Fine Arts Commons^™

Mind, Body, And Handwoven Cloth, Andrea Donnelly

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores the nature of individual perception, and the side of our lives lived entirely within our minds. I do this through the lens of self-reflection, examining the images of my own mental life and translating them into delicately handwoven cloth. These images and their structures become sensory experiences of the intangible, and a meeting place for my internal life and that of my viewer. The cloth I weave is simultaneously familiar and strange. Through woven surface and imbedded imagery, I attempt to illuminate the deep emotions that necessarily isolate us from each other, and the shared experiences of …

Voice On The Skin, Sarah Turner

Theses and Dissertations

“The body can write on the skin from the inside—the soul, the mind, and the passions rise to the surface in boils, blushes, and rashes, and the invisible inside speaks by writing from the other side of the page”. -James Elkins Skin not only covers but reveals what is behind it. I utilize its language as indicator of flaws and pathologies. I depict and manipulate this, not just as it already exists with the human body, but as projections of my psychological states onto inanimate objects. Proposing that sight is a kind of touch, we touch with our minds, through …

Heritage Braided, Akiko B. Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

The awareness of marginality, oppression, and hierarchy at an early age directly influences the creation of work specific to my identity as a woman of color. Born and raised on an island in the Pacific Ocean, I was aware of my sense of location and space relative to the world. The vast ocean separating me from the ‘mainland’ created a specific understanding of marginality, of what is “main” and what is “minor,” and how these categorical placements continued from my youth to ongoing perpetuation. The work I create has a subtle and persistent investigation into my identity as a socio-economic …

Fountains, Toshiyuki Tanaka

Theses and Dissertations

Most of my works are figurative and depend on my memory when I was modeling. I’d like to attempt to clarify the memories through process of modeling. When I model a human, it might not be a perfect imitation of body because it’s a representation of memories, and it’s affected by memories. It is not important to imitate the human form, but I’m interested in gathering memories and giving a form to them. I’m interested in life force and transience of life, so I was looking for a material which can represent these qualities. When I am engaged glass, I …

Structure And Repetition, Jon Sutter

Theses and Dissertations

This work is the result of an exploration into the relationship of form and pattern. Its inspiration began as an experiment where certain two dimensional graphical patterns were interpreted as three dimensional elements in a lattice-like assembly. The resulting compositions are built entirely of MDF, and each piece is made from multiple copies of one or two identically shaped parts that are joined with shallow grooves. Some of the pieces resemble Asian architectural lattices as well as the scientific models of molecules in crystals. Often, the flat components seem to undulate in space or twist into impossible shapes. Although the …

Beyond Edifice, Keith Mendak

Theses and Dissertations

Seeing one’s self in another requires empathy and compassion. A person must be willing to look beyond their immediate self and feel what is not readily perceptible. Difference is merely an edifice constructed by our faith in perception. By transfiguring what is familiar an alternative now is made available to the mind and reveals an underlying essence common in all people and things. We realize physical separation is an illusion of the material world and that everything exists from one sacred source.

Altruism, Activism, And The Moral Imperative In Craft, Gabriel Craig

Theses and Dissertations

I consider myself a metalsmith although my interest in materials and ideas extend beyond the boundaries of traditional practice. I approach my work thematically, meaning that I treat my discipline as a framework for a broad investigation rather than as a skill set or process. The outcomes of this approach are therefore varied and include jewelry, installation, performance, video, interactive community based projects, print and web based writing, and historical research. It is through humor or direct viewer interaction that I promote accessibility in my work. My ideas are layered and communicated in a way that allows viewers to engage …

The Imagination And The Real, Thomas Ryan Gothrup

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis challenges the sedentary nature of living vicariously through the television, whether it be watching sports or playing video games. Since the advent of professional sports spectators have become accustomed to stadiums stuffed with people cheering on their favorite teams. The television substitutes for this visceral experience and allows viewers to live surrogate lives without leaving the living room. Ultimately, I see this thesis as a social commentary on the impact of sports and media in our society. This project highlights the sociological implications of the loss of interpersonal contact perpetuated by media.

Finding Myself Here, Cari Freno

Theses and Dissertations

Both the natural and civilized worlds establish a context within which I may understand my own existence. My search for “self” and the emotive qualities of life within these contexts provides the impetus for my work. I create juxtapositions: from found art assemblages to, more recently, intimate experiences in public park environments. Within these curated experiences I challenge myself to open up to unknown experiences derived from my relationship to the landscape and the life forms found within. My videos are a kind of self-surveillance fostering absurdly promiscuous behavior when I am alone, in front of a camera. These conjured …

Legacy, Susana Almuiña

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in family secrets and the rules and mores that may constrain family behavior or adversely affect a member’s destiny. I make work that looks askance at the efforts to hide from the world those events or secrets that reflect badly on a family. I look at the places where I have discovered some of them: family furniture and objects around the house, which can shed, metaphorically, the secrets and stories that are part of family tradition. I focus light on the lives of my uncelebrated ancestors and bring them, however briefly, into the collective consciousness.

Objects: Entropy And Temporality, Anthony Cioe

Theses and Dissertations

The transparent qualities of glass lend to the creation of elements that suggest presence and absence. I often use glass as a surrogate for lost time or space in an object, comparable to the human prosthetic and the notion of a phantom limb. Recent objects of exploration have included broken bottles, fallen tree limbs, and a human skull. The practical knowledge I gained while working in a conservation lab has directly influenced the methodology for treating these objects of disrepair. My primary impetus is a desire to construct what has been lost during an objects existence and reveal sublime qualities. …

Surging Seepage: A Triple Bond Accretion System, Jacqueline Brown

Theses and Dissertations

My current work revels in a state of flux. I strive for the work to be electrically charged, conveying a feverish sense of immediacy and vitality that implies motion and frenetic energy. The work is an accretion of brightly colored biomorphic forms that extend out from the wall and onto the floor. Viscous parts ooze and drip while others are globular and bulbous. The hyper-organic forms suggest a paradoxical state of both ripening and rotting, becoming and unbecoming. The work is an attempt to traverse between seemingly divergent constructs, some of which include: growth and decay, the artificial and the …

Schema, Ann Walsh

Theses and Dissertations

A schema is described as a diagram showing the basic outline of something, or as an organizational or conceptual pattern in the mind. It is also, in Kantian philosophy, a method that allows the understanding to apply concepts to the evidence of the senses. My Schema is a model of emergence.

Shiver, Jennifer Elaine Carson

Theses and Dissertations

Dissipating through growth; Solving within illusion; Resilience in vulnerability. Through enveloping strands of tenuous connections, translucent flesh-like layers, and subtle movement through touch, my thesis installation entitled "Shiver" makes reference to the Sublime as it asks the infinite question; What is my primordial self?

Our Hiding Places, Rashaid Farida Al

Theses and Dissertations

I am creating this body of work based on how we as a society interact and utilize our every day valuable possessions. These would consist of personal items such as our keys, wallets and purses, As well as how well we are able to hide them from strangers, insofar as to where we personally choose to place them. It's interesting how many of us can be lackadaisical in this regard and as a result, many times don't carefully think about where we choose to place our valuable objects, until we lose them or worse, have them stolen.I am exploring the …

Llum: Light And Reflection, Kazue Taguchi

Theses and Dissertations

When I was nineteen years old, I traveled to ten countries in Europe. While there, I visited many museums and monuments, but it was in the solemn churches that I first saw stained glass and my aesthetic awakening occurred. My first impression was of a "living painting". By this I mean that a stained glass window is a non-static painting, as its appearance is dependant on the quality of light that shines though its panes. The same stained glass window looks different in the morning, evening and night. It has one color scheme on a sunny day and another on …

I Built This City, Joshua Isaiah Rodenberg

Theses and Dissertations

I have been overwhelmed by curiosity, a curiosity that is keeping my desire to make valid. I have an endless infatuation with growth and constructing. My aim is to juxtapose an academic and a "rudimentary" approach that will set up contradictions in which traditional woodworkers may find irreverence towards.

Lucidity, Sarah Rebekah Byrd Mizer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on space, the in-between-ness that exists amidst mental and physical experience. Pith explains personal attachments and rooting systems. The thesis continues with Blessing, narrating love then loss, and finishes with a recipe for making a tomato sandwich. Blessing is followed by Materialize, a collective view of cyclical learning and meandering paths. Finally, the paper concludes with a quirky Women and Swarovski encrusted skulls, which matter-of-factly lists artists (all of whom happen to be women) whose works I find particularly compelling; and also notes on general trends in art I find interesting in a much less obvious manner. …

The Alchemy Of The Everyday, Nanda Soderberg

Theses and Dissertations

Everyday objects inspire and inform what I do. The personal histories and associations we may have with ordinary things are of great personal interest to me. Often times, these items reflect the social class, education, and background of the owners. I am drawn to these objects and the possibility of elevating them in a way that transcends their implied meanings (their worth, importance, and status). The transformation of the mundane is a method of working that allows associations to remain intact while bringing new meaning and perspective to the object. My method of working becomes an alchemic process aimed at …

Beaut-Ease, Amanda Rae Douglas

Theses and Dissertations

The Beaut-Ease product line consists of several machines that are a hybrid between beauty products and infomercial products. Both industries flourish on a level of falsehood that teeters on the brink of hilarity.

Indeterminate Lines, Hyun Kyung Yoon

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis work is about flow. Indeterminate lines symbolize the developing plant form and explore the perception of space by experimenting with the subject's proportion and shape. Movement is also a vital factor of space, a notion found in the early forms of cursive script (grass script) of Far Eastern calligraphy. My individual plant pieces work as dots and lines of cursive script. An installation's ceramic pieces illustrate similar flow and movement when viewed as a whole.

Persistence Of Vision: The Value Of Invention In Independent Art Animation, Pamela Turner

Kinetic Imaging Publications and Presentations

The focus of this investigation is in the realm of animation that straddles the ever-shrinking gulf between a screening and an exhibition, the theater and the art gallery. There is a subtle maturity and movement in the animation art world that not only continues but also extends the often-overlooked legacy of independent animation while engaging the conceptual dialogue of contemporary art. This tradition of an art aesthetic is passed from the early inventors who fashioned the necessary tools and images. The myriads of techniques and concepts evidenced throughout this history inform the current practitioner, just as digital technology and the …

Sphere Of Influence, Benjamin Andrew Jones

Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis titled SPHERE OF INFLUENCE is about development. I discuss my efforts to develop as an artist addressing observation and awareness of the self and our surroundings. I will discuss how this relates to my approach with materials and process and will explain not only what the sculpture titled SPHERE OF INFLUENCE has come to represent for me, but also the reactions of viewers during the temporary installation of the SPHERE OF INFLUENCE at the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University from May 5th 2006 through May 14th, 2006. I will explain the SPHERE OF INFLENCE'S function as …

If Chivalry Is Dead, Women Have Killed It, Nicole Heimbach

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in the dual meaning of pattern. Pattern is a design format used for decoration. By introducing certain images into patterns, they have the ability to give meaning or messages. The repetition of a certain image emphasizes importance to a particular idea or issue. I embroider pattern designs onto pre-manufactured clothing pattern pieces as a response to things in society that I find absurd. This body of work focuses on female iconography. The delicate nature of these materials lends themselves to feminine associations. Embroidery, which is stereotypically associated with women's work, is used to play on these clichés.Patterns …

A Tinker's Studio, Catherine L. Hudnall

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is meant to describe and explain a space in which one can imagine things necessary for making objects that wobble, squeak, clack, creak, crank in and out, open and close, light up, roll about and generally hurl themselves into creepy existence. It is also an endeavor to describe some objects having lately taken such a journey into being. These include (but are not limited to): a chess table for one, an examining table and tray, two workbenches, chessmen and women, creaky floorboards, stairs on wheels, a stool on wheels, and Monsters of various sizes and shapes.

One Is Concerned Because One Is A Human Being, Sayaka Suzuki

Theses and Dissertations

I am a nomad. I have not had a place to call home in almost two decades. I wander around the world searching for a place to belong, only to discover the forgotten lives and silenced voices. I have come to realize that to find a "home," I need to first create a world in which to belong to. My recent works are investigations of possibilities for another world, a world of compassion, through a critique of our current society. I create as I rediscover the forgotten histories and lives. My work captures my process of remembering and celebrating while …

Conversations With The Self: An Artist's Visual & Written Wanderings, Elizabeth W. Perkins

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis is made up of episodes in which I am in dialogue with myself, sometimes in dialogue with the work, and yet other times I am speaking directly to the reader/viewer. The tense also sways from past to present as frequently as the visual language does. The following episodes are a selection of writings from my final year at graduate school. The episodes express my influences, inspirations, theories, and philosophies as a person and a maker. I think of these things as what allows me to wander and then wander somewhere else completely different within the same landscape. I …

Growth And Deterioration, Brooke A. Hine

Theses and Dissertations

I use porcelain clay because it allows me to focus on the subtle color shifts between white, beige, and gray. The forms I make in clay are associated with tangled roots, naked tree branches, hollow logs, and bones. I reveal this with a dense mass of curvilinear hollow forms that stack into a rhythmic linkage. They twist and turn, relying on gravity to dictate their structure within the installation. The ends of some are closed while others remain open to expose their interior. The tearing and perforations on the surface of each piece are employed to emphasize deterioration. In opposition …

Content And Meaning In Abstract Animation, Pamela Turner

Kinetic Imaging Publications and Presentations

Talking about the content and meaning of abstract animation, for the practitioner or enthusiast, is like discussing why one eats chocolate or why we stand at the edge of the ocean, experiencing the sensation of the sand being sucked out from under our feet by the pull of the receding wave. Or why listening to a beautiful adagio can create such a stirring response. These experiences stand for themselves and need no explanation.

For the uninitiated, or the viewer who has little to no encounter with abstract animation, however, these moving images can be initially disconcerting and hard to understand. …

Calliphysics, Sara Miller Clark

Theses and Dissertations

My work focuses on the reality and life of mental objects. The unseen masquerade as the seen, not only in our mind's eye but as an immediate visual experience.

To realize this I apply volumetric form to models of thought and present them in a variety of environments. The forms are derived from the fields of science and mathematics, specifically geometry and topology. Topology or "rubber-sheet geometry," is the study of shapes whose essential attributes are unchanged by continuous deformation. The shapes are not defined by measurements of distance and angle, but by whether they can be transformed when bent, …