Browsing by Author "Dormer, James T., advisor"

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Open Access
A timeless vision
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1996) Niles, Kathryn M., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Ellerby, David A., committee member; Mitchell, Carol A., committee member; Simons, Stephen R., committee member
Landscape and figure are timeless, universal, and venerable motifs that compel constant and continued examination. This group of works employs form, movement, and spatial relations that are elements evident in both themes. I approach my subjects with a history of memories, an awareness of my surroundings, and my psychological state at the moment. These portrayals of life as I experience it may, in a sense, all be seen as self-portraits.
Open Access
An exhibition of twenty-three original works of art
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1980) Benedict, James Michael, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Dietemann, David L., committee member; Sanford, Kern, committee member
The concern of this thesis is a personal translation of light and form into an interplay of forces that animate the objects or shapes beyond the picture plane. This poetic rhythm of object and space is created by delicate intrusions of geometry on the shapes. These intrusions allow the open space and light to penetrate the image or object but do not dictate its specified shape. The images suggest volume, but they are not hallowed out from space; rather they are projected from space through the interaction of light on form. I have examined these elements in terms of organic forms and also mechanical forms.
Open Access
Currents
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Ayars, Maxwell, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen, advisor; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Coronel, Patricia, committee member; Beecken, Masako, committee member
These prints represent the fusion of digital technology and an organic aeshetic of wabi-sabi (侘寂). Through various printmaking processes I am creating an unusual marriage between two opposite forms of mark-making and imagery. I find beauty in the acceptance of both modes of life, embracing deformities that mirror the decay of the natural world as well as the polished and mechanical realm of technology. There is a simple elegance in allowing both elements equal weight and presence in the framework of my prints. I see the work as currents, in that it is an acceptance of living in harmony with such diverse practices and values. In not fighting the current and blurring the lines between technological reproduction and the artist's touch, my work realizes its existence through a creative flow and merging of opposition. Currents also represent current technology, trends and a certain relinquishing of control to the passing of time.
Open Access
Figuration and the human condition
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1999) Kleinschuster, Stephan J., author; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Orman, Jack L., advisor; Dormer, James T., advisor; Kneller, Jane, 1954-, committee member; Twarogowski, Leroy A., committee member
The figure has always been what has interested me most. The desired to reach competence in its rendering was a prime concern for me before I realized the process by which this goal is sought. The everlasting struggle for this skill began to take precedence over my desire for the skill itself. I began to seek the struggle; to push the struggle into the content where before the figure was only the desired end. As the action of the figures themselves began to emulate the struggle that I went through in trying to reach them, I became aware that the content of this struggle needed to take a more coherent form. I found that the quintessential nouns and verb of my struggle were the horizontal, the vertical and the diagonal. Further exploration revealed that the manner in which I combined these elements qualified the type of struggle that I unknowingly sought, the struggle of rising and falling. My passion became, as Rudolf Arnheim states, the acknowledgement of our relationship to...the eccentric power of gravity that pulls us down. In response, we struggle to liberate ourselves from the coercion of our earthbound condition and to rise-with height (verticality) as an eccentric objective, the explicit target of our striving. As we shall see, this tension-laden struggle is a vital component of artistic expression because it dramatizes the pervasive human conflict between powers of trying to pull us down (diagonal) and our own striving to overcome them. In seeking to liberate my personal interpretation of this kinesthetic action the shapes began to secede from the figures they represented. This perhaps came about via the mediums I chose to utilize. The methods of making stems directly from working in the intaglio print medium. This is a sculptural medium that allows one to access the sense of finality in velvet blacks, the richness of tonal gradation, and the potential to illuminate volume. These characteristics began to inform even the drawings that were to become prints. I drew looking for this content with a contemplative discretion, using drawing techniques I knew to be translatable into intaglio. The violent shapes of the first soft ground impressions in zinc re-informed the drawings that were to become prints. As a result all that I paint, draw, or sculpt has the residual sensibility of problem solving in intaglio printmaking. The abstraction that came to fight the figure also joined the content in it's struggle. The figure was not only an exciting visual referent it came to be the control. Its presence and identification act as a standpoint from which to judge the level of abstraction that is necessary to reaffirm the expression apart from the subject matter. Since the desired content was no longer a mere rendering of the figure, I realized that in the transformation of the figure there also resides the struggle of collapse and support. This collapse and support is not confined to physical dimensions, rather it now includes the contrast between intellectual recognition of the figure and the confusion arising from abstraction.
Open Access
Humanity unmasked
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Scott, Stanley James, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Beachy-Quick, Dan, 1973-, committee member; Flippen, Paul, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member
The darker facets of human nature drive my work. The figures you see in these prints and drawings are very real depictions of, and responses to, internal conflict. These figures offer the viewer a deeper level of understanding of the human condition as present both within the artist and society as a whole. I am particularly interested in the elements that make us uncomfortable and the aspects of ourselves we deny. These unexpressed emotions are the source of the tension in the images. The tension that binds each of these figures is inside us, driving our own actions and choices. I feel we need to accept and acknowledge our inner demons, both at an individual and a societal level. My work accepts this internal conflict as a normal part of the human condition that we all feel when we struggle. By speaking honestly through the works, the viewer is challenged to redefine their relationship to the internal struggle invoking a raw response.
Open Access
Interior event
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1984) Bridges, Amy C., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Ellerby, David A., committee member; Berland, John C., committee member; Orman, Jack L., committee member
My work is based on rooms I have entered, where a corner or objects on a table quicken and stimulate me visually. The way things are placed geometrically and the way light falls to alter and distort them becomes a phenomenon or event. That arrangement or event spells out something very personal; a culmination of reality shown as pure form. It is a unique quality found only there at that moment, which is made up of unrepeatable consequences. These forms perceived in a certain relationship are an inspiration to me, and I create an image stemming from my emotion to it.
Open Access
Making my image
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Tompkins, Farrell Elisabeth, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Ryan, Ajean Lee, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Snodgrass, Jeffrey G., committee member
The impulse to craft my own likeness is an intuitive choice driven by questions about my identity as a woman and an artist. I define these themes as passive and active, and explore them visually through the medium of reductive woodcut printmaking. Using the genre of self-portraiture, I force the viewer into the same space I occupied as I observed myself in the mirror. Original drawings are analyzed as a series of shapes and broken down into layers of value. The resulting prints express my suspicion that the viewer can never fully understand my point of view.
Open Access
Naturaleza muerta
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1995) Mott, Cynthia, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., advisor; Voss, Gary Wayne, committee member; Turner, Ronny E., committee member
I am constantly seeking out images that surround my daily life. I am attracted to the refuse of man-made objects that are left behind in varying states of decay. They become the records of existence, of the comings and goings, of ordinary people. I identify with these images, attracted by the repetition of patterns and shapes. The redundancy of daily habits are reiterated by fences, buildings, and chairs. Basic elements create patterns, asserting control within a space, reflecting the human need to organize and define. Structure and shape may overtake the recognition of objects transcending the normal realm. Life is rarely static. These inanimate objects mirror the same cycle of birth and death as our own lives. They force us to confront our own mortality. My work visually embodies our inevitable place in the life cycle through the cultural aesthetic of the built environment.
Open Access
On and of paper
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1984) Miller, Gail I., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Crocker, David A., committee member
A personal interest and belief in nature has been the basis for the creation of this series of reflective, interior landscapes. Color is used to express subtle atmospheric light, and space appears to extend beyond the picture plane, which is defined by an abstract, geometric structure. These landscapes reach for the universal essence of nature rather than a sense of place and present a moment of timelessness within the ever changing.
Open Access
Origin and expansion
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Vaeth, Sarah R. J., author; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Dormer, James T., advisor; Pressel, Esther J., committee member; Ellerby, David A., committee member
This work has its source in the internal landscape, constructed out of memory, dream, psychological propulsion and inhibition. It is fundamentally my autobiography, in which I use the language of pictorial space to create a text of the mind. The work encompasses two series, called Wing and Stone and Water. These are differentiated by physical processes and by formal qualities. Both are conceptualized as an elucidation of my own psychological terrain. Throughout the work runs this vein of thought: that I am pushing forward from a ground prepared in childhood. My work is an examination of this liminal confrontation.
Open Access
Phylogeny
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1993) Javernick, Michael, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., advisor; Voss, Gary Wayne, committee member; Ruby, Christine, committee member
My intention has been to synthesize and hybridize forms and marks into unique and compelling visual poetry. Having worked as a biologist in the past, I am intimately familiar with the structures and processes associated with living things. The language of shapes, forms and marks with which I have chosen to work is informed by this familiarity. The majority of the work is done in the media of intaglio prints because I felt the images required the tremendous complexity of marks for which this media allows. I approached the plates as sculpture, treating it as a relief surface. Every plate and corresponding image speaks of an intense, sometimes aggressive, physical involvement. Much of the actually image making occurred subtractively through either scraping or open-biting. Images where more "found" than "built". Drawing has provided me with the opportunity to more rapidly transform and search for images, and has made preliminary experimentation with color possible. All the works can be seen as descendants of the drawing Cloaca. The bilateral symmetry and kidney-like motif of this image have undergone transformations in each successive image. As these mutations compounded new motifs appeared. While the images do speak of the phenomena of organic life, my only conscious intention has been to create work that is visually intriguing and speaks of my unique and personal vision.
Open Access
Prints and sculpture
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1989) Gilhooly, Barbara Marie, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Lakin, Barbara L., committee member; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Voss, Gary Wayne, committee member
The source of my work comes from a strong background in drawing. My subject matter is secondary to the constant need to draw. The choice to make prints is an obvious one because I feel printmaking is the direct result of drawing. I rely heavily on multiple-line etches to achieve rich, active black areas. The zinc plate is scraped, after several deep etches, to pull up the middle valves and then burnished and polished to obtain the bright white areas. This intense involvement with the incised and irregular surface of the intaglio plate is also prevalent in my sculpture pieces. The marks drawn into the wax echo the linear quality of the etched plates. My work is an obsession of ongoing ideas that allows me to continually draw in a variety of media, allowing me to determine the material that has the greatest aesthetic impact for the perceived intent.
Open Access
Prosaic mystery, pentimento images
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1985) Hettinga, Kathy T. (Kathy Tolsma), author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Jordan, James R., committee member
The idea began with depicting places/landscapes that I feel an emotional affinity for; this initial interest was in expressing, by the subject matter and the marks, the intense feeling of a certain place and my relationship to it. Beyond the landscapes, which involved the places that I had lived, I then felt it necessary to add the images of people that I had known, who were intimately and inextricably tied to these places. The figures and the structured landscapes were interwoven in overlapping structures, resulting in phantoms of remembered places and pentimento figures; some clearly delineated, others merging with the architecture, or fading into grass fields. These distanced symbols of passing people and places, I saw as embodying the temporal nature of life and thus something of our common mystery. In these prints, I strove to represent what is of importance to me, personal symbols of people and places filled with the personal moment, which is specific; and in this very specificity, embodies the universal.
Open Access
Recent prints: landscape and still-life
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1998) Stack, Karin E., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Simons, Stephen R., committee member; Twarogowski, Leroy A., committee member; Ronda, Bruce A., committee member
My investigations of the landscape are tied to observation but equally informed by memory and imagination. I am fascinated by creating light, space, and illusion, however, these interests are countered by my interest in formal qualities. I hope to achieve psychological impact and expressive effect while exploring isolation, emptiness, and disquietude in the landscape. I am attracted to the intaglio medium because of the richness of the resulting images as well as to the process itself. Initially, I work from observation, then generalize, edit and invent. I also explore still-life subjects using lithography in which I investigate compressed space and abstract shapes. I sometimes include ambiguously scaled houses within the still-life to evoke architectural space and present a question or tension.
Open Access
Recent work
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1997) Neuville, Melissa, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Simons, Stephen R., committee member; Dietemann, David L., committee member; Lakin, Barbara L., committee member
My art work is a means of exploring feeling. It is an involvement in a process which leads to personal expression and discovery of the unknown and hidden. My concern is about content and my search is for honesty and essence. My desire is that the work be authentic, personal and spiritual.
Open Access
Recent work: William R. Howard
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1998) Howard, William R., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., committee member
The work that I have accomplished during my graduate degree reflects an integration of traditional printmaking with some of the technological advancements in photography and computers. Although printmaking has not always been favorable to new and non-traditional techniques, current trends have broadened the definition of a print, embracing computer technology as one of the tools in intaglio printmaking. In my recent work I have combined traditional approaches with some of the newer technology. For example, in my prints a photograph is scanned on the computer where it is altered, then copied and transferred onto a zinc plate. It is then etched in a traditional manner and transformed into an intaglio plate. The distance from the photograph that is achieved through the etching process, enables me to attract audiences outside of photography such as printmakers and painters. The result is, I believe, a unique work of art that focuses on my own sensibilities as an individual and artist. In my work, collections of people, or groups of individual images, shown as a series, reflect the way that each individual relates to another to form a group or a "community." By bringing a group of individuals together, one begins to compare and contrast each individual, but at the same time is still able to see them as a whole. Although I am addressing social conditions, the idea of each personality figures into the perception of the work. The manipulated heads, hands, and bodies of the individuals reflect the idiosyncrasies of each subject allowing the viewer to isolate subtle differences between them. In the end what exists is a community of individuals rich with cultural associations and individual characteristics. My work is derived from the reconstruction of several photographs into an expressive whole. By reassembling individual photographs into a single piece, a statement about my own sensibiities as an artist comes through and the result is a taxonomy or set of people that has personal meaning to me. By looking at the set of individuals the viewers can make their own associations and leave with their own conclusions. These conclusions will be different according to each background and experience that the viewer has, and I assume will often be different than mine.
Open Access
Resonance of awe
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Keith, Julie Anne, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Ellerby, David A., committee member; Harding, Blane, committee member
My art is a visual expression of my intimate relationships to family and my surroundings. It is a search to unite the dichotomy of self and other, and a seeking out of the divine. Using landscape as subject matter I strive to create a visual vocabulary with line, shape, color, and movement to express a universal and spiritual way of seeing.
Open Access
Reticulation: earth and aesthetics
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Anderson, Kimberly, author; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Dormer, James T., advisor; Kokoska, Mary-Ann, committee member; Twarogowski, Leroy A., committee member; Cafaro, Philip, 1962-, committee member
My love and respect for the natural environment has deeply directed my artwork. This series of work evolves around an in-depth study of environmental issues. My artwork is a response to the research; some works simply use the issue as a starting point while other work clearly displays the concern. The printmaking lithographic process has also guided the development of this work, both conceptually and aesthetically. Within this series, I am trying to bring beauty, mystery, curiosity, and conservation of the land back into our daily focus through the image-making process. The work is my way of internalizing the natural world and expressing my concern for it.
Open Access
The camera's abstractions and "the" truth
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1987) Galante, Peter, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Zoellner, Robert, committee member
It must be some law of nature that Existentialists are to be reared in urban environments. I suppose it is the obvious disconnection from the earth in the cities' concrete canyons that emphasizes existential alienation. In places like New York, distinctions of nature are blurred, as it is always night in the subway, and it is always day in the streets, under the glare of unnatural light, even if the sun is shining. To reduce the city to its fundamental unit, I would say that the city is made entirely of walls. I'm sure this contradicts the majority opinion that the city is made of people, but I just don't "see" them. I only see the walls and how the city's unique light plays on them. Emerson, an unlikely Existentialist said correctly, "Every wall is a door." As walls define our existence, let us look for the door and the way out only in our personal walls. My earliest memories are of television, of a large mahogany veneer set, with its horizontally ovoid picture. The images I recall are not of the children's programs of the fifties, but the "film noir" genre movies of the forties, which dominated WPIX's weekend schedule. Dark empty streets with a hardened, solitary detective struggling to correct some injustice. The image is very clear to me, but by the time the filmed original was reproduced by our television, it was reduced to a fuzzy, high contrast abstraction. The highlights became a green white glow and the shadows became murky and indiscriminate. This effect, a consequence of early television's technical limitations, heightened the sense of drama as it facilitated a willful suspension of reality. Throughout this decade when, as a child, I was forming my impression of the world, camera images began to dominate the world's access to visual media. Thereafter, the camera's inherent abstraction was understood to be a faithful duplication of "reality" and was therefore perceived as "the" truth. Therein, mechanical rather than interpretive means gave man the look of things and, more important, his outlook on them. It is for these reasons I find it necessary to search for fundamental meanings and human equivalents against walls which reference a time before the camera's influence, with the very instrument which induced a changed perception of society. It is necessary for me to work with our culture's primary visual medium in order to understand its power over the traditions it consumed. Traditionally, art has used material means to gain spiritual ends. The traditions of Renaissance printmaking provide a conceptual foundation, without which my use of the camera image would be as empty as the pervasive media images. I do not accept the camera's view, de facto, as truth in the manner which society nostalgically accepts the mechanical likenesses in the family picture album. Nor do I attempt to manipulate the image in a surrealist or dada fashion simply to create shocking juxtapositions or anti-art sentiments. I work simply and directly with traditional printmaking techniques to heighten visual and emotional impact. In this way I attempt to strike a balance between the unsettling impact of technology and the stability inherent in the spiritual dimensions of tradition. For me neither the camera nor the processes of printmaking are reproductive techniques, but, rather, are investigative tools with almost mythic significance. For all the technology in the world, there is nothing quite like the odors and effort of mixing bone, vine and burnt oil in handmade ink to awaken the mythic sense of tradition. In this age, artists are finding that to make something new they need to borrow from the old. To understand the present you need to have an understanding of the past. This is my story of how I began to remember. This is why I continue to work.
Open Access
The particular in prints
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1995) Frye, Kathleen, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Orman, Jack L., committee member; Voss, Gary Wayne, committee member; Williams, Ronald G., committee member
I make art because I like to look at things and I want to make images which describe how I feel about what I see. My work is based on a cycle of seeing and responding to the visual world as well as to the images that develop as the artmaking progresses. I choose subject matter which is visually exciting to me and has compelling formal qualities which offer an enticing opportunity to make descriptive marks. These formal qualities include: the abstract structure of forms; how forms are altered by shifting points of view or distance; the impact of light on forms; repetition of forms, pattern; and finally, the nature of large spaces (landscape) and intimate spaces (interior, figures). I prefer to work directly from what I see in front of me, rarely using intermediary sources such as photographs or slides. The mark-making possibilities inherent in the printmaking media of intaglio and lithography are well suited to my direct approach to making images. In addition, printmaking offers a means of creating a tactile surface with deep rich blacks, a surface which I find to be particularly expressive. If an image communicates something of how I experience both the external characteristics and the underlying reality of the visual world, as well as my love for the printmaking process, then I consider it complete.