Fine Arts Commons^™

Regarding The Porosity Of Borders, Lee M. Piechocki

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the surface of my paintings through Jean Baudrillard’s notion of seduction and the cool mechanism of the airbrush. I further investigate my work through the metaphor of the black mirror also known as a Claude Mirror and the connections between my work, Claude Lorrain’s landscape painting and divination through the use of reflective surfaces known as catopotromancy. Considering the notion of assemblage as outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour’s Action Network Theory I attempt to navigate the part/whole relationships found in painting, and in society.

Hands On Painting, Matthew Yaeger

Theses and Dissertations

How can we know something through how it is sensed? Making anthropomorphic, three-dimensional paintings through a set of basic, at-hand materials, I’m interested in how empathy, modesty, and doubt can mediate a tangible experience of an object. Challenging notions of perception, I want to create a heightened sense of awareness in which the intangible can be seen or felt.

Cute As A Button, Marta R. Finkelstein

Theses and Dissertations

Cute As A Button explores powerlessness, vulnerability, illness and addiction all wrapped up in tender buttons and a cute, cuddly creature. Using animation, sculpture, sound and an intimate space, I surround the viewer in a saccharine nightmare, one that references the dark underbelly of the cute and the sweet. The visual and aural elements are representative of the psychological and emotional states of powerlessness, which are overcome by the act of making and exploring a medium over which I can have complete control.

Double Zero, Anthony Earl Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis follows the trajectory of my artistic practice over the past two years, which has led to the installation of my thesis exhibition titled, Double Zero. I hope to position the work among its art and cultural terms by exploring how I have expanded my research concerning Situationist and Marxist theory as well as developed a broader photographic studio practice driven by material experimentation, play, and an investigation into how we live and interact with commodities through media.

Thank You For A Lovely Time, Kelley Mj Morrison

Theses and Dissertations

Stemming from my own fixation on trying to understand the actions, decisions and thought processes of those around me my work explores the difference between internal and external lives. I construct “brain spaces”; whether my own or someone else’s I strive to understand the decisions they have made and the stories we are a part of. I combine thoughts, feeling and sentiments which I have collected over my life to make objects that act as intermediaries, allowing others to imagine stepping into a mind other than their own. I attempt to bring the landscape of the mind into the physical …

Lullaby, Amber M. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

I have been investigating the way in which my mind has altered my memories, especially from childhood. The more a moment is recalled, the less precise it becomes. The most inaccurate memories from childhood are the ones I have fixated on. Bedrooms are spaces where dreaming, sleeping and reverie take place leading to even more fragmenting. The intimate space of a bedroom allows me to represent the personal distorted recollections. The bedroom furniture is missing parts, shifted in height and placement or combined together. By making doubles of furniture, a direct comparison can be made from the real piece to …

Postcession, Evan D. Pomerantz

Theses and Dissertations

This is a series of daily writings. Each day consists of a new topic and is closed at the end of the day. The ideas presented are philosophical, humorous, rambling, lamentations, incantations, doubt-ridden, aesthetic pep talks which combine into an affective representation of my studio practice’s becoming. There will be little congruency, some stories, and a lot of parallels because that is who I am.

Reconstructing A Science Fiction Autobiography, Jason R. Rood

Theses and Dissertations

This is a collection of essays revolving around concepts pertinent to my current visual arts practice, centering on a deconstruction of personal narrative mythologies. What is generated is a web of connection that spans Narrative Modes, Science Fiction, the use of Lines and Drawing, the Digital and Space and Time. Through this interweaving of topics, I am beginning the process of rebuilding the structure of a personal story for the future.

The Object Inbetween, Lucy L. Derickson

Theses and Dissertations

My mission is to bring attention to the unusual, undefined, and fluid connections we have to objects through various avenues of experience. Things, objects, and devices have shaped our culture, environment, and personal philosophies. We live, grow, learn, and mourn with objects. We worship, sympathize, and relate to objects. But what I am most interested in is a human tendency to retreat to objects, allowing them to mediate experiences of friendship and intimacy between people.

During my graduate studies, I have been evaluating my personal and professional connections with others in order to understand how technology such as smart phones …

Play Doh's Cave And The Pursuit Of The American Cream, Becky S. Sellinger

Theses and Dissertations

Take a minute. Imagine Wiley Coyote and Road Runner are in a domestic partnership. What would that look like? Close your eyes and Pause for 30 seconds. Don’t you see? Coyote never catches up. They keep running faster and faster. Everything in the house gets swept into the whirlwind they’ve created in their paths - the books, the shelves, the bed, and the desk lamp. Their circling movement creates a vacuum, which ultimately causes the entire structure to implode upon itself.

This text is an examination of my work and its relationship to the economic and the domestic. The metaphor …

Distance Moving Through Me: Working In Exile, Anne Beth Albagli

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and accompanying exhibit, Untitled [Distance Moving Through Me: Giselle and Marco] explores contemporary issues of displacement and our relationship to the site of home. Through the trope of a pilgrimage in the desert, both virtual and in person, inspired by the eviction and imprisonment of my paternal family from Egypt in 1956, Distance Moving Through Me: Working in Exile asks how we can use our virtual experience and changing perspectives of the landscape to our advantage for a more empathic world.

Limelight & Indigestion, Joshua D. Thorud

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis chronicles the progression toward and creation of my thesis show, Limelight & Indigestion, as well as the cultural, technological and artistic influences and discussions that underpin the works therein. The show is an exploration of celebrity, mass media, and the nature of the desire for fame. I hope to situate my work through an investigation of topics such as Hollywood and the use of green screens and associated technology, our physical and ideological connection to cinema, the absurd in cinema history, and the complex nature of media digestion.

New Patriarchies: A Turbulence Of Source And Subject, Stephen Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

Experiencing a turbulence of source and subject in the variable inversions and supports of one source to another--the wreck of the U-352, Carpeaux’s Ugolino and his Sons, a movie poster for J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, and Cassiopeia mythology--these four sources as sons, in sacrifice to and surviving by way of “daddy” documentation, are here refigured to reenact and critique the patriarchally recreational, monumental, cinematic, and mythological infrastructures supporting the sources of this work and thereby serving to critique the newer patriarchies to which these sources and their subjectifications here seek to cross consumptively dead end. Following three public …

Z Axis Follies, Adam Collignon

Theses and Dissertations

This document will outline the nature of performance / object interaction, and the role of documentation in this interaction. In addition, I will explore the body / object as a site of multiplicities, the quality of simultaneity in appearance and apprehension of such multiplicities, and traverse the triumphs and travails of the body / object’s journey from one state of being to the next.

Fallen/Lifted, Hillary Waters Fayle

Theses and Dissertations

I use found botanical material such as leaves, seedpods, and branches to explore human connection to the physical world. By combining these organic objects with the rich traditions of needlecraft, I bind nature and the human touch. Both tender and ruthless, this intricate stitch work communicates the idea that our relationship with the natural world is both tenuously fragile and infinitely complex.

The way I think about and make art mirrors the way I think about my life and how I walk through the world. What I do is about elevating details. It is about noticing cycles and connections. It …

Hope Chest: A Memoir Of Home, Marriage, And Objects, Emilie L. Duck

Theses and Dissertations

As a child, Emilie often imagined what her future home would look like. As she wandered through flea markets with her mother, she would envision the pieces she found there in a home of her own, building spacious libraries, comfortable bedrooms, and well-appointed kitchens in her imagination with the same passion that other children built models out of Legos. Although the houses always changed, there was an underlying certainty that she would eventually have one house—a certainty that could not be realized once she got married, and committed to living wherever the Army stationed her husband. In this memoir, Emilie …

Paintings: Perceptions Of Ordinary Moments, Laura Brainard Raborn

Theses and Dissertations

By depicting the human figure in ordinary moments, I highlight mundane, yet important, actions in daily life. In order to captivate the viewer, I use specific formal elements: abstraction that contrasts areas of representation, evidence of drawn line, a variety of high contrasts, and repetition of forms. I also use a layering technique to obscure or reveal information selectively. These formal elements are employed to compel the viewer to thoughtfully question and consider the presented figure. This body of work was inspired by my ideas about social norms and modern culture. Contemporary painters such as Eric Fischl and Jenny Saville …

(Untitled), Christine Navin

Theses and Dissertations

For millennia humanity’s preoccupation with time and its own mortality has proven to be elemental in what makes a civilization tick. This concern has been a focal point of philosophy, science, and religion. The measuring system of time asserts itself daily through the Danse Macabre, daily motions and memento mori — the things at every corner of civilization.

The Abstraction Of Toys, Dan Ruben Thornhill

Theses and Dissertations

painting style. The toys depicted in the paintings were used at on time by my two grandchildren, Kaylee Smith and Brennan Thornhill, and serve as inspiration for this body of work. These compositions are based on direct observations of the toys used in this series, and relate to abstraction as defined in this thesis as simplification, distortion, exaggeration, invention, and erasure. The works that date later in the series fall under this definition. My work draws heavily upon Pablo Picasso and is influenced by his use of abstraction. The series tries to capture the essence of the toys and evoke …

Four Seasons, Morgan Pearse

Theses and Dissertations

FOUR SEASONS By Morgan Pearse, MFA. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Major Director: Matt King, Assistant professor, Sculpture + Extended Media. Fantasy functions in a mental space. Cyberspace is a fantasy world. Cyberspace is a mental space mediated by the individual, but also through/into itself. What does an internal thought mean when it is directed towards strangers via online avatar? The Internet exists. Your body exists. There is something in between. There is no singular …

Painting As In A Journey, Kristin Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

PAINTING AS IN A JOURNEY The experiences, processes, and artistic influences are described in this paper supporting the student’s MFA painting exhibit. A variety of influences from Max Beckmann to Alice Neel, as well as the oil medium itself, helped build the collective knowledge that was used in the development of this student’s work.

Insert Title, R. Abram Deslauriers

Theses and Dissertations

It is a gestural sensibility forever suspended in the material as it cools. With each movement to and fro, I become fully immersed and given over to the activity of glassworking, where the simplest impressions whisper of fantastic melodies. I remain open to it: conducting a collision: a symphony of riffs, vamps and arpeggios. Constructing the chorus in disjunctive phases as if it forms out of its own directive. The polyphonic rhythm of decisions converge into a new composition, now completely obscured from the intro—existing in reference only to itself and you

Potential Energy And The Three Odalisques, Yamins Roxanne

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this paper is to examine some ways in which BEHAVIOR, POTENTIAL ENERGY, and EMPATHY are critical components in my thinking and work. The impetus for my work is an investigation of how these three components can be manifested in visually expressive and powerful states. My masters thesis, The Three Odalisques, is an attempt at making a space and world which privileges these components and the potential for art to express these ideas. This paper is divided into two parts. The first section is a formal analysis of the pieces in my work from my MFA thesis show. …

Psychic Fax On Vibrate, Received On Phantom Limbo, Jake Borndal

Theses and Dissertations

I offer a cloud of observations about language and art. I will prioritize my questions about how language operates in art, the way it functions within my own studio practice, and locate aesthetic interstices throughout. There will be insights gleaned from the various orderers of order (Lacan, Saussure) and orderers of disorder (Derrida, Agamben), walks in terra-incognita, and even some poetry on my part. I will take this chance to orient myself among different structures and deconstructions that have piledup around language, aesthetics and art.

Standoff, Omri Zin

Theses and Dissertations

This Paper is about the intertwining and swiveling narratives that made up the conceptual building blocks of my work process during the production of the piece: Standoff. This is not a description of the physical tasks that were undertaken in the production process, nor is it a recipe for extracting the ingredients that form the intricate relationships within the sculpture, but rather it is a collection of stories that are told through a zigzagged structure in an attempt to mirror the distorted hierarchies between fantasy and fact, history and imagination, truth and speculation.

Inhale. Exhale., Jared Cru Smith

Theses and Dissertations

I did not become a farmer or railroader like generations of my family before me–but I continue to rely on my hands and physical labor. The use of my hands as tools to construct through woodworking and metal fabrication techniques becomes a musing action. Using wood and metal as materials, I develop structures in an exploratory way to frame the endless process of making. When I lose myself in this progression of forms, I allow myself to breathe.

Artificial Dissemination, Brian Fleetwood

Theses and Dissertations

This writing is an experiment in combining the two most important frameworks through which I understand the world, the storytelling traditions of my people, the Mvskoke(Creek), and the rational tradition that began with European Enlightenment era thinking. By weaving allegorical narrative (much of it personal) into theoretical speculation, I draw connections between recollection, truth, and the act of making. This examination of the gaps and connections between seemingly disparate worldviews, runs in parallel to the purpose of my work, wherein I construct fictive symbiotic and parasitic relationships between jewelry and wearer. This work takes advantage of the wearer as environment, …

Threshold, Marisa Finos

Theses and Dissertations

Are the threshold experiences encountered between waking and sleeping similar to the liminal space between life and death? The sights, sounds, and bodily sensations experienced in the unconscious void blur the lines between the unknown and our conscious existence. Using the figure, I portray how the body might exist in these transitional moments. Through my investigations into sleep paralysis, dream states, and notions of an afterlife and the soul, I explore how we perceive the self in these altered states of consciousness.

Erratic Boulders, Julie Malen

Theses and Dissertations

Exploring how the material environment affects human knowledge of the world is an ongoing investigation in my studio. With this tactile exploration I am also looking to discover how histories and cultures overlap constantly and in close proximity within my daily experience. By collaging natural fragments and cultural debris in my installations, I seek to exaggerate this overlap and create the dizzying feeling of moving through many places at once. Cultural and historical overlapping also occurs in the phenomena of erratic boulders, which refers to the depositing of boulders, rocks, sediments and other materials that receding glaciers leave behind. This …

Unification, Agency, Systemization, Intuition: My Art Making Process And Ideas, Zachary Duer

Theses and Dissertations

This essay is an attempt to describe my ideas about my work, my process, and my philosophy of art by examining five of the major pieces I created during the pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts degree at Virginia Commonwealth University. I will discuss the pieces in chronological order, first providing a description of the works’ salient characteristics, then delving into both my specific thoughts about the work as well as the background ideas that were pertinent to me during my process of creation.