Fine Arts Commons^™

Textus Complexus, Vishakha Ruhela

Masters Theses

textus complexus investigates how language shapes thought by merging scientific rigour and poetic action to challenge reductive narratives. My inquiry stems from a fascination with complexity as an existential condition—one that resists homogenisation, preserves collective memory, and demands inclusive, multidimensional engagement. Hybridity, as a spectrum from complicated to complex, becomes a methodological tool to uncover latent connections that lead to cross-communication, and articulate transitional spaces through recursive processes. By systematising multiplicity via layering, modularisation, and indexing, my work foregrounds expression through form, where structural clarity emerges from cumulative gestures rather than simplification.

The projects in this thesis trace the roots …

No One Thing, Kate Brown

Masters Theses

Graphic design has mobility. It is oriented toward action, travel, and distribution.

My projects put me in touch with people and ideas, language, and visual form. They’re broad, conversational, and curatorial in spirit. They allow me to cut a path through the discipline of graphic design, and to branch opportunistically out to others, when I can—to art, architecture, fashion, writing. I expand my field of operations. Make it as big as you are. Make it 1:1. Take the part and run with it. Fold it up, send it away.

A Woman’S Worth: A Portrait Of Single, Unmarried Women In Fiction, Megan V. Jenkins

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the characterization of single women and the theme of singleness in fiction and explores how nineteenth-century British literature portrayed single women using the writers’ observations of societal standards and cultural shifts throughout the century. The artist statement delves into the inspiration and origins of the project, along with a personal journey to faith. The critical paper titled “A Portrait of Single Women in Nineteenth-Century British Literature” analyzes five British novels, Emma, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Middlemarch, and The Portrait of a Lady, that discuss single women or have a theme of singleness. The creative manuscript portion is the …

Designing For Neurodiversity: Creating Adhd-Friendly Digital Publications, Yenelys Acosta Baxter

Masters Theses

Current digital publications often fail to meet the needs of neurodiverse audiences, such as those with ADHD, which leads to low engagement and cognitive overload. This thesis explored how ADHD-friendly designs can be incorporated into current digital magazines to create accessible and engaging reading content for neurodiverse readers. Providing a guide can assist with creating more diverse content and allows designers to have a reference for future publications. The research applied also goes over the literature review, case studies, visual analysis, and surveys to help showcase the best results for designing for ADHD readers. Some of the case studies' main …

Update The Console: Educating The Next Generation About The Benefits/Problems Of Video Games, Nicholas A. Del Rio

Masters Theses

Video games have changed since the late 90s and early 2000s. Technology has advanced, graphics have gotten more detailed, stories and narratives have become more intricate, and gameplay has become more involved. Gaming nowadays is much more accessible, popular, well-known, and widespread compared to back then. It is important to not only know about the roots of video games, but also how it has changed over the years. With many new advancements comes many new benefits and problems. This research covers how video games affect the new generation of gamers, especially children, compared to the older generation of gamers, along …

Music Sight-Reading Systems In Secondary Choral Education, Savanna N. Hagerty

Masters Theses

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to demonstrate the effects of various music reading systems in the context of secondary choral education by exploring the incorporation of the chosen system, determining the benefits of student’s musical understanding and performance because of that system, and defining how various music reading systems compare to one another. The data will be drawn from the survey of middle and high school chorus educators in the 14th District of the Georgia Music Educators Association. The importance of this study is that it will present the impact associated with specific sight-reading methods as they …

Sixth Grade Music Composition Unit: A Second Semester Curriculum For Georgia’S Middle School Choral Students, Michaelyn Cortez Findley

Masters Theses

This research presents a music composition curriculum unit designed for middle-school choral students in Georgia, aligned with the state's Standards of Excellence in Music. The unit emphasizes composing, revising, and integrating technology, with a focus on a spiral curriculum that builds upon students' prior knowledge. Key elements include solfege, Takadimi rhythms, call-and-response melodies, and folk songs, providing a comprehensive framework for learning. MuseScore, a music notation software, is used as the primary tool for students to develop and notate their compositions progressively.

The research identifies a gap in resources for teaching composition to choral students with existing musical knowledge and …

Umbrella And Jellyfish, Yanran Bi

Masters Theses

Rainy season arrives as soon as the summer begins in Shanghai. For some reason, I rarely remember to bring an umbrella with me. I have a lot of umbrellas, most of them are transparent ones bought at subway stations. When it suddenly starts pouring rain, umbrella vendors in Shanghai gather at each crowded exit of the subway sta- tions to sell umbrellas to people like me. The cheapest umbrellas they have are always the transparent ones. The whole city is turned upside down by the rain with its reflections on every street. Then a transparent umbrella opens up, then another, …

Rejected Manuscripts, Yangqi Deng

Masters Theses

Rejected Manuscripts is a series of visual metaphors reconstructed from hyperlink research. It explores the representation, perception, and processing of information as fact across three projects, highlighting the pervasive influence of fiction throughout each stage. It investigates forms of fact versus fiction to bring awareness to multi-perspective and from that explores the intricate interplay between reality and imagination.

This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 falls into an abyss of fictional imagery intertwined with factual information. From there, the second chapter explores how we observe the world and how technology affects our vision. Chapter 3 discusses how this information …

America, Dreaming., Sarah Meftah

Masters Theses

There is a version

of America

that exists

only in dreams,

a kind of folklore,

shrouded in images,

technicolor interiors,

wrapped in plastic,

ghosts of recent past

to haunt and guide;

a constant reminder.

Wishful thinking

a constructed imaginary,

one I can hold in my hand.

Popular culture and spectacle, America and the domestic ideal, capitalism and the collective unconscious of a national identity. As an artist, I am interested in the myriad images that manifest for a viewer when they think of the spectacle of American pop culture, its domestic archetypes, and the material worship it revolves around. My …

An Abundance Of Caution, Gonçalo Preto Jorge

Masters Theses

Abstract

An Abundance of Caution

3 puffs and breathing stabilizes...

Must have been the pollen last night.

Quiça

An eerie sense of emptiness takes over

And incidentally

The inability to express and verbalize any articulated thought.

Quiça

I seek sensations...experiences. To indulge.

The fascination with dreamscapes hails from the daunting lack of them.

Poooooxa

I listen, imagine, and process scenarios around me

In a precarious attempt to interpret and translate instances into something meaningful.

Oxalá, Matéria pictórica.

Oxalá.

I see my shadow but only an elusive silhouette

I observe the way it follows the wall and fades into the sidewalk, …

The Day The Door Flew Open, Clara Delgado

Masters Theses

A journey is a chance to better oneself, to go and come back anew. This kind of pilgrimage does not only happen in the spectacular realm of far-off travels. Often it happens where the soles of one’s feet comprehend the curvature of the land. Then, without forewarning, time opens a sliding door that appears on the recognized ground. Stepping in, the world is realized in a new way.

The writings that strike my tongue with ravishing bittersweet flavors are fictional narratives, with voyages that sail through day and night, disguised as lovely prose while critically probing the world. This written …

A Delicate Balance, Lily Taylor

Masters Theses

There's a silver key from Lowe’s for the front door and a smaller unmarked gold key for the back door. There are two identical RISD keys–studio and storage closet. There’s the key to my mom’s apartment and another to the gallery where I used to work on Saturdays. There’s the key to the bike lock that I’ve kept on the ring even though my bike was stolen. I tried splitting up all the keys and creating two different sets–daily keys and occasional keys–but I never had the occasional keys when I needed them.

I have been making paintings of the …

Call And Response : Experiments In Storytelling, Deanne Fernandes

Masters Theses

Being part of RISD's inaugural Masters of Illustration cohort has been an immense honor. This journey has been nothing short of transformative and healing, as it has allowed me to unearth layers of self-discovery through my creative practice.

In my thesis, I introduce a fresh research methodology rooted in the principles of call and response, with adaptability, creativity, and storytelling as its foundational pillars. Through the lenses of visual storytelling, experimental animation, graphic journalism, and fictional world-building, I demonstrate how these techniques can effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice. This dynamic approach fosters meaningful connections among diverse perspectives …

Urban Looms, Recoloring City, Ella Son

Masters Theses

The metropolis has been a dominant and defining aspect of my life. Acutely aware of visual illusions created by the choreographed and unchoreographed movements of people in the streets and the distortions of light and shadow on the glass facades of skyscrapers, I reinterpret the patterns and colors that are in constant interplay into a collection of architectural textiles.

With an emphasis on optical layering, these immersive installations recreate the quality of being spellbound in the city. Scaled to emphasize verticality and activated through transparent overlays and dense color interplay, a rich visual field is activated. In their application, the …

Unruly And Unresolved: A Shared, Precarious Survival, Sara Inacio

Masters Theses

I'm just a little rat trying to survive,

To exist and not be perceived.

Building a home,

In a place unnatural to me.

Destroyed and rebuilt again,

I've learned to live in the toxic world you've created.

In a world that is not made for my belonging, I’ve had to find my way, to exist and build with what’s within reach. Such a constant state of construction feels oddly familiar and comfortable to me, home is always in the process of becoming. As I build, I think about how the home building process always takes up the space of others, …

The First Gate, Ji Zou

Masters Theses

Upon months of indecision on how to verbally communicate my thesis, I decided on the following format for my written thesis at this point in my practice. I consider this to reflect fragments of a larger practice which draws upon the influences on a subjective subconscious. My communication style has always been very transparent, straight to the point, and efficient, while the concepts I’m exploring often occupy a space that can’t be fully located through a short series of references and research. That space is constantly moving, expanding, changing, and ebbs and flows between opacities even to myself. I want …

Intangible Shells, Elena Bulet

Masters Theses

The following essay mimics the constant disruption of a fragmented memory. It reflects on intergenerational gendered family dynamics since the civil war and dictatorship-era Spain and how memory articulates narratives of belonging within the matrilineal lineage. A process of excavation departs from personal memories, familial archives, contemporary interviews, theoretical readings, photographic reenactments, and observations of traces in the landscape of Almayate’s town. The author attempts to retrace her roots, as well as her family history, acknowledging the impossibility of making personal histories tangible.

Sircling The Cquare, Latika Balachander

Masters Theses

As we journey into an increasingly virtual and intangible reality, is there an opportunity for our tactile fabrics to journey with, and even reorient us? Can they exist in our future worlds to remind us of the value of current traditional, low-tech practices that we may soon forget?

Referencing the fundamental fabric languages of knitted and woven structures, this collection of garments, that I term “Earthsuits,” embody the stages of metamorphosis as we adjust to a new phase of our perceptive reality. With an emphasis on circling, we loop through virtual squares like screens and pixels, to the circles of …

A Thesis, Or Digressions On Sculptural Practice: In Which, Concepts & Influences Thereof Are Explained, Set Forth, Catalogued, Or Divulged By Way Of Commentaries To A Poem, First Conceived By The Artist, Fed Through Chatg.P.T., And Re-Edited By The Artist, To Which Are Added, Annotated References, Impressions And Ruminations Thereof, Also Including Private Thoughts & Personal Accounts Of The Artist, Jaimie An

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exercise in, perhaps a futile, attempt to trace just some of the ideas, stories, and musings I might meander through in my process. It’s not quite a map, nor is it a neat catalogue; it is a haphazard collection of tickets and receipts from a travel abroad, carelessly tossed in a carry-on, only to be stashed upon returning home. These ideas are derived from much greater thinkers and authors than myself; I am a mere collector or a translator, if that, and not a very good one, for much is lost. I do not claim comprehensive …

Winter Solstice, Jingwen Cao

Masters Theses

For a long time, I have been thinking about what contemporary photography is, what its position is, and what the relationship is between artists and audiences. At the same time, I was developing my concepts and photographic directions and trying to make my work and my perspective on photography relevant. Winter Solstice includes a series of essays that locate my thinking and my work. Its title references the longest night of the year.

The position of photography has changed significantly over the past few decades. The way people read photos is also changing. Perhaps because of reverence for art and …

I Am Becoming., Dai Asano

Masters Theses

This is a collection of essays documenting my grappling with the idea that time is always in motion. When you say now, it is not now anymore, but we are still in now, a new now. How can I stay in the now without being swept away by the current of time? Describing a film by Ozu Yasujiro, Deleuze writes, “The vase in Late Spring is interposed between the daughter’s half smile and the beginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form of what changes does not itself change does not pass on. This is time, …

From Here To The Ground, Courtney Mccracken

Masters Theses

Art, for me, is a thinking process. It is also a process of connection to body and place. It directs my fractured attention toward the things I care about. As I labor through process, I am gifted with a moment of attentiveness. In a time where everything feels urgent, and our perspective can be warped by the endless flood of information, making art is a chance to stop, to think, and to feel.

It is a space for holding, and a space for being held.

Recently, I have been working primarily in animation and sound design, experimenting widely across media …

Embodied Abstractions: Identity And Representation In The Digital Era, Srikar Hari

Masters Theses

The digital image is a copy in motion. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, squeezed through

digital connections, resized, uploaded, downloaded, reformatted

and re-edited.

- Adapted from “In defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steryel

With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable

representation of the world, but a programmable database that

is updated in real time. It is not only part of a program, but it

contains its own operating code: the image is a program in itself.

Consequently, the image’s rhetoric has taken on …

Good Taste No Waste: A Solution For Managing Food Waste In Newly Independent Young Adults, David Eppinger

Masters Theses

Consumers are the biggest contributors to food waste in the United States and in other developed countries, though most of them don’t realize it. American young adults living independently for the first time lack education on responsible food management in the areas of planning, preparation, and preservation. This lack of skills results in excessive waste of food, money, and energy, and leads to significant damage to the economy and the environment. Ample research exists identifying this issue and the changes that need to be made, yet effective visual solutions have not yet followed. Through a comprehensive topical survey, along with …

God's Endangered Animals: Awakening Conservation For Future Generations, Stefan R. Sanford

Masters Theses

Poaching and illegal hunting have brought several endangered species to the brink of extinction. The elephant population in Africa has been depleted from millions to less than 500,000 known to live in the wild. Ocean species are seeing grave losses with whales having been hunted for so many years, and their numbers not returning to the levels they once were. The purpose of this thesis is to create a body of work through research and creativity which will demonstrate how the protection of these animals is essential to the earth that God created. All the animals God created were of …

You Are Here: Experiencing Place Through Poetry, Janet Reeves

Masters Theses

This thesis contains a collection of poems about Whidbey Island, its plants, wildlife, landscape, character, historical and community events, legends, and landmarks. I have written these out of curiosity about my new location as I begin to claim this place as my home. Imagery will help readers understand the place. Yet some aspects of the place may also, sometimes, function as analogies to help readers understand something else. I have used my knowledge of Whidbey Island in a way that I hope will help readers grasp more than what people can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste in this place. …

Mr. Wicker: A Horror Novel, David Viergutz

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes writing in the horror genre that uses characterization and symbolism as literary elements to explore the depiction of good versus evil. The author’s creative writing includes instances of characterization and symbolism and identifies the use of those elements in acclaimed horror novels.

Music Literacy And Worship Theology For Volunteer Choir And Worship Teams, Timothy Ray Marsden

Masters Theses

When building a worship team and a worship-leading choir, worship pastors seek gifted volunteers within their congregations to add to the numbers of their groups. Assessing team members' music literacy and theology of worship often comes later in the process, if at all. This project aims to determine the essentials of music literacy for a volunteer choir or worship team member. It will create a curriculum for developing those skills further through weekly rehearsals. The project will also seek to define a theology of worship for the First United Methodist Church of Red Oak, Iowa, and a plan to study …

Fine Arts And Missions: A Pragmatic Application And Implications, Monica L. Parson

Masters Theses

Missionaries must raise finances and general awareness of their mission work within the evangelical community. In their attempt to do this, missionaries rarely collaborate with fine artists in their efforts to inform the pastorate and congregants of their missions’ objectives and needs. In this study, a thematic review of relevant literature is combined with an Intrinsic Case Study of several artists, including the Erin— DVD, made by Daniel E. Greene N.A. during his lifetime. Daniel E. Greene, N.A., was one of the world’s foremost painters. An analysis of Mr. Greene’s applicable methodologies for oil painting was investigated. His methodology was …