Fine Arts Commons^™

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 …

Snip, Snap, Snout: This Tale Is Told Out, Crista A. Ames

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Mythology has shaped human thought and experience since before recorded history. Passed from one generation to the next, myths elevate and aggrandize realities that are difficult, complex or horrifying. This is what makes us human, an inspiring capacity toward metaphor and the ability to make beauty, lyricism and splendor—order from the chaos. Within mythology, the cause and effect of both misery and joy may be explored in their wholeness. In this act of imaginative translation, we may come to understand how misery and joy are naturally coexisting.

In my thesis exhibition this tale is told out, I use the layering …

What Adds Up To Being: The Work Of Tanna Burchinal, Tanna L. Burchinal

All Theses

My practice takes form around embodied experience. I affect signifiers of the human body within the ordered grid, the scientific text, and the logic of the machine, to highlight the interdependencies of physical bodies and those social constructs that produce and influence identity. We are a part of these constructs that both extend and limit; we are enacting and interacting with them. I do not aim to eradicate these structures of power (without them, our identities are in chaos). Instead, I point out the pitfalls of these constructs that are perceived as unchanging, by making interaction and experience integral to …

Materialize: Sculpture Using Digital Fabrication, Robert And Elaine Stein Galleries

Exhibition and Program Catalogs

This guide was created for the Materialize exhibition, curated by John Dickinson and Tess Cortes, with juror Tom Lauerman. Materialize highlighted 58 works by 27 artists that used digital processes in their design or production. This exhibition also traveled to Purdue University Galleries.

You And I, Nao Yamamoto

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Artist statement Nao Yamamoto The environment I grew up in allowed me to cultivate an appreciation for both contemporary art and traditional craft, and I still respect the Japanese culture. However, experiencing contemporary art based on a different society and environment changed my perspective and I felt like it took me beyond the narrow culture of Japan. Since I recognized my art as a way to represent myself, or even to have conversations with tnyself, I became devoted to a contemporary art practice. It has been so exciting to see my thoughts made visual and how I've been changed by …

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 …

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 …

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.

Concrete Painting, Stephanie Cafcules

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the evolution of my artwork with synthetic materials through influences of the Minimalist and Process Artists of the 1960's and 1970's, inspiration from natural forms, and my exploration of concrete painting. Each work reveals discoveries of different processes and materials, accelerating the creation of new works. It is my hope this thesis will inform viewers about the process and concepts that my work embodies.

Fare Thee Well, Georgia L. Godwin

LSU Master's Theses

The common thread in all my work is time—its passage, effects, and remembrance. I have created a series of works that are meditations on time, the ephemeral quality of memory and the effects of aging, profession, and life decisions on our bodies, especially faces. The physical materials and my treatment of them reinforce these themes, showing the erosive qualities of earth, and drawing inspiration from natural features that signify the passage of time such as desert hoodoos, desert varnish, old wood, erosion and chemical oxidation, and from man-­‐made features such as old documents that have been written, erased, and rewritten. …

[Implied Depth]*, Hope Thier

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

While snooping through my great grandmother's belongings, I found late 19th and early 20th century photographs and stories of untold familial histories, from that of my own family and others. I have taken to adopting these families, and I am attracted to these almost forgotten narratives and developing these incomplete truths about past relatives into fictionalized characters and false histories. I strive to develop a chaotic but structured quality in my work. While doing so, I explore relationships. The relationships evolve between myself and the material, myself and the characters, and the characters and the material. By observing and learning …

Art And Symbolism: The Technique Of Applying Hidden Meaning And Communicating Specific Ideas Through Art, Andrea C. Macbean

Senior Honors Theses

Symbolism is an artistic style frequently used in the arts. Through the course of art history, it was its own artistic movement as well. The incorporation of specific symbols, shapes, colors, or identifiable images communicates to the viewer an intended message or statement. Frequently, symbolism appears to be hidden or initially unperceived by the intended audience. In some works, symbolism is so abstract that it needs explanation or clarification to be understood completely by the viewer. This thesis will analyze a few techniques of symbolism that can be incorporated in a work of art to communicate truth, entice thought, point …

The Speakers (Voice Box), Chris Purdie, Brian Christensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Speakers (Voice Box) is a six-foot cube made of two hundred-twelve black speakers. The point of departure for this sculpture is found in an art historical dialog between Minimalist art and the criticism of Michael Fried. In this piece I examined the phenomenology of perception as it applied to Minimalist artist Tony Smith’s sculptures—specifically Die, a six foot steel cube. The dimensions of Smith’s Die and mine correspond to those of the human body as depicted in Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing, Vitruvian Man. Both Smith and myself are interested in the ways physical objects, as well as our spatial …

Catalog Of An Artist’S Work: A Compilation Of The Works Of Torlief S. Knaphus, Martha M. Beddoes, Dr. Martha Peacock

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Torlief S. Knaphus was born in Vats, Stavanger, Norway in 1882. Throughout his childhood and teenage years, Torlief showed artistic promise in his whittling and painting. He had a deep love for the beauty and divinity in nature and wished to capture this beauty in painting. Through his teenage years, Torlief became a sailor and studied art in Oslo.

Three-Dimensional Time Line, Michael Francom, Brian Christensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Time is a constant in our lives. We are completely wrapped up in its influence. We relate everything we do to this marching enigma. Its outward markings are day and night, equinox and solstice. What separates the present from the past or the future? How does the principle of entropy relate to times passing? Does time cause us to age or does our getting old mark time? All of these questions are difficult or impossible to answer.

Art In The Library: From The Collection Of The Thomas G. Carpenter Library, University Of North Florida, Thomas G. Carpenter Library

Art in the Library Catalog

The Thomas G. Carpenter Library’s Art in the Library project began in 2008. Since the project’s inception the collection has grown to more than 100 pieces through the generosity of artists and collectors. Many of the works are by artists from northeast Florida. This is a selection of the pieces that may be found on display throughout the library’s four floors.

Catalog contains work by the following artists: Nofa Dixon, Diane Farris, John Bunker, Mindy Hawkins, Tom Farrell, Anthony Whiting, Louise Freshman Brown, Susanne Schuenke, Susanna Richter-Helman, Tiffany Leach, Jonathan Lux, Marilyn Taylor, Steve Williams, Christie Holechek, Sydney McKenna, Jerry …

Modular Envelops, Rotem Tamir

Theses and Dissertations

This texts in about my thesis show; Modular envelopes which was presented in the Anderson gallery at may 2013. The text speaks about my individual process of making both this particular work and art in general.

Ritual Process, Kevin A. Baer

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art is a means for investigating the passage of time, the decay of physical things, and the truth of mortality. I explore these concepts through process-oriented sculptures that emphasize ritual and material. The process is communicated with the creation of relics, often existing as drawings or the remains of degenerated sculptures. These relics bear witness to the process. I focus on themes of temporal change and death because they remain central to our metaphysical and physical existence. I see a diminished reverence for the power of death in our culture, and through my work I aim to pay homage …

Trip Report: A Few Lessons In Love, Jason Adams

All Theses

Can a work of art care for someone? Can it address a need for comfort or love? My research focuses on simple gestures and actions that seek to fulfill these questions. This research spans a wide array of sculptural and performative strategies in order to give breadth to these goals and to access a multitude of audiences in different contexts. The work importantly bridges both traditional art venues as well as more public venues in order to participate in multiple conversations pertaining to the role of socially engaged art practices. By utilizing both ends of the locational spectrum for the …

Path - Loss, Gregory S. Cook

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

The term “path loss” could be considered somewhat idiomatic – it refers at once to a very specific technical definition and an easily relatable conceptualization, but perhaps its most immediate read is one of defeat, literally “a path, lost.” I find this beautifully problematic. In its original end as a term in radio-engineering, it’s used to describe the attenuation of a signal through physical space on its way to a receiver – that is, “path loss” describes some kind of thin-ness of intensity, the parts of something snagged along the way; parts caught in bedrock, lost in soil, or tangled …

Threshold, Alexandria Knipe

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

My decisions in the studio are tied to my experiences outside of the studio, intertwining the complex relationship of memory and sentience. Each work precariously balances between softness and rigidity, vessel and sculpture, monumentality and intimacy. These tensions transform the familiar into the enigmatic and are an integral part of my philosophical approach to making.

Soft curves and billowing planes are punctuated by the structure of defined edges, hard angles, and areas of dark shadows. This duality suggests two worlds, one of feeling, intuition, sensuality, and dreams, the other of intellect, reason, structure, form, rhythm, and geometry.

By contradicting the …

Experiments And Undulations, Jackleen Kramer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

I’m fascinated by the strengths and weaknesses of ceramic and metals. Traditionally ceramic objects have had a sense of sturdiness, as do industrial metals. My interest stems from utilizing both materials’ plasticity to my advantage. My work juxtaposes these concepts by embracing the fragility of both materials in a playful manner. This allows me to transform a static linear piece of metal or wire mesh into an undulating organic shape with curves and cast shadows that change from every angle. To accomplish this, I use small gauge wire mesh and thinly applied high fire paper clay, nylon clay, or Egyptian …

9mm Ii, Daisy Gould

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

9mm Shell Iii, Daisy Gould

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

Placed Residue, Thomas Lapann

LSU Master's Theses

“Placed Residue” is a series of eight works that highlight nature and its transformative quality. The video, photos, and sculptural objects, contained in the show, call attention to different materials and how they undergo growth and decay. Using various resources ranging from Kinect to video projection I incorporate the unnatural in order to depict a natural narrative involving the viewer. In order to emulate these natural processes, a cause and effect system had been developed where nature completes the final object. These systems activate the material providing for behaviors to be visible through their tactile qualities and allowing for their …

The Collaged Practice : (Un)Familiar, Raina Beth Wirta

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis exhibition is an installation of works including sculpture, video, paintings, a hand made book, sound, and drawings that emanated from a series of two-dimensional collages: self-contained forms that evoke the surreal, (un)familiar, and/or grotesque. Infused with a sort of mysterious being-hood and intended to inspire curiosity (at the least), they are unfamiliar in relation to a particular biological thing, but (mostly) recognizable in the autonomous bits and pieces. I seek to question where our physicality ends and the next form of biological life begins, and our responses to that physicality. With childlike inquisitiveness and wonder, and a healthy …

Precious Commodities, Colin John Klimesh

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My process mimics the production of goods and commodities in the industrial and commercial sector. It begins with the conception of a design, which I translate to the fabrication of a matrix, a means for replication and reproduction. I find the aesthetics of systematic production visually appealing. Store shelves speak of repetition and duplication, a society of productivity, efficiency and economy, industrialization and commercialism. Though I despise the underlying values that consumerism promotes, I love the clean, geometric, organized and modular aesthetic that it conveys. I often work between ceramics and print media, letting one process inform the other. Ceramic …

Ancient Traditions And Personal Mythology: An Immortal Connection To Wilderness, James Brantley

All Theses

My personal experiences with nature lead me to have a very primal relationship with wildlife and landscape. These experiences elicit primal internal responses of fear and wonderment. They peak my imagination in a way that nothing else does. To effectively visualize this, I create prints and sculpture that present my personal mythology and symbols.
The use of mythology has historical precedence. The use of myth helps us make sense of the aspects of life that are ethereal, intangible and difficult to understand. To visualize my experiences in nature, I create network of personal mythology and symbolism based on personal experiences, …

Whiff Of Black Ice, Alina Tenser

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a concentration of thoughts, peripheral and direct, that occurred around the making of my thesis exhibition at the Anderson Gallery, Whiff Of Black Ice. While these thoughts meekly occupy space on the following pages, I assure the reader that they are quite physical, even extending three-dimensionality to them. My awareness of their form and their containment within the inner space of the mind, which also extends to the body, becomes central to understanding their meaning and, finally, knowing them.

Warm Compression – Damp Gestures, Melanie Mclain

Theses and Dissertations

Thoughts on vulnerability, emotions, social interaction, self-awareness, skin, touching, bodily functions, and the combination of all these ideas into a confined space filled with heat and humidity just enough to leave you feeling damp and perhaps a bit sore.