Art Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2745
Browse
32 results
Search Results
Item Living with Flattened Space(2011) Knobel, David William; Strom, Justin; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My work is a source for the expression and communication of the concepts that discuss the fantasy spaces created within the mind. It engages the rapidly expanding geographical space of the digital realm that encroaches on our material existence. Digital technology and space has effects on almost all our daily happenings from the products we buy to how we get them, not to mention the dramatic expansion of diversity in the products offered in the marketplace. Other effects such as how we create films or create architecture or design have become all but digitized. Much of the imagery presented in my work is flattened, fractured, broken and separated. Similar to that of information gathering on the internet, one clicks back and forth through multiple frames of reference or existence coming from unknown distance later to be flattened by the nature of the media. The works ebb and flow from illusionary spaces to plastic spaces of flattened abstraction. With a world based in complex ever-changing visual symbols and rapid image reproduction, our language doesn't evolve at the same rate our image culture does. One is left with only image construction as way to interpret data into information. I choose painting and drawing as a way to communicate and come to terms with the time and space in which we live. I believe my work is a point of departure not a location of fact. It is inspired by subcultures, many of which I have been a part of such as internet gaming communities to potentially create other ideas about our global cultural net of existence.Item Performance of Objects(2011) Burrowes, Jesse Harris; Ruppert, John; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis is about the nature of objects and the interaction of bodies with their extensions and remnants. The residual evidence contained within an object, of and from interactions with living things, is an inanimate performance the suggestions of activity within stillness. As part of the hunt for gestures and moments, all things that I bring into the studio are simultaneously objectified and translated into narratives. In turn these transformative processes embody both a non-fiction of their history and origin, and the fiction of assemblage. Words are at the root of my sculptural works, the physical materials are sought through the necessities of the articulation of thoughts. The found objects are in one way or another facts, and the combinations, compositions and manipulations become a fiction. The performance of objects, the tolerances of materials and bodies, generates a story that is the content of this work.Item Collector of Nothing Good(2011) Jackson, Zachary Christian; Sham, Foon; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My work stems from a fascination with our reactions, both mentally and physically, to ideas of stress and anxiety. Referencing interviews and conversations gathered from others as well as my own experiences with stress my work creates a dialogue for these often-unrecognized occurrences. Each of my pieces is a conglomeration of several different ideas of stress. Often during conversations and interviews it becomes apparent that bases of tension cross paths between multiple individuals. This paper will discuss the work presented in my thesis exhibition as well as the ways that the work is initially created through the interview process.Item Potential Disasters(2010) Watson, Jennifer Lynn Stewart; Ruppert, John; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The common conceptual thread woven through my work is a fascination with the point at which two things meet, thereby creating a third entirely new event. This ongoing theme of two forces and their point of contact speaks of weakness and controlled failure. Whether it is with feather filled, upholstery fabric forms pinned to the wall by bowed steel armatures, or tense steel rods sprung between wall and floor, my interest lies in exploring how the slow, kinetic action of one, affects the other. I construct three-dimensional drawings with steel rods that rely upon relationships with their surroundings. The starting and ending points of the rods are ambiguous, rather, they are a series of marks that link one point to another. Developed through self-created codes and natural genetic patterning from my personal history, each rod represents a relationship. These installations and three-dimensional drawings are part of the series entitled Potential Disasters. The work has potential for slip, change or collapse. I guide, direct, and balance elements, but once the installation is established, the resulting event is out of my control.Item Potential Disasters(2010) Watson, Jennifer Lynn Stewart; Ruppert, John; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The common conceptual thread woven through my work is a fascination with the point at which two things meet, thereby creating a third entirely new event. This ongoing theme of two forces and their point of contact speaks of weakness and controlled failure. Whether it is with feather filled, upholstery fabric forms pinned to the wall by bowed steel armatures, or tense steel rods sprung between wall and floor, my interest lies in exploring how the slow, kinetic action of one, affects the other. I construct three-dimensional drawings with steel rods that rely upon relationships with their surroundings. The starting and ending points of the rods are ambiguous, rather, they are a series of marks that link one point to another. Developed through self-created codes and natural genetic patterning from my personal history, each rod represents a relationship. These installations and three-dimensional drawings are part of the series entitled Potential Disasters. The work has potential for slip, change or collapse. I guide, direct, and balance elements, but once the installation is established, the resulting event is out of my control.Item Modern Warfare(2010) Hoffman, Joseph Daniel; Richardson, William C; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Title of Document: Modern Warfare Joseph Daniel Hoffman, Master of Fine Arts, 2010 Directed By: Associate Professor Williams C. Richardson, Department of Fine Art This thesis discusses my use of sound as a sculptural object. I investigate the physical potential of sound as well as its use throughout art history. By exploring the distinction between sound, music, and noise I give context for my current body of work.Item The Mystery That Prevails: Drawing Fragmented Worlds(2010) Laing, Sarah Anne; Gavin, Dawn; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The body of work I have made for my thesis exhibition is built from organic imagery that hints at diagrammatic filtering of information, but repeats, contorts and layers to become an unsettling conversation between the known and the unknown. In this essay, I discuss my use of repetitive drawing and the rendering of strange, shifting landscapes as a means to describe the uncanny nature of my surroundings as I move from one place and experience to the next. At the same time, I discuss indirect concerns of shared displacement and discontent within a world of unforeseeable changes.Item Painting: Despite(2010) Horjus, Timothy James; Richardson, W. C.; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Painting: Despite" is an exploration into the possibility of continuing to paint despite the constancy of digitized images in our everyday and their effect on our ability to process images. Our contemporary culture is one primed for the consumption of images, but one woefully unable to understand them. This inability is for many the reason for the 'death of painting.' The paintings in the exhibit evoke a space that is fractured unstable and in a state of flux. Within the framework of past romantic notions concerning painting, its progress, and purported death, these works posit a new position for painting. The position for painting is one of duality. The works are paintings, but are not a continuation of the history of painting, instead referring only to what has come before through stylistic tendencies and knowingly taking part in a culture where the time for contemplation is no longer validItem Modus Operandi(2009) Flick, Jeremy Joseph; Gavin, Dawn; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Modus Operandi" is a presentation of the resulting images and artifacts premised on the artistic investigation of the found patterns of tinted security envelopes. The works included in the exhibition engage a theoretical dialogue, representing an awareness of the language of abstract painting and offer some possibilities of its future recalling that "painting is more than an act of remembering the conditions of daily experience; it is an exercise in looking; a subject in itself" (Grabner 25). Based upon serial strategies and procedures, the individual works of art included in the exhibition, along with this and any other supporting documentation, are sub-divisions, which collectively offer a broader understanding that through investigating the whole of visual culture, even the most banal or trivial, and the most marginalized patterns and decorative motifs can become symbolically, even poetically, vested with meaning.Item Fear and Doubt(2009) Wead, Matthew; Pinder, Jefferson; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My work is about the shared human experience. The intent of the work is to address broader issues by using a mixture of the observational with the personal. The underlying concept of the work is that individual identity is not seperate from the larger human collective. Finding a commonality between our individual experiences is the only way to truly understand each other.