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Browsing by Author "Mitchell, Carol, committee member"

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    Erté-style wearable art eveningwear created for a specified target market
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Loving, Katrina, author; Littrell, Mary Ann, advisor; Sparks, Diane, advisor; Mitchell, Carol, committee member
    Wearable art is a wondrous form of self-expression for both the creator and the wearer, but it also offers the viewer a remarkable experience. The "wearable" aspect of wearable art makes it uniquely relatable to a viewer. Most people engage in the act of wearing clothing every day. Therefore, a piece of art that is also wearable allows the viewer or viewers the opportunity to relate to an art object as a somewhat familiar part of every day life, while also responding to the, perhaps less familiar, yet extraordinary aspects of the object that make it "art". This study explores the process of creating wearable art from beginning to end. In addition, the researcher proposed and then modified a new model for creating and viewing wearable art, based upon models proposed in previous studies. Wearable art was created, based on the work of famous fashion designer and illustrator Erté, as well as the wants and needs of a specified target market. First, a content analysis of the work of Erté revealed important elements of the inspiration source. The researcher then gathered target market information by conducting interviews with a sample of five women between the ages of 40 and 70. The information revealed by the content analysis, along with the target market information informed the design of three wearable art garments which were then viewed and assessed by the original target market participants. The participants gave the garments consistently high scores in response to almost every question included in the post-assessment survey, suggesting a high level of satisfaction.
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    Gargoyles
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 1984) Nichols, Charlotte, author; Getty, Nilda, advisor; Kwiatkowski, Ronald W., committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member
    Circulation of internal and external currents within a sculptural form is the major focus of the work in this thesis. As a contemporary interpretation of medieval waterspouts found in Gothic architecture, these gargoyles act to catch, circulate and expel the viewer's visual currents. In addition, these forms constitute a personal interpretation of the flow of human emotional currents circulating internally, erupting, entering and flowing away from man's receptacle. Two distinctly different sculptural forms, mechanical and organic, have been combined in the development of these gargoyles. Geometric surfaces of grids, movable connections of sockets and tubing, constitute the mechanical facades of humanity. They act as an armor to protect and house man's emotions. The organic forms containing recognizable human qualities create an identifiable relationship between the viewer and the sculpture. This relationship establishes a bond between mechanical and organic forms, both acting as human characteristics. Hollow systems were incorporated in these gargoyles to establish an internal flow throughout each piece. Rather than directing a physical flow of water as did their medieval counterparts, these systems act to channel the eye of the viewer. Openings allow entrance into receptacles whereas spillways and exits enable the eye to pour out over external surfaces. The visual currents circulated by these forms represent the movement of emotions within mankind. The human body is the receptacle for emotions, yet unlike physical circulation confined within sealed systems, our emotional currents are free to come and go. To enter and dwell within us, to seep out of crevices, our feelings are at liberty to erupt and splash onto mechanical facades. The viewer plays an active part in establishing the currents within these gargoyles. Human characteristics create rapport, non-human aspects stimulate inquiry into meanings which ultimately reach inside man's emotions. Perhaps these gargoyles, manifestations of emotional currents, will give the viewer a new insight into human sensitivity and feeling.
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    ItemRestricted
    Pardon blooming
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 1983) Hayden, M. D., author; Ude, Wayne, advisor; Tremblay, Bill, committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member; McMurray, George R., committee member
    A toad, a butterfly, a human being, a philodendron, all need sustenance, need air; all grow and change. Clamp a bottle over a living creature and it suffocates, its movement restricted, its possibilities limited. For an individual, rigidity becomes a glass bottle, and those who struggle to escape the bottle must experience something painful in the process. Glass bottle. Rigidity of society and tradition. For some, rigidity comes from their own acceptance of society's rules or tradition's importance. A creature raised in the confines of a glass bottle is uncomfortable with sudden freedom, as uncomfortable, perhaps as a free creature confined. For others, rigidity is imposed from the outside. These rigid boundaries of society and tradition may not be apparent until they conflict with the individual's inner needs for growth, but when they do conflict, the individual must find air to breathe. Some escape the glass bottle; most don't. Glass bottle. Rigidity of linear time. Although the concept of time as linear is arbitrary in Western thought (some American Indian tribes do not have such a concept), most of us assume our past happened to us in the time line before now. If we remain always the same person, the past, the memories happen continually. But if we have grown and changed, we are not the same person as the child of ten, the adolescent of fifteen, the young adult of twenty. The memories we hold happened to a different person because we are always becoming someone else. Linear time does not allow this idea, but circular time, or even spherical time, does. Glass bottle. Rigidity of gender. Separation of the sexes by innate differences or by imposed societal roles creates a rigid boundary that obscures the commonality of human experience, that denies the similarity of emotion and need in men and women. The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are 'the opposite sex'--(Though why 'opposite' I do not know; what is the 'neighboring sex'?) But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world. 1 Glass bottle. Rigidity of language. The boundaries of our language define the boundaries of our world. Those things we cannot perceive, we cannot say, and vice versa. The stories in this collection seek to express what our language has no way of saying, to escape a rigid structure, voice or time, to break glass bottles.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Power in transformation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 1986) Fené, Sandra, author; Dietemann, David L., advisor; Yust, Dave, 1939-, committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member; Kwiatkowski, Ronald W., committee member; Levine, Frederick S., committee member
    I am interested in exploring and clarifying the concept of contrast. My intention is to emphasize the transformation of opposing forces to create harmonious balance. Paper is a natural way for me to express these ideas with power and elegance. I am interested in the power which unites these elements into a whole that is interacted upon and supported by all its parts. I want to recognize and explore the matrix of change and the fusion of energy to create order in my life and in my art.
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    "Too disconnected/too bound up": the paradox of identity in Mercé Rodoreda's The time of the doves
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 1991) Short, Kayann, author; Freeman, Marion, committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member; Boyer, Harriet, 1936-, committee member
    Feminist theory has shown how women's lives are paradoxically both marginal to, yet affected by, hegemonic discourses of power. However, as long as women's experiences are viewed singularly along an axis of sexual difference, placing paradox as a trope for female identity risks reinscribing a closed system of oppression based only on male-female relations, thereby foreclosing possibilities for oppositional strategies organized around intersecting locations of resistance. Mercé Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves, originally published in Catalan as La Plaça del Diamant in 1962, portrays a working-class woman's life in Barcelona from the onset of the Second Republic to the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a period she calls "a piece of history." Natalia's presence as both "articulate" narrator and "inarticulate" character embodies her paradoxical position as both outside and inside discourses of gender, class, and national oppression. Attention to the specific cultural contexts within which women's lives are both externally constructed and internalized allows a recognition of Natalia's silence and inwardness oppositional strategies of survival rather than as qualities of limitation and alienation.