Fine Arts Commons^™

The Nature Of My Nature; A Story About Relationships, Andrew Mcilvaine

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

As a second generation Hispanic, I am a painter whose work is informed by my personal experience of displacement and longing to belong. In turn, I hope, this longing inspires an important dialogue about place, memory, otherness and belonging. I work in small, intimate scale, evoking narratives of vastness yet also of solitude. The landscape and the natural environment I represent, become populated by anonymous creatures. Both animal and human, posed in semi-natural and semi-artificial settings.

I was born in Texas and grew up in Missouri. The images I produce are often tranquil and surreal yet are grounded through …

Stray Cats, Christian P. Chesnut

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper details the making of Stray Cats, a University of New Orleans thesis film. It examines the process of creating the film in three parts. Part one will detail the pre-production, including the conceptualization, writing, and preparation for the project. Part two will cover the production, including the directing, production design, cinematography, and on-set operations. Part three will describe the post-production process, including the editing, color correction, sound design, and musical score. These three components will then be referenced in regards to the theme of the film, and will conclude by analyzing whether or not the final film …

Invisible Territories, Lydia Seaman

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Layering geography, space and time, my work urges viewers to embrace the equivocal and create a desire for the impossible. To explore this notion, Invisible Territories is an analysis of my practice, examining how I mediate specific references into abstract and universal interpretations. My work employs subjects that document the world by analyzing the layers and simulacra that form our visual information; focusing on the intervals between “things” as the subject matter themselves. Looking to the words of Italo Calvino as a conceptual guide, this paper discusses the practice of mapping through drawing, etching and painting.

Mediated: An Investigation Of Print Media's Impact Of Self, Rachel Hertzman

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In the 21^st Century print media is often overlooked for the masses of images available at everyone’s fingertips on the internet. This thesis is an exploration of the ways in which those original forms of mass produced images, specifically fashion/ beauty magazines and newspapers, alter one’s sense of self. The magazines have a proven negative effect on women consumers who internalize the singular thin beauty ideal persisted in this media. A similar internalization happens with the constant viewing of news papers, creating a sense of shared cultural memory. The Artist takes an in depth look at how these ideas …

Tracing Patterns: Making Sense Of Experience, Isabelle Davis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my life, I have developed several practices in attempt to preserve my memories in a way that I can relive them, knowing exactly how I felt at the time. Two of these practices are the practice of frequently journaling, and the practice of keeping objects for their sentimental value. For my thesis, I used journal entries and sentimental objects as a starting point for creating a metaphor for how I process emotions in my life. I created a quilt out of 36 excerpts of journal entries from throughout college to symbolize the way it is comforting to me to …

The Continuous Movement Of Water And Time, Ryan Brandt

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Water has a relationship with every living thing on earth, and represents a force that both gives life and can eliminate it. In my work, I use water, color, and the figure to explore the sublime, death and decay, the passage of time, and overwhelming emotions. I have looked at my work in relation to Marilyn Minter’s photography, Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, Julie Evans’ and Henri Matisse’s cut-out works, Sam Gilliam’s continuously changing canvas installations, and Ekaterina Smirnova’s investigation into the meaning of an individual’s place in the universe. By seeing the different ways in which these artists and …

In The Margins, Savannah Bustillo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A margin is defined relative to something else. A ruled line. A body of text on a page. The margins are the excess, outside of the value we can qualify or quantify. Our understandings of the habitability of the margins are too often framed as fundamental differences between those that inhabit value and the rest that do not. What would happen if we reframed the margins beyond a simple dichotomy? What could we gain if the margins were a habitable space around and between the things we prioritize in defining? By analyzing a body of my own art, I …

The Bambi Portal, Zoe Grieze

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

An investigation into the multiplicity of Walt Disney’s 1943 film Bambi — including both the content generated as a result of the film and the way in the film exists ephemerally in mass memory — develops into an investigation into the film’s use of appeals to “nature” to reinforce the gender roles of the traditional American nuclear family. Through the creation of an interactive “portal” utilizing distorted video, these themes are pulled out from the usual world of the film and presented in an alternate format for critical consideration. However, a tension between this critique and genuine sensory enjoyment of …

Beauty Enthroned, Lian Giloth

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

For the longest time in Western culture beauty and art were inseparable from one another. However, within the last one hundred years, various cultural movements and phenomena have split Beauty into a series of dichotomies that exist independently from one another. These bifurcations have weakened Beauty’s power and influence and reduced its intellectual rigor. No longer taken seriously as a primary goal or characteristic of art, Beauty has been reduced to mere charm and superficiality. My body of work seeks to reunify Beauty, thereby giving back its agency and legitimacy in art.

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

If My Grandmother Had Wheels She'd Be A Trolley Car: The Accumulation Of Objects, Encounters And The Passage Of Time, Sara Weininger

Graduate School of Art Theses

The house is the structure. Within the house are rooms, spaces, hallways and corners. In those live the objects.The objects live on surfaces, surfaces that much like the previous layers, are made up of many things, most certainly not one thing. A static object may hold a series of other objects, spaces and events. A static object may also embody the passage of time.Though one may try to hold the object at a constant, that is to slow or even bring a halt to its motion, this task is near impossible.

Bird Box House, Bear Box Dresser, Lamp Hat, Macaroni …

Enter The Void: Visual And Other Pleasures, Serena Silver

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My research and art practice focus on the idea of power dynamics where the female is the passive object of the active male gaze. Through the influx of digital social media platforms, these power dynamics exist in many fluid forms which is what I believe to be the relationship between the masculine and the feminine- where the masculine is inevitably always alpha. In contemporary terms, this power dynamic exists and penetrates our daily consumption of visual culture. From the art world to the fashion industry and beyond- all are feeding into consumerism and capitalism. People have become brands, or as …

The Vanishing Line, Jacopo Mazzoni

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is an exploratory effort to bridge the rift that political and monetary powers created between art and technology. In my practice, these socio-political motivations are exposed through the creation of non-utilitarian inventions that use different technologies as charged metaphors. I research mass media language and construct interactive pieces while borrowing strategies from the entertainment industry to make environmental, social, and political issues more palatable than documentary films or raw data could. In my work, technology is regarded as a semidivine entity with supernatural powers that can both elevate and reduce the human experience. My work functions differently according …

A Meditation In Three Parts, Brent Nakamoto

Graduate School of Art Theses

I’m interested in the way we read images—they way we see through an image’s surface in order to perceive its illusion, in the same way that we see through words in order to understand their meaning. I’m interested in this relationship, in both images and texts, between surface, illusion, and meaning. In Buddhist philosophy, the source of suffering is in our attachments to the self-as-image. The function of Zen meditation practice is to bring attention to this process of perception and, in doing so, to help see through the illusions of self-hood and ground our understanding in the reality of …

Marching On Together: The Future Of Non-Profit Museums In A For-Profit World, Matthew R. Dellaguzzo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis proposes a model of increased collaboration among museums as an alternative to the commercialization of the museum field. Through a combination of internal and external factors, museums are finding it necessary to operate in a manner akin to that of commercial enterprises. This trend threatens to undermine the cultural and educational mission of museums. At the same time, the ability of museums to carry out their missions necessarily depends on a solid financial base. Collaboration, whether in the form of consortia or consolidated institutions, provides an avenue whereby museums can not only make more economical use of their …

Safe Haven, Korey Burns

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Safe Haven is a body of work that reflects my interest in different cultures that have similarities to my personal background. Recreating familiar symbols, colors, textures, and finishes, I create wearable sculptures that communicate memories based upon historic imagery from areas that have impacted my life. By being able to clasp a necklace or pin a brooch on, the viewer physically engages with the work. This interaction resembles my own experiences within the areas I traveled and artists that I have met. With the combination of different metalworking techniques and personal experiences, I am able to developed work that adorns …

A Shift In Silence, Bailey Idom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Shift in Silence is a body of work that emerged because of a key shift in my life. Using the formal components of line, shape, and value, I create a space representing an intimate moment in time. Physically, the medium can be any material, but I process all of this as an expression of line. Each piece shares the commonality of lines and lineage, while the layering embodies the record of my relationships from the past that directly affect the present. The abstraction and unpredictability within my own relationships require openness and vulnerability. This honest dialogue sustains and informs …

Making Sounds, Patrick Costello

Theses and Dissertations

Using collaboration and performance as tools, I situate my personal story, my body, and my skills and interests within a contemporary landscape that is intersectional, full of partialities, and rooted in evolving ecologies.

Profanation, Tsahi Zac H. Hacmon

Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to provoke an Israeli American dialogue that comes through profanity of conventional architecture. I am creating this dialogue by displaying two main subjects in proximity to each other: border architecture from Israel and institutional architecture or non-places in New York.

A Race Of Angels And Their Nameless Longings, Andrew Van Dinh

Theses and Dissertations

I use drawing methods to navigate my diasporic perception and conjure narratives of displacement. This indecipherable distance between self and Other, Vietnam and I, has formed into enigmatic desires, which informs the use of the imaginary in my works as temporary solutions to issues of self-hood and nameless longings.

With Monsters, Leonard J. Reibstein

Theses and Dissertations

These are the things I have learned about how I deal with pain. This paper includes a genealogy of immanent painting from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Through the lens of my biography I explore my relationship to toxic masculinity through expressionist distortion.

Polaroid Access, Becky Jane Rosen

Theses and Dissertations

In her thesis statement, Becky Jane Rosen discusses the relationships between photography, family, and the psyche through her recent paintings and artistic influences.

The Art Curriculum As A Model Approach For Cultivating Higher Order Thinking Skills, Nicole Ross

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

As a life-long learner, I am fascinated by the abyss of knowledge that characterizes and composes a life of consciousness. As a teacher and mentor, I am committed to igniting this quest for knowledge in others and developing effective practices in doing so. The curriculum functions as an invitation to knowledge—or what can be seen as the crux of an education. The question I am most interested in answering is: “how can we most effectively approach curriculum in a way that inspires higher order thinking?” Throughout this study, I examined the factors that go into the formation of curriculum, the …

Art Interventions And Disruptions In Financial Systems: An Interview With Paolo Cirio, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that uncovered the movement of funds through offshore tax havens – conceptual artist Paolo Cirio’s (b. 1979) project Loophole for All (2013) revealed and documented the mechanics behind offshore financial centers. In this interview, Cirio expounds upon his investigations of offshore banking practices, describes his projects for instituting alternative financial models, and explains his hacktivist (i.e. Internet activist) strategies that engage with legal and economic systems. Defining the foundational movements that inform his work, Cirio in turn illuminates his methods of direct provocation and …

Creating A Happy Ending For Socially Relevant Television, John Thomas Cunha

Senior Honors Projects

Television is accessible to millions from the comfort of their own homes and shapes the way we view the world. It has the power to bring people together, but often presents diversity with a strong emphasis on labels. Characters are defined by the one trait that, to the majority of viewers, is unrelatable. This maintains the separation of “us” and “them,” isolating those in the minority. Representation is essential for progress, but it’s more than just including diversity. Instead of dwelling on differences and indulging in stereotypes, characters should all treat each other equally.

The focal TV show of this …

Uri Theatre Presents: Rob Neill And The Neo-Futurists, Caitlyn Sloan

Senior Honors Projects

The University of Rhode Island has given me the opportunity to explore and recognize many different interests that I never knew I previously had. While at the university I discovered my love for Theatre and the talent I have as a manager, as well as a love for event planning through my employment with University Events. These passions drove my desire to create an Honors Project that would help me learn more about management and planning on a scale that could have a large impact. When the theatre department won the Distinguished Visiting Artist Grant for 2017, I seized the …

Racial Peeves: The Exploitation Of Microaggressions, Olivia Gabrielle Ellis

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Racial Peeves: The Exploitation of Microaggressions documents my personal experience of dealing with microaggressions throughout my life, as well as the history of these racial issues. This thesis also documents the creation of my Senior BFA Exhibition of the same title inspired by 1970s Blaxploitation posters.

Poteus, Jimmy Snowden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Proteus is an exhibition that consists of seven sculptures, three woodcut prints, and an installation comprised of steel and ceramics. The seven sculptures vary in size and are fabricated from steel, wood, plastic, and foam. The woodcut prints are hand carved and large in scale from a printmaking standpoint. The purpose of Proteus is to explore ideas of balance as it pertains to: life, death, love, resentment, adventure, responsibility, the subconscious, and the physical world. The methods employed while producing this body of work range from traditional to experimental, and the results of the endeavor are mainly obtained through …

Art Infested Water, May 2018, Nova Southeastern University Department Of Performing And Visual Arts

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.