Browsing by Author "Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, committee member"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Open Access
Drawing as a phenomenological exploration of ritual
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Valentine, Clark, author; Lehene, Marius, advisor; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, committee member; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Brady, Shawn, committee member
Historically, drawing developed in conjunction with ritual practices. Beginning with cave paintings, where drawings were traced and retraced over generations, drawing developed as a performative element of ritual practice. Even into modern day, drawing is present in many ritual practices throughout the world. In defining ritual from a phenomenological perspective, specifically through the language of Martin Heidegger's book Being in Time, ritual embodies a process of uncovering the horizons of the world, which is the realm of one's understanding. Many of Heidegger's key ideas overlap ritualistic perspectives from ancient China, including the philosophy of Daoism and the ritual culture of Confucian philosophy. Through these, I am able to articulate the way in which my own studio practice and current body of work (2020 through publication) function as a subset of this methodology of mark-making as ritual. I explain the relationship between the ritual of my making within the studio setting and the ritual of looking, audience members perform in the gallery. This ritual of drawing embodies both ideas of being-in-the-world as well as providing paradigmatic examples of the transcendence of ritual into everyday life.
Open Access
Rope language
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Guilfoyle, Johanna, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, committee member; Romagni, Domenica, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member
With blistered hands and rope-burned ankles gripping the rope, I look up towards the peeling tape marking the daunting height of 15 feet. I loop the rough fibers over my right foot before clamping it in place with my left. My feet hold steady and I stand up to reach my arms further upwards. I unwrap the rope from my feet and lift them higher before re-looping the rope over my right shoe, again and again, literally sculpting my body, my muscle, my flesh. Through the rope and this repetitive task, I build my flesh. The rope and other symbols of my past are imprinted over and over again. Similarly, the layering and fusing of prints transform inanimate material into bodily experience--I create flesh from repetition, and through this flesh convey the physical narratives contained within. The color and texture of each print builds to create the final collective mass. If any one of the prints were missing, any piece of the narrative, the final piece would exist as a different form. The layered narrative of my work is embedded in encaustic mortality. The amalgam of my life is embedded into flesh. The corporeal experience of my work entices the viewer to become increasingly aware of their own flesh and the narratives contained within.
Restricted
Sedimental: a geomemoir
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Tabb, Rebecca Lynn, author; Dungy, Camille T., advisor; Candelaria Fletcher, Harrison, committee member; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, committee member
This Creative Nonfiction MFA Thesis is a book-length work comprised of two essays which are modeled after the process of sandstone formation. The work covers the first two of four sedimentary phases, Erosion and Transportation, using sedimentation to understand the limits and impossibilities of preserving memory. The writer, also a climber and painter, uses the sandstone formations around Horsetooth Reservoir, where they love climbing, as an entry point for grief, eventually exploring what it means to construct a more ecologically-centered life experience. The work is hybrid-genre, including paintings, and photographs from the writer's father, speaking to the aesthetics of geomemoir, visual collage, and, more broadly, the intangibility of grief. The essays, Erosion and Transportation, are the writer's attempt to understand what preserving love and life means, how they got to be where they are, and, principally, who has influenced their journey.
Open Access
Socializing playgrounds and creating invisible borders
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Delgado, Vicente, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Aoki, Eric, committee member; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, committee member
Equal rights have been the outcry for many protesters and environmentalist fighting against injustices done to communities throughout the years. Visual arts have the power to start and steer conversations, therefore juxtaposing objects, images, and the use of color to indicate concepts of invisible borders that are created by people, maps, and the built environment. An understanding of the early adaptation of children's stratification of others through the readings of Pierre Bourdieu's community doxa, and the three capitals that differentiate one's upbringing into a society. The ontology of the adult-made toy can tell us a bit more about how these objects introduce a child to a Marxist society, while other toys can teach them how to socialize and obtain skills that only belong to the community. Low social classes and high social classes are clear distinctions of the social economic state of families across the nation, yet Charles Tilly's Durable Inequality, helps us understand that we care to dissolve injustices, much more than fighting for equality.