Fine Arts Commons^™

The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience Of Vulnerable Immigrants, Eric Andre

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience of Vulnerable Immigrants" focuses on the impact of systems of state control such as immigration laws, policies, and practices that have been institutionalized and that have marginalized immigrants. In my thesis, I pay specific attention to inhuman acts of exclusion and discrimination resulting from the systemic barriers perpetuated by xenophobic and nationalist ideologies.

From this standpoint, my thesis exhibition employs interactive space, which includes visual art (drawing, sculpture ceramics), projection, video, and sound, as a means to explore the effects of the exclusive and discriminatory immigration policies and practices. Furthermore, it is designed to explore …

Cannibalizing The Popular Work Of Barbara Wagner, Beatriz Arcoverde De Oliveira

Theses

This project offers an analysis of the appropriation of popular culture aesthetics and imagery in contemporary art through a critical examination of the work of Brazilian artist Barbara Wagner. Wagner’s work contributes to an understanding of this increasing tendency, and also fosters the possibility of a discussion about its consequences in the social world, in creating a paradox of both challenging colonized sensibilities, and also working to maintain a structure of social inequality. Her work is also a good way to discuss the expanding contemporary definitions of popular culture

< Justice > And < Open Debate >: An Ideographic Analysis Of < Freedom Of Speech >, Emily Ann Spackman

Theses and Dissertations

< Freedom of speech > is a foundational ideograph in the American and more broadly, Western, tradition. Yet this term is not static in its meanings or commitments to social action. The current debate around cancel culture is the site of renegotiation of < freedom of speech > in relation to other terms such as < open debate >, < justice >, < marginalized >, < tolerance >, < democracy >, and < power >. This study is an ideographic analysis of two artifacts that represent two sides of the < freedom of speech > discussion: “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” and “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” Following McGee’s theory and method, this research examines the diachronic definition of < freedom of speech > through the U. …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Artifice And Observation: Truth, Automatism, And The Performative Self-Portrait, Eileen F. Powers

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

If art and artists are complicit in the transfer of information, then photographers are charged, falsely or veritably, with conveying evidence, and by extension, promoting a kind of truth. Since its inception, the camera has been used as an instrument of documentation, creating still recordings of what it sees. Cameras were pointed with seemingly nonprejudicial focus at individuals, the self, and the dead. Pioneering photographers were viewed not as artists, but skilled technicians and observant operators, and thus tasked with the burden of proof.

The “truth claim” is the prevalent belief that traditional photography accurately depicts reality. While the use …

Dotphotozine Issue 10, June 2021, Students Of The Csusb Art Department, Thomas Mcgovern

Dotphotozine

No abstract provided.

Writing Not Writing: Transdisciplinary Poetics, Institutional Critique, Miriam L. Atkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of transdisciplinary creative practice as a means of institutional critique. The artists I have chosen as my primary focus—Robert Kocik, Eleni Stecopoulos, Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmie Durham, Leslie Scalapino and Lyn Hejinian—employ multiple mediums and fields of discourse to address the presumptions and exclusions that are structurally integral to the institutions that house them. They enact “architextural” interventions through their use of forms that move between the page and three dimensional space, incorporating architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, performance, poetry and prose. My work aims at a renewed understanding of critique as such, and therefore—though …

The Undiscovered Country, Luke A. Atkinson

LSU Master's Theses

The Undiscovered Country is a compendium of paintings, prose, and poetry that defines the place of creation. This work is a response to life as I find it, in as honest and truthful a way as my ability allows. Sergei Prokofiev said, “The more the sea rages, the more precious a hard rock among the waves becomes.” My paintings are solid rocks that I cling to. Hopefully, someone else can too.

Symbolism Of The Body, Claire E. Ragland

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Using a variety of print mediums and mixed media processes, I create dynamic imagery derived from my own evolving mythology and symbolist language. These highly decorative pieces are rich with motifs and patterns that have emerged through my personal narratives as well as pop cultural movements. The iconic, androgenous figures in my compositions help me tell stories of queer relationality, connection with self and the natural world, and the complexities of my emotional landscape. Using different tactics to create doorways and openings around and within these pieces, I invite the viewer to step into these alternate realities to find layered …

The Art Of Heritage And Mortality, Barbara Johanna Mileto

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through my art I explore the formation of cultural and personal identity addressing the importance of heritage, ancestors, and religion in Latin-American culture, while I develop my unique deities and spiritual space, creating my own iconography. The pieces are strongly autobiographical, using my family members, and frequently lived experience as a subject. Furthermore, I am drawn to the circle of life and productive failures - beginnings, deaths, and transitions. - My work integrates two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums, ranging from photography and printmaking to assemblage and textiles, video and digital.

The Gravel In Her Voice, Swiss (Kierra) B. Mccall

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the relationship between oral poetry and written poetry, and is written with a heavy blend of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This work seeks to interrogate the notion that there should inherently be a rigid dichotomy between written poetry and spoken word poetry, but rather aims to show there is a relationship of mutual seepage between the distinct entities. There is also an aim of interrogating the belief that within American English there are not a multitude of dialects that are, too, worthy of academic study and poetic focus. Upon defense, this collection serves as a language …

The Stylistic Development Of Jean Despujols (1886-1965), Kelly M. Ward

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis is the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the life and most extant works by Jean Despujols. The French and later naturalized American painter, writer, poet, philosopher, deep-thinker, and mystic was best known for his Neoclassical and academic style. This thesis briefly discusses the artist’s beginnings as a young painter at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux and in Paris, his sketches in the trenches of the First World War, his time at the Villa Medicis after winning the distinguished Rome Prize, and his paintings and thoughts as a philosopher and political writer throughout his life. An outstanding …

Fun House, Stephanie Cobb

LSU Master's Theses

The expression “fun house” seems empathetic and joyful, but has potentially melancholy connotations. Fun houses are participatory. They allow guests to move freely through their colorful halls. At the same time, they do not organize guest’s experience. Usually, we are thoughtful of all possible contingencies that make the world so unpredictable. We prefer certainty to doubt and try to avoid risks. However, reason and order have limits. To feel alive, we must take risks. The connotation of the paintings in Fun House may imply either a sunny mood through tenderness between figures or a tense ambivalence that lingers in their …

Hello Again يا اهلا A Study Of Grief, Diana Abouchacra

LSU Master's Theses

Grief is an unwanted visitor who we all come to know throughout our lifetime. Although every person reacts differently to bereavement of a loved one, almost always the lost other becomes etched into our being for the remainder of our lives (McClocklin & Lengelle, 2017). In today’s society, we are encouraged to say “Good-bye”, but what if instead, we allow ourselves to keep those who have passed on close to our hearts and say hello again? Hello Again يا اهلا is a body of work that explores my experience with grief. The artworks made for this exhibition investigate my process …

Finding My Feet: A Documentation Of The Ambiguity Of Cultural Displacement, Aanchal Raisahib

Theses - ALL

The aim of this thesis is to describe my studio practice and expound on the ideas that inspire my projects. First, the thesis demonstrates the ambiguity that arises from a displacement of cultural context from being an international student in America. Then, it goes on to describe how themes of nostalgia and cultural identity are explored through individual projects. It investigates the decision-making process in terms of material and technique used for making the artwork. Finally, the thesis concludes with how the work has potential for existing in more than one narrative and lays a foundation for further investigation.

Reflections From The In-Between: Visualizing The Mental Thresholds Of Dissociation, Katherine Virag

Theses - ALL

I am fascinated by the state of being in-between; by the mental spaces that are somehow neither here nor there, but also somehow both here and there. At a young age, I began to experience depersonalization and derealization, and this dissociated state left me feeling trapped somewhere on the threshold of reality and non-reality. My artistic practice is concerned with the psychological antitheses of dissociation – comfort vs discomfort, safety vs danger, and reality vs non-reality, and the continuum of space between these polarities. Often through large-scale installations, I create a physical space for the viewer to enter. These spaces, …

The Journey From Somewhere To Anywhere: The Interchange Of Two Worldviews, Qinyu Chen

Theses - ALL

This thesis discusses the worldview of conservative Somewhere People and open-minded Anywhere People put forward by David Goodhart in his book The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics. It reveals that under the trend of globalization, Anywhere common-sense challenges the Somewhere worldview and partly replace it. Anywhere People's mobility is the key to maximizing their benefits.

By analyzing the living environment, educational background, and psychological activities of these two kinds of people in the first part, the thesis revealed the relatively higher social mobility helps Anywhere People better seek fortune and opportunities. The most significant difference between …

"Let Me Show You Around": The Domestic As A Site For Personal And Political Transformation, Brett Morgan

Theses - ALL

This thesis seeks to contextualize and describe my art making practice through my personal experience and professional research. I begin by referencing a childhood memory to craft a metaphor for my current work. Through storytelling, I weave together the ideas of home, comfort, and alienation to describe the influence that domestic objects have on the construction of identities. Using disidentification as a queer method, the works described herein act as visual (and visible) evidence to imagine queered futures and complicate the traditional divisions between public discourse and personal narrative. In conclusion, the importance of this queering as a sustained and …

The Art Of Reconstruction, Kristina Starowitz

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to highlight my artistic process, current projects, and research strategies emerging from my studio practice. First, this thesis describes and elaborates my practice of "reconstruction," the reasons I find it effective, and the personal history behind it. I also discuss the goals of my work and how I intend to carry it forward into the future. Throughout my work I seek to tell a story that resonates with my personal history, communicating to audiences both the vulnerabilities and transitions of life experience. My work invites the viewer into a collective space where the …

Stern In German Means Star, Stern In Yiddish Also Means Star, Maya Stern

Theses - ALL

As an artist, I explore my family's complicated history of lost Jewish identity and the contrary involvement. I engage in this history by reflecting on the current political climate using an archive developed by my ancestors. I use components of these varying objects, photographs, and writings to deconstruct - utilizing materials and techniques that can be unwound, discolored, or aged to depict, if not honor, the mutable nature of memory. It is the tension within my ancestry that drives me to make work to ensure that genocidal tragedies like the Holocaust do not happen again. I aim to portray the …

Thank You For Tody, Britton Thorp

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to describe my current projects and research within my studio practice. First, this thesis illustrates my personal journey from addiction to recovery and therefore sets the tone of gratitude for the rest of the paper. Next, the paper discusses my methodology and processes within the ceramics medium. Then, the thesis goes on to draw conceptual parallels between fine art and the culinary arts, leading the reader back to core concepts within recovery and art making. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing core values discovered throughout my tenure as a maker and reaffirms why …

Shangles: A Stream Of Consciousness, Joshua David Baker

Theses - ALL

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the Shangle. Shangle is a term devised by my grandfather during the course of a practical joke. Years after his death, I look to define and explore the ramifications and possibilities of a shangle. I describe how the pursuit of a shangle has allowed for an evolution of my art-making methodologies and concerns. My artwork draws from my interests in humor, culture, materiality, personal anecdotes, and a pervasive need to find the edge of my artwork. My artwork toes the line between fictional narrative and the violent reality of everyday life. I …

The Journey From Somewhere To Anywhere: The Interchange Of Two Worldviews, Qinyu Chen

Theses - ALL

This thesis discusses the worldview of conservative Somewhere People and open-minded Anywhere People put forward by David Goodhart in his book The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics. It reveals that under the trend of globalization, Anywhere common-sense challenges the Somewhere worldview and partly replace it. Anywhere People's mobility is the key to maximizing their benefits.

By analyzing the living environment, educational background, and psychological activities of these two kinds of people in the first part, the thesis revealed the relatively higher social mobility helps Anywhere People better seek fortune and opportunities. The most significant difference between …

Finding My Feet: A Documentation Of The Ambiguity Of Cultural Displacement, Aanchal Raisahib

Theses - ALL

The aim of this thesis is to describe my studio practice and expound on the ideas that inspire my projects. First, the thesis demonstrates the ambiguity that arises from a displacement of cultural context from being an international student in America. Then, it goes on to describe how themes of nostalgia and cultural identity are explored through individual projects. It investigates the decision-making process in terms of material and technique used for making the artwork. Finally, the thesis concludes with how the work has potential for existing in more than one narrative and lays a foundation for further investigation.

The Art Of Reconstruction, Kristina Starowitz

Theses - ALL

The objective of this thesis paper is to highlight my artistic process, current projects, and research strategies emerging from my studio practice. First, this thesis describes and elaborates my practice of “reconstruction,” the reasons I find it effective, and the personal history behind it. I also discuss the goals of my work and how I intend to carry it forward into the future. Throughout my work I seek to tell a story that resonates with my personal history, communicating to audiences both the vulnerabilities and transitions of life experience. My work invites the viewer into a collective space where the …

Situationships: Creating Situations And Relationships For And With Material, Catherine Spencer

Theses - ALL

The ability to heal, adapt, and evolve is essential to thriving within new circumstances. These characteristics, which are so easily observed in nature, have been the visual guide to not only the methodology behind my practice but also in how I have learned to make sense of unimaginable emotional pain. By examining each visual and material ingredient that goes into my process, I reveal my imagined world and the systems of power that influence the “situationships” between each object. This paper aims to reflect the essence of my process and art, where chaos is embraced and the precarity of life …

Reflections From The In-Between: Visualizing The Mental Thresholds Of Dissociation, Katherine Virag

Theses - ALL

I am fascinated by the state of being in-between; by the mental spaces that are somehow neither here nor there, but also somehow both here and there. At a young age, I began to experience depersonalization and derealization, and this dissociated state left me feeling trapped somewhere on the threshold of reality and non-reality. My artistic practice is concerned with the psychological antitheses of dissociation – comfort vs discomfort, safety vs danger, and reality vs non-reality, and the continuum of space between these polarities. Often through large-scale installations, I create a physical space for the viewer to enter. These spaces, …

Making Room: Addressing The Counter-Therapeutic Nature Of Psychiatric Hospitalization Through Containment- Based Group Expressive Therapy, Max Sandor Copans

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The process of hospitalization and the environment of a typical psychiatric hospital is often counter-therapeutic. To challenge this problem, clinicians may introduce the concept of psychological containment. To elaborate, being hospitalized anywhere can be disorienting, frightening and even traumatic. This problem is only further exacerbated in psychiatric hospitals where patients may be disorganized, manic, or struggling with psychosis. Furthermore, psychological containment is essentially the ability for psychiatric patients to prevent their intense emotions from effecting others negatively, and to act with resiliency when other patients are unable to contain their own disruptive behaviors. This paper utilizes both an initial literature …

Stern In German Means Star, Stern In Yiddish Also Means Star, Maya Stern

Theses - ALL

As an artist, I explore my family's complicated history of lost Jewish identity and the contrary involvement. I engage in this history by reflecting on the current political climate using an archive developed by my ancestors. I use components of these varying objects, photographs, and writings to deconstruct - utilizing materials and techniques that can be unwound, discolored, or aged to depict, if not honor, the mutable nature of memory. It is the tension within my ancestry that drives me to make work to ensure that genocidal tragedies like the Holocaust do not happen again. I aim to portray the …