinth. Participants actively engage the space, navigating the confined structure. A playful nature runs throughout the prints and installation reflecting upon reinterpreted memories within transitional spaces.

A Crow And A Hanger, Kelsey Ann-Morgan Livingston

LSU Master's Theses

A Crow and A Hanger is a body of work that explores and illustrates the nature of life and death through the use of mixed-media drawing and printmaking techniques. My intention for this work, and this thesis paper, is to explain my thought process and how the imagery came to be. For me it is not at all important for every viewer to fully understand each image and the thoughts that went into the body as a whole. I let the images and their titles lead the viewer in a general direction and allow for their personal history and biases …

Conversation, Tajreen Akter

LSU Master's Theses

My goal is to catch the moment in my paintings, whether it is an event from my busy everyday life or a slow formal arrangement of objects, that studies composition, light, color and movement. The drastic change in my life, traveling from Bangladesh to the United States, inspired me to render important small, quiet, little moments of my daily life by painting them. The intimacy of this connection is very important to me.

This Is My Attempt To Hold On, Kimberly Reneé Jones

LSU Master's Theses

I am an identical twin. The connection I share with my twin sister is intense and immediate. But now, we live over 800 miles apart. This Is My Attempt To Hold On serves as a visual metaphor for the longing for the undiluted rapport we have when we are together, and the frustrations of communicating with her through a digital device. I am constantly dissatisfied with my attempts to connect with her. I watch myself, my words, and my thoughts become diffused through the pixels. The work exists as composites of various mediums, creating a dialogue between photography, printmaking, sculpture, …