Fine Arts Commons^™

The Rug's Topography, Rana Young

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

My complex relationship with photographs began when I was young. I remember tearing images out of publications and bringing them to my dad prepared with questions. Where I grew up, normative values defined by anatomy at birth impacted an individual’s gender perception and performance. Raised by a single father, I experienced a non-traditional family structure in my home. Seeing photographs portraying the “wholeness” of family contradicted my reality. Those psychological impressions provoked my curiosity and propelled me to solve the mystery of what existed beyond the scene depicted.

In retrospect, my search for missing context stems from an interest in …

Domestic Curiosities, Larry D. Buller

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

My art at first glance suggests the domestic, ornamental nature of ceramic objects, but upon closer inspection one discovers a showy, transgressive content that is conceptualized around issues of gay sexuality, the phallus and fetish objects. I create decorative sculptures that resonate with my varied experiences as a gay man. Clay with its endless possibilities for form and surface, is the ideal medium for my subversive intentions. It allows me to blend the rich historical language of ceramic art with the low-brow, and in my case, kitsch nature of craft that one might find in second hand stores. I invite …

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 …

Whitetail, Michael Steven Villarreal

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

When I was growing up, both my parents worked at a U-Haul from which they brought home discarded objects to the house my dad built with his own hands. This home, interior and exterior, was not designed to fit an explicit aesthetic, but all aspects of the house were in harmony and completed by the objects brought into each space. The house became a repository for abandoned domestic American culture— beds, window blinds, couches, appliances, and other products made it into the home in irregular but frequent intervals. For me, each item was an opportunity to have something new to …

Symposium Program Outline For Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port. Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium. Savannah, Ga, October 19-23, 2016.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Conference program: times, locations, speakers, events.

Wednesday, October 19th 2016, through Sunday, October 23rd 2016.

10 pages

[Tsa Web Pages For] Symposium 2016 -- Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The web pages for the 2016 Savannah Symposium (archived in pdf).

The 2016 Textile Society of America Symposium will take place in Savannah, Georgia on the campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. To maximize scholarly interchange, the Symposium will consist of multiple, concurrent sessions, plenary and keynote speakers, a poster session and curated exhibitions that will intersect with the scholarly program. In addition to the symposium sessions and exhibitions, there will be a series of dynamic pre- and post-conference workshops and study tours to local and regional art institutions and …

The Intercontinental Reflections Of An Eighteenth-Century Mexican Rebozo, Eleanor A. Laughlin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The eighteenth-century Mexican rebozo (scarf) is an excellent example of a garment type that crossed not only ocean currents, but also boundaries of race and class. Initially, the rebozo was associated with indigenous culture in Mexico. Evidence suggests that the rebozo existed during the pre-Columbian period,1 but it has been most commonly remembered as an article of clothing used by the Spaniards to cover the exposed bodies of indigenous women in the church setting. Aspects of the scarf’s decorative elements, such as fringe and dying methods, are thought to have been inspired by Asian styles that arrived in Mexico via …

Esprit De Corps, Shalbey L. Workman

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

UCARE Funding Application

Studio Assistant

Shalbey Workman

As a transfer student with an Associate’s Degree in photography from Metropolitan Community College, I am continuing my education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by emphasizing in Photography while earning my BFA in Studio Arts.

I am currently taking a lighting class with Photography Professor Walker Pickering, whose enthusiasm and strict guidelines are beneficial to my artistic career. Professor Pickering knows the ins and outs of being a professional photographer from a business standpoint, as well as the conceptual side of fine art. He has solo exhibitions in New York, Texas, Ohio, and …

Ripple, Surge, Release, Meryl E. Engler

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

There is something primal and instinctual about living through the physicality of one’s body. The body reacts to the world through feel, ruled not by logic and rational thought, but rather energy, movement and impulse. While this might seem mindless, focusing on the physical for me leads to a state of mindfulness, where every action serves a purpose and I seek to reach clarity through repeated exertion. In art, I seek to slip into this mindful state so each layer of carving, printing, and paper comes from the decisive awareness of my movements and energy.

Growing up playing among the …

Ceramic Apprenticeship With Professor Eddie Dominguez, Victoria E. Norton

UCARE: Research Products

The purpose of this research is to explore specific techniques and processes as employed by Eddie Dominguez through an apprenticeship in ceramic art in which I will be intimately involved in both the critical thinking and process of Professor Dominguez’ work. Topics of focus include building upon my skills of testing glazes and clays in order to discover which glaze and clay combinations cater best to the work. I also plan to investigate idea generation and art concept, an element of Eddie Dominguez’s work that is very important.

Many other vital studio practices were implemented during the apprenticeship. Skills such …

Until It Doesn't, Kendall Johnson

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

And I said to my body, softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath. And replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’

--Nayyirah Waheed

My artistic explorations of self are fueled by my experiences as a person who has struggled in the past to acknowledge a facet of my identity. Consumed by questions and doubts I’ve rarely wanted to accept the different truths of who I am. I often feel in conflict with myself and sometimes I feel it might always be this way. The struggle is always there until it’s not but …

Insight: An Invitation, Joyce Bingeman

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

My abstractions originate in my relationships to my mother, father, and self. Visual entry points of whiteness, flatness, and organic shapes become a language and form of communication that speak to my connections with my family. They begin as quiet and contemplative works with minimal use of color and imagery that oscillate around an ovular organic form and shift to more colorful pure abstractions.

Working consecutively with a similar shape in size and appearance came naturally to me as I began putting paintbrush to paper. My impetus was to complete a form and reveal its edges with gesso – lines …

Land/People, Amanda R. Breitbach

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

Through my project, Land/People, I investigate the decline of family farming and the emotional and spiritual issues that underly the human relationship to land. The exhibition combines aerial and large-scale panoramic photographs of my family’s farmland in eastern Montana with more intimate images of family members and domestic spaces. Through the use of multiple images, visual grids, and a repeated motif of windows, I tell a complicated story about history and land use, as well as the changing face of American agriculture. The installation is meant to be immersive, inviting viewers to experience this landscape for themselves and to …

Author Guidelines: Biennial Symposium 2016 Proceedings

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Instructions for submission to the biennial symposium proceedings

Lasting Impressions: Indian Block-Prints And Global Trade, Eiluned Edwards

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

"Above the proficiency in making cotton textiles, India’s crowning textile accomplishment was the patterning of this cloth with brilliant fast dyes."

Textiles are among India’s most successful exports and the enduring popularity of block printed cloth has sustained a centuries-old craft that survives and even thrives in the digital age. Block prints have been integral to the dress codes of the subcontinent as well as serving domestic and ritual functions. (figs. 1-2) They were also embedded in the material culture of diverse nations through centuries of international trade. So what has enabled their longevity and global reach? This paper explores …

Exploring Color Interactions Illuminated In Goldwork Embroidery, Katherine Diuguid

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Unexpected things happen when you mix colored threads with metal threads in embroidery--the metals cast their reflections onto the threads, changing the perception of the colors to the viewer. The expectation is for the metal to reflect the light. The excitement lies in the unpredictable nature of how the reflections affect the perception of the surrounding colors and how these perceived colors change as the metals age. Color theory principles are seen in their extremes when mixed with the metal threads. The natural reaction when approaching gold is to assume it is a yellow, making purple its complement according to …

Sacred Currency: The Value Of Textile In Colonial Andean Painting, Gaby Greenlee

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In this 18th century colonial Andean image painted in the former Inka capital of Cuzco, Peru, a wreath of flowers encircles a small female figure sitting upon a richly textured seat (Figure 1). She wears clothing that connotes distinction; her features and gestures are as delicate as her garments yet her eyes are fixed and discerning. Our eyes are drawn to her eyes. What does she see? What is her role? We also turn these questions on ourselves: what do we know about this figure that gives the painting meaning? We tend to interpret the work through her identity.

However, …

On Textile Fragments Found At Karadong, A 3rd To Early 4th Century Oasis In The Taklamakan Desert (Xinjiang, China), Sophie Desrosiers, Corinne Debaine-Francfort

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 1993 and 1994, the Sino-French archeological mission in Xinjiang led by Abdurassul Idriss and Corinne Debaine-Francfort,1 excavated the site at Karadong in the heart of the Takalamakan desert, on a former delta of the Keriya River, whose headwaters are in the Kunlun Mountains at the Tibetan border, and which vanishes in the desert sands. At one time, it continued north all the way to the Tarim River, thus forming a communication link with the Kucha region. Older deltas visible on satellite images have been explored and two related archeological sites have been consecutively excavated to the northwest of Karadong: …

Mexican Ikat And Transatlantic Trade, Alejandro B. De Avila

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The earliest text known so far in the Americas was engraved on a potsherd found in Chiapa de Corzo in southern Mexico that has been dated to around 300 years before our era. The script appears to represent a language in the Mixe-Zoquean family (which developed historically along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec), and it has been proposed that the inscription on the clay reads as follows: “The pleated cloth got dyed. The thing that is made of pleated cloth has been cut.”1 If this interpretation holds true, the text must refer to a textile that was patterned by means of …

America’S Indigo Obsession: From Colonial Plantations To Contemporary Diy Ethos, Sonja Dahl

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This research project is, as the title implies, quite broad. It has grown from stories shared generously with me by many of indigo’s proponents today, as well as the stories compiled in the historical and ethnographic research of scholars such as Andrea Feeser1 and Jenny Balfour Paul.2 This paper was originally written for oration, and what I offer here is a transcript of this talk as performed at the Textile Society of America’s 2016 symposium, Land, Labor and the Port in Savannah, GA, October 2016. It is an open reflection on some of the stories and broader themes I’ve encountered …

New Tools In The Box: Traditional Methods, Contemporary Materials And New Techniques On The Atlantic Coast A Round Table Discussion, Memory Holloway, Laurie Carlson Steger

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on the new interest in fiber arts, with the claim that this interest has seen a revival in the hands of contemporary artists exploring bold new forms. “The emergence of fiber art,” states Glenn Adamson, director of New York’s Museum of Art and Design, “is not just the reappraisal of an historic textile movement, rather a much more broad-based interest.”1 The fiber artists on this roundtable addressed two topics related to this broad-based interest, one on formal experimentation, the other on their geographic placement as artists on the Atlantic coast, particularly in and around …

Field To Bag, Bag To Field: Feedbag Production And Distribution In Rural America, Heather R. Buechler

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

sack- noun a large bag made of a strong material such as burlap, thick paper, or plastic, used for storing and carrying goods.[English Oxford Living Dictionaries.com,]

A popular object among collectors of agricultural ephemera, the printed agricultural sack—both textile and paper—used for the distribution of agricultural goods, is an object with a rich history. Previous research published on these ephemeral objects has typically examined their use and reuse in American households as clothing, quilts, and other domestic goods, or their significance in the World War I Belgian War Relief under the Herbert Hoover administration. This paper poses approaches to the …

Bombay To Bauhaus: Design Influences In Churchill Weavers Textiles From 1922-1949, Sarah Stopenhagen Broomfield

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Churchill Weavers, a nationally known handweaving center founded in 1922 in the Cumberland foothills in Berea, Kentucky, created a marketing niche by promoting the Modernist look in its textile products. Modernist textiles focused on woven structure, texture, yarn and fabric properties as the major design elements. Bauhaus artists codified and disseminated a theory of modern textiles as Europe rebuilt in the interwar period, while in America Modernist textiles were commodified as a marketing trend in early 20th century consumerism. Eleanor Churchill, co-owner and the company’s first designer was influenced by textile designs from India, from Modernist textiles, and from Swedish …

Transnational Influences On Louisiana Samplers: Traditions, Teachers, Techniques, And Text, Lynne Anderson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Louisiana’s early history is colored with multinational interests and domination by a succession of nations speaking diverse languages. Although “discovered” by the Spanish in the 1600s, the French were the first to colonize the area, founding New Orleans in 1718 with financial support (and administrative control) from the Company of the Indies. New Orleans became Louisiana’s colonial capital in 1721. Most of the earliest immigrants to Louisiana were either French military personnel or French Canadian adventurers and traders. Their number was augmented by the forced immigration of criminals, prostitutes, and those incarcerated in French workhouses. By all accounts this made …

“The British Are Coming! A Contraband Cloth Tsunami Flows Over Maya Handicrafts And Homespun In The Kingdom Of Guatemala, 1760-1820”, Heather J. Chiero

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Latin America today has a lower perceived place on the global scale of development in comparison to other Western regions, however incorrect that assumption may be. And, Central American nations, in particular, seemingly fulfill that notion. One might ask, why did the nations of Middle America not become industrialized at an earlier point in their histories? If those nations had at their disposal adequate land, natural resources, and labor, as well as ports for exit for their products, why did they not advance in the 18th and 19th centuries alongside other northern hemispheric nations? This research paper investigates the thriving …

The Legacy Of Yarn Dyed Cotton Lungis Of Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu: A Case Study, Vasantha M. Dr.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Woven cotton textiles of India are ancient, diverse, and steeped in tradition, an amalgam of different ethnic influences, much like reflection of the country itself. Having had the advantage of possessing a unique raw material for more than 5000 years of recorded history, she has been a benefactress of her rich cotton textile heritage to the entire world. In a world where the trends are dictated by the mass producers and the consumers no longer make out the difference between the hand crafted and the machine made, it is a miracle that these textile traditions have been persistently passed on …

Drawloom Velvet: Exploring A Centuries Old Tradition, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Since 1986, I have been pursuing my passionate interest in handwoven velvet, both practically and academically. By velvet, I mean extra-warp pile, rather than weft-woven types of pile, such as weft-looping or knotting. Simple, monochrome plain velvets have been woven since the early Coptic period, requiring only simple looms and two simple warp tensioning systems, one for the foundation cloth and another for the pile warp.1 (On the basis of such a simple set-up, early velvet figuration could be created through the following colour effects using: (a) striped pile warp; (b) ikat/chiné (spaced dyed) pile warp; (c) painted or printed …

"Knit A Bit For Our First Line Of Defense": Emotional Labor, Knitters, And Comforts For Soldiers During The First World War, Rebecca Keyel

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the First World War, American women were encouraged to support national defense by conserving food, sewing clothes for refugees, and knitting comforts for servicemen sent abroad to fight. Groups like the Navy League and the Red Cross promoted knitting for the troops as a necessity for the security of the home front, and for the comfort of servicemen abroad. By the end of the war, knitters had hand-knit millions of garments to send to servicemen, an act of compliance that supported an overseas war--one that had aroused bitter resistance only a few years before. Defense knitters knit in private, …

The Story And The Stitch., Alice Kettle

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores my work and the connection between stories and stitching. It seeks to find meaningfulness and purpose in these narratives and activities and see how they are a reflection of everyday encounters. It asks if there are mnemonic properties to stitching and stories that can offer ways to understand and transform actual experience and to represent the past by making it physical and continuous. Tim Ingold uses this textile vocabulary to present its close connection with story telling; “To tell a story then, is to relate, in narrative the occurrences of the past, retracing a path through the …

Performance, Adaptation, Identity: Cantonese Opera Costumes In Vancouver, Canada, Jean L. Kares

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Photographs of the 1936 Vancouver Jubilee Parade show Chinese men and women wearing Cantonese opera costumes that appear to be similar, if not identical, to ones in the collection of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. In this highly public forum, they portray the role of “Chineseness” for the non-Chinese audience, reference the power of temple festival dramas, and assert their presence and aspiration to be accepted by mainstream society. By reconfiguring costumes for public display, Chinese immigrants employed material culture in a strategy of performance, adaptation, and identity. This connects to matters still pertinent today: …