Fine Arts Commons^™

The Petticoat: Details Of A Forgotten Garment In Mexico City (1900–1910), Nallely Rangel Vázquez

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During Porfirian government, Mexican society experienced a flourishing of the textile industry driven by state policies that encouraged both the rise of the national industry and foreign investment. This process was perceived from the daily life of the capital, through the windows of silk shops, shoe shops, warehouses and, above all, the imposing department store El Palacio de Hierro. One of the garments that was designed to fit at the waist and cover the legs was the petticoat, which was assumed to be a piece of female underwear. In this article, I am interested in unravelling details findings about this …

Woven Symphony: Exploring The Parallels Between Weaving And Music, Qianwen Yu

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Weaving and music are art forms often perceived as unrelated but actually share deep connections and fascinating similarities. In this presentation, I will first briefly introduce the impact of the 19th-century Jacquard loom on the invention of the Player Piano, a musical technology that evolved into the modern "MIDI" computer audio notation system. Second, I will explore the similarities found in both weaving and musical composition by presenting some of my own media installation art works. These works translate musical scores into woven textures, and vice versa, creating symphonies and revealing new sensory ways to appreciate textiles and music. I …

Five Quilts As Claims About Collage, Teaching, Learning & Being Together, Tim Abel

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

How can quilting and collage act as creative methods and modes of permission for understanding ways of relating in learning spaces, while also working to help make visible the interrelated nature of being together. Through the networking of personal reflection, lyric essay, theory and concrete reflections related to teaching, this presentation will take five examples of quilts (expansively defined as quilts, quilt-tops, collages, reclaimed and accumulated materials, collective/invitational works) as a way to make space for claims related to collage and pedagogy. This woven investigation helps to scaffod the learning process as a series of interconnected strands because when I …

Gny Rary Tsihy Tsy Enganay (‘We’Re Not Leaving The Mat Weaving’): Transitions Of Craft Practice In Southeast Madagascar, Sarah Emily Brown

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Sainte Luce, southeast Madagascar, livelihoods are in a state of transition due to climate change, deforestation, shifting local economies and globalisation. Activities passed on by the ancestors are not sufficient to meet everyday needs. In 2012, embroidery was introduced by an NGO as an alternative to the ancestral process of reed-weaving due to declining reed populations. Embroiderers have now formed a 100-strong independent cooperative.

My PhD fieldwork (2017-2019) explored the multifaceted dimensions of change for these craftswomen. In addition to the practicalities of mastering a new craft, they have renegotiated collaborative working patterns, obligations to kin and ancestors, flows …

One Thread At A Time: The Role Of Textile Crafts On Well-Being In Marginalized Communities, Michelle Burton, Bianka Hausknecht, Ja-Young Hwang, Kim Hahn, Jihyun Kim-Vick

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Racial injustice and social unrest have spurred support for marginalized communities, historically excluded from mainstream society's activities. Marginalized individuals may often feel powerless and experience societal discrimination and negative stereotypes resulting in diminished well-being (WB). Consequently, finding resources to promote well being in marginalized communities is paramount. One possibility is exploring the art of textile crafts (e.g., repurposing, knitting, crocheting, and quilting) to serve as a platform for rupturing exclusionary hierarchies and oppressive frameworks, fostering empowerment and community cohesion.

In this qualitative study we conducted focus groups and individual interviews to better understand the impact on marginalized communities. Participants in …

Burning Fear, Amy Dorie

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Climate change is leading to more intense and devastating wildfires that lead to tragic loss of life and property (Cal Fire, 2018; Sinco et al., 2023) and disturbing environmental impacts (OECD, 2023). The purpose of this textile design was to create an activist design that communicates the fear and anxiety felt by those impacted by wildfires. First-hand accounts of those experiencing wildfires were researched as inspiration for the textile design. Based on the accounts, a selection of wildfire-related images were cropped in irregular shapes, placed around the canvas, and blended evoking a sense of chaos and devastation. An image of …

Caring Cloth Praxis: Ethics Of Loss, Practices Of Remembering, Suzanna James

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This research, in continual development as a part of early PhD study, is currently entitled ‘Ethics of Loss, Practices of Remembering’ and locates itself within the field of cultural sustainability. It is foregrounded by my MA thesis entitled ‘Caring Cloth’ and works in response to the words of Louise Bourgeois: ‘the needle is used to repair damage, its claim to forgiveness.’ My own socially and environmentally regenerative textiles practice considers the way in which personal practices of remembering can be developed in response to cultural sustainability.

This textiles practice develops explorative visual textile art and social textile practice research which …

23 Extinct Redwork Quilt Project: Repairing Relationships With Our More-Than-Human Kin, Stitch By Stich, Heather Kerley

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 2021, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed 23 species for delisting from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. I would like to present my redwork quilt, Mourning Lost Kin (23 Extinct), which honors each of these species. I plan to share my process from researching and sketching each species to the embroidering of each block and the over-all construction of the quilt. But most importantly, I would love to share the stories of these species, the layers of meaning in this quilt, and the many questions it raised for me over the course of two years. …

Stitches Of Sustainability: Empowering Women And Preserving Culture Through Pakko Embroidery, Rajesh Kumar, Dharmendra Bana, Deepali Bhatnagar

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Pakko embroidery, originating from Gujarat’s Kutch district, stands as a testament to the area's rich textile tradition, marrying exceptional craftsmanship with profound cultural narratives. Currently facing the challenge of conserving its heritage while adapting to the evolving demands of the modern world, this study aims to identify pathways for cultural and economic resurgence.

Pakko embroidery, renowned for its sturdiness and the detailed cheereli saankdi stitch, finds itself at a critical crossroads, battling declining engagement and integration into modern design paradigms. Initiatives to rejuvenate interest and establish sustainable practices for artisans are deemed critical for preserving this ancient art for future …

Lambani Textiles: Oscillating Between The Past And The Present, Beena Santosh Modathi, Anjali Karolia

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines the experiences of home-based women zardozi artisans in Bhopal, India, who use traditional embroidery skills to create fashionable products. It highlights the role of the traditional craft sector in promoting women's empowerment, enhancing economic well-being, and supporting sustainable development in the Global South. Through ethnographic research, including literature review and interviews, the study reveals the resilience of these artisans, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds with limited education. Despite modest earnings, Textiles embody narratives, legacies, and lineages. Indian traditional textiles, particularly those featuring strong Lambani embroidery, represent a dynamic interplay of ancestral techniques, motifs, and cultural …

Public Patriotism, Silent Dissent: Women And The Making Of Senninbari In Wartime Japan, Mariko Nagai

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the early years of the so-called “Fifteen Year War” (1931–1945), Japanese women and girls created senninbari when men received draft notices to serve. Often worn around soldiers’ waists underneath their uniforms, these sash-shaped talisman were embroidered with 1,000 red knots, each knot made by a woman. In a time when the Japanese government censored dissenting voices against its militaristic and nationalistic foreign and domestic policies, this government-encouraged gesture of stitching senninbari became one of the few ways in which women could voice their personal protests within patriarchal gender expressions (良妻賢母 “good wife, wise mother”). Senninbari’s design evolved with regional- …

Textile As Cultural Technology: The Evolution Of Robert Rauschenberg’S Jammers, 1975–6, Katya Oicherman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Robert Rauschenberg suggested that any material has a “humanitarian reportage” or a history built into it, that opens art to the “strange and unpredictable” experience only comparable to everyday reality. Developing this idea, I will focus on the Jammers, a series of works with significant textile presence produced in 1975–76, and discuss how Rauschenberg’s relationship to textiles evolved from treating them as “materials” to recognizing them as cultural technologies. In 1975 he was on a fellowship in Ahmedabad, India, a period of intense experimentation.

Textiles were already a significant presence in his art, playing a subservient role of materials …

Inconclusive Objects: Sample Making As Inquiry-Driven Practice, Etta Sandry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Inconclusive Objects: Sample Making as Inquiry-driven Practice I will discuss craft sample making as a valuable practice of critical thought and experimentation. Craftspeople, artists, and designers make samples to practice technical skills and to demonstrate results on small scales. It is process work, typically used to learn a new technique or a hidden step on the way to a final product. However, as a cumulative process of research, material probing, and play, sampling is a critical aspect of design and creation. What can a closer study of sampling reveal about creative practice and knowledge production in craft and beyond? …

Textile Ways Of Thinking As A Trauma-Informed Design Tool To Research And Understand Communities, Smrti Ganesan, Nishanth Srikanth

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

There has been a shift in methodologies in the broader world of design. Today, co-design and participatory methods are a vital part of the modern designer's toolkit, and designers are finding new ways to interact with communities and design solutions that are more responsive to the actual needs of those communities.

Textile design has historically been a medium for expressing and processing traumatic experiences, reflecting individual and collective traumas in society. Textiles have also historically served not only as a form of artistic expression but also as a powerful tool in activism, particularly within feminist movements. Recent developments have seen …

Solidarity Dividend With Us Wool And Community Engagement To Address Socioeconomic Inequities, Helen X. Trejo, Angela Becerril

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a long-standing natural fiber, wool provides an opportunity for community engagement and reflexive practice. Our process involved sourcing wool from US sheep and wool farms in lower income areas and hands-on textile development, and intersectional reflection. Being at a Hispanic Serving Institution, informed approaches to engage with concepts, such as the “zerosum paradigm” and “Solidarity Dividend” based on Heather McGhee’s NY Times Best Selling book “The Sum of Us.” It explores how racism affects intergenerational wealth among minorities. The zero-sum paradigm is the idea that progress is a tradeoff; benefits to some is at an expense for others. The …

Lavenz, Valenz, Levenxë, Lavexha, Lavenzka: Woven Felted Blankets From The Korçë Region In Southeastern Albania, Alexis Zoto

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will look at and document colors and patterns and motifs of woven and felted blankets from the Korçë region of southeastern Albania. Very little is published on these textiles. This paper will document the disappearing and under appreciated textile, and why are they no longer understood or valued. In Albania and in Albanian diaspora communities this textile has had different names in prewar, prewar Korçare dialect and now.

I will be drawing from information gathered interviewing parishioners who volunteered to share their heirlooms and information gathered from examining the textile(s). These heirlooms belong to members of multiple generations …

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Attitudes Of Experiential Designers Across Design Disciplines, Danielle Degarmo

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

The expanded use of the term scenography is widening its understanding of the word to encompass many experiential design disciplines beyond its origin in theatre. At its essence, scenography is the culmination of a designer’s collaborative efforts to take a prompt, whether it be a client program, a script, or other, and produce a holistic assemblage of experiential design elements to spatially engage an end user. Many experts in across design fields have acknowledged that there is disciplinary cross over among those practicing in experiential design fields in terms of design output or intention. By means of designer surveys and …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

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

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Death Of A Salesman: A Treatise On Technical Direction Practices, Stephanie Schlosser

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The Nebraska Repertory Theatre, in partnership with the Johnny Carson School of Theatre, Film, and Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, chose to produce Death of a Salesman, directed by Jacqueline Thompson, for the second show of their 2022-2023 season. Death of a Salesman was produced on the Howell Stage, a 300-seat proscenium theatre located in the Temple building on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. The graduate faculty assigned the role of Technical Director to me in May 2022. As technical director I was responsible for budgeting materials and labor, drafting and engineering scenery, managing personnel, maintaining …

Magic Mirrors, Jamie Ho

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

When a beam of bright light hits the convex and polished surface, an image is reflected back onto the wall. This is a description of a magic mirror, an object from the Han Dynasty (206 BC -24 AD), that embodies how Euro-America views China: both technically advanced and shrouded in mystery. The magic mirror also points to the history of photography, as this term was often used in the Victorian era to describe a camera. The image created by a camera is a mimic of reality, both all too familiar and unfamiliar.^[1] Like magic mirrors, the GIFs I create …

Origami Club - A Gateway Into The Art Of Self Expression, Minjae Song, Noah Vincent Rachwitz

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

The Nebraska Honors Program's Origami Club is an engaging platform for 3rd-5th graders that uses the fascinating Japanese art of origami to create a rich, interactive learning environment. Under the guidance of experienced instructors Minjae Song and Noah Rachwitz, and supplemented with YouTube tutorials, the club facilitates a captivating journey from simple projects to complex designs, skillfully developing each student's creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving capabilities. Each session is planned meticulously to ensure an immersive experience, starting with anticipation-building project reveals and culminating in the production of personal origami masterpieces. As a hands-on club, students are encouraged to question, explore, assist …

Me Tengo Que Ir, Eddy Leonel Aldana

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

In Spanish, me tengo que ir means “I have to go.” “I have to go” as in go home, or back to one’s home country. As in leaving home for the unforeseeable future, hang up the phone, or pass away. me tengo que ir is also the name of a song by Adolescent’s Orquesta — a song about love, loss, and heartbreak over time that was always played at family parties when I was growing up.

In me tengo que ir, I use world history and personal memory to examine my family’s place within the Guatemalan diaspora. Diaspora is …

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

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

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

I Want To Go Home, Amber Boris

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

The significance of a home lies within the memories of the space. I Want to Go Home is a body of work that explores this idea through a collection of sculptures and drawings depicting my childhood home. This house holds meaning to me not only because it is where I grew up, but because it was also my mother’s childhood home. Six generations of our family have passed through the house, creating a long history of associated stories, memories, and emotions.

I have constructed scaled down sculptures of rooms for these memories to live in. The spaces are left empty, …

Salt In Our Bones, Hannah Demma

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

In my studio I lead a rich fantasy life. I am excited and enchanted by the interplay of color, pattern, and texture in a variety of mediums — but always involving paper, most often, paper I’ve handmade. I look to the natural world for inspiration in my work. Approaching the work as a scientist or naturalist might, I observe, hypothesize, and run experiments. Then I interpret and process my findings. I consider creative play and intuitive investigation into materials hallmarks of my practice.

When I watch documentaries about sea life, or read about the discoveries of marine scientists, I feel …

The Woman Behind The Whitney, Breanna Epp

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as a prominent sculptor and patron to artists in the early 1900s. Her art collection was the largest of American art at the time, and she led the nation into an appreciation of its own native art. Native in this context specifically means any art that was made in America, not strictly art made by the indigenous people of the Americas. Tackling her entire life, from growing up in the Vanderbilt family to her death, I provide an overview of her interactions with the art …

A Documentation Of A Year As An Artistic Director For Unl, Philip Crawford

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The goal of this project was to document a year of being an Artistic Director for UNL’s student run theatre company Theatrix. Through this documentation, I will be able to reflect upon and learn from my experiences as a leader, director, and theatre maker.

This thesis will be broken up into eight different parts to outline the eight different stages I experienced as Artistic Director this year: season selection, the 24-hour Play Festival, The Revolutionists, The Thanksgiving Play, Clown Bar, season changes, Based on a Totally True Story, and Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. Through these eight stages, I will …

A Midsummer Night’S Dream: A Scenic Design, Grace Trudeau

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, production photographs, and other materials which document the scenic design for the Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. This thesis contains the following: research images indicating thematic ideas for Athens and the Forest, weather patterns for Athens and Woodland, environmental textures and colors, shapes, and forms; preliminary sketches and photographs of the ¼” scale model; a full set of drafting plates and paint samples, a set dressing reference book; paperwork generated during the rehearsal process; and additional information. Archival production photographs are available …

Bright Star: A Scenic Design, Marty Wolff

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, production photographs, and other materials that document the scenic design for Midland University’s production of the 2014 musical Bright Star, written and composed by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. This thesis contains the following: the effects of COVID 19 on the production selection process; a conceptual analysis, scenic breakdown, charting and diagrams to organize the show, preliminary modeling and plotting imagery; research images of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachia, mountain cabins from the early 1900s, and various rustic landscapes; an examination of the design evolution from conception to …