Fine Arts Commons^™

New Patriarchies: A Turbulence Of Source And Subject, Stephen Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

Experiencing a turbulence of source and subject in the variable inversions and supports of one source to another--the wreck of the U-352, Carpeaux’s Ugolino and his Sons, a movie poster for J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, and Cassiopeia mythology--these four sources as sons, in sacrifice to and surviving by way of “daddy” documentation, are here refigured to reenact and critique the patriarchally recreational, monumental, cinematic, and mythological infrastructures supporting the sources of this work and thereby serving to critique the newer patriarchies to which these sources and their subjectifications here seek to cross consumptively dead end. Following three public …

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Postcession, Evan D. Pomerantz

Theses and Dissertations

This is a series of daily writings. Each day consists of a new topic and is closed at the end of the day. The ideas presented are philosophical, humorous, rambling, lamentations, incantations, doubt-ridden, aesthetic pep talks which combine into an affective representation of my studio practice’s becoming. There will be little congruency, some stories, and a lot of parallels because that is who I am.

Reviving Project:A Chinese-American Culture Exchange Project, Yushan Cassie Sun

UROP Posters

Through art exhibitions in Beijing, China and Richmond, Virginia, Reviving project 01 aims to help promote/ revive a craft technique in Qinghai, China that is disappearing due to the urbanized surroundings.

American artist were invited to collaborate with people from Qinghai to make new pieces incorporating original crafted pieces.

Inspiring Piety: The Influence Of Caravaggio’S Paintings In Santa Maria Del Popolo, Cara Coleman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This article looks at the way Italian Baroque painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio broke from the artistic conventions of the Renaissance and Mannerist styles in his religious paintings to create an entirely new style that reflected the needs of the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. Caravaggio pushed painting throughout Europe in a new direction, away from the idealization of the Renaissance and the artistic extremes of Mannerism, by popularizing realism in art. Caravaggio’s unique style is examined through comparisons of his paintings, The Conversion of Paul, c.1601 and The Martyrdom of Saint Peter, c.1601 in the Roman basilica, Santa Maria del Popolo …

Double Zero, Anthony Earl Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis follows the trajectory of my artistic practice over the past two years, which has led to the installation of my thesis exhibition titled, Double Zero. I hope to position the work among its art and cultural terms by exploring how I have expanded my research concerning Situationist and Marxist theory as well as developed a broader photographic studio practice driven by material experimentation, play, and an investigation into how we live and interact with commodities through media.

Fallen/Lifted, Hillary Waters Fayle

Theses and Dissertations

I use found botanical material such as leaves, seedpods, and branches to explore human connection to the physical world. By combining these organic objects with the rich traditions of needlecraft, I bind nature and the human touch. Both tender and ruthless, this intricate stitch work communicates the idea that our relationship with the natural world is both tenuously fragile and infinitely complex.

The way I think about and make art mirrors the way I think about my life and how I walk through the world. What I do is about elevating details. It is about noticing cycles and connections. It …

Aggro Duality, Michael B. Lesh

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Aggro Duality features sculptures inspired by skateboarding and custom–automobile cultures. This body of work is inspired by the manufacturing process, physicality of materials, individual aesthetic, and attention to craft. Each sculpture in Aggro Duality is created through intensive construction techniques that aim to modify materials into a unified form; which indicate a combination, a duality of mechanical and organic coexistence. Within the skateboarding and custom/automobile cultures there is an aggressive attitude that pushes individuals above and beyond boundaries of traditional standards, meaning, and styles. These cultures intend to create products that are dramatic, personalized, and stand-out from the norm. This …

A Perception Of Change, A Change Of Perception, Christopher D. White

Theses and Dissertations

Change is a constant reminder that permanence is the ultimate illusion. It is through the creation of hyper-realistic, ceramic sculpture that I explore the relationship between nature, humans, and the phenomenon of impermanence. I seek to expose the beauty that often results from decay while, at the same time, making my viewer question their own perception of the world around them. The juxtaposition of natural and man-made features in combination with the skewing of scale, proportion, and material, creates an altered perspective – forcing the viewer to look closer. By combining both human and natural elements within my work I …

Examining The Role Of Active Student Engagement In High School Arts Courses, Athena Irene Nichols

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A primary challenge to educators is the design and implementation of effective student engagement processes. High school students cannot be successful if they are frequently absent from school, as active engagement opportunities reinforce knowledge and help to keep students enthused in their learning. To address the challenges of frequent school absences, this study examined a gap in the literature--namely, the relationship between active engagement and arts courses as a motivator for students to remain in high school. For this study, active engagement was defined as a process in which the student's interests, efforts, and knowledge culminated in an application of …

Invisible Labor And The Preservation Of Dignity, Laken Bridges

All Theses

My art seeks to question the social value of labor. Throughout history, labor hierarchies influenced by social class and economic stigmas have informed how laborers are viewed in the United States. Physical jobs such as menial and domestic work are a common form of invisible labor that experience debasement and stereotyping. In my art, I use labor-based and ordinary objects as a metaphor for the worker, linking the value or disposability of the object to the societal value of labor. This critique of labor is enhanced by the manipulation of text, by the formal tools of scale and perspective, and …

The Land Scouts: Guide Book, Katie D. Ries

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

The Land Scouts promote modern land stewardship and are open to all. The Guide Book gives an overview of the scouts as well as information on getting started earning badges and hosting a troop.

Fiction Fix 16, April Gray Wilder, Jayshiro Tashiro, Christopher Stephen, Cathleen Calbert, Amanda Paulger, Van G. Garrett, Jane Zich, Di Jayawickrema, Josh Lamstein, Liz Dolan, Denise Mostacci Sklar, Holly Day, Erica W. Jamieson, Jack King, Meeah Williams, Glenn Erick Miller, Edward Hagelstein

Fiction Fix

No abstract provided.

To Each His Own Reality: How The Analysis Of Artistic Exchanges In Cold War Europe Challenges Categories, Mathilde Arnoux

Artl@s Bulletin

How to reconstruct artistic relationships among four European countries, situated on both sides of the Iron Curtain, during the period that commenced post-Stalin and lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall? This is one of the questions that faces the research program To Each His Own Reality: The notion of the real in the art of France, West Germany, East Germany and Poland between 1960 and 1989, which was initiated in January 2011. The paper discusses syntheses of the questions that the research team is facing, descriptions of its methodology, an analysis of preliminary results and what they allow …

Psychic Fax On Vibrate, Received On Phantom Limbo, Jake Borndal

Theses and Dissertations

I offer a cloud of observations about language and art. I will prioritize my questions about how language operates in art, the way it functions within my own studio practice, and locate aesthetic interstices throughout. There will be insights gleaned from the various orderers of order (Lacan, Saussure) and orderers of disorder (Derrida, Agamben), walks in terra-incognita, and even some poetry on my part. I will take this chance to orient myself among different structures and deconstructions that have piledup around language, aesthetics and art.

Insert Title, R. Abram Deslauriers

Theses and Dissertations

It is a gestural sensibility forever suspended in the material as it cools. With each movement to and fro, I become fully immersed and given over to the activity of glassworking, where the simplest impressions whisper of fantastic melodies. I remain open to it: conducting a collision: a symphony of riffs, vamps and arpeggios. Constructing the chorus in disjunctive phases as if it forms out of its own directive. The polyphonic rhythm of decisions converge into a new composition, now completely obscured from the intro—existing in reference only to itself and you

Dreamcatcher From Mao's Last Revolution: My Venture Into Creative Social Documentary Video, Christopher Shea Howard

Student Publications

Dreamcatcher From Mao’s Last Revolution is a filmmaking venture into creative social documentary production undertaken by this filmmaker as his own experimental departure from narrative feature film production and the fiction genre. This thesis report not only describes aspects of this film production that are specific to the methodology of documentary film production, but also describes the film’s cinematic expression of memory and the filmmaker’s telling of the story. Some cinematic and conceptual aspects of the story are related to the film’s influences, specifically to those theoretical concepts and techniques employed by documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog.

The documentary story is …

Awful/Awful: An Archive Of Light Embarrassments, Teysha Vinson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The difficulty of representing intangible religious ideas is at the core of Awful/Awful: An Archive of Light Embarrassments. Through an interest in how light is discussed in the Bible as a symbol for God and his fellowship, I make imagery that both repulses me and intrigues me but never do I get to the point where I feel the work encapsulates any answers. Instead, the photographs are questions, archived, unable to represent this light of God on their own without being trite or obtuse. The arranged work on the walls consists of these photographs plus a few ephemera from my …

Recording The Learning Curve During The Mastery Of Glassblowing, Katie L. Corticelli

Senior Honors Projects

Fire and inspiration melted glass art’s enchanting ways into the center of my passions. Lampworking is a small-scale method of glass blowing, which is the term to refer to an art form where one shapes molten glass into a variety of items. To create glass art, propane and oxygen supply a flame torch which melts the glass. Gravity and rhythmic hands work symbiotically to shape glass rods and tubes. The result is unique three-dimensional visual art.

After years of aspiring to work with borosilicate glass, the opportunity to incorporate the endeavor with academia presented itself. Through months of time and …

Mfa14 (Mfa 2014), Sam Fox School Of Design & Visual Arts, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Buzz Spector, Patricia Olynyk

Books and Monographs

Catalogue of a culminating student exhibition held at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, May 9-August 3, 2014. Contents include Introduction / Buzz Spector and Patricia Olynyk -- David Baker / Katie McGinnis -- Amber bloom ; Mop cask ; Sullen fluff ; Frothy Shiraz ; Aquatic jaws ; Smoking trumpets ; Lake feigned goose flap / Steve Byrnes -- Nathan Childs : the affliction a strange weight, the weight a plume of pain, the pain a shrill desire / Aaron Coleman -- Christopher Chrome / Marianne Rosa Laury -- Shayna Cohn / Cassie Jones -- Alyse Cole / Nicholas …

Iterations, Thomas Lowell Edwards

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

For millennia, pottery has facilitated the communal activities of eating and drinking. I use pottery as a placeholder, a metaphor for human interaction. The central core, the initial inspiration, of my sculpture is the diminishing level of connection our culture actively pursues.

I began to notice a trend of increasing disengagement in American culture after spending time abroad and observing the amount of time other cultures allotted for meals, coffee, etc. with companions. I make sculptures that comment on growing American disengagement using various formal principles of art (line, mass, scale, rhythm, and repetition). I am generally unsatisfied with a …

Labor, Vera Bauluz

CGU MFA Theses

I make sacred objects from scratch, from ready mades, from industrial materials, and sometimes from trash or recycling. I treat those objects with love and reverence to embed them with essence and soul. I propose conversations with objects exquisitely executed, that question our social order and the machine, easily understood by everybody, although still challenging our understanding of contemporary art.

The placement of the work and the lighting, as fundamental part of the installation, attempts to generate strokes of conscience that enhance human understanding and capabilities beyond a specific discourse.

Humor and sacred coexist in my installation and in my …

Closely Distant, Crisha Yantis

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

Drawing upon my own experiences and observations of the world around me I use the figure to explore what it means to be human. This body of work addresses the universal experience of anxiety through the dynamics of both personal and interpersonal relationships, specifically focusing on fear of the unknown or what subconsciously lies just out of our comfort or understanding.

Often what is unknown is also what brings about questions of our own power and what we can or cannot control. In my work, I address ideas of power and powerlessness formally through what the figures lack. Their control …

Sally Bruno, Sally Bruno

CGU MFA Theses

My investigation starts with an examination of color, form and line. It continues with an examination of how these elements collide and collude to form objects both abstract and representational. What interests me is the intersection between formal abstraction and representational imagery. My goal is to combine these practices in a rigorous, epistemological inquiry into how human beings make sense of their surroundings, using our minds and our bodies, our perceptions and our expectations, to come to understand the visible world and our embodied relationship to it.

Making Rich Use Of "Leisure", Augusto Sandroni

CGU MFA Theses

I make paintings, drawings, installations and sculptures using oils, acrylics and everyday materials such as burlap, reclaimed wood, cardboard and duct tape. More than any other, Matisse’s work was always a point of reference. Everything I do is partially informed, even if not directly by the work of my predecessors, with Matisse toping the list: the element of joy, play and expression of visual beauty is something I’m not ashamed to strive for. I also embrace risk taking, not conforming with establish norms or methodology; I’m always hoping for novel ideas and methods to infiltrate my workflow.

Fiction Fix 15, April Gray Wilder, Mame Ekblom Cudd, D E. Smith, Denise Emanuel Clemen, Dennis Must, Sally Deskins, Nicolas Poynter, Sara Rauch, Timothy Day, David Gaither, Bruce H. Hinrichs, Michal (Mitak) Mahgerefteh, Tina Tocco, Louis Gallo

Fiction Fix

No abstract provided.

Carrying Water: A M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition By Aaron Sober, Aaron M. Sober

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

For all of us, everyday life is punctuated by moments of victory, defeat, pride, and vulnerability. The process of welcoming gain and tolerating loss is a basic lesson in proportionality. My work is a personal reckoning with the contradictions that define this very human experience. Through animal imagery, symbol, and metaphor I explore the unpredictable circumstances that form a life lived.

We engage with, and understand our own place in the world through stories. By doing so, the avatars we create reflect the scope of our experiences, both sublime and damaged. The animal protagonists who inhabit my work are placeholders …

Taking In: The Best Of Undergraduate Photography 2014, Lucad Students

Taking In

Taking In is a student run project featuring a selection of work created by students attending the college of art and design. The project focuses on the business of promoting art and culminates each year with a juried exhibition, publication and a website all designed to promote selected works of AIB artists. The selected pieces were chosen anonymously by a jury of distinguished members of the Boston Art Community to represent the best of undergraduate in 2014. The book in your hands is the end result of a collective effort by those in the class.

Can Art Stress?, Bojana Joksimovic-Ginn

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Presented in this paper is an interactive, acoustic installation morphologically and functionally influenced by the evolutionarily developed phenomena of two particular defense mechanisms. The first one is the prey’s reduction of noise once a predator is detected; the second one is an internal physiological response to danger known as stress. Conducted in a manner of an experiment, this interactive artistic project has interesting and unpredicted results.

Mana & Ea, Dan Taulapapa Mcmullin

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This work, Mana and Ea, expresses Polynesian indigenous sovereignty struggles with colonialism and globalism in the Pacific Islands.