Fine Arts Commons^™

In The Library And Online: Social Media And Civic Discourse, Samantha A. Mairson

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis analyzes the findings of an interview-based research study of public-serving libraries in the state of Connecticut. Specifically, it examines these institutions’ use of social media to promote civic discourse online and on-site with the purpose of producing guidelines for best practices. This new research emerges from the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts research Experience (SHARE) Award project, “Museums, Libraries, and Civic Discourse in Connecticut,” which concluded Spring 2016.

The research develops an understanding of the use of social media by public-serving libraries, presents three models for dissemination of findings to the field, and concludes with key observations and …

Purge, Amanda Foshag

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement describes the eight hanging veil-like structures and sculptures that constitute my thesis exhibition work; it further comments on the movements, philosophy, and personal sensibility that most influenced the art making: Process Art, Taoism, and my own empathetic experiences. The movement of Process Art is discussed in reference to materiality and the physicality that goes into making these pieces. The influence of the Taoist philosophy is discussed in light of the unity and balance found in the combination of dualistic materials, and their relationship to one another, in these sculptural forms. Lastly, this statement expresses how the emotional …

Blueprints, Robert Blalock

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement is a written defense and an articulation of my thesis work Blueprints. Blueprints is a series of 78” X 42” indigo pencil on white paper drawings of clothed contemporary women in interaction with geometric objects. In this thesis statement, the method used to arrive at this body of work, my processes and materials, my artistic influences and artistic background will be discussed. My conclusion will connect the thread of ideas that ultimately led to Blueprints.

What You See Is What You Get, Kevin Kempisty

Graduate Theses

This thesis statement describes and comments on the four videos that compose my thesis exhibition, "What you See is What You Get." Together, they constitute a self-portrait. Videos require multiple mediums and software, each with their own purpose and aesthetic. The three key ingredients these four videos make use of are recorded performances, 2D animation and narrative. This statement will detail the visuals and purpose of each one, the technology and editing process, and the inspirations that have led to the thesis exhibition. The statement describes the choice of color, movement and rhythm to carry the narrative, which is not …

Nips Of Clairvoyance, Samantha Valdez

Graduate Theses

My thesis statement describes the fundamental elements of inspiration, along with the artistic references for my thesis body of work. It revisits memories, and explores the symbolic significance of bodily action, form, material and composition, as a means to expose the relationship between object and memory. The thesis exhibition, Nips of Clairvoyance, consists of an installation of a triptych of videos of performances that depict the complexity and pain of an abusive relationship. Adjacent to the videos are three sculptures that consist, of glass cylinders filled with personal objects embedded inside and placed on top of slabs of soap. While …

Remembering Virtual Worlds: Painting And Video Games, Nathaniel M. St. Amour

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Video games create the feeling of great achievement and place the player into a role that turns them into a great hero. These experiences feel significant because they require great time and emotional investment. The monumentality of these experiences, however, are at odds with the transience of the electrical virtual worlds. The medium of oil painting helps overcome the sense of transience because of oil painting’s durable permanent way of image making and stillness. Painting’s inherent nod to history also creates a dissonance between the newness of the video game medium and the antiquity of painting, a contrast exacerbated by …

Material Poetics, Ellen G. Reid

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

quench: /kwen(t)SH/

a : put out, extinguish

b : to put out the light or fire

c : to cool suddenly by immersion

d : to cause to lose heat or warmth

e : to bring to an end typically by satisfying, damping, cooling, or

decreasing

f : to relieve or satisfy with liquid

This is often how projects begin, a haunting idea, word, or experience inundates my consciousness and sub-consciousness. How could the body directly relate to an experience of quenching? This provoked the idea of the extreme sport: freediving. To adequately depict the definition of quenching, any …

"Transitions Through A Painter's Eye", Benjamin M. Wailes Iv

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Abstract

This monograph discusses a body of work that I completed during 2016 and 2017. The medium used for this project was photography. This work started on a very small scale taking a few photographs in Harrisonburg Virginia, but this initial investigation led me to complete over 25,000 photographs and travel to over thirteen different states including Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee over an eleven month period of time.

This work presents photographs of everyday items going through transitions as metaphors for the passage of time and …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

Reclaiming Female And Racial Agency: The Story Of Dido Elizabeth Belle Via Portrait And Film, Madison Blonquist

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

This paper explores the complex relationship between artists and their subjects, particularly with regard to race and gender. Using Niki Saint-Phalle’s definition of “truthful representation,” I consider the issues that race and gender pose to this ideal using the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, an eighteenth-century aristocratic woman of mixed race. The intriguing life of Dido Elizabeth Belle is especially relevant to today’s evolving definition of intersectional feminism. Her portrait Painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and her Cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray (1779, formerly attributed to Johann Zoffany) challenges the idea of “truthful representation” because it was presumably painted by a …

The Intersection Of Manufacturing Technologies And School Music Programs, Leslie Prunier

University Scholar Projects

The objective of this project is to design and manufacture a musical instrument, a marching baritone horn, out of plastic. It is constructed out of both PVC pipe and 3D-printed components. Utilizing this project’s documentation, a high school student could use a 3D printer and other basic tools to make their own musical instrument for a fraction of the cost of purchasing one. This documentation will produce a horn tuned in the key of B flat with one functioning valve, and suggestions for future work to make the other two valves functional as well.

Two-Faced And Vulnerable, Stephanie Wright

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

A helpless calf suspended by a balloon. A dog attempting to focus through a set of blinders. Vultures circling over an abandoned bed. The situations in which these animals find themselves might seem, at first glance, quirky or ambiguous. But we can easily empathize with their perceivable state. Through fables, myths, religion, everyday interaction, and animal husbandry, we have made animals and emotions recognizable metaphors for humankind. These animals address broader human experience; certainly the notions of “human nature” and culture are themselves human constructs. We self-consciously work to define our existence through the separation of the concept of “society” …

The Rug's Topography, Rana Young

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My complex relationship with photographs began when I was young. I remember tearing images out of publications and bringing them to my dad prepared with questions. Where I grew up, normative values defined by anatomy at birth impacted an individual’s gender perception and performance. Raised by a single father, I experienced a non-traditional family structure in my home. Seeing photographs portraying the “wholeness” of family contradicted my reality. Those psychological impressions provoked my curiosity and propelled me to solve the mystery of what existed beyond the scene depicted.

In retrospect, my search for missing context stems from an interest in …

Meditative Art: A Diversion From Stress And Anxiety, Hannah T. Justis 4239670221

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I wished to present a body of work that visually represented my own meditative process of managing stress and anxiety. Towards the end of studying for my undergraduate, I began preparing for my Final Exhibition Show, and with these preparations, my life, as well as my work, changed drastically. Within the past two years, my drawings began to take on a meditative therapeutic process. It was this development that then helped manage my growing stress levels and well as the symptoms that stemmed from high levels of anxiety and bloomed from losing control in my day to day life. It …

Archetypes In Clay, Kaylea N. Williams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The artist discusses the background, ideas, and work entitled Archetypes in Clay, for the completion of her Bachelor of Arts Degree and undergraduate research for the Fine and Performing Arts Scholar program at East Tennessee State University. The artist used this development of work to explore personality types, and how they can be portrayed through clay vessels. In particular, the artist shows her work, how she created the vessels, the testing involved, and the struggles she faced. Archetypes is the focus behind the concept of this project. Her work includes four ceramic vessels, created with clay and finished with glaze. …

Immigrant Stories: Exploring The Conflicts That A Filmmaker Must Face In A Documentary, Berenice Saez Briceno

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to address the personal conflicts that a filmmaker must face in the making of a documentary. It contrasts definitions and theories with the experience of producing the documentary entitled Immigrant Stories and the ethical implications of making it. To conclude, it summarizes the results of the study as final thoughts.

Art Infested Water, Graduation Edition, May 2017, Nova Southeastern University Department Of Performing And Visual Arts

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Meaning In Perception: Metaphor In Figurative Sculpture, Tommy Riefe

Graduate School of Art Theses

The body is the intermediary between the immaterial and material world and allows for the expression of one’s psychological and physical identity. The perception of the body and mind within space and time provides opportunities for change. Representation through figurative sculpture is a common thread over historical time. Works from Greek Classicism, like Kritios Boy, exemplify how a body’s physical condition is directly contingent on an individual’s psychological state. Alberto Giacometti and Antony Gormley further expand upon this as they present the body as a channel between the mind and the surrounding enviroment. Each artist creates alterations in scale, …

A Hazy Bliss, Anna Joo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: "I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table." And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids …

On Remembrance, Ashley Lee

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My works are inspired by autobiographical memories — especially those that are traumatic. However, the works rather discuss the nature of how memories are recalled, stored forgotten, remembered, manipulated, constructed, reconstructed, and destructed. Memory is a pseudo reality, that grounds on past events but is different from the objective truth. Memory is one’s own creation, which is formed by the body and mind through time, space, and experience. Then it is stored in the mind, within the infinite void of dimensional space. In my writing, I’ll explore John Sutton’s Philosophy and Memory Traces, Roland Barthe’s Camera Lucida, Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed …

Interspace Suit, Moriah Okun

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My thesis work investigates the transformative possibility of mediating the space between ourselves and others, the tension between solitude and loneliness, and the disconnects between mind and body, personal and shared experience, and artist and viewer. The basis of my process is stitching and coiling — a practical and symbolic act of joining together material that serves as structure and surface. I am inspired by work that explores this middle space, like that of Archigram, Lucy Orta, Lygia Clark, and Ernesto Neto. These artists first showed me what it was possible to create when the viewer’s body becomes the site …

The Record In Question, Kari Varner

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is an archive composed of text and image that catalogs the perpetual distance between the photograph and its subject. In my practice the fluidity of representation is examined through the frame of the photographic archive, while the notion of what constitutes a photographic archive is redefined. While seeking to describe the mutability of encounters with landscapes and past memories the materiality of the photograph is emphasized, the image and its substrate destabilized, and both experience and photograph are fleeting. In many cases water acts as the alchemical substance for transformation, leading the photographs closer to a state of …

Shannon County Warrants, Judge Bockman

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Finding amusement in the realm of the grotesque can alleviate some of the uncomfortable and inevitable parts of our nature. In my work, by creating images closely related to cartoons or other benign media (i.e. puppets, old country songs and toys.), I am able to illuminate the dark aspects of the redneck culture in a blithe and lighthearted manner inviting the viewer to contemplate and challenge regional stereotypes.

My Books: Creating Bilingual Worlds For Children, Maria Gerasimchuk-Djordjevic

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In my fourth semester of graduate school, I wrote and illustrated my first, full, bilingual, 32-page children’s picture book – What do you like/ Що тобі подобається? I have since continued to explore and pursue the social aspects and influences of nationalistic conflict among the population of war-torn Ukraine. These books express my hope and confidence in a new generation, especially in the immigrant community. The cultural exposure from my youth, yielding autobiographic experiences, as well as observations of a new culture, are prominent in my work. The bilingual aspect of my books is central to my work in general …

Meat Cake, Todd Wilson Reynolds

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

There is a language being spoken in visual art; a rhetorical dis­course that uses semiotics to communicate with a viewer. My research has fo­cused on way s to break the traditional ideas of narrative in photography . By focusing on the forms of delivery, and by combining digital and ana­logue techniques, my work forms a distortion of communication that forms a new language to communicate with the viewer. Much of this research has led to a specific form of communication that has been termed "punk" which began as a musical and artistic movement in the 70's. This sty le, both …

The Dream Maker Man // Body Of Christ // Je Ne Sais Pas // Internal Method, Ashley Lester

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Taiwanese Traditional Musical Idioms Meet Western Music Composition: An Analytical And Pedagogical Approach To Solo Piano Works By Tyzen Hsiao, Yi-Chuan Tsai

Dissertations

Since Western classical music was introduced in Taiwan, many contemporary Taiwanese composers have been experimenting with different musical forms and techniques. The members of the Third Generation of Taiwanese Composers began to lead the modernization of Taiwanese music after 1960. They proposed the establishment of a specifically Taiwanese musical tradition, one which would reach out to Taiwanese audiences through the incorporation of familiar folk songs and musical idioms, while incorporating Western compositional techniques and forms.

Tyzen Hsiao (蕭泰然) (1938-2015) was one of the most influential Taiwanese composers. His music is a blend of Taiwanese traditional musical idioms and Western music …

Law Library Blog (May 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Transplantar : Los Frutos De Sus Labores Transplant : Fruit Of Their Labor., Marie-Elena Ottman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will describe my body of work both formally and conceptually and accompanies my thesis exhibition. In the Introduction section, I will discuss my influences and the forms that I am exploring in creating this body of work and the experience that provided me with first-hand knowledge that pertains to immigrants. In Methods and Materials, I will discuss the materials that I used, glass, ceramics and metal. I will separate the glass and ceramics in two categories as each material was handled differently. I will also touch on the metal frame that is utilized to suspend the forms. …

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …