Art and Design Commons^™

Uncovering The Story Of Sally Maria Johnson: Revealing The History Of The Portrait Of A Painting, Yuanzhen Song

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Portrait of Sally Maria Johnson by the artist James Johnson is a 19^th century oval shaped portrait in the collection of the Buffalo History Museum.  It suffered from structural damages and paint loss resulting from surface alterations and previous restoration campaigns.  This study combines art historical research with scientific analysis to explore both the biography of the subject and the materiality of the painting.  Through local research including historical newspaper articles in Buffalo, the story of Sally Maria Johnson (the wife of Buffalo’s first mayor) was uncovered.  High-resolution imaging techniques were used to document the surface condition and identify …

Shadow Garments: Costume Creation For Integrating Alienated Parts Of The Self, Mega M. Galvin

Art Therapy | Master's Theses

This study explores costume creation as a narrative-based intervention for integrating "shadow" parts, or aspects of the self that are repressed or alienated due to shame, trauma, or social pressure. Grounded in Jungian analytic psychology, narrative therapy, and expressive arts theory, the research addresses the limitations of traditional talk therapy in accessing somatic memory and proposes costume making as a pathway for externalization and re-authorship. Using a qualitative, participatory study inspired by Pat B. Allen’s Open Studio Process, four adult participants engaged in a three-session workshop to design, construct, and wear costumes representing their identified shadow aspects. Data was collected …

Artizein Arts And Teaching Journal Volume 11 (1), Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Full Issue

Music, Meditation And Decolonization: A Cross-Cultural Conversation, Ashwani Kumar, Zaira Manila

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article presents a reflective and dialogical exploration of music, meditation, and holistic well-being. It draws on the authors’ distinct musical backgrounds and personal experiences to explore structure and free flow in music, the impact of Western thought and colonialism on perceptions of Indian classical music (ICM), and the challenges in promoting ICM to younger audiences. Key points discussed include decolonization and cultural heritage, the journey from seeing ICM as “boring” to spiritual, viewing fusion as a respectful blend of musical forms, and the notion of existential music as music that exists within, waiting to be expressed. The dialogue format …

Narrative Threads: Mining Testimonios And Story-Building As Transformative Practice, Nicole M. Romanski, Leslie C. Sotomayor Ii, Julia L. Hovanec

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This visual essay interweaves narrative and feminist testimonio practices through the lived experiences and critical reflections of three art educators. It explores storytelling as a transformative method within art education and visual culture. Through vignettes of personal narratives and testimonios, the authors examine how individual experiences shape their teaching philosophies and pedagogical practices. This article situates their positionalities through diverse creative processes, including story mining, bookmaking, filmmaking, advanced clinical experience reflections, and visual pláticas. By merging practice and reflection, the collaborators highlight narrative pedagogy as a tool for personal and professional growth. Drawing on the work of scholars such as …

Drawing Out Remarkable Communities, Bailey Ennig

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This visual essay examines how an unused classroom whiteboard evolved into a student-driven site of relational art and community building. Initially left blank, the whiteboard became a shared drawing space as students began to doodle informally, returning regularly to contribute and interact. Over time, these collective drawing practices fostered friendships, cross-grade connections, and a sense of belonging grounded in shared pop culture interests and creative play. Drawing on theories of relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 2002), creative ecosystems (Harris, 2021), and connected learning (Ito et al., 2019), the whiteboard functioned as a dynamic social space shaped by student agency rather than teacher …

Metaphoring Visual Metaphors For Visual Art Research, Jeff Horwat

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

In Art Practice as Research, Graeme Sullivan (2005) advances a seminal argument for art making as a rigorous mode of inquiry capable of generating knowledge comparable to that produced within positivist traditions. He conceptualizes visual art research through a complex framework. To render this model usable, Sullivan introduces a braided metaphor that operationalizes the framework while implicitly demonstrating the generative capacity of visual metaphors to reshape theoretical constructs themselves. Building on this premise, this visual essay approaches Sullivan’s framework not as a fixed schema but as an open invitation for methodological experimentation.

Through a process of metaphoring—the conceptual melding …

The Humidity Of Living: Walking, Permeability, And Care As Embodied Research Practice, Lyndsay Mckay

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This visual-textual essay traces walking as an embodied research methodology situated at the intersection of autoethnography, material feminist theory, and practices of care. Drawing on nursing-informed sensorial attunement and site-responsive observation, the work follows a pedestrian route through urban and coastal landscapes to examine how bodies, infrastructures, atmospheres, and more-than-human matter co-produce perception. Through photographic documentation and poetic narrative, the project foregrounds permeability as a methodological stance—one that resists detached observation in favor of affective, relational, and trans-corporeal engagement. Concepts from Ingold’s correspondence, Alaimo’s trans-corporeality, Mol’s logic of care, and Benner’s embodied expertise are woven into lived encounters with decay, …

Fieldmaking In The Shaughnessy Village: Conducting Arts-Based Research In Response To Human Spaces, David J. Lerue, Marian Schurman, Keyiana Marques

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

What can human spaces teach us when we engage them in open-ended observation and artmaking? This visual essay shares the practices of three artist-teachers engaging in fieldmaking, an arts-based research methodology conjoining open-ended artistic inquiry, spatial theory, and fieldwork in Montréal’s Shaughnessy village, a densely populated, transient neighbourhood shaped by ongoing redevelopment and mixed-use infrastructures. Drawing on visual ethnography, research-creation, and place-based art education, we engaged the site through iterative cycles of walking, observing, making, and reflection, attuning to the specificities of space. The authors reflect on the implications of their process, arguing fieldmaking offered a flexible and generative approach …

Sketching Collective Resilience: Visual Journals As Murmurating Heartwork, Miranda D. Koffey

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This visual essay offers a portal into twelve anonymized visual journal pages by pre-service art education students, read as a set rather than as isolated artifacts. The pages are not presented as finished works, but as traces of attention and lived weeks that show how making can help a learning community stay with what is difficult without demanding resolution. I approach the sequence as an invitation to witness, with captions that record my reading and attend to what becomes visible when pages are placed in relation, where a collective register emerges from shared classroom practice and a journal’s private form …

Nurses' Week, Sekia Lor

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

I am an academic advisor for nursing students who also happens to be a balloon artist. I created all of these nurse balloon animals during Nurses' Week to represent “better together.” These balloons were then given to staff members on campus to celebrate Nurse’s Week!

Family Tree, Margaret J. Demars

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

I currently work as an intensive care unit nurse and was asked to paint a mural in our break room. I decided to paint a “family tree” symbolizing unity among the departments. I wanted to create something that promoted peace and serenity. Once the tree was completed, the employees were encouraged to print photos of themselves, their pets, or their families to pin to the tree. This project brought everyone together and was a really fun and engaging activity among the nurses and staff. Now, we can take our breaks and admire something other than the same white walls we …

Wave Of Healing, Annemarie Dittmar

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

There is so much hope and healing in nursing. As nurses, we are meant to bring hope and healing to others. To me, the sunrise is symbolic of hope, hope that healing will happen and that there are always things to hope for. The wave of water is symbolic of healing; it is a blue green wave of healing that washes over and provides calming energy and mental clarity. Sunlight and ocean waves bring hope and healing to my own soul. I used a Japanese art form called Kinusaiga, which is a type of painting with fabric. I used …

Collaging Stickers: Revealing Objects' Relational Interiority, Mochammad Mirza Yusuf Harahap

ARSNET

This paper proposes a methodological approach to learning about an object's interiority, embracing two schools of thought that largely revolve around the study of objects: one that concerns the object's substance, and the other that concerns the object's relationality. In particular, the study sees an opportunity to reveal object's relationality through a deep understanding of the object's substance. In achieving the objective, the presented study found a resonating notion in the concept of interiority, which is understood as an inward-outward dialectic. Thinking of object with interiority posits a process of disassembling object's substance for building inward awareness. This study further …

Konstruksi Identitas Nasional Melalui Bahasa Visual Animasi Dalam Trailer Film Merah Putih: One For All, Deva Alviana, A. Syaifuddin Rohman

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

This study aims to analyze the application of the 12 principles of animation, the construction of national identity, and audience interpretations of the animated film trailer Merah Putih: One for All. A qualitative approach was employed through scene-by-scene audiovisual analysis of the 2-minute, 2-second trailer published on the YouTube channel @perfikitv and reception analysis of 15 comments purposively selected from X. The analytical framework combines Thomas and Johnston’s 12 principles of animation with Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory. The evaluation indicates that one principle was applied effectively, two were partially applied, four were inadequately applied, and five were not adequately …

Beetle Panic!, Ross Lowrance

Game Design

Beetle Panic! is a 3D game designed in GDevelop that combines exploration, collectible-based scoring, time management, and enemy avoidance in a compact, interactive level. Players navigate the environment to collect four coins, each worth 25 points, while managing a 60-second timer and avoiding a pursuing enemy known as the Beetle Bot. Environmental objects, including movable blocks, provide opportunities for tactical interaction by obstructing the enemy's movement. Contact with the enemy resets the scene, adding risk to the player's efforts to complete the objective before time expires.

The game incorporates a scoring system, countdown timer, audio feedback, and end-state messaging to …

Marbs & Carbs, Kevin M. Mcghee

Game Design

Marbs & Carbs is a 3D rolling game set in an oversized kitchen. Guide Marb across countertops, past stove burners, and through sink-side shortcuts while collecting pasta and donuts that make the marble grow. Larger sizes open new routes, including a breakable sink drain. Collect at least 25 carbs to enter the mouse hole and finish the level. Special pasta can turn Marb into a tumbling cube or pyramid, changing how it moves and adding a score bonus. A results screen tallies your pickups and time before the next run.

This game is inspired by the classic Atari arcade game …

Illuminating Perspectives Through Critical Visual Literacy, Wanju Huang, Filipa Machado Rodrigues, Lee Okan, Catalina Huilcapi-Collantes, Ellen Corrigan, Peter Klubek

Purdue University Press Books

Illuminating Perspectives Through Critical Visual Literacy exemplifies the initiatives put forth by the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), a diverse community of professionals dedicated to enhancing people’s understanding of how to interpret visual stimuli and engage with their visual surroundings. Featuring peer-reviewed essays that encourage ongoing dialogue among diverse groups, this book intends to spark new insights into everything from the arts and sciences to business and instructional technology. A key strength of IVLA is its variety of scholarly conferences and publications that encourage thought-provoking interaction between practitioners and theorists. Illuminating Perspectives Through Critical Visual Literacy showcases insightful works that …

Art Inquiries, Vol. 21, Oct. 15, 2026 - Full Issue, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Fairytale Bounce, Caroline Sexton

Game Design

This project is a 3D fairy-themed platformer created in Unity. Players control a fairy as they travel through a colorful fantasy environment filled with floating platforms, magical mushrooms, collectibles, and enemies. The goal is to navigate through the level, collect fairy dust crystals, avoid enemies, and reach the end. The game includes a health system, checkpoints, background music, and sound effects.

This game was created as my final project for a 3D game development course. I focused on creating a playable level with different platforming challenges while learning more about Unity, 3D level design, scripting, and gameplay mechanics.