Fine Arts Commons^™

West Coast Workshop To Southwest Institute, Hannah Marie Cerne

Art & Art History ETDs

This thesis considers Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico (originally established as Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, CA), and its contributions to collaborative printmaking. Originally founded in 1960 by June Wayne with Clinton Adams and Garo Antreasian, Tamarind Lithography Workshop (the precursor to Tamarind Institute) revitalized lithography through structured collaboration between artists and master printers, alongside rigorous training programs. This thesis provides an institutional history of the workshop during its relocation to the University of New Mexico, highlighting its transformation into a university-based institute that integrated education and professional production. Using social and labor-based methodologies, this study analyzes how …

If The Sun Were As Big As My Heart, What Would Be The Distance Between The Sun And The Earth? Or How To Domesticate The Sun, Catalina Martinez, Catalina Martinez Rojas

Masters Theses

If the Sun were as big as my heart, what would be the distance between the Sun and the Earth? Or how to domesticate the Sun is a multidisciplinary installation project that explores how emotional, spiritual, and perceptual experiences can be translated into material form. Beginning from a speculative mathematical proposition that reduces the scale of the Sun to the size of the artist’s heart, the project investigates distance not only as a physical condition, but also as an emotional and domestic one.

Drawing from Colombian vallenato traditions, everyday observations of sunlight, and references ranging from Agnes Martin and Wayne …

Tarot - Reimagined: Monotype Tarot Landscapes, Eleanor B. Nelson

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Printmaking is a form of artmaking that utilizes transferring marks from the matrix to the final piece of paper, often through a press. These processes are able to create an edition of multiple identical prints. This is typically considered the highlight of using print processes; however, the process of making monotypes allows for one original piece. Through the process of researching and creating watercolor monotypes, I made a collection of ten original pieces, all depicting different landscapes throughout the Tarot deck. Each piece is 9” x 12” printed on a 13” x 17” piece of paper and created with watercolor, …

Foundations Of Art: Materials, Methods, And Meaning, Elizabeth Mellott

Art OERs

This course provides an introduction to the tools, materials, and processes used across a wide range of artistic media. The focus is on understanding how different materials shape the way art is created and experienced. Attention is given not only to what artists make, but also to why particular media are chosen to communicate specific ideas, emotions, or perspectives. The physical qualities of materials, the methods used, and the cultural meanings attached to them all influence artistic decision-making.

The course surveys several major categories of artistic media. Pigment-based practices include painting, drawing, and printmaking, where color and mark-making form the …

Accessible Art: Connecting Community Through Artistic Expression, Michaela M. Speers

Art and Art History Summer Fellows

I answered an important investigative question: How can we use art to connect our community? I illustrated, produced, and installed a “Mini Art Vending Machine” on campus to provide the Ursinus College community easy access to original works of art. I explored visual topics that would connect not only current students, but also prospective students, alumni, and members of the Collegeville community.

The Mini Art Vending Machine's permanent home is within Schellhase Commons. However, the machine will frequently move locations to further enhance events or to bring further exposure to the student artists. You can expect to see it at …

Unraveling Landscape Stories, Marcus O’Donnell Prof

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

In Silvi Glattauer’s photographic practice nothing is set, time, light and landscape are each staged in unexpected ways. An image is never singular: often literally composed from multiple exposures, always taken through multiple processes, and always opening a dialogue with the rich history of her own work and the work of other artists. For Glattauer photography, and more particularly printmaking, isn’t about fixing an image it is about opening it up. It is work marked by nimble curiosity and although it is often technically startling it is never about technique, rather, it is about an ethic of slow looking.

Shell Quilt: Piecing Memory Through Quilting, Collage, And Printmaking, Grace M. Woodruff

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Shell Quilt is a mixed media quilt and accompanying book which collect an amalgamation of found, hand dyed, and printed fabric pieces. This project serves as a visual tether and inquiry into my late grandmother Sylvia’s life and a way of piecing together memories of my time with her. As a conceptual frame for my thesis project, Shell Quilt, I have looked to the process of femmage, a term initially coined by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer, which I interpret as a portmanteau of feminism and collage. Through the lens of femmage, I explore the processes of collage, quilting, …

Weep No More, My Lady (Oh! Weep No More Today): Love, Violence, Printmaking, And Kentuckian Futurity, Madison Brown, Marshall Brown

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Situated within a regressive political climate, this essay considers the writer’s thesis artwork Weep No More, My Lady as a simultaneous account of Southern gendered violence and a desire for healing. Through personal and historical connections to Kentucky’s material culture, the work navigates binaries of class, race, and gender that have dictated the dominant contemporary conception of the region. Placing the competing forces of care and brutality in dialogue, Weep No More, My Lady translates these theoretical challenges into formal attributes. The work suggests modes of making — stitching, unraveling, tearing — can act against the construction and naturalization of …

Records In Space, Anthony Torrano

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in how the process of layering has the capacity to mimic layers of history. History is a fraught concept, subject to changes with the passage of time, hierarchies in dissemination, and differing memories. Its precarity leaves some stories immortalized and some forgotten. The acts of recording, erasing, and rerecording in my work are a mediation on this liminality.

The Function Of Art, Magdalen O. M. Pickering

Theses and Dissertations

With the help of machines and the powers of perception, Magdalen Pickering introduces logic to strange and fantastical subjects. The Function of Art explores a hybrid of techniques in painting, screenprinting, and computer generated imagery as Magdalen attempts to use generative printing to obscure art historical consciousness. The installation crosses into virtual reality; reframing textiles, landscapes, and the gallery space through a metaphysical lens.

Recollections Of A Tejana Life, Carolina Yáñez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This thesis encompasses the life of a young woman navigating life in Texas through various political and social barriers. My interdisciplinary practice analyzes the historical context of Mexicans in Texas from its Revolutionary period into current injustices. Through fiber, printmaking, and photography I create a visual diary to illustrate what the political has made personal. These works display the beauty of Tejano culture, but also the power struggles that threaten communities I care for, as well as my own existence that persists against far-right wing agendas.

Current politics and government leadership in Texas have inspired me to make artwork calling …

Collective Drip: Transformation, Hybridity, And Queer Ecologies, Vee Adams

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In my recent body of work, Collective Drip, I investigate the queer and trans body as a site for transformation. Through the lens of queer theory, ecology, and myth, I explore what it means to be becoming, always in process. Looking at hybrid bodies and symbiotic life forms, I’m interested in investigating what it means when the body is seen as a dynamic landscape? What happens when the community is reinvisioned as an ecosystem? Facing the current transphobic political landscape, this body of work offers queer and trans visions of pleasure and abundance.

Held On By A Thread, Annie M. Hutchins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Annie Hutchins, discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Held on by a Thread, which was installed at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, TN, from March 6, 2025, through March 28, 2025, with a public reception held on March 7, 2025. The exhibition is a collection of textile works containing repurposed material artifacts of the life she shared with her maternal family since childhood. The artwork incorporates found objects from the artist’s home, including domestic textiles, clothing, handmade sewing projects, family photographs, and sewing notions. The artworks are made using the printmaking technique of photo emulsion screen …

My Art Is Garbage, Beth Shepherd

The Goose

In “My Art is Garbage,” I describe three recent art projects where garbage is both a theme and an artistic medium used to critique the overuse of and inability to reuse or safely dispose of plastics we use every day. The first work, Untitled (Plastic Film Balls), uses non-recyclable single-use household plastic made to form an installation of shimmering balls and alludes to the environmental footprint of the artworld. Plastic Shores, a series of monotype prints, reminds us that plastics in the environment are deleterious to species that we see every day. Finally Plastic Pests, a series …

An Acceptable Time, Crystal Mccallie

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This scholarly work is my interpretation of the art in the exhibition, An Acceptable Time, which ecompasses a diversity of media that varies as much in material and process as the span of my life as mother, a steward of the domestic home, and a spiritual child-at-heart myself. At the center of the work is a contemplative beauty inviting the viewer to linger with the art and reflect upon the echoes of the past as they might affect the present. The formal delivery of illustrative realism, a mirage of pattern, and abstract layering draws out major themes of memory, nostalgia, …

Unruly And Unresolved: A Shared, Precarious Survival, Sara Inacio

Masters Theses

I'm just a little rat trying to survive,

To exist and not be perceived.

Building a home,

In a place unnatural to me.

Destroyed and rebuilt again,

I've learned to live in the toxic world you've created.

In a world that is not made for my belonging, I’ve had to find my way, to exist and build with what’s within reach. Such a constant state of construction feels oddly familiar and comfortable to me, home is always in the process of becoming. As I build, I think about how the home building process always takes up the space of others, …

Swine & Symphonies, Dilara Miller

Graduate Artistry Projects and Performances

Dilara Miller’s work critique’s and reflects on the social/cultural effects of being a Turkish-American Muslim woman in today’s society. Through referencing antiquities and how they are presented today, she identifies patterns of hierarchies that exist in human history through an eco-feminist lens. Miller’s work reflects on the role of the artist and the historical testimony we leave behind; like her Girl Birds, she seeks to record her experiences within our Anthropocene as colored by mythic and Islamic teachings. Miller pulls from historic epochs to generate a foundation from which to examine our contemporary treatment of women as related to our …

Closet Space, Savannah Hope L. Andries

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Closet Space is an exhibition investigating what makes a home. Through the creation of six drawings and seven prints, I investigate the relationship between isolation and companionship. This body of work explores the concept that a home is not simply a physical structure made up of walls and doors. Instead, it is about the emotional connections we create with places and people. Through fragmented memories, imagined environments, and a desire to connect with others, I address that the true meaning of home lies in our emotional attachments to inhabited spaces and the people we share them with. Being queer in …

Sometimes Windows Break, Samantha Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

The sensation of detachment and reclusion frequently gives rise to an uncanny and dreamlike space. Enveloped within this dimension, the quirks of memory become a fragile lifeline to bygone, intangible ideas of reality. Fixated on this threshold, my artistic explorations in print, collage, and assemblage navigates these elusive realms, rendering fragmented and distant shapes and figures in stark contrast to elements that evoke an eerie sense of familiarity. In this manner, my work invites viewers to embrace the disconcerting and unsettling aspects of the in-between, all the while establishing an unsettling connection to reality through the lens of nostalgic objects …

Emma Fry, Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio, Swarm, Emma Fry

Senior Art Portfolios

This work is created for the Senior Art Exhibition 2024. This work explores the feeling of being alienated by communities.

Hearts And Minds, Steven Knapp

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exploration of how lived experiences, a sense of dark humor, and creativity translate into my studio practice. Through images, material exploration and pointed interactions with the audience I encourage people to embrace nuanced views of difficult topics that exist in our world.

Alcea, Autumn Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

This exhibition was created with the intent to investigate and celebrate gender fluidity in both nature and humanity by depicting one plant, the hollyhock, whose reproductive parts share a structure that changes from male to female as the plant matures. Alcea consists of prints, drawings, and installations that showcase the hollyhock in each stage of its transition.

Reading The Room: Memory, Dwelling, And The Everyday, Sara R. Hardin

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In any space, there is a residue that coats the present with a patina of memory. Creating layered imagery in dream-like paintings and prints, I use the domestic realm as a metaphor for the internal world of the mind, memories, and private thoughts, including them in compositions with symbols like the boundaries of windows, doors, and gates. These metaphorical structures also portray outward identities, which guard inner emotions. The conceptual aspects of these compositional elements weave together memories of the past and places of the present into a unified whole.

I began graduate school at the beginning of the COVID-19 …

A Tenth Of A Second, Natalia Andrea Mejía Murillo

Theses and Dissertations

A Tenth of a Second is an installation that explores modes of cartographic representation of the universe, specifically the moon, in dialogue with poetic language. The work is based on research and reflection on disciplines such as astronomy and archaeology and addresses issues such as the fragility of the reference and categorization systems we use to approach reality, tactility and the body as a standard of measurement.

Wonderland, Mai Tran

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

“WONDERLAND” is a series of large-scale print and installation work created from 2021 to 2023. This body of work showcases dream-like landscapes, Vietnamese legends and customs blended with American culture to create unique visual narratives. Elements such as mythical animals, the Ly dynasty dragon and ceramics, and the Vietnamese Nom script speak to an almost forgotten culture. In contrast, the carno-lotus (cheeseburger) plant, Walleye, Bobcat, and winter scenery reference life in the Midwest. By combining elements from the two cultures, the artist builds parallel worlds where all living things can sustain and value each other’s differences — a place without …

Home/Sick, Elizabeth P. Fontenot

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a supporting document that discusses the conceptual and technical aspects of the artworks in the accompanying exhibition, HOME/SICK. The work in the exhibition consists of selections from different series of work that are inspired by related subject matter. The content driving the work responds to anecdotal experiences of people living in communities near oil refineries and chemical processing plants and how events at these facilities affect their way of life. Many times, these are communities of color which strive to voice concerns and protect homes from harmful toxins. In one series, original and appropriated imagery serves as …

Quilted Archives, Rebecca M. Gallandt

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Memory and identity are rooted in the experience of being in material spaces and the process of remembering is often prompted by associative places. Quilted Archives is a series of four collages that combine the mediums of printmaking and oil painting in the pursuit of exploring nostalgia. In each work I use brightly colored intaglio aquatint prints, sepia intaglio etchings, patterned linocut prints, and oil paint to embed memories of childhood play and pretend in the flora of the landscapes where each memory takes place. The flora is collaged in a colorful geometric style to reference quilting and is used …

The Printmaking Boom And Its Effect On The Future For The Market For Prints And Multiples, Helen H. Condo

MA Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the history of the market for prints and multiples beginning with the print renaissance of the 1960s to discover the underlying drivers of a successful editions market and make predictions for the future. Before the print boom of the 1960s, driven by the departure of printmakers from Europe during World War II, who reinvigorated a passion for the artistic process, printmaking was considered that of a craft. Once it was elevated from its secondary status, due to excitement from Contemporary artists and institutional accreditation, a market structure was solidified. By examining the …

Bitter Sweet, Hanna M. Kesty

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written document is the accompanying thesis for my Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, Bitter Sweet. The exhibition featured traditional framed prints with sculptural accents that reveal brutally honest negative personal experiences, interactions, and emotions, paired with delicately cute aesthetics. My work embodies the necessity of personal artistic expression to process years of emotional repression. The prints and sculptures in the exhibition focus around a collection of insults and harsh comments coupled with feelings of loneliness and isolation. I allow personal vulnerability to show, to reinforce that these moments have molded and shaped who I am and will continue to …

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 …