Fine Arts Commons^™

Fiesta On Shuffle, Tristan William Niskanen

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

This thesis is a linked short story collection about a character named Thom, told in first person. In 52 short pieces, Thom travels around different places on a seemingly aimless journey. It is almost a mix of a “man goes on a journey” & a “stranger comes to town.” The 52 short stories are structured like a shuffled deck of cards, with four distinct suits. Each suit has a minor story arc for Thom. In Hearts, he’s on a search for love. In Diamonds, he’s on a search for treasure. In Spades, he’s on a search for enlightenment. In Clubs, …

Unearthed And Exposed, Kelly Hagen

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

My work is a continuous dialogue between ancient symbolism and contemporary womanhood, weaving together personal experience, historical reference, and natural form. Through clay and mixed media, I explore the layered identities women inhabit—nurturer, creator, survivor, transformer—often drawing inspiration from early figurative sculpture, myth, and the cyclical patterns found in nature. Unearthed and Exposed speaks to the heart of my practice: revealing what has been buried, silenced, or overlooked, and bringing it to light through form and material. I am particularly drawn to the timelessness of the feminine figure and the stories it holds. From Paleolithic Venus figurines to amphora vessels, …

Heiniboxitittel, Harry Ritchie

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This exhibit can be considered a sort of parody of an average gallery exhibition. Sacrilegious elements such as shoddy hand-written labels, tilted shelves, and lack of measurement call attention to the standard formula of a visual art exhibit. Artists are meant to think outside the box, but many adhere to strict guidelines when it comes to showcasing artwork. Everything must be just so.

But expecting perfection leads to disappointment. Having an exact plan means things will go wrong. This exhibition challenges conventional notions of beauty and shows that some of the most truly beautiful things in the world happen not …

The Impact Of Visiting Artists On Education, Naomi Boyer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this Honors Research Project was to provide an extensive resource for art educators who wish to incorporate meaningful experiential learning opportunities by bringing visiting artists into their classrooms. The first section is a brief literature review detailing the benefits of incorporating experiential learning and visiting artists in the classroom. Following the literature review are three appendices provided as resources for teachers to utilize. The first appendix pertains to Ohio-based illustrators being used as visiting artists in schools and includes a list of ten illustrators with respective profiles for each. The second appendix contains a bibliography of the …

Artsparks And The Vincent House: A Deep Dive Into Nonprofit Dance In Akron, Grayce Thomas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project explores the benefits of accessible dance programs for children in the Akron area, focusing on programs like ArtSparks and the Vincent House. It looks at how these programs help kids grow physically, emotionally, and socially, especially for those who might not otherwise have access to dance. As a dancer and teacher, my personal experience with the positive impact of dance motivates this project, as I know how important it can be for a child's development. Through interviews, observations, and online resources, I’ll examine how these programs work and how they support the kids involved. The goal is to …

Lilly Reich: La Mente Detrás Del Mobiliario Moderno Que La Historia Olvidó, Noa Llanas Angrill

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

La historia ha sido escrita desde una perspectiva que se ha invisibilizado las contribuciones femeninas en su desarrollo. Este artículo se centra en Lilly Reich (1885-1947), figura clave del diseño moderno, cuya autoría ha sido eclipsada por la de su colaborador Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. La investigación evidencia que la diseñadora no solo contribuyó al diseño de mobiliario moderno y de espacios expositivos, sino que lideró proyectos clave y que su trabajo ha impactado en el diseño expositivo, textil y mobiliario moderno.

Kain Tayo, Ramier Villarama

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Kain Tayo (“Let’s eat!” in Tagalog) is a sculptural installation inspired by the Filipino tradition of Kamayan—a communal feast eaten with one’s hands and served on banana leaves. Using found and discarded objects, the work reimagines a shared dining experience as a celebration of cultural memory, sustainability, and participation. Each piece mimics traditional Filipino dishes like lumpia and lechon, inviting viewers to touch, rearrange, and reflect on the meaning of value, waste, and connection. This honors project merges my background in Studio Art and Environmental Studies, transforming everyday scraps into a joyful expression of identity and storytelling.

Wiring Attachment, Alexander K. Bacon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis began with a question: can diagrams create understanding, or only reflect it? Through paintings that layer automotive wiring schematics with family photographs, I explore how the human attachment system resists easy mapping. Using digital tools like Photoshop and scanning, alongside analog methods such as papier-collé and photo transfer, I examine how systems built for clarity—like wiring diagrams—contrast with the layered, often messy realities of human relationships. Drawing from attachment theory’s empirical foundation, rather than the metaphorical leanings of psychoanalysis, my work investigates how emotional bonds form, falter, and repair over time. Material loss and layering are not flaws, …

Drawing 1 Course Syllabus, Fall 2025, Jennifer Sullivan

Open Educational Resources

This introductory drawing course offers an immersive, practice-based exploration of observational drawing from life. Emphasizing perceptual skills, students will engage with key visual principles—such as proportion, space, perspective, and composition—through projects focused on still life, the human figure, and portraiture. Working with graphite, charcoal, and ink, students will develop both technical fluency and expressive range, learning to convey presence, mood, and memory through mark and form. The course blends rigorous studio practice with critical looking and discussion, encouraging students to cultivate their own artistic voice through sustained attention, experimentation, and care.

Birds Of A Feather: Peace And Conflict Founders Milton Schwebel And Luella Buros, Janet Carlson

Buros Center: Professional Staff Publications

Milton Schwebel, peace psychology pioneer, described Luella Buros as “a pillar of strength, her principles uneroded by age or economic well-being, her determination to struggle against social evils undiminished” (1992, p. 4). At age 90, Buros had just become the founding contributor to Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Schwebel was its founding editor. In announcing the gift, he emphasized Buros’s steadfast commitment to pursuing peace, while recognizing her artistic accomplishments and her collaboration with her husband, Oscar, in establishing the renowned Mental Measurements Yearbook series (Buros, 1968; Buros, 1978; Carlson, 2023). She later provided funds to support …

Essential Caretaking For Artists With Disabilities: Exploring The Overlooked Histories Of Hazel Knapp And Grandma Moses, Bryan P. Martin

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the intersection of disability studies and art history, addressing the underrepresentation of disability in scholarship, especially concerning medical sociology and caretaking. Focusing on two early-twentieth-century self-taught American artists, Hazel Knapp (1908–95), who fell into obscurity, and Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), best known as Grandma Moses, this is a comparative analysis of how disability influenced their artistic practices and shaped their divergent career outcomes. Knapp was born with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, and fell into obscurity due to a lack of support for her condition, but experienced a promising start to her career that included patronage …

Home: Ever A Work In Progress, Cayman Chen

CMC Senior Theses

Home: Work in Progress (2025), examines the concept of ‘home’ through a diasporic and transcultural lens to explore how personal and collective experiences of migration shape identity. Using the clothing of my loved ones, I constructed a wearable textile sculpture—creating a physical object that gathers the pieces of my home into one place. Through video performance, I embodied my sculpture as a living, breathing space that is alive with my own memories and experiences.

Communicating The “Already, Not Yet” Through The Visual Arts, Hadley Jacobs

Senior Honors Theses

The “already, not yet” is a theological concept that addresses the tension of Christian living. Although believers are free from sin’s power, they are not free from its effects. This thesis examines the “already, not yet” through a series: one graphite drawing, one colored pencil drawing, and one oil painting. The graphite drawing depicts a ruined building, the colored pencil drawing depicts a building being rebuilt, and the oil painting depicts a restored building. They represent the fallen state of man, the state of believers on earth, and the state of believers after being restored, respectively. Together, these pieces create …

From Ink To Code, From Binary To Boundless Reality—Until All Returns To Emptiness, Weitong Sun

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the entangled relationship between language, memory, and technology through the lens of immigrant experience. Moving from programming to visual storytelling, I investigate how dyslexia, bilingualism, and cultural displacement have shaped my ways of reading, writing, and coding.

Beginning with personal reflections on switching from computer science to art, I trace how code offered a form of clarity and expression where written language had once failed me. Yet as I ventured into real-time simulation and XR storytelling, I encountered new forms of mistranslation—where narratives dissolved, mutated, or resisted coherence altogether.

Through a series of experiments in code-driven art, …

The Cut Worm Forgives The Plow, August Neuscheler

Theses and Dissertations

The explorations in this thesis writing are centered on William Blake’s proverb “The cut worm forgives the plow.” It has been reinterpreted as an allegory of history and energy. A theory of their relation is proposed based on forgiveness, a theory that accepts the palimpsest of orders as evidence for the abundance of the present moment. The writing focuses on questions of proportionality, scale, archaeological screening methods, planar cutting, and a critique of entropy as grounds for this theory. Some of its subjects include the Statue of Liberty, Kate Raworth’s donut economic model, sashimi, triangulation, Joseph Beuys’ “7,000 Eichen,” semiconductors, …

A Parting Repast, Debra D. Dowden-Crockett

Theses and Dissertations

Both the thesis document and exhibition comprise the story of my journey through grief, examination of loss, contemplation of death, and transformation through acceptance and relinquishment. I conflate art and emotion to put form to the complex human experience of watching a loved one die, having to say a last goodbye, and the mourning that ultimately follows.

I examine the rituals surrounding death, the role of memory, and the symbolic presence of food as a shared experience of both mourning and nourishment, the intimate moments of mourning, and the gradual process of finding peace and closure.

Featuring works from a …

Vessels Of Spirituality: Merging Faith And Form, Maryam Al-Tajer

Theses and Dissertations

According to traditional Islamic teachings, natural materials like frankincense, black sesame seeds, and sidr (jujube) leaves are valuable both physically and spiritually. Historically, they have been used for healing and purification. Nowadays, influenced by contemporary science, people tend to overlook their metaphysical value, focusing on their medicinal uses. Similarly, Muslims assign spiritual qualities to the Muqatta’at, the disconnected letters that preface several surahs of the Holy Quran, believing them to contain sacred power. In both of these cases, the material leads to the spiritual.

Through material experimentation, informed by religious texts, my thesis combines revered materials with sacred letter forms …

Queer-Keying: Performing Video Processes As [Trans]Gressive Resistance, Wren Tiffany

Theses and Dissertations

As part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), I transformed the 'Sponge' gallery on the top floor of The Anderson, VCU’s historic thesis exhibition home, into The Green Room, a neon green, immersive video and performance space featuring mirrors, disco lights, a foam tile dance floor, makeup stations, and a functioning green-screen editing suite. This hybrid drag rehearsal and ‘Chroma-key’ green video production room deepened both my understandings of Queer performance art and process-based art making during the Spring of 2025, through two public performance activation …

How To Touch Your Bile, Aleckxi Dorhofer

Theses and Dissertations

I have been reflecting on my past decade-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia. Reinterpreting this experience through the lenses of mythology and magic, I have constructed these Stygian carcasses (from the river Styx, which serves to separate the living and the dead) using my own bodily proportions in muslin, an intermediary material which requires transformation. In this work, I utilize these forms to symbolically rot for me as my body did, performing a type of sympathetic magic (magic worked from afar on another person) on myself, extending my life and allowing all which occurs between birth and death to affect …

Food Porn, Amanda Jordan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Food Porn explores the seductive allure of consumer food culture, tapping into themes of desire, indulgence, and excess. Inspired by the bold colors and compositions of pop art, my work exaggerates the appeal of everyday treats, mirroring the glossy, hyper-stylized nature of advertising. Through large-scale formats, repetition, and vibrant hues, I examine how food imagery fuels obsession, status, and identity. The way we consume food visually is just as powerful as the act of eating itself, blurring the line between sustenance and spectacle. By magnifying these visual temptations, my paintings invite viewers to reflect on their own cravings, the power …

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, …

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …

Yoga Sūtra Book Four And The Yogabindu, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Four themes from the fourth pāda of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra are examined here: karma (IV:2-13), individuality (IV:16), humility (IV:20-22), and freedom (IV:29-34). Affirmations and variant interpretations of these four are provided from Haribhadra Virahāṅka’s Yogabindu, most likely composed a century or two later.

Collective Karma: From The Yogasūtra To Taylor Swift, Zoë Slatoff

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Indian knowledge traditions speak at length about karma, which is divided into three categories—accumulated (saṃcita), ripe (prārabdha), and future (kriyamāṇa). While much is said about our individual karma and how it affects our repeated reincarnation in cyclic existence, how does this affect others and how do others affect us? In other words, as this paper explores, what is our reciprocal and collective karma?

Painting Liberation: A Visual Ontology Of The Interplay Of Mind And Consciousness In Book Four Of The Yoga Sūtras, Melissa Townsend

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This presentation explores how artistic practice can illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, and liberation as articulated in Book Four of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Through a series of paintings that visually translate these sūtras, I propose that art offers a unique, experiential means of engaging with the complex relationship between citta (mind) and puruṣa (consciousness).

The paintings function as a form of “visual ontology,” inviting viewers to engage with abstract philosophical concepts in a sensory, tangible way. By depicting the interplay between the mutable processes of the mind and the unchanging awareness of consciousness, these …

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Designing Into The Woods: An In-Depth Analysis, Jackson Berhow

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis is intended to provide insight into the costume design process for West Virginia University’s production of Into the Woods. This thesis will document the entire process, starting with a close reading of the musical exploring its symbols, themes, and characters with some theory crafting thrown in for good measure. This will be followed by the early stages of the show’s production, as well as a full explanation of the development of each character’s design throughout the show’s conceptual evolution. The show’s production process will also be explored, highlighting notable instances and how this impacted the costume design.

Things Goin’ On: Hierarchical Order, Olivia Rachel Austin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Things Goin' On: Hierarchical Order is a series of mixed media works examining power dynamics and structured relationships within human life. This body of work explores social class, gender roles, and systemic power structures through a combination of found textiles, altered objects, and diverse rendering techniques. Each piece investigates how individuals are positioned within broader social and natural systems. The works collectively encourage reflection on the universal and historical role of power dynamics in shaping human experiences and interactions.

F/Utility: A Sculptural Exploration Of Futility, Utility, And The Absurd, Asha Cabaca

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis provides context for my MFA thesis exhibition, F/UTILITY, displayed in the Laura Mesaros Gallery at West Virginia University. My sculpture visually references various aspects of human culture, drawing from the natural environment, urban architecture, and ideas of work and play. These elements, often contradictory and incongruous, are, in fact, humorously subverted, transformed, and combined so that the resulting artwork is serious, playful, and arbitrary all at once. At the same time, the uncertain and sometimes involuntary interactivity of my work prompts a phenomenological viewer experience. My practice is informed by the philosophical and literary absurd, focusing on not-knowing …

A Comparison Of The Strategies And Methods Influencing Success Among Formally Trained Artists V. Outsider, Naive, Or Self-Taught Artists, Anna Stolina

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis examines the contrasting strategies and methods formally trained artists, self- taught artists, naive artists, and outsider artists used to influence their success in their chosen field. The study explored each of their educational backgrounds, available resources, and unique expertises that allowed them to achieve a successful art career. Every pathway has unique advantages and challenges (Langley, 2024). Formally trained artists and exhibiting artists typically have degrees in art from a university or post-secondary art school. My research highlighted the benefits of having a formal art education, a structured learning environment, access to resources, networking opportunities, and professional mentorship. …