Browsing by Author "Emami, Sanam, committee member"
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Item Open Access Designing ornament: the Plic Plac series(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Crutchfield, Whitney Elizabeth-Simon, author; Lundberg, Thomas R., advisor; Coronel, Patricia, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Littrell, Mary Ann, committee memberOrnament, "something that lends grace or beauty," and decoration, "something that adorns or enriches," are by no means new elements within the human experience. Humans have been adorning their dwellings and possessions as early as 30,000 B.C., as seen in the Grotte Chauvet in present-day France, where inhabitants decorated their caves with paintings of horses. Ornamentation has continued throughout history and within every known culture, as demonstrated by a range of objects and environments, from Paleolithic carved antlers to the interiors of the palace at Versailles. Despite this ubiquity, the terms ornament and decoration often seem unwelcome in the traditional art canon. Recent history has seen a serious attempt at the eradication of ornament, founded upon perceived associations of ornament with otherness, irrationality, weakness, and barbarism. For many practitioners of art movements during the last one hundred years, ornament and its color and complexities represented a threat to their core artistic values. Especially within the contexts of modernism and minimalism of the last century, these words appear to be reserved for those objects and ideas undeserving of the high praise given to the traditional arts, and they often provoke scoffs and disregard from art professionals and critics. This disregard comes at a cost, that being the nearly total rejection of our visual histories. While a majority of art and design movements of the last century have attempted to diminish the importance of ornament within our daily lives, it is my goal to contribute to the re-introduction of ornament that can be seen today in a number of different design and art movements focusing on the revival and celebration of ornament.Item Open Access Embrace your brokenness: a narrative journey of an immigrant(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Monem, Nikoo, author; Bates, Haley, advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member"Embrace Your Brokenness" unfolds the symbolic narrative of my immigrant journey through a collection of works, capturing the intricate complexities of identity and resilience. The artworks delve into themes of connection, border blending, and the interplay between external presentation and internal reality within the context of my own life. This thesis explores the unity and dissonance inherent in my personal experience, delving into the transient nature of memories and the emotional intricacies they hold. The signature of this collection are the delicate rose pattern porcelain pieces which serve as reflections of my roots and connections to my homeland, evoking a profound sense of belonging and contributing to my self-portrait within this collection. Utilizing visual narratives, each piece becomes a nuanced story, framing my daily struggles with adapting to a new life in the United States. Aligned with a broader theme of unity, "Embrace Your Brokenness" unveils the complexities of the immigrant experience, offering a tangible representation of the often-unseen challenges I have faced as both an immigrant and an artist. Through this body of work, viewers are invited to contemplate the concealed stories and connections that contribute to the collective human experience.Item Open Access Forms of transformation(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Nelson, Christy, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Flippen, Paul, committee member; Dik, Bryan, committee memberI find used, soiled, discarded, often familial objects and using art agents like encaustic, stretcher frames, and pigment, I change them into new things. This resonates with Bill Brown's Thing Theory which deals with human-object interaction and the shift in perception of an "object" to a "thing." Some of my newly recreated "things" expose holes or scars that can be closed and opened similarly to a wound that is perpetually re-opening and re-healing. Rachel Sussman, Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgeois are three artists who also deal with differing types of healing in their art. Though there are some similarities in how we approach repair, my work revels in the process of tangibly redeeming salvaged forms and freezing them in a moment of restoration. This experience is empowering to me, as it provides a form of therapy and is often a magical interaction. Beyond the symbiotic interaction of the found-objects compelling me to remake them and the process-based catharsis they in turn offer me, I seek to engage the audience with these pieces. As the viewer sees the transformed artworks, I remind them that renewal is possible and ask them to be active participants in the process.Item Restricted Hurricanes make the best bouquets(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Meyer, Eliana, author; Ausubel, Ramona, advisor; McConigley, Nina, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee memberHurricanes Make the Best Bouquets is a collection of short stories which explores love, loss, isolation, inner strength, and the process and shape of forgiveness. These nine stories reimagine the domestic drama as a place where displaced men and women—mothers, daughters, sisters, divorcees and one widower—search for answers in decomposition, orange blossom perfume, and strange apparitions. From the top of a lighthouse to a Visalia Super 8 to a Salvation Army window display, the heartache these characters experience in the wake of abandonment, death, and self-discovery asks them to adapt to new realities and confront the meaning of home and belonging.Item Open Access Instantiating time: object as metaphor(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Forsythe, Alexandra, author; Bates, Haley, advisor; Egenhoff, Sven, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee memberThis body of work reflects personal research into the characteristics of time, specifically memory in relation to site, and our human relationship with the natural world. Time is relative, not absolute. Each individual has a unique perspective, from the speed at which time passes to recollection of the past to speculation into future events. Through the dual lenses of the personal and the geologic, I engage with perceptions of spatiotemporal experience. Exploration of the souvenir as a physical representation of memory and site is contrasted against the expansive theory of deep time. Through repetitive, time intensive methods grounded in traditional ways of making I create objects that both embody and represent time. By interacting directly with the body, my wearable pieces allow for an intimate engagement with these ideas; the non-wearable work provides space for reflection on the nature of time and memory.Item Restricted Keepers: a novel(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Carey, Patrick, author; Ausubel, Ramona, advisor; Dungy, Camille, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee memberKeepers is a novel told through the rotating first-person perspectives of three lighthouse keepers on an island in northern Lake Michigan around twenty-five years from now, in the midst of the Second Great Depression. It takes place during a weeklong visit by one keeper's son, who forces them to reassess their pasts and return to the present. By foregrounding backstory and digging for the differences within repetitions, the novel traces a gradual accrual of emotional and spiritual mass even as individual events seem to blend like raindrops in a puddle.Item Open Access Making with attention(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Sink, Douglas M., author; Voss, Gary Wayne, advisor; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Aoki, Eric, committee memberMy sculpture examines relationships between human and environment, object and intention. By creating a sense of the art object as a modern artifact, I challenge modes of making and living in contemporary western society through the guise of utilitarian objects. By using materials that have been classified as waste to create sculptural works I bring value to something that had little. I use low-tech and old-world methods to create, allowing myself to experience the true labor inherent in the making of things, while at the same time creating a contemplative sculpture which embodies skillful craft and sensitivity to material.Item Open Access Rock collection paintings(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Cameron, Mikie, author; Sullivan, Patrice, advisor; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Flippen, Paul, committee member; McKee, Patrick, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee memberSimply observing the world around me can be fascinating. Patterns and forms I find on stones and pebbles especially provoke my imagination. In my works, I observe and render natural forms onto surfaces; I interpret rocks from my collection into multi-colored, multi-layered, quiet paintings on carefully prepared panels. By translating my experience of these objects into art I am investigating my own perception of such an other, the alien rock - what it means to enter into a dialogue with it, subsequently constituting it and reconciling myself with it. Following this activity, a painting is created; an entirely new thing is made that the viewer can then contemplate. What follows is a description of how my work relates to contemporary theoretical considerations of perception, phenomenology, and epistemology. The rock collection paintings are a visual exploration of theoretical notions including phenomenology of perception, play transformed into structure, and experience of the other. As a result of the process of experiencing and translating a rock into a quiet oil painting I produce a visual playground. What exists is not two closed off subjects: the painting and the viewer, but a playful yet serious dialogue occurring between the two entities. What emerges from the discourse between viewer and painting is a form of self-knowledge. These works of art are forms of truth that, in part, shape the viewer.Item Open Access That which sees me: painting's unique capacity in an ambivalent age(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Price, Justin, author; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Kissell, Kevin, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee memberI use the medium of paint to express my interest in problems for which I do not have the language to express. Born from my obsessive and indecisive tendencies, these preoccupations must be attended to at a distance from myself, a skill paint is specific to accommodate. Paint functions as a corporeal engine of thought, a notion expressed by French phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, showing no distinction between the mind as non-extended or the mind as body/matter. Using paint to address my own disposition of ambivalence, its own ambivalent qualities provide a nuanced context for these interrogations. Paint exists both as itself, color made tactile and concrete, and decidedly descriptive with its illusionistic capabilities. These oppositions also provide a unique perspective to the fluid nature of our modern world burdened by the violence of its systematic naming and control as theorized by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Paint is agile to speak of the implications to these ambivalent systems created in ordering our world. Secundino Hernández, Tomory Dodge, and Joshua Hagler are three artist who also deal with the medium of paint as a logic unto-itself. Like them, I explore the subtlety of ambivalence in search of a new constancy.Item Open Access Thresholds(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Truitt, Laura Carpenter, author; Yust, David, advisor; Sullivan, Patrice, advisor; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee member; McGrane, Joseph T., committee memberThese paintings and drawings reference the interaction of architecture and landscape; physical space and a merging of geometric and organic forms. They utilize the horizon line and linear perspective to create an illusion of space. By using human sized scale I encourage the viewer to exist physically in the space, and by keeping the imagery ambiguous the viewer is engaged in the creation of the space. I see these works as thresholds; an unsteady viewpoint in the middle of a representation and constructed metaphorical space. These works operate with multiple thresholds. First of all there's a metaphoric threshold, a place that is specific to my local fluctuating landscape. Secondly, there's an architectural threshold between inside and outside, looking out and seeing in. Thirdly, my work explores structures between their life and death; construction, decay and destruction. Finally, there's an enacted physical threshold that I think about while painting, trying to paint in-between foreground and background, and creating structures just to destroy them so that they sit at a mid- point of completedness.Item Restricted To smoke a wasp's nest(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Browne, Margaret F., author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Steensen, Sasha, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee memberThis manuscript centers on destroying wasps' nests as a central metaphor for a kind of exorcism of a deep-seated grief. Grief for a time and place in a family's history, for the traumas they experienced that left long-lasting wounds, and for the loss of a matriarch—who loomed so large as what felt archetypally "mother". In many ways, this is an elegy for a mother who can never be—a permanent, vast mother able to carry and hold us and all of the grief of being a person in the world, as we were once held as children. It's an elegy for the knowledge that there is no such mother, and inevitably, we cannot return to that place of childlike innocence and comfort.Item Open Access Transformation by the mark(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Lenaway, Scott R., author; Dormer, James, advisor; Simons, Stephens, advisor; Emami, Sanam, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member; Ore, Janet, committee memberThe earliest elements of art have been the mark making found in painting and drawing. From the cave paintings created in France 40,000 years ago to the modern day, the use of line and mark making in the rendering of an object is still of importance. Technology will always play a role in society, which in turn carries over into it's art. Modern artists have found methods to incorporate technology influence in their work and process. Artists must not forget the importance of line. In my thesis work the importance of line and mark making is a key element in my work. Using industrial made objects and environments, I explored the relationship between the handmade marks of an artist and industrially created objects. As modern technology has had a great effect upon the production of industrial objects, it has dehumanized the worker. In contrast, the lines and marks that an artist creates reflect the human aspect of art and life.