Fine Arts Commons^™

I Was Born In A Rabbit Hole, Chris Davis

Student Theses and Dissertations

In the exhibition "I Was Born in a Rabbit Hole," I have continued to explore beauty, form, and balance. There is a strong Modernist tilt to the work that is most prominent in the use of materials. In this thesis, I will discuss how, despite the perceived mutual exclusivity of autobiographical information and Modernism, I explore autobiographical themes using a Greenbergian model.

Whiff Of Black Ice, Alina Tenser

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a concentration of thoughts, peripheral and direct, that occurred around the making of my thesis exhibition at the Anderson Gallery, Whiff Of Black Ice. While these thoughts meekly occupy space on the following pages, I assure the reader that they are quite physical, even extending three-dimensionality to them. My awareness of their form and their containment within the inner space of the mind, which also extends to the body, becomes central to understanding their meaning and, finally, knowing them.

Reflections Of Self, Melissa Athey

Theses and Dissertations

I vacillate between all extremes, beauty vs. ugly, internal vs. external, micro vs. macro. It is these disparate notions that inspire what I make. We cannot ever see ourselves objectively, but does that mean we shouldn’t try? This thesis is my attempt to dissect what I created in my 2 years at Virginia Commonwealth University, my exploration of the illness within and the psychological nature of how we go about hiding our insecurities.

Artist Alien Ghost Juggler: Performance Of “Troilus And Cressida” As Graduate Thesis, Vladislav Smolkin

Theses and Dissertations

Through an analysis of my adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida”, I will deconstruct the artist’s studio within an institution as a paradoxical heterotopic space.

Warm Compression – Damp Gestures, Melanie Mclain

Theses and Dissertations

Thoughts on vulnerability, emotions, social interaction, self-awareness, skin, touching, bodily functions, and the combination of all these ideas into a confined space filled with heat and humidity just enough to leave you feeling damp and perhaps a bit sore.

You Can Eat Off The Counter I Wiped It Down This Morning, Jessica Kain

Theses and Dissertations

Alternative to meeting a calculus of quality roundness and curves are everywhere. Peaches, pinks, browns, ochres, greens. Klein Blue. --------- An experiment like a party; the hows and whys of picking bedfellows yields a list of possibilities— iterations of better, advantages in flesh volume. Inventory whittled down to give us stories, aspirations, allegiances. --------- Just to see it and touch it. Build in different ways, depending. Grow, cover, carve, cast—let for flexibility. Limbs in one direction sawed off, turned round, glued back on. If it looks like two more ways of how I want it there’s more work to be …

Being-There, Atilio A. Pernisco

CGU MFA Theses

I blend figures with backgrounds to define pensive areas of focus and delve between figuration and abstraction. These paintings connect the viewer with the strangeness of the ordinary world. This is the moment of unconsciousness. It is then where elements of a narrative emerge. I depict the figure in movements of awkwardness. Images of the familiar environments of children involved in some kind of work-play activity, the inheritors of generational trauma, reoccur in my work--a parade of daydreamers in direction to witness the uncertain.

White Light, Tessie Whitmore

CGU MFA Theses

The work is about nothing and everything. It is about belief systems engaged with everyday, monotonous theories of repetitious acts that will deliver freedom and freewill or acceptance and enlightenment. These acts become systems, which are bought into with ridiculous dedication. What is left is the void, potential death, fleeting mortality.

I use the highway as a place of investigation and motivation building a relationship between its physical and psychological aspects. I focus on moments from the drive: tension, the possible crash, monotony, and the trance state. I use materials from high culture and low culture to form a cultural …

The Darkness Is Passing, Grace Heeeun Park

CGU MFA Theses

My work is about the interplay of light, darkness and space. I express illumination of space and penetrating light with abstract painting. I use the white of canvas and thick application of black paint to create frames and to break rules of defined dimensions. Through my paintings, I challenge the perception of space and question the boundaries between two and three dimensions.

Gabriel Bizen Akigawa Interview, Joe Ondrey

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Gabriel Bizen Akagawa is the Assistant Director of Academic Advising and recently former Academic Advisor in the Office of Student Affairs and Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Sculpture department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibits regularly as a Chicago-based artist. He has been awarded Artist-in-Residencies at the Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, British Columbia, at Crabtree Farm in Lake Bluff, Illinois, and at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, Michigan. His curatorial projects include an ongoing and changing series he initiated in 2005 called “Faketure” (fake nature), which lead to founding the Faketure Consortium …

In Tub And Wig Out, Ryan Crowley

Theses and Dissertations

Using short stories, descriptions of objects and thoughts on process, I aim to establish a few ideas about the way I see and think through making in the studio.

Auto Tune, Dana Ollestad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an overview of the source material, methodologies, artistic influences, and conceptual decisions that inform my artwork and characterize my art practice. Utilizing participation (audience, community, viewer), I engineer experiences and encounters for the general public. Whether through directed physical interaction or implicit reaction, I create open-ended situations or environments that I may influence, but not fully control. The democratic cede of authorial control, as well as the heightened risk and unpredictably in my work, instigates a more positive, non-hierarchical social model in which every viewer is an “author,” who produces content and communication signals, and has a …

Freedom Of Interpretation, Georgi Ivanov

Theses and Dissertations

The photographic series Ideal Cities that I started in 2011 is inspired by the conflict between my idea of the “west” and my evolving experience in the United States. What struck me was the popularity of what I see as model experience – a spatial experience controlled by the Spectacle. In the terms of the Situationist International and its most prominent figure Guy Debord, the Spectacle is the collapse of reality into the streams of images, products and activities sanctioned by centralized monopolist business or state bureaucracy. Thus, personal experience is replaced with preconceived notions, which control the way people …

Between Utopia And Dystopia, Zhe Ren

Student Theses and Dissertations

I watch the city. I am fascinated by the swift change and goings on of metropolitan life. I think of it as a collective performance and exemplary of basic human nature. The urban space also frightens me because it is expanding so fast that it disrupts the relationship between human civilization and the natural balance. My work is an exploration of this coexistence between humans and nature. As populations continue to expand and energy becomes rare, we find new ways to cohabitate. While creating new life forms both naturally and scientifically, humans become parasitic to their surroundings. Population growth is …

Jacob Hashimoto Interview, Madeline Barnabee

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Jacob Hashimoto was born in Greeley Colorado 1973 and grew up in Walla Walla, Washington. He Currently lives in New York City. He received his Bachelors degree in fine arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hashimoto “redefines Japanese screen painting with his assemblages of paper "kites" in undulating, interactive compositions.” Jacob is represented by Studio La Citta, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Galerie Forsblom and Mary Boone Gallery. – Bio from http://jacobhashimoto.com/bio-cv/

White Sands, Laura Vitale

Theses and Dissertations

I’ve constructed a narrative thread that connects experiences, events, and artworks made during my time in graduate school. This narrative, which has the perspective of time, betrays the firsthand experience of wayfaring through the projects and places I describe. The narrative loosens as it approaches the present moment. Rather than to arrive at any conclusions, my goal for creating this narrative is to understand a tension between expectations: of systematic rationality and subjective knowledge, of play and display. I understand that my work productively fails to r-r-resolve contradictions about the way things are.

Display, Baldwin Amanda

Theses and Dissertations

I will discuss six art works that have a range of characteristics, but can all be unified through the notion of surface, both physically and conceptually. I will investigate how ideas of taste, assumption, collage, façade, figure/ground, display and value can all be seen through this lens. Much significance and symbolism is imbued in such a thin layer and I am actively aware of this as I work. The way I construct and render my subjects and the space in which they reside determines how they are viewed, perceived, considered, and judged by others.

The Dragons In Your Dreams, Jacquelyn Walther

Theses and Dissertations

What if every craving that you ever felt stayed with you forever? Suppose facades couldn’t exist, and what should only be the deepest, densest core of a desire was formed into a mass, a body. Its will matching yours in its physical presence. I make creatures that are embodiments of emotions. In this study I mainly focus on desires and inhibitions surrounding romance. I explore anatomical structures and how material make-up can directly reflect emotional character. In this exploration, the materiality of clay allows for a thorough manipulation of the composition of the creatures. In this I am also able …

Reflections On Sexuality, Sensuality, And Painting, Loie Hollowell

Theses and Dissertations

The written component of my thesis will take the form of an extended artist statement in which I discuss all six paintings included in my thesis exhibition. A major theme of my work is sexuality, specifically female sexuality. This thesis will begin by looking at the three miniature paintings that spearheaded the investigation of this theme. I will examine the generalized and personal feminist symbolism that these paintings contain. The two works that followed the miniatures are depictions of sexual interactions between my husband and myself. I will explain the significance of my depictions and relate them to the work …

Reckless Hope, Jesse Potts

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an approximation of several years spent in the studio. It represents an equitable exercise of memory and speculation.

Ed Lai Interview About Grace Lai, Thomas Matt

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Grace Lai painted downtown Chicago in concrete and steel bloom, for two decades producing vibrant montages of skyline-shaping buildings as they climbed. An "on-site" artist who didn't seriously take up painting until nearly 60 because of a promise made to her deceased husband, Mrs. Lai donned a hard hat and was unafraid to board construction elevators for rides high into the sky to complete her work. In winter she'd wrap herself in plastic garbage bags and substitute rubbing alcohol for water in her paints, so they wouldn't freeze.

Artist Bio taken from the Chicago Tribune (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-17/news/ct-met-0318-lai-obit-20100317_1_paintings-materials-train-stations)

To learn …

The Three Principles (For -2012), Nikolai Noel

Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing alchemy as an allegory for the political, social, cultural history and present of the Caribbean, I discuss critical themes, approaches, methodologies their development, application and evidence in my thinking and art practice.

Float In Float Out, Jason Sabbides

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses Float In Float Out, his Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at The Slocumb Gallery, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee from March 19, 2012, to March 23, 2012. The work consists of paintings on canvas, panel, and paper and employs a variety of media ranging from traditional materials to spray paint. The painting sizes vary from 20x24 inches up to 48x96 inches and all hang directly on the wall, framed and unframed. Topics discussed in this thesis paper include the influences of the artist's military experience and travelling abroad as well as the influences …

"Ya'll Come Back" Continuing Arts And Crafts In Gatlinburg., Molly Noseworthy

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Gatlinburg, Tennessee is a tourist town. I was born and raised in this area, and am currently employed at a ceramics shop in the historic Arts and Crafts Community. Due to this job, I have decided to research the importance of the town and crafts area. In this paper, I will present an overview of the history of the town and its art community, and also present an inside look at life and business in a tourist town. Although the Arts and Crafts Community has grown to be a tourist attraction, its roots still lie in the traditional handmade trades, …

Everybody Lies., Justin Doak

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Everybody lies. Everybody. The fact that everyone lies, however, is by no means a judgment; it is a good thing, a necessary thing. As far as I am concerned lying is the very foundation of our society. Nobody in the world tells the truth all the time, not because they are trying to be malevolently deceitful, of course, but out of necessity. Like the old adage says, the truth hurts. That is, in essence, the very heart of this body of work. Everyone tries so hard to not only convince others that the truth is a moral imperative, but also …

American Made: Ansel Adams And The Bishop National Bank's "The Islands Of Hawaii", Lauren Walton

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

"La Venus Se Fue De Juerga Por Los Barrios Bajos": Nacho López, Mass Culture, And Modernity, Jenifer L. Caneschi

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Wild|Life: A Forest For The People, John Lusk Hathaway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses the work in wild | life: a forest for the people, his Master of Fine Art exhibition held at the Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee from March 12 through March 23, 2012. The exhibition consists of 24 large-scale color archival Inkjet prints representing a large body of work that examines the human experience through viewing public and private land and land use within or tangential to the Cherokee National Forest. A complete catalogue of the wild ife exhibit is included at the end of the thesis. Historical and contemporary influences are discussed in …

A Search For Balance, Scott Matthew Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there defines the spirit of which nature herself is animated" (Auguste Rodin). My intention as a sculptor is to explore the intersection between nature and industry. I seek to find a balance between the industrial (steel) and the natural (stone). Steel represents societal obligations. Stone (river rock) is specific to place and representative of family. With these juxtaposed elements I strive to create sculptural forms of wonder and contemplation. I attempt to interpret and understand my involvement with the complex world through the process …

Religious Symbolism In Salvador Dali's Art: A Study Of The Influences On His Late Work., Jessica R. Hawley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Salvador Dalí was an artist who existed not long before my generation; yet, his influence among the contemporary art world causes many people to take a closer look at the significance of the imagery in his paintings. For the most part, Dalí is categorized as a Surrealist artist, yet in this essay, I also plan to explore other possibilities of influence that surrounded Salvador Dalí’s generation and inspirational background. Around 1941, Dalí’s work began to shift away from Surrealism and, instead, moved toward a more Classical style that contained many religious themes, a style which he called “Nuclear Mysticism” (Taylor …