Fine Arts Commons^™

Tracing Patterns: Making Sense Of Experience, Isabelle Davis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my life, I have developed several practices in attempt to preserve my memories in a way that I can relive them, knowing exactly how I felt at the time. Two of these practices are the practice of frequently journaling, and the practice of keeping objects for their sentimental value. For my thesis, I used journal entries and sentimental objects as a starting point for creating a metaphor for how I process emotions in my life. I created a quilt out of 36 excerpts of journal entries from throughout college to symbolize the way it is comforting to me to …

The Continuous Movement Of Water And Time, Ryan Brandt

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Water has a relationship with every living thing on earth, and represents a force that both gives life and can eliminate it. In my work, I use water, color, and the figure to explore the sublime, death and decay, the passage of time, and overwhelming emotions. I have looked at my work in relation to Marilyn Minter’s photography, Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, Julie Evans’ and Henri Matisse’s cut-out works, Sam Gilliam’s continuously changing canvas installations, and Ekaterina Smirnova’s investigation into the meaning of an individual’s place in the universe. By seeing the different ways in which these artists and …

In The Margins, Savannah Bustillo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A margin is defined relative to something else. A ruled line. A body of text on a page. The margins are the excess, outside of the value we can qualify or quantify. Our understandings of the habitability of the margins are too often framed as fundamental differences between those that inhabit value and the rest that do not. What would happen if we reframed the margins beyond a simple dichotomy? What could we gain if the margins were a habitable space around and between the things we prioritize in defining? By analyzing a body of my own art, I …

The Bambi Portal, Zoe Grieze

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

An investigation into the multiplicity of Walt Disney’s 1943 film Bambi — including both the content generated as a result of the film and the way in the film exists ephemerally in mass memory — develops into an investigation into the film’s use of appeals to “nature” to reinforce the gender roles of the traditional American nuclear family. Through the creation of an interactive “portal” utilizing distorted video, these themes are pulled out from the usual world of the film and presented in an alternate format for critical consideration. However, a tension between this critique and genuine sensory enjoyment of …

Beauty Enthroned, Lian Giloth

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

For the longest time in Western culture beauty and art were inseparable from one another. However, within the last one hundred years, various cultural movements and phenomena have split Beauty into a series of dichotomies that exist independently from one another. These bifurcations have weakened Beauty’s power and influence and reduced its intellectual rigor. No longer taken seriously as a primary goal or characteristic of art, Beauty has been reduced to mere charm and superficiality. My body of work seeks to reunify Beauty, thereby giving back its agency and legitimacy in art.

Enter The Void: Visual And Other Pleasures, Serena Silver

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My research and art practice focus on the idea of power dynamics where the female is the passive object of the active male gaze. Through the influx of digital social media platforms, these power dynamics exist in many fluid forms which is what I believe to be the relationship between the masculine and the feminine- where the masculine is inevitably always alpha. In contemporary terms, this power dynamic exists and penetrates our daily consumption of visual culture. From the art world to the fashion industry and beyond- all are feeding into consumerism and capitalism. People have become brands, or as …

Canonical Poses And The Gaze, Sarah Oakley

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My work deals with the nude female form and the various depictions that it has taken on. From the early oil paintings from masters like Ingres and Titian, through Playboy centerfolds of the 50s-70s, and continuing all the way up to the contemporary nude iPhone selfie, I explore questions of the gaze, ownership, and commodification of the female form. Starting with my painted Selfie Series and ending with my embroidered pillows, I touch on a variety of framing devices for the female nude and its representation of sexuality in modern culture.

Other-Ing: Creating A Three-Dimensional Asian American Perspective, Caroline Yoo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Through my thesis body of work “Other-ing,” my goal is to create a three-dimensional Asian American perspective. As a result of Western standards implemented as the norm, where colonialism is still prevalent and white still reigns supreme, the media has created an onslaught of fictional Asian characters to control this group. Representations, tropes, stereotypes have long shaped the Asian American community, so much so that it is often easier to understand these one-dimensional depictions rather than the complex reality of how an Asian American defines themselves. Not shying away from implicating myself in this systematic structure of racism, I become …

Betwixt / Between: Hybridity In Asian American And Christian Identities, Sherry Xiao

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Hybridity is defined as the fusion of worlds that were once separate in one’s self. Both cultural and religious identity are sites of hybridity and dialogue with one another to shape conceptions of sacred and profane. My research explores historical accounts and anecdotes in which cultural understanding informs expressions of faith. My practice takes elements of Eastern and Western visual culture and art history and frames them within a Christian perspective through painting, printmaking, and installation. By participating in the legacy of religious art through a hybrid lens, I seek to adopt cultural ownership of Christianity.

Humidifier, George Bowles

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A discussion of the painter’s position in relation to visual culture as organized by collage. The role of abstraction is described, the correlative possibilities for gestural and textual reference of which are entailed. Models for the translation of art-historical source material provide the painter with a path forward and justify the non-verbal art experience.

Queering The Material, Rachel Youn

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Queer is the disorienting of a subject in space and time. With this notion, this paper goes through various extensions of my practice, investigating how I queer objects and actions to destabilize normative expectations of function. I engage with the aesthetics of Minimalism, the everyday experience of Asian American identities, and the association of the domestic environment with comfort and stability. Employing queer theory crossed with object theory, I posit how deception and failure exist as alternative understandings of how objects and environments function. Through subverting what is expected to be true and real, the work points to the fluid …

Same Stuff, Just Packaged A Different Way (Maybe It's Not So Bad?), Kyle Strobel

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Who Would You Be? examines the interplay between person and persona, relationship building, and artist-sitter dynamics. By placing contemporary sitters in the context of historical portraiture conventions, it seeks to lead viewers to consider the issue of self-absorption and vanity in social media profiles from a different angle. Additionally, this project became a way to enhance the quality of my personal relationships with those involved through providing a space to interact and creating a link for them between myself and each other.

Encounter: Alone In The Woods, Max Zagor

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Encounter aims to take the viewer into the darkest parts of the mind through my own journey into the woods. With the images, my work attempts to capture a pure level of the fear that I felt as I ventured into the woods, alone, at night to experience the emotions I wanted to show. Similarly, Encounter deals with why we see what we see; as in, why do we think we see Bigfoot in the shadows? Where does that idea come from? Through my research, I work to prove that our culture has implanted the imagery and thoughts of monsters …

[Insert Body Here], Katie Yun

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

The personal is political. Using humor and my individual narrative, I illustrate the main three factors that drive my work and relate them to corresponding theoretical frameworks: 1) My OCD tendencies and labor as art concept 2) Assimilation and the appeal of the White Cube 3) Reclamation of identity and Abject art. Through textual and visual research, I provide scholarly backing and precedents set by other artists to situate these personal narratives as part of a larger structural system of oppression, while being transparent of my culpability and participation in these structures. I posit that my work provides a nuanced …

Light On, Baby. No Future, Shane Dollinger

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This project is a realistic depiction of the circularity of experience. As Images of ourselves and our experiences become increasingly inescapable, the repetitive and nonlinear nature of those experiences is amplified. This issue is explored in looking at contemporary artists/filmmakers whose handling of inundation in representation and narrative distinctly embraces multiplicity. Queering structures of representation, the work holds a mirror to the way that we experience living, encountering images, narrative structures and memories.

Open To The Public: The Political Zoo, Mary Brown

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Open to the Public: The Political Zoo is a two-part project that began as an experiment, a creative curiosity into the intersections of co-authorship, political censorship, and mail art. Spurred in a moment when the news media is being challenged by those in the highest offices, the analog nature of this project explores the potential of a world in which online self-expression is hindered. Mail art projects, while out of the box in this digital era, are situated in a history of 20th century artistic practices. Used as a tool for creative exploration and community in Western countries, in Eastern …

One Epic Φf Stardusts, Y∞N Irene Hong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A long time ago in a far away galaxy,

there was a star shining alone in the deep darkness.

The beautiful star aged and exploded into a supernova,

where her golden light scattered into the tiniest sparkles of dust,

pouring down to Earth.

Made of Stardust,

humans naturally have responded to the divine light that they carry inside their souls,

through diverse acts of enlightenment such as art, religion, and science.

.

.

.

As a Stardust, an artist, a Korean, and a woman,

I keep walking in between opposing forces and varying perspectives

until I transcend their boundaries and …

( )* *This Smells Familiar, Sachi Nagase

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Fragments from quotidian sensory experience conjure memories from personal history. Vague manifestations of feelings become interpretations of memories, which are investigated through immersive installation, sculpture, and video. Imagined scenarios are constructed to expose moments of cultural disconnect and reveal states of inbetweenness, which settle within territories amongst imagination and reality, adult and childhood, and loss and comfort. Within the works, sensory experiences including smell, sound and taste develop to relay meaning and affect. Haptic, olfactory, and auditory stimulation allow active participation, while subjectivity inherent in taste and smell generate space for new meaning. Color is used to immerse, to delineate …

Cat Metamorfosis: Becoming Animal And The Freedom Of Non-Identity, Hannah Becker

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A large number of modern and contemporary female artists have employed the state of becoming to either free themselves of or challenge the social norms that come with being a woman. Kara Walker frees the Mammy of her expectation by combining her with a sphinx in her monumental sugar sculpture, A Subtlety. The Guerilla Girls have an impenetrable and unidentifiable voice when they speak from behind gorilla masks. Lucy Gunning’s The Horse Impressionists depicts women mimicking the behavior of horses to lose their human consciousness, and more specifically, female identity. Looking beyond the art world and into recent consumerist …

"Collaborating With Chance", Alyse Gellis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Have you ever felt a desire to get lost on a journey much larger than yourself or experience the thrill of the unknown? Think about a time you intentionally swam further out in a lake or the sea than you have before, or drove down a road without knowing where it would take you, or wandered around a new city without a map. Think about how you made the decision to push those boundaries. Remember how taking that risk in pursuit of an unknown made you feel, because it is that thrill that drives my artistic practice. Through my thesis …

A Hazy Bliss, Anna Joo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: "I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table." And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids …

On Remembrance, Ashley Lee

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My works are inspired by autobiographical memories — especially those that are traumatic. However, the works rather discuss the nature of how memories are recalled, stored forgotten, remembered, manipulated, constructed, reconstructed, and destructed. Memory is a pseudo reality, that grounds on past events but is different from the objective truth. Memory is one’s own creation, which is formed by the body and mind through time, space, and experience. Then it is stored in the mind, within the infinite void of dimensional space. In my writing, I’ll explore John Sutton’s Philosophy and Memory Traces, Roland Barthe’s Camera Lucida, Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed …

Interspace Suit, Moriah Okun

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My thesis work investigates the transformative possibility of mediating the space between ourselves and others, the tension between solitude and loneliness, and the disconnects between mind and body, personal and shared experience, and artist and viewer. The basis of my process is stitching and coiling — a practical and symbolic act of joining together material that serves as structure and surface. I am inspired by work that explores this middle space, like that of Archigram, Lucy Orta, Lygia Clark, and Ernesto Neto. These artists first showed me what it was possible to create when the viewer’s body becomes the site …

Art And Science: Blurring The Poetic And The Analytical, Caitlin M. David

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Abstract: Despite a modern conception of art and science as being fundamentally opposed, both have at their core a desire to explain the inexplicable. Their investigations and the communication of the results of these investigations can be blurred at both poetic and analytical junctions. Vivified abstract thought, or the poetic, can be thought of as instigating the ubiquitous desire to explain the inexplicable. Fruitful analysis of resulting data and representation of that data must consider the idiom of both art and science if it is to successfully cross between them, and special emphasis must be placed on the diagram as …

The Void Between Us, Hannah D. Blumer

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My interactive thesis installation, The Void Between Us, addresses the topic of human connection in relationship to the body. The human body marks a physical barrier between one’s self and others. While we exist in the same physical sphere as one another, our minds are isolated in our own self-centered versions of reality. Our bodies allow us to perceive others and be perceived—including having verbal communications—and, therefore, could be seen as helpful or restrictive in the social world. However, our bodies also allow us to engage in physical interactions with others, such as sex, which is a means to …

Exercises On Overcoming Perfectionist Tendencies, Jake Yoo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my latest series, I investigate my neurotic perfectionist tendency through repetition of phrases that I understand to be true in my head, but have a problem with accepting it in my heart. This way, I am studying my personal biases and the way I perceive the world in order to break free from unwanted behaviors and process negative emotions. Louise Bourgeois is a historical precedence to my practice as whole, while the series functions similarly to Yayoi Kusama’s dot and net paintings—a psychological portrait achieved through continuous repetition of a few elements.

Artificiality And The New Image: The Image Body, Liza H. Butts

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This paper sets up a historical argument for how images exist in the world and how artists relate to these images. The questions of the paper are concerned with defining the “Contemporary Image” and looking at how the digitization of all the images in our world affect the art object and the experience of art in the physical world. The conclusion and answer to these questions is found in a resistance to images that oversaturate our culture. This resistance occurs by looking to the painted image to function as a body in the world; aware of its existence, responsive to …

Changing Human Relationships Through Interactive Art, Daniel Shieh

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In our current society, there is a constant endeavor to reconcile our differences while respecting our individuality. Since the 1990s, a large amount of artworks begin focusing on human relationships. In this essay, I discuss the question: how can interactive artworks create common ground between people while respecting their individual identity? Through creating a sequence of interactive artworks, I determine the three factors that are necessary for connecting people of different backgrounds—mutual vulnerability, anonymity, and the leveling of power dynamics. Mutual vulnerability entails an interaction where two people reveal themselves to each other, and connect through this reciprocal action. Anonymity …

Rewriting History: The Press As A Tool For Destruction And Preservation, Emily L. Mogavero

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This statement describes my two bodies of work, Aufheben and Artist-Hero/Squish, in which I use printmaking processes to rewrite history. In Artist-Hero/Squish I mimic canonical paintings of women by modernist male painters and run my quotations of these paintings through the press while the paint is still wet on the canvas. Through this process, I examine, confront, and change the male-dominated history of art. Aufheben currently includes one hundred drypoint prints that catalogue the personal history of my mark. This series represents a process of constant change, with individual prints suggesting stages of my process including moments of growth …

Abstraction As A Form Of Redaction, Alex P. Derosa

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Abstraction as a Form of Redaction acts as an explanation of the personal and conceptual basis of my three bodies of work titled the dimension of intimacy, notations of the mind, and medical signifiers. Examining contemporary art through the lens of the self, I have created work that is present in conversations about intimacy, abstraction, self-portraiture, and feminism. Though my work does not directly address contemporary feminism, I am using this work to reclaim my body, my mind, and my space as an act of agency. The work, when looked at as a compilation, functions as an autobiography. …