Now showing items 21-40 of 149

    • Passing strangers: MFA Thesis - Painting

      Caputo, Michael (2021-06)
      Passing Strangers, after the iconic 1974 porn film by Arthur J. Bressan Jr., celebrates the desire for the male body and longing for its touch. This body of work is a collection of monochromatic figurative oil paintings, personal Polaroid photographs, and found objects.
    • Imposing order: MFA Thesis - Metal

      Webb, Claire (2021-06)
      I explore the role of wonder and beauty in our search for knowledge, comfort, and security. Through optically rich material manipulations I fabricate objects of wonder and inquiry that regard the nature of truth and perception, and question established routes to understanding.
    • Collective history: reparative and materialized memory: MFA Thesis - Metal

      Kraushaar, Lisa (2021-05)
      The forms and techniques within my work are varied, but have found focus in three pieces that work together to engage people with contemporary history. First, is A Public Memorial, which presents a collage of objects, sampling text and imagery from the media to present a view of our present moment. The second, Collaborative History takes the focus of storytelling and with a mind to decentralizing historical authority, asks others to share their stories and images of what’s happening in the world for inclusion in an archive. The Future Is Now postcard set then extends the idea of owning your perspective and provides the space and directions on how to advocate for your point of view by contacting your elected officials or community members.
    • Windows of (dis)connection: MFA Thesis - Ceramics

      An, Jiyu (2021-05)
      In my work, I am using the images of the city and windows. Viewers can read the reflected images of fragility and disconnection in my work. The window is a sign of human emotions. How can I make the viewer feel that we are disconnected and fragile? I think the windows and cities can be signifiers and mirror all emotions.
    • The innovation of technology: an introspection on growth and obsolescence: MFA Thesis - Printmaking

      Noel, Haley (2021-05)
      The COVID-19 pandemic led to an inevitable surge in the use of digital technologies due to the social distancing norms and nationwide lockdowns. People and organizations all over the world had to adjust to new ways of work and life.2 This resulted in an overwhelming need for more effective forms of communication/technology. Due to this, I began experimenting with antiquated family memories which included photographs, letters, and conversations. These recordings brought discoveries of bittersweet moments to light and became the underlying basis of my work.
    • A Jumbie journey: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related Media

      France, Jauzzle R. (2021-06)
      In the Caribbean, the Jumbie is a mischievous, mythical, ghost-like creature known for possession and other physical disturbances. Thought to be the souls of someone who has lived a violent life or died a violent death, practices such as exorcisms and prayer are performed in hopes of capturing and banishing these presences from their victims’ lives. The Jumbie's goal is not to harm or kill but to cause mischief and mayhem. Ever since I moved to the United States of America for college from the Caribbean, I have noticed a decline in my mental health. In my culture people reacted to mental health the same way they responded to the Jumbie, as a demonic possession that, according to them, could only be fixed through prayer. Once I became aware of that comparison, I began working on A Jumbie Quilt and Are You Seeing Jumbie, a children’s book that follows a girl, who discovers she has a Jumbie and takes account of how she moves forward with learning to live with it. In both of these projects, I use photography, digital collage, and fabric to explore what it means to preserve a hybrid identity while recounting the impact living in another country has had on my mental health. The quilt and the book serve as documentation of my relationship with the Jumbie and how we have grown from being strangers to becoming familiar with one another, I wish to create a dissonance that mimics the turmoil I feel as a person caught in between cultures and grasping for solace while battling an unknown foe.
    • Stay at home: MFA Thesis - Photography and Related Media

      Corr, Deborah (2021-06)
      My book, New-New House, Residence of Mr. J.C. Joslyn, Miller Guest Home, Driscoll Home, Opportunity House, The Nut House, and my house is a diaristic depiction of the nostalgia I have for my childhood home while trying to establish a sense of belonging elsewhere. I use expired 35mm film to document my changing surroundings in an attempt to preserve my memories of what home has meant to me throughout my life. I utilize archival photographs and documents from the previous residents who lived in the house to compare their version of home to my own. Through weaving in the historical narrative of my house with a vernacular style of photography showing my experiences in Illinois and New York, my work examines how a sense of home or belonging is established.
    • Oneirism: MFA Thesis - Ceramics

      Kruse, Anna (2021-05)
      Ceramic objects explore play, communication, and our relationships in the world. The work presents opportunities of interaction through enclosed spaces that incite moments of connection. Combining a visual dialogue of tubes, playground equipment, and gardens, abstract pieces are constructed in order to be completed through the interjection of the body. The work is not done until someone uses it, imbuing the objects with functionality. Scream, laugh, yell, whisper secrets to another; these objects present a fictional world that invites you to be curious and examine how you move through your surroundings.
    • Meld / Suffuse: MFA Thesis - Metal

      Pollack, Ashley Nettye (2021-06)
      My work started with a basic curiosity about non-ferrous metals. Why is silver whitish, why is copper pink-y, and why are there so many shades of gold? I was always drawn to gold for its range of colors. As an artist, trained as a painter for most of my life - in comparison to the five years I have been a practicing metalsmith, I always felt that the color palate of gold would lend itself to painting beautifully. I am not alone in this attitude. The ancient Egyptians experimented greatly with the color palette of gold. So great was their enchantment with the coloration possibilities that of, "The sixteen Akkadian terms for gold include nine refer[ed] to colour or shade" (Lindsay 214). Once I became a more invested metalsmith, I began to wonder - if gold could come in such varied shades, why wasn't that also true for silver and copper? This is the origin of my preoccupation with alloys.
    • Emergence: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

      Haeick, Courtney (2021-05)
      Vulnerability, resilience, and empathy are emotional states that are displayed in the action of creating my work as well as the outcome of the sculptures throughout time. My work is ephemeral, as it changes, the material’s vulnerability is revealed. In my metal, cyanotype, and video performances there is a focus on everyday actions, the ‘gaze’, as well as movements and gestures related to dance. By researching performance and dance history, I make connections on how specific events influence performances and how personal emotions eventually factor into the art form. As part of my practice, I imprint my body onto a sheet of steel with coconut oil and use a torch and vinegar solution to rust the bare steel. The female body emerges and appears distorted to the viewer by the ephemeral qualities of oxidation on metal. People don't often associate metal to be vulnerable or rust to be beautiful. However, in my metal works, rusting steel is a beautiful medium to visualize emergence and growth. Through the process of making and watching my work change throughout time, I find the personal connection of watching my pieces grow and change while my mind and body are going through a similar process.
    • Visual hysteria: an investigation of the "feminine protolanguage" as an embodied index of trauma in the arts: MFA Thesis - Painting & Drawing

      Farina, Ana Maria (2021-05)
      The pieces I am showing in my thesis show are the four latest pieces I have created. They're all entitled histérica which is Portuguese for hysterical, followed by the number referring to its place in the series timeline. Histérica #8 started off as lines that could resemble a flower and/or vulvar forms. It is the biggest piece I have ever created and it was at first a challenge to myself: what would happen if I take this cathartic process to its utmost. It took me months of labor (and callused hands) to come to a finished piece. However, in the middle of the process I felt the work had a mystical presence, and I added an eye to its center, and now the work is displayed in the horizontal, not so related to a vulva symbology anymore, but more a garden. Staring at it is like peeking at the wilderness within.
    • Hitting the nail on the head: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

      Elmadany, Adam (2021-05)
      In my thesis exhibition, Hitting the Nail on The Head, my sculptural works examine how the ethics and morality of American society are shaped through our words. The idioms and sayings in the United States’ lexicon have a direct correlation to the development of our thoughts, actions, and understanding of the world and its citizens. Through my sculptures, I task the viewer with examining their use of common phrases like, “When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do”, and if it excuses insult based on lack of understanding with images of Hollywood icons ignorantly appropriating various elements of Black culture in America, in the form of postcards. In my video, “One Bad Apple Spoils the Barrel”, I present the viewer with categorical evidence that the commonly used alternative phrasing they have been hearing on television following tragic events, is an inversion of the truth with decomposing apples displayed in a time-lapse video. In my monument, “Thoughts & Prayers”, I confront the viewer with an assault rifle mounted to a mountain of 27 children’s bookbags covered in the candle wax to challenge the the 2nd amendment and what the years of political inaction has cost us in innocent lives.
    • Up shit creek (without a paddle): MFA Thesis - Sculpture

      Brannan, Emily (2021-05)
      I am exploring the use of art as a means of healing from childhood trauma that I experienced growing up as a lower middle-class girl in Appalachia. I use imagery from old family photos, visual, and sensory memory to recreate my distorted memories. I am working to find some sort of empathy for my family members who created these traumatic experiences for me growing up. Trauma theory explains that the individual needs to relive and revisit traumatic memories in order to heal from them and I am attempting that through reliving not only my experiences, but trying to reexamine others’ experiences and the intergenerational trauma that lead to the way I was raised.
    • Survivance: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

      Antonak, Erin Lee (2021-05)
      I am Wolf Clan, from the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, a member of the Iroquois Confederacy. I often consider the things we pass down between generations. I grew up learning Iroquois craft techniques from my mother, aunts, and grandparents. I look at my hands when I am working with corn using traditional techniques and think about how they are the result of women’s hands working in the same way over many, many generations. Working with corn husk and corn products ties me to my lineage and it allows for a meditative state that creates space for me to consider my humanness and my connectedness to the past and the future. It represents knowledge about life and healing sent through time from my ancestral mothers. While working I reflect on the lives of my matrilineal ancestors, who they were and the challenges they faced. It is comforting and empowering to know my own life is proof of their ability to persevere through extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I gain strength and healing from acknowledging their presence in me and my life.
    • What does the Internet do to our emotions?: MFA Thesis - Metal

      Yang, Beiya (2021-05)
      I found that people born in the 21st century are accustomed to convenience and having everything at our fingertips. We use the Internet to search for all the answers we want and even prefer to use our phone for all communication, such as chatting with others, finding addresses, taking out food, online shopping, even games, and other entertainment activities. We are surrounded by virtual reality and forget the true emotions of real life. People may not realize that the world we live in is beginning to be covered by another language. This language is called coding- a series of numbers and letters without evidence of real emotions and meaning. My work reminds people that through this form of communication, feelings are being forgotten as we immerse ourselves in our screens. The translation of words-to-code parallels the disconnect between people as they communicate virtually…Through new and developing work, I use code as my research subject. I translate the common language that may be quickly shared in text messages into codes and present them in the form of jewelry.
    • Dysthymic: MFA Thesis - Metal

      Sullivan, John (2021-05)
      Moments of trauma mark pivotal shifts in my life that have forever altered my perception of self and reality. Coinciding with lifelong depression, these ailments are both a morbid source of inspiration and debilitation. My creative work is a means of articulating trauma and coping with dysthymic depression. Due to trauma’s unrepresentable nature I rely on engendered emotion as an intrinsic component in the creation of meaning. I construct empathetic experiences through sensory based affects that are understood through a compassionate engagement. These embodied translations of experience are my way of conveying that which is beyond conventional comprehension.
    • Beyond the mind’s eye: MFA Thesis - Printmaking

      Ozola, Karmena (2021-05)
      The elements of nature, colour and light in my work are joined in colourful, small to large scale (depending on the medium and technique) abstract prints, paintings, handmade paper sheets, handmade paper lamps, digital photographs and artist’s books. To make the work, I use Western, Asian and handmade paper, canvas, acrylic ink and oil paints, natural found objects as well as thread. The techniques employed include mainly monotype and screen-printing methods, papermaking, three-dimensional object construction and hand stitching. In order for the viewer to find a connection or a moment beyond the material world when looking at my work there is one more missing element – openness or, in other words, the right kind of perception. Therefore, my research includes a look at altered states of consciousness and how those are achieved, belief systems, places where people experience altered reality, hypnosis and individual practices such as meditation and prayers.
    • Sabal palm and stiltgrass: MFA Thesis - Sculpture

      Stowe, John A. (2021-05)
      As we build new communities and heal old ones, we are presented with opportunities to collaborate with existing ecosystems. How can infrastructure be modified to promote resilient ecological communities that support each other and the overall biodiversity of the spaces we inhabit? Billboard Fields, Dumpster Agriculture, and Lap Siding are all examples of ways we can heal the socio-ecological disturbances that generally support humans but interrupt the ecology of the surrounding area. Lap Siding embraces vernacular architecture as a point of entry into both new and historically old material relationships with the land we build our homes on.
    • There is no home like me: MFA Thesis - Drawing & Painting

      Tyman, Emily (2021-05)
      There is No Home Like Me explores of the anxieties that I carry with me, my need to be comforted and finding a home within myself. Each piece focuses on what I reach for to provide myself with a sense of security and cope with memories of my painful experiences. The embrace of a stuffed animal, the shelter of a bedroom, and the love for a pet provide safety from an overwhelming force of anxiety, which I represent as a swarm of wasps. Slowly, I am teaching myself how to be comfortable with being my own home. I am contemplating what defines a home, if there are specific markers that indicate if something is a home. Is it a place? Can it be a person? Or do I only find my home through myself and become comfortable within my own body and that becomes enough? The title of this show comes from a poem by Rupi Kaur about accepting one’s body and taking care of it, because it is your home. I feel as though one day I can do the same as the lines in the poem state, to “look down at your body / whisper / there is no home like you”.
    • Palpable memory: MFA Thesis - Printmaking

      McBride, Julia (2021-05)
      I am focused on the concepts of fallible memory after suffering a traumatic brain injury 8 years ago. Using paper-making and printmaking, I document my own personal memories in their fragmented state on handmade paper that I make from my own recycled prints. This handmade paper is then used to create prints using a paper lithographic printmaking method. Using these prints, I create a books and components for installations. The outcome of this research is displayed in my show Palpable Memory.