Art Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2745

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    Art and Everyday
    (2008-08-21) Conaway, Sarada DeviDasi; Gavin, Dawn; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Responding to the 1983 essay The Real Experiment, written by the recently deceased artist Allan Kaprow, I discuss the "lifelike art" tradition and the lifelike art I have created while in graduate school. This thesis also compares and contrasts two western avant-garde art traditions. Various technological and cultural changes are proposed as reasons for lifelike art's recent popularity. I conclude that lifelike art is becoming vernacular, while retaining quality.
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    Reshaping and Recovering: Painting as an Existential Meditation
    (2004-05-12) Reynolds, Susan; Kehoe, Patrice; Art
    My paintings evolve from a series of re-configurations. They develop through a system of painting and repainting, shaping and reshaping and coding and decoding. This system reflects not only my intention to develop meaningful, compelling work. My painting process reflects my determination to find purpose in life in general. The spirit of the work is childlike. It is intentionally simple in its approach to abstraction. Children's toys and science textbook imagery are appropriated and playfully transformed into formal elements. A construct of layers and fragments, the work functions like a puzzle. It is my existence that I seek to understand, to piece together, and it is by painting and shaping the canvas that I make my findings visible. Throughout this thesis, I intend to explain how my painting process mirrors the spiritual introspection I engage in both inside and outside the creative act. In order to shed light on how I make this connection, I describe the methods, the influences and the references that form and inform my paintings.
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    TASTE AND THE OBJECT IN THE POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE
    (2010) Henry, John Bailey; Craig, Patrick; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    I appropriate discarded objects seen by the roadside to create monuments to post-industrial America. The selection process is focused on man-made objects and structures such as: dilapidated houses, roadside memorials, tattered billboards, and other discarded materials. Each object is reinterpreted and presented as an artifact or a natural history museum model of something pulled from the contemporary landscape. The purpose is to evoke a sense of wonder from the byproducts of American industrial history. Instead of merely pushing these man-made items into the peripheral of our everyday routine, I recreate the curiosities that happen when they depart from contact with people to move, decay, and harbor with other items to create monuments to cultural disaffection.
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    Unveiling the Inner Self
    (2008-05-15) Chishty, Mahwish Kamran; Ruppert, John; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Contradiction between the visible (zahir) and the veiled (baatin) creates this dialog of what we see and what the reality holds within; "They find as what they seek..." I have found my secret hide-outs, the Sanctuaries as my divine peace and every time I am in contact with them, I reveal myself onto myself. My early life experiences of not settling down in one place and moving from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and later to America have left me with this sense of homelessness. In order to find connections between my roots, and myself, I started building my own comfort spaces within the spaces that were available at that time. By allowing my viewers to interact with the sculptural installations,I invite them to explore the concept of self-actualization and self-realization. For the past two years I have been investigating Kufic calligraphic fonts in my artwork. In the tradition of Sufism, the whirling and spinning helps one to know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one's inward from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits.