Fine Arts Commons^™

Uncovering The Story Of Sally Maria Johnson: Revealing The History Of The Portrait Of A Painting, Yuanzhen Song

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Portrait of Sally Maria Johnson by the artist James Johnson is a 19^th century oval shaped portrait in the collection of the Buffalo History Museum.  It suffered from structural damages and paint loss resulting from surface alterations and previous restoration campaigns.  This study combines art historical research with scientific analysis to explore both the biography of the subject and the materiality of the painting.  Through local research including historical newspaper articles in Buffalo, the story of Sally Maria Johnson (the wife of Buffalo’s first mayor) was uncovered.  High-resolution imaging techniques were used to document the surface condition and identify …

Between Their Hands And Mine, Ellie Barnes

Art and Art History Honors Projects

We better understand the people who came before us through objects, images, and stories. Between Their Hands and Mine is a studio art honors project that connects wheel-thrown ceramics to the stories and experiences of the women in my life, known and unknown. Adorning the home with love and care through objects like cups with butterflies was common in my upbringing. My family’s Norwegian background inspired the florals and stripes that decorate the surface. This series of plates, bowls, mugs, and other dinnerware set amongst a dining room and ancestral objects is reminiscent of the homemaking women in my life.

Familiar Corners, Lilia Gonzalez-Baldwin

Art and Art History Honors Projects

The mundane is defined as lacking interest; dull, unimportant. My honors project aims to find the beauty in the mundane moments that linger in the domestic spaces that hold meaning to me. My desire to amplify the figures, spaces, and belongings that formed my childhood home and current apartment inspired me to create numerous highly detailed, overlapping works that act as portals into rooms in these spaces. In Shaving Cream, 2008, my 6-year-old self is shaving my older sister’s legs in the bathtub. In Down in their Nest, posters, trinkets, and stuffed animals act as easter eggs for my childhood.

New U Showcase Program, 1974, University Of North Alabama

Documents

New U Showcase Musical, 1974 program.

Digital Age: A Collection Inspired By Nostalgia, Memory, And A Late-2000’S Youth, Syd Libby

Art and Art History Summer Fellows

The cycle of visual culture, objects, and entertainment marketed to children changes rapidly. However, the objects, sounds, music, places and people we attach to as young people tend to hold weight in our lives and shape our understanding of the world. “Digital Age” is a series of paintings, sculptures and fiber works inspired by these feelings of nostalgia for a time that wasn’t really that long ago; around the late 2000’s – early 2010’s. I took this idea of nostalgia and represented it in different forms; both the images of me as a kid, alongside the objects I associate with …

Murder Of A Creative: Mfa Thesis, Himani Sanjeevkumar Mehta

Masters Theses

In the creative industry, the phrase “fast-paced environment” is often treated as an essential ingredient for productivity and success. The contemporary design landscape operates within an output-driven system that prioritizes speed, visibility, and measurable worth, contributing to the growing commercialization of creativity. Within this framework, the creative process is often diminished or overlooked where it no longer serves efficiency, reducing creativity to a consumable outcome rather than a reflective and sustaining practice. As a result, creative professionals and students increasingly experience creative anxiety, burnout, and paralysis, alongside imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and self-doubt. These conditions are rarely examined as systemic outcomes …

Reflecting On Freedom: 250 Years Through The Eyes Of Wvu Alumni Artists Exhibition, Sally Brown, Livia Balan, Ken Hillberry, Yvette Mazza, Precious Burger, Margaret Rose Caro, Ron Hollingshead, Betsy Jaeger, Ruth Yang, Tom Ott, Nancy Swisher, Griffin Nordstrom, Ben Nelsen, Morin Nessim, Desiree Vu, Ali Printz, Tiera Joy Tanner, Eliza Siefert, Stephanie Alaniz, Raymond Thompson, Sue Byrd, Michael Vercelli, Lesley Cottrell, Penny Lipscomb, Joshua Lohnes, Kelly Watson, Hal Gorby, Judith Stitzel, Bonnie Brown, Bob Britten, Renee K. Nicholson, Ellen Rodrigues, Erik Herron, Mark Brazaitis, Alfgeir Kristjansson, Linda Rosefsky, Joseph Lupo, Beth Royall, Evy Wright

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary, the 2026–27 WVU Alumni Art Show invites viewers to explore freedom and independence through the eyes of West Virginia University alumni artists. This exhibition gathers a rich spectrum of perspectives—personal, historical, political, and cultural—demonstrating that the meaning of liberty is neither fixed nor singular. The exhibit also includes community responses to the work.

Portraits, abstractions, text-based paintings, mixed media, ceramics, and quilts collectively reveal the diverse ways artists grapple with liberty: as memory and inheritance, as resistance and care, and as lived, ongoing practice. By presenting these perspectives side by side, the …

Zine Open Assignment Guidelines For Mmp460, Anna Pinkas

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Gustav Holst's The Planets On The Music Of John Williams, Kara Lewis

Senior Honors Theses

Throughout his six-decade career in film music, John Williams has achieved incredible success. Yet, one of the most prominent criticisms of Williams’ work is that it borrows heavily from classical repertoire. It is common to read that Williams stole from composers such as Gustav Holst. This paper examines in what aspects and to what extent the music of Williams takes inspiration specifically from Holst’s The Planets. Overall style and specific excerpts will be compared to demonstrate that, while the two share some characteristics, there is not an overall sameness of style. It shall also be demonstrated that certain excerpts …

Radiance After Exile: Visionism And The Art Of M, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This essay introduces and critically examines Visionism, the artistic philosophy developed by contemporary Australian painter M. Emerging from a practice shaped by early success, prolonged creative exile, and eventual return, Visionism is presented not as a stylistic movement but as a visual philosophy concerned with atmosphere, symbolism, transcendence, and the persistence of intensity after critique. Situating Visionism within contemporary debates surrounding postmodernism and metamodernism, the essay argues that M's work occupies a distinctive position within a broader cultural shift toward renewed engagements with meaning, affect, and sincerity.

Drawing on the artist’s own reflections, alongside theoretical perspectives from David Sudnow, Timotheus …

Darkness Seen By Candlelight: Painting To Discover Feeling, Shelby Feltoon

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts

This thesis discusses the ways that a phenomenological experience can translate itself through the medium of painting. This translation evokes deep feelings through physical considerations of materiality, light, context, distance, and time. Through a series of intimate and abstracted oil paintings created in thin layers, the work conveys an interdependent relationship between light and darkness. This project draws from research on art movements like Suprematism, Minimalism, and Expressionism, as well as larger practices and philosophies about photography and the sublime. The body of work draws direct reference to Junichiro Tanazaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows. Ultimately, the work described …

Reviving Revive. Is The Notion Of An Independent Artist An Outdated Concept?, Richard C. Moore Mr

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This article published in Spectator Magazine - online - is a reflection on whether or not a cultural policy is a means of controlling the artistic community and whether there is still such a being as an independent Australian artist. It was published as the 2026 submissions for an update to Australia's cultural policy REVIVE -  were closing.

There Was Time And Place, Mary G. O'Connor

Graduate Artistry Projects and Performances

There was Time and Place is body of work that explores the relationship between reality and imagination as it relates to themes of creativity and transformation through time and place. Inspired by surrealism, automatism, science fiction, and poetic theory, the exhibited drawing-centered lithographs create encounters with fictional designs of rendered objects, machinery, and architecture. These encounters estrange us from monotony and banality of the current moment, reminding us that there is time and place for imagination in our routines.

Shimmer Methodology: May 2026 Cultural Studies Association Of Australasia, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This webinar presents an overview of the contemporary state of creative-practice research and autotheory before introducing Shimmer, an emerging methodological framework developed through creative practice, postgraduate supervision, and reflective inquiry. The presentation argues that while creative-practice research has successfully established creative work as a legitimate form of knowledge production, and autotheory has legitimised lived experience as theoretical material, both traditions leave relatively under-theorised the embodied moment through which insight first emerges.

The significance of the work lies in its contribution to ongoing debates around embodiment, affect, intuition, and knowledge production within creative-practice research. Shimmer proposes a language for understanding …

Caladrius: Creating A Playable Game Via A Multimedia Experience, Isabelle Morgan Brookshire

Whittier Scholars Program

Caladrius: Creating a Playable Game via a Multimedia Experience hones in on making an experience through different forms of media to represent a game. If this project was fully funded and done, it would be a video game on Steam with an art exhibition, small poetry book, and novel accompanied with it. It would even have a show, a soundtrack, and merch. But at this level, it was to make an experience for my audience that they could experience whether or not they enjoyed video games as a concept. I wanted them to enjoy 'playing' within a physical exhibition and …

The Brain And Becoming: Integrating Play And Performance-Based Learning In The Community College Classroom, Hannah M. Green

English

Instruction in the community college classroom is in need of a shift, according to neuroscientific, pedagogical, and demographic data. Primarily, students in today’s community college classrooms are instructed in the form of lectures (Nilson 106), but research has shown that game-based learning would be the way to enhance learning experiences for these adult learners. Game-based learning specifically takes form in student learning through games, interactive reading activities such as performance pedagogy, discussions, and small group work. While research shows that play-based learning at the community college level is neurologically beneficial for students, there is a gap in implementing play-based learning …

Ameling Manor Drive, Dalia K. Al-Sagr

Art and Art History Honors Projects

This honors project has been an exploration of my relationship with time and memory. By studying old childhood photos, I translate them onto canvas, focusing on how my perception of specific memories affects my color composition and value structure. I explore the evolution of perspective by understanding how my adult self views these pictures. In turn, this captures time and impermanence. My paintings focus on specific details in the photos, while other sections appear faded. I use an oil glazing technique to represent how some moments are vivid, while others are fogged with emotion. This reflects how memory tends to …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #3, The Year 1591, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This tour guide is the third in Victoria Weston's An Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys. To access the full book, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining sections, visit:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/ This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #2, The Year 1230, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This is the second of three tour guides connected to Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art. For the full guidebook, visit https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

The remaining sections can be found at these links:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally …

An Introduction To East Asian Art In Three Journeys, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This is the full version of this record. For individual tour guides, visit the following links:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/ Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/ Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative analysis. Students learn methods of visual analysis while also exploring …

An Introduction To East Asian Art: Tour Guide #1, The Year 748, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This book is chapter one of Victoria Weston's Introduction to East Asian Art in Three Journeys, which can be found in full at https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/3/

For the remaining chapters, visit:

Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/

Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative analysis. …

Volume 17, Christian O’Neill, Kyara Greene, Savva Sidorov, Laura Bisaillon, Luke Clemmer, Hannah Gordon, Kitt Benson, Taylor Blount, Rachel Danzitz, Nicholas Duellman, Chase Gionis, Hima Fernando, Seth Franzyshen, Onyx Gonzalez, Bryan Lin, Samantha Start, Ysabel Wells, Maggie Duncan

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Amorette Barber, Director, Office of Student Research

From the Editor Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell

Cover Artist’s Statement Maggie Duncan

On Mentoring Dr. Yulia Uryadova

Ukrainian Resistance in the Face of Russification: Nestor Makhno and Anarchism

by Christian O’Neill

Life Vest by Kyara Greene

Isolation and 16S rRNA Identification of Bacteria from Fire Department Connection Pipe by Savva Sidorov

The Effectiveness of Planned Exercise in Reducing ADHD Symptoms in Children by Laura Bisaillon & Luke Clemmer

Linguistic Analysis on Confidence and Communication Strategies with Disparities Between Sign Fluency and Hearing Impairment by Hannah Gordon

Freedmen in Indian Territory by Kitt …

Eurydice | Tigers Be Still: Technical Direction Between Two Studio Sets, Rory G. Galada Brownell

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

This thesis examines the technical direction processes for two studio productions, Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl and Tigers Be Still by Kim Rosenstock, produced during the 2025–2026 season at the Nebraska Repertory Theatre. Through comparative analysis, this document explores how differing design styles—metaphorical and installation-based versus grounded realism—impact the planning, communication, and execution responsibilities of a technical director within a constrained academic production environment. Both productions operated within similar parameters, including limited budgets, student-based labor, and a shared performance space, allowing for a focused evaluation of process rather than resources. The Eurydice production emphasized abstract scenic elements, including large-scale string installations …

Weaving Ideology: Textiles In Florentine And Venetian Painting Of The Cinquecento, Ruben Verità

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Renaissance art historical scholarship has largely ignored the political and cultural significance woven into the representation of textiles, as well as their communicative potential in paintings. In this study, I examine how textiles in their various forms carry the potential to go beyond their normative categorization as decoration. Through a comparative analysis of the paintings produced in two politically distinct polities—Florence and Venice—during the sixteenth century, I integrate Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and Michael Baxandall’s period eye to elucidate how painted fabric was not the representation of a passive decorative ornament. Rather, it was an active and legible proxy …

Foundations Of Art: Materials, Methods, And Meaning, Elizabeth Mellott

Art OERs

This course provides an introduction to the tools, materials, and processes used across a wide range of artistic media. The focus is on understanding how different materials shape the way art is created and experienced. Attention is given not only to what artists make, but also to why particular media are chosen to communicate specific ideas, emotions, or perspectives. The physical qualities of materials, the methods used, and the cultural meanings attached to them all influence artistic decision-making.

The course surveys several major categories of artistic media. Pigment-based practices include painting, drawing, and printmaking, where color and mark-making form the …

Theater To Be Named For George Lindsey, Michelle Rupe Eubanks

Documents

Article from The TimesDaily about the new black box theater at UNA and its new name

George S. Lindsey Theater And Ernest Borgnine Performance Hall Grand Opening Ceremony, Una Foundation

Documents

Grand Opening Ceremony for the George Smith Lindsey/Ernest Borgnine Performance Hall, 2012

Fstc Plans For A New Auditorium, Florence Times

Documents

Plans and architect's drawing of the new auditorium slated for construction at FSTC

Fine Arts Center Brings Needed Space To Department, The Flor-Ala

Documents

Much needed space improvement for the new Lurleen Burns Wallace Fine Arts Center

College In Florence In Midst Of $3,000,000 Construction Program, Florence Times

Documents

Florence State College construction program-Men's and Women's dormitories, Student Union building, Science and Home Economics building, Addition to Collier Library, new Kilby School, and new Auditorium for the school.