Fine Arts Commons^™

I Reach Toward The Ground I Reach Toward Space, Kristen A. Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

Imagine one million and six hundred thousand years ago — a prehistoric character points. There in the moistened soil, the hominid Homo habilis draws a line, inscribing with her finger the first mark. At the core of my work is a meditation on this very scene as the otherwise unknowable origins of image making. And at the center of this discovery is a prehistoric woman — a previously invisible character within human evolution. My work aims to insert these characters into the origins of tool use, image making, and other supposed markers of humanness while also examining historical representations of …

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove, Devin Kylie Harclerode

Theses and Dissertations

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove is an engagement in magical thinking that proposes a displacement of swamp methodologies into the virtual realm, existing during the fourth wave. In doing so the cyborg and goddess are united in a re-routing of essentialism and the neo-liberal domination of technology. The metaphorical swamp is the possibility of a mushy danger zone that harnesses the absorption of an unwanted space: a disintegration of the binary and the soft-coded awareness of the body as a process, not a site.

"Fuck Off, Get Free, Love And Love's The Only Thing", David S. Moré

Theses and Dissertations

A child, angry at concrete and strip malls, enjoying coffee from too many styrofoam cups.

Choreographic Space, Kelsey Sheaffer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, Choreographic Space, and accompanying exhibit is an arrangement of contemporary work being done in the cross-over between movement, drawing, sound and architecture. The thesis develops a lineage of choreographic thinking through a fissure in the classification of a dance as necessarily the body in motion. Through the link of the “choreographic object,” Choreographic Space asks how an interdisciplinary exploration of the principles of movement can reveal novel ways to think about the body in space.

The Curiosity Of Con, Petrified Breath, And An Accident Known As Blue., Steven Randall

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis installation emerged from an interest in visualizing breath. The resulting work came to exist at the intersection between art, biology, and performance.

The unicorn tapestries were used as a generative point of departure to explore the preservation and transformation of images through time, by time, and with time. Reproductions of the six tapestries were each etched into paper and then submerged into solutions of Phenol Red dye, Ferric Ferrocyanide (also known as Prussian Blue), and various forms of sodium chloride. Exhaled breath was used to encrust these images of the tapestries into physical objects which gradually crystallized and …

Fundamental Units, Ryan M. Flores

Theses and Dissertations

Surface, Skin, Facade, Countenance, Resistance, Chinchorro Mummies,Touch, Mark Making, Residue, Intuition, Repression, Indigestion, Disassemble, Blighted,Components, Body as Containers, Levels of Hierarchy, Absorption, Plastination, Modernism and Containment, Vanitas, Disembodied, Embodiment, Fragmentation, Arches, Gothic, Typology, Stacking of Cultures, Slippage.

Truth And Doubt In Representation, Mathew Gasparek

Theses and Dissertations

My work deals with the connection between the act of representation and conceptions of truth in the contemporary image-mediated social environment. This thesis details elements of my paintings in exchange with methods and ideas from artists and writers in order to position my aesthetic and conceptual sensibilities within a historical and contemporary framework.

Antithetical Commentaries On X, Y And The Disruption Of Being, Eva Rocha

Theses and Dissertations

Through discursive essays and poetic narrative, Antithetical Commentaries on X, Y and the Disruption of Being explores the tenuous relationship between modes of measurement and the struggle for human relevance in the post-contemporary digital age. In the introductory essay, “Not the Feather, but the Bird”, I give an overview of the inherent problems of object-oriented ontology, and how it relates to aesthetics and social issues of our times. In the Developmental Overview, I detail how I developed my installation approach and techniques, particularly with regard to the three-way dynamic of the artist:work:viewer relationship and how it can encourage …

Memory Of A Landscape, Elizabeth Halliday

Theses and Dissertations

Artist Statement

Creativity is one of my strongest talents. As a visual person, I understand and interpret the world through observation and analysis. Nature intrigues me. I find it awe inspiring how the natural environment can change so dramatically day-to-day. As a result, I record my experiences and memories of landscapes and seascapes.

My areas of interest are painting and computers in the arts. I am an abstract painter and my media consists of acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, and digital imagery. I create low relief and rough textures with added materials, and develop layers of paint with a palette knife. …

Strata, Lauren Hale

Theses and Dissertations

In my mixed media pieces and sculptural books, I explore the significance of place. Place is not just a geographical location; it is a layered history that tells a story. My experiences in a specific environment and how I relate to it, study it, remember it, or imagine it drive me to create pieces. While the choices I make are influenced by my own experiences, I want to evoke feelings of familiarity, intrigue, and a sense of nostalgia.

In my process, I intuitively layer paint, printed materials, and mixed media to make a foundation for exploration. I continue to …

Nostalgia And Iphone Camera Apps: An Ethnographic Visual Approach To Iphoneography, Maria L. De Panbehchi

Theses and Dissertations

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone and camera on social media. iPhoneography, the photography taken or edited with the iPhone, has set the trend of nostalgic photography on social media during the 2010s; thus, the iPhone, a high-tech camera, produces low-tech-looking images. This dissertation attempts to find out why iPhone photographers (iPhoneographers) take, edit, and share images that mimic photographs taken with analog photographic equipment. I argue that nostalgia allows iPhoneographers to use the iPhone as a creative tool and to belong to a community. Based on the arguments of Vilém Flusser—who suggested that photographers are more interested in …

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.

Performing Conquest And Resistance In The Streets Of Eighteenth Century Potosí: Identity And Artifice In The Cityscapes Of Gaspar Miguel De Berrío And Melchor Pérez De Holguín, Agnieszka A. Ficek

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the ways in which Potosí's two most influential colonial artists represented the urban dynamics of race, class and labor in their depictions of the Andean 'City of Silver' during the eighteenth century, when silver production, profits and population were dramatically declining.

Deposition, Conjecture, And The Word Of Nod, Victor Vaughn

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis involved mixed medium drawings based on written colonial papers regarding the beginning of a border war between the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. To fill in the fragmented historical information, the project incorporated period artifacts as merged and manipulated by contemporary technology and the internet’s ethos.

Exploring Lds Missionary Blogs: How Culture Manifests In Self-Narratives Of Foreign Missionaries, Karina Marie Gathu

Theses and Dissertations

Missionaries serving in foreign countries provide a unique perspective on culture that they chronicle on public blogs. A content analysis of these blogs showed that missionaries use their own cultural and religious frame to make observations, some good and some bad, about cultural habits and beliefs foreign to their own. Through the medium of blogging, we see how missionaries use self-narratives to understand and make sense out of differences in culture and beliefs that ultimately impact how they identify themselves.

With A Twist, Heather Marie Beckwith

Theses and Dissertations

My functional ceramic art takes into account the user, its intended function, and the spaces in which it should be used. The utilitarian object is important to our daily ritual. If successfully designed it can enhance the user’s experience. My exploration in sculptural clay work has carried over into the functional pieces I created. Careful attention is paid when designing the form, leaving a soft blank canvas for inlayed line work and deeply carved surfaces that will mesh well with the spontaneity of the firing process. I draw inspiration from the people and places that have graced my life. By …

Intermediate Realities, Brady Forrester

Theses and Dissertations

I experiment with constructions of light, glass, paint, and everyday materials to create photographs which are intended to stir within the viewer a meditative uncertainty. When these translucent collages are back-lit and photographed, the resulting images appear spatially ambiguous, and resemble superimposed realities. The images in this series were inspired by ideas concerning the elusive and vulnerable nature of our emotional and creative wellsprings. I arrive at these stages through processes that subvert my preconceived ideas and allow the materials to suggest evolving compositions. The scenes are transitory, therefore the photograph serves as their point of inscription.

Oh, Lazarus…Whom God Has Helped, Wala Ka Bang Hiya!, Lazaro Juan

Theses and Dissertations

Art as a means and a vehicle towards a higher form of consciousness, and state of awareness to communicate complex issues and a way of healing. Within the context of the decolonization process.

Cliffdwellers: A Study In Wildness, Stoney Larkin Sasser

Theses and Dissertations

How do I find wildness? This question is a central tenant of my work and manifests psychologically and physically in my installation, video and performance work. As the diversity of non-human ecosystems wanes and wildness along with it, I am overwhelmed by idea that the human generated debris might eventually cover the earth and become our new landscape, our new wilderness. I wonder "what do we do with all of this stuff'? In my installations, I play with the materials I gather and accumulate. I construct `ecosystems' often using pedestrian materials such as nylons, fabric, lint and glitter to explore …

Aggregation And Satiation: Finding Meaning In Repetition, Samantha Buchanan

Theses and Dissertations

In my work, I see repetition, but also complexity and variation. This supportive

statement examines my interest in the aggregate, in forms composed of multiples, as well as the repetitive processes required in their construction. I look at the ways in which predictability, recursion, and rhythm function in my repetitive practice, as well as how the energy expended throughout the process manifests in the matter of the work. What I intend for the viewer is the perception of a holistic and simultaneous sensory experience.

G.A.M.E.: A Hypermedia Edition Of James Mcneill Whistler’S The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies, Amy Colombo

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, G.A.M.E., refashions James McNeill Whistler’s book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, into a hypermediated facsimile text and archive. By remediating the text, the socio-historical context of the Victorian time period in which Whistler lived is reestablished, making his book more accessible to twenty-first century audiences. The era studied in this dissertation includes the expansion of the idea of celebrity, the power of the press, and the concept of art for art’s sake from 1863 through 1892. In order to showcase these concepts, archival materials, such as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and published pamphlets, from this period were …

Belt Melon Grass, Andrew M. Francis

Theses and Dissertations

This essay was written largely after the completion of my thesis exhibition which shares its title. An integral aspect of the work was the after-­hours maintenance it required. Below I describe the unforeseen personal significance that labor came to hold and the way in which it functioned as a healing ritual. Through this work, and those leading up to it, I have a reinvigorated awareness of the importance of therapy as an aspect of my art­making, of which this thesis is a testament.

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

The Immersive Media Library @ Vcu, Michael Rosenthal-Mix

Theses and Dissertations

Answering the call issued by John Underkoffler in 2010 about the future of UI, I have imagined the Immersive Media Library (IML) as an annex of the main VCU library, offering a concentration of visually immersive spaces to compliment the space the university is already building in the renovated Cabell Library. The design is new in that the emphasis is placed on the collaboration between librarians and visitors in creating new work. Focusing on the interpersonal might be unexpected from program with such an emphasis on new technology - but I see it as vital part of the new computing …

Love Story, Grace Weaver

Theses and Dissertations

I think of my paintings as pop songs. My aim in the work is to embrace a complicated femininity, championing and questioning the aesthetics of girliness, cuteness, and whimsy. This is the realm of the Young-Girl. The text that follows will chart a path from the cliché to the empathic—holding hands with philosophical comrades in that same territory, ranging from Taylor Swift to Kaja Silverman—seeking the way in which the paintings relate to the grand tradition of the love story.

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Avatar, Cyborg, Icevorg: Simulacra’S Scion, Guido E. Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.”

The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

Into The Fray, Frances Pearce

Theses and Dissertations

My sculpture and prints are about dismemberment and the destruction caused by war. To address the high cost of war, I make works that present the threat of injury, amputation, and prosthetics. I use Classical Greek art history references to address contemporary political, military, and social issues. I include images such as Amazonian women, horses, and doves. These images are coupled with references to the damage caused by conflict. While my work concerns destruction, paradoxically, my process involves additive construction. I take a mixed media approach to both my sculptures and my prints, and use a wide range of materials …

A Perception Of Change, A Change Of Perception, Christopher D. White

Theses and Dissertations

Change is a constant reminder that permanence is the ultimate illusion. It is through the creation of hyper-realistic, ceramic sculpture that I explore the relationship between nature, humans, and the phenomenon of impermanence. I seek to expose the beauty that often results from decay while, at the same time, making my viewer question their own perception of the world around them. The juxtaposition of natural and man-made features in combination with the skewing of scale, proportion, and material, creates an altered perspective – forcing the viewer to look closer. By combining both human and natural elements within my work I …