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Full-Text Articles in Fine Arts

Built To Play, Forrest Sincoff Gard Jan 2014

Built To Play, Forrest Sincoff Gard

LSU Master's Theses

Built to Play is an interactive art exhibition featuring four participatory installations. Each installation transforms non-playful objects and activities into handmade porcelain replicas used for exciting gallery made games. Focusing on the carry over from child’s play to adult play the exhibition emphasizes the importance of play in our adult lives. As gallery visitors risk breaking handmade ceramic objects for a moment of fun and a chance to win art as a prize, their interaction completes the exhibition.


Wonderland, Jeremy Joseph Grassman Jan 2014

Wonderland, Jeremy Joseph Grassman

LSU Master's Theses

Wonderland is a film about a fictitious, alternate dark society, free of original thought and action. The people toil day to day in a mechanized fashion. All characters are predictable and unquestioning except for our protagonist. He seems to think something is not quite right, and possibly he discovers it too late. Wonderland is a world in which the people work, sleep and repeat this procedure daily with no end until retirement. The story takes place on the last day before our hero’s retirement. What is the next adventure to come? It must be better than the past comprised of …


A Storied Surface, Courtney Wilburn Marse Jan 2014

A Storied Surface, Courtney Wilburn Marse

LSU Master's Theses

A Storied Surface is an exploration of narrative based graphic design engineered for textile surfaces. Beginning with an experiment involving the characters of the novel Matilda, I developed a design system. My process involves creating narratives and illustrating the characters. Then the illustration is abstracted. The abstraction is used to create prints. Finally, all of the elements including the original illustration, abstraction, and print are used to create engineered designs for three-dimensional surfaces. Advances in digital textile printing and the increasing implementation of graphic textiles in the fashion industry led me to experiment with applying my own design to textiles …


A Captive Audience, Holley Shinn Jan 2014

A Captive Audience, Holley Shinn

LSU Master's Theses

A Captive Audience is a permanent onsite installation of cage furniture and a wildlife garden at Louisiana State University’s Raptor Rehabilitation Center. Both the furniture and the garden are intended to enrich the lives of permanently disabled raptors who live in captivity at the center.


Memory, Memorial, James Kimura-Green Jan 2014

Memory, Memorial, James Kimura-Green

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis exhibition investigates concepts of memory and memorial. These are fueled by feelings of yearning, longing, and nostalgia. We allow memories to linger. I believe we try to strengthen these memories, encase them and tuck them away deep in our minds. These memories create in our psyche psychological memorials. Like physical memorials, our memories too deteriorate and crumble over time. We fill in the gaps to the point where it is unknown just how true these memories are. At times I think that mine are now idealized and idyllic then they really were. The paintings in my exhibit are …


Urban Monuments, David V. Contreras Jan 2014

Urban Monuments, David V. Contreras

LSU Master's Theses

Surviving in poverty in an urban environment is hard work. Fear of not having basic needs creates desperation, and not being able to improve upon these conditions can test ones patience and faith in others. The simple routine of daily life can be monumental. Small achievements can be huge moments for some and irrelevant to others. One learns to appreciate and hate what one has. Urban Monuments comes from a struggle to understand what painting is to me and the relationship it has with this idea. Working hard to better ones self or ones situation is a noble cause but …


Drugged Paranoia And Warlust, Nathan Pietrykowski Jan 2014

Drugged Paranoia And Warlust, Nathan Pietrykowski

LSU Master's Theses

Drugged Paranoia and Warlust are stories of human depravity and violence that happened on an abandoned U.S. military base in the rural world of Indiana. These tales are told through a series of prints, drawings, animation and a comic. Scenes of bombings, mass graves, and drug overdoses are presented as humorous cartoons in playful colors to subvert the viewer into exploring imagery that discusses serious and somewhat bleak issues. The work in this exhibition is both satire of absurd events and trying to find meaning amongst madness.


Graviora Manent: Heavier Things Remain, Andrea Laborde Barbier Jan 2014

Graviora Manent: Heavier Things Remain, Andrea Laborde Barbier

LSU Master's Theses

The photographic collection Graviora Manent addresses the complexities and deciphering of human relationships, intensified through the decisive acts of obscuring or revealing formal information. The pictures are made using an alternative French photographic method called mordançage, which physically alters the surface of the gelatin silver print using a combination of chemistry and water. The images frequently include recurring elements of my own dreams, as well as figures set in recognizably interior or exterior environments. Recurring themes in the series include what is public vs. what is private, voyeurism, familiarity, and the unknown.


A Meal Denied, Sarah Kolac Jan 2014

A Meal Denied, Sarah Kolac

LSU Master's Theses

The photographs in the series A Meal Denied offer a unique portrait into the lives of individuals currently serving as Texas Death Row inmates. In 2011, due to an extravagant meal request by an inmate, Senator John Whitmire sought to put an end to the last meal requests in Texas. Whitmire stated, "It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege." However, I disagree with Whitmire; every inmate on Death Row should not be denied one of the only choices they will perhaps ever have during their incarceration in prison due to one particular inmates' …


Playschool, James S. Nord Jan 2014

Playschool, James S. Nord

LSU Master's Theses

Playschool is heavily influenced by my tactile way of learning. Each sculpture is a visual way of communicating my story. Traditionally, words are the primary tools used in learning and communication. However, from a very early age I discovered that my auditory processing disability and dyslexia made expressing ideas through words and the written language very difficult. It was a challenge for me to understand how words fit together to make compete sentences, and I struggled throughout my education to find a successful means of communicating my thoughts and ideas about the world around me. What came naturally to me …


Time Frame, A K M Jabed Rashel Jan 2014

Time Frame, A K M Jabed Rashel

LSU Master's Theses

I am interested in painting figures from direct observation as well as from photographs and memory in an invented theatrical interior space. My models act in an artificial stage to create the drama of a narrative. My figurative paintings present a rolling panoramic space that is manipulated over time. In addition, as a foreign student I had access to many sights in the new world once I came to the United States for the very first time. The expansiveness of the capital culture helped to develop the depth of my narratives in my art work.


Less Class, More Sass!, Amanda Lee James Jan 2014

Less Class, More Sass!, Amanda Lee James

LSU Master's Theses

Less Class, More Sass! is a visual soundtrack to the crass jokes, hairy faces and smelly wardrobes of my disorderly, and politically incorrect friends. These young men and women have mutated into a ragged crew of personified sasquatches to tell a collection of stories about coming of age in the American punk and metal music subcultures.

In this series of prints the characters grow from aimlessly rebellious youths into hopeless but happy young adults, ashamed of their desires for a nice neighborhood and a steady job. While thrashing through a sea of self-destructive tendencies, each character slowly finds their inner …


The Art Of The Circle, Yvette Creel Jan 2014

The Art Of The Circle, Yvette Creel

LSU Master's Theses

The circle is a primary shape, a closed curve that divides a plane into two regions: an interior and an exterior. This exploration has allowed me to place what I like inside the circle and then use that piece to complete a composition. In graphic design, the circle is not only a ring, a disc or a sphere; it is also the fifteenth letter of the Roman alphabet. ‘O’ is not only a letter, but a vowel that is the same shape in upper and lower case. It can also be a number. Beyond its ability to participate in statistics …


Identifying Ways Of Effective Communication Focused On Public Campaign Design, Ki Ho Park Jan 2014

Identifying Ways Of Effective Communication Focused On Public Campaign Design, Ki Ho Park

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to identify the most effective way of communication in cause-related campaign design. The fundraising campaign selected for this study focused on children’s leukemia, “Draw a Message of Hope.” The five types of public campaign design were developed utilizing different elements and techniques of visual communication: (1) image plus text, (2) infographics, (3) motion graphics, (4) typography, and (5) description only. Each type of public campaign design was assessed in terms of (1) the extent to which audiences understand about the campaign and (2) the extent to which the materials encouraged the audience to participate …


Danger Shelter Opportunity: The Coastal Fortifications Of Nineteenth Century Louisiana, James F. Osborne, Iv Jan 2014

Danger Shelter Opportunity: The Coastal Fortifications Of Nineteenth Century Louisiana, James F. Osborne, Iv

LSU Master's Theses

This document seeks to establish a contemporary record of the nineteenth-century masonry fortifications of the Third System whose continued existence in Southeastern Louisiana is in peril. Designed and implemented in the years following the invasion of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812 by Napoleon Bonaparte’s chief engineer, Louisiana’s coastal forts represent the pinnacle of European, pre-modern-warfare military architecture. With their obsolescence secured by advances in technology in the mid to late nineteenth century, each was abandoned or decommissioned following the American Civil War. These historic constructed spaces that are each uniquely adapted to the land they occupy have never …


Stillnoticing, Roberta Ann Massuch Jan 2013

Stillnoticing, Roberta Ann Massuch

LSU Master's Theses

The installation stillNoticing contains ceramic still lifes and drawings that illustrate and bring permanence to ephemeral and fleeting moments. The work is an attempt to share my experience of being captivated by the phenomenon of light affecting the perception of objects and spaces. These moments are often found in familiar spaces, with familiar objects. Each work addresses a particular type of looking: one in which the act of noticing an object transforming from one moment to the next becomes a silent, almost meditative experience.


Suspensory Filaments, Santiago Pineda Jan 2013

Suspensory Filaments, Santiago Pineda

LSU Master's Theses

The interrelationships between vision, desire, and language are the elements that drive my artistic practice. “What is seeing?” “How is seeing related to desire?” These questions are at the base of my interests. I recognize optics as a subset of perception, yet I strive to reform them into interchangeable components. My interest in optics is based on doubt. I’m not interested in optic’s correctness, clinical orientation, or current sophistication, but rather in undermining its limitations. Our culture still struggles to absorb the notion of the sentient being, one example is our acuity of vision being standardized to 20/20. Within my …


Without Words : An Exhibition Of Functional Objects, Paul William Callahan Jan 2013

Without Words : An Exhibition Of Functional Objects, Paul William Callahan

LSU Master's Theses

At the core of my artwork lie two essential goals, to make objects that convey my understanding of beauty, and while doing this, to preserve the objects functional qualities. The materials that I select to build with, primarily wood and porcelain, are renown for their durability and longevity, resulting in objects that become a permanent fixture in the life of the user. Through utility, the things that I create infiltrate the lives of those around me and provide an entry point for a conversation between myself and the user via the object. Newly developed technological methods are an integral component …


Your Loss, Lauren Jean Hegge Jan 2013

Your Loss, Lauren Jean Hegge

LSU Master's Theses

Your Loss is an exhibition of drawings, photographs, intaglio prints, found objects and prose. Drawn from personal and anonymous archives, the works in the exhibition acknowledge various forms of breakdown, exploring individual reactions and attempts to rebuild from the fragments of loss. Inherent in the work are discussions of remembering and forgetting, finding and losing, building and destroying, growth and decay. This work is both recognition of the desire to hold on too tightly and an effort to learn to let go.


Domestic/Terror, Charles Russell Durio Jan 2013

Domestic/Terror, Charles Russell Durio

LSU Master's Theses

The focus of my studio work is an exploration of my interest in the physical and mental dynamics that take place within the confines of my home versus the world outside. The home, spatial arrangements (architecture, passageways), maritime disasters, and the ambiguity of abstract expressionism all have an identifiable impact on my images. Abstraction allows me to maintain a visual ambiguity that often reflects the ambiguity of the real-life situations on which they are based. My drawings are rooted in remembrances of events and interior architecture culled from childhood memories. It also explores the juxtaposition of domesticity and fear, both …


I Died I Lived : Shaping An Ecological Balance, Shelby Prindaville Jan 2013

I Died I Lived : Shaping An Ecological Balance, Shelby Prindaville

LSU Master's Theses

I Died I Lived: Shaping an Ecological Balance is a body of work about our tenuous ecological situation and the power humanity has to preserve or destroy it. Through a broad range of two- and three-dimensional media, my installation transforms the gallery into an environment that demonstrates the enrichment nature delivers and the compensatory responsibility we have to conserve that experience.


Placed Residue, Thomas Lapann Jan 2013

Placed Residue, Thomas Lapann

LSU Master's Theses

“Placed Residue” is a series of eight works that highlight nature and its transformative quality. The video, photos, and sculptural objects, contained in the show, call attention to different materials and how they undergo growth and decay. Using various resources ranging from Kinect to video projection I incorporate the unnatural in order to depict a natural narrative involving the viewer. In order to emulate these natural processes, a cause and effect system had been developed where nature completes the final object. These systems activate the material providing for behaviors to be visible through their tactile qualities and allowing for their …


Temporal Cycles, Sarah Anne Shearer Jan 2013

Temporal Cycles, Sarah Anne Shearer

LSU Master's Theses

Temporal Cycles explores how systems and changes in the human body parallel those in nature. The investigation takes the form of a print installation, which captures the essence of bodily processes. The serial nature of printmaking and the organic world plays an important role as biomorphic forms and hourglass shapes are repeated in numerous renditions that breathe, pulse, expand, wither, ovulate, and transform. Labyrinths of pattern, texture, and color connect the symbolic forms as the installation tracks the evolution of processes in the body, and the forms reveal themselves through their pictorial associations.


Now And Then, Scottt Arthur Jan 2013

Now And Then, Scottt Arthur

LSU Master's Theses

I am interested in painting that begins in observation and manifests itself as a meeting ground of the subject and myself. My paintings explore color and spatial relationships as well as a surface that is manipulated over time. I often paint from nature on site as well as from small sketches and drawings that are later brought back to the studio and painted on a larger scale.


Conditions Of My Release, Michael Alford Jan 2013

Conditions Of My Release, Michael Alford

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT From the dawn of human history, technology has driven and shaped our evolution as a species. It has vastly accelerated our ability to communicate, create, conquer and do more with less time, space and energy. Throughout the history of Art, technology has forged new methods, movements and Masters. “Conditions Of My Release” is a series of mixed media works that utilizes a variety of common and cutting edge technologies as a way to explore the relevance of “Time & Space” as an influential medium in artistic production. Have they been masked or obscured by the technology used to create …


The Collaged Practice : (Un)Familiar, Raina Beth Wirta Jan 2013

The Collaged Practice : (Un)Familiar, Raina Beth Wirta

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis exhibition is an installation of works including sculpture, video, paintings, a hand made book, sound, and drawings that emanated from a series of two-dimensional collages: self-contained forms that evoke the surreal, (un)familiar, and/or grotesque. Infused with a sort of mysterious being-hood and intended to inspire curiosity (at the least), they are unfamiliar in relation to a particular biological thing, but (mostly) recognizable in the autonomous bits and pieces. I seek to question where our physicality ends and the next form of biological life begins, and our responses to that physicality. With childlike inquisitiveness and wonder, and a healthy …


Color Journal, Meichi Lee Jan 2013

Color Journal, Meichi Lee

LSU Master's Theses

Color Journal consists of a collection of works, which depict landscapes and cityscapes with an underlining consciousness of the interrelationship between humans and their environment. Over the ages, the relationship changes through the history of human civilization. In the current age, nature seems to suffer a losing battle. Therefore, there is a personal nostalgic sentiment to emphasize the beauty of our natural environment and the importance of the balance of the relationship. The image of houses is chosen to represent human activities because of the inherent symbols embedded in houses. All the paintings in the collection rely heavily on memory …


Interiors Imagined And Remembered, Andrew Brown Jan 2013

Interiors Imagined And Remembered, Andrew Brown

LSU Master's Theses

My paintings are about the concept of home and how this notion constantly evolves with each successive experience, changing how I perceive and experience interior spaces. The imagery in my work is limited to common forms such as cardboard boxes and shelving, as these are elements that are easily related to, and that speak to everyday experiences. Color, space and form are manipulated to work within and at times subvert the implied narrative of each painting. Although memory remains an active part of my process, imagination and the exploration of paint’s physical and expressive possibilities have risen to the fore. …


Intermix: Traditional Pre-Columbian Art Meets Contemporary Design, Luisa Fernanda Restrepo Jan 2013

Intermix: Traditional Pre-Columbian Art Meets Contemporary Design, Luisa Fernanda Restrepo

LSU Master's Theses

Cultural identity is something that impacts the individual, shaping and influencing them, during their lifetime journey. Each person chooses to embrace that identity differently. For my thesis, I investigated pre-Columbian culture and it’s rich history, specifically source visuals of faces as symbolic forms integrated into my visual study. Exploring: various media, elements that are expressive of national identity, image-making techniques, and my graphic design knowledge as vehicles in my work to uncover a different point of view of my own cultural heritage. The process of finding new graphic representations of traditional pre-Columbian faces, while deconstructing and reconstructing their structure and …


North To South, Mercedes Jelinek Jan 2012

North To South, Mercedes Jelinek

LSU Master's Theses

North to South is a series of photographs that reflect ideas of home and community. The images and video components depict portraits of my neighbors taken over the last two years. The individuals I photographed were crucial to my process, for with their help and a simple homemade photo booth, I found a “home” here in the south.