Browsing by Author "Moore, Emily, committee member"

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Open Access
A thing of things: Critter comfort
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Hagerman, Haley Leilani, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Reip, Dave, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Harrow, Del, committee member
This paper explores physical and theoretical layers behind the thesis show Critter Comfort which ultimately aims to immerse and enrapture the viewer in overwhelming giving. Split into four parts, the paper starts with the first two sections give with a more empirical mindset of the installation through exploring the situation of a museum setting, and the art thing(s) on display. Parts three and four deal with the intangible of what goes into creating art with tension, and the quintessential part beauty plays on a surface and metaphysical level. Ultimately this paper is an indulgent explanation of exactly why I made the type of installation I did for my thesis capstone show: to create and share what I find beautiful.
Open Access
Agency of ecological landscapes through paintings of the American West
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Hinkelman, Adam, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Bowser, Gillian, committee member
The lineage of American landscape paintings invokes a hierarchical structure cresting with humankind and the divine. This evokes problematic relational dynamics between humanity and the natural world which is exacerbated by Anthropocentric activity. Traditionally, early western landscape artists illustrated nature as a sublime force displayed as vast expanses of "untamed" wilderness, ethereal mountain peaks, fertile valleys, and steaming brooks. Alongside colonial settlements, paintings effectively lured eager European Americans to claim land through western expansion. To promote mutualistic bonds between humans and nature and contribute towards a new decolonial ecology, my thesis instills agency to natural landscapes by exploring a synthesis between generational historicity to place, non-anthropocentric phenomenology through kinship, and a painting process enriched by the practice of ultra distance trail running. More specifically, my paintings recognize the innate agency of trees, mountains, and glaciers through non-human centric perspectives across time scales, spatial dimensions, and non-observable light wave spectrums. This invites observers to identify a kinship with nature from non-anthropocentric grounding.
Open Access
Being: in badges
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Coder, Cara, author; Bates, Haley, advisor; Moore, Emily, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Canetto, Silvia, committee member
As a woman in contemporary society, I am often at odds with my physical appearance and comparing it to how I “should” look. Through Being: In Badges I use the format of the brooch to make visible my daily battle to love and accept my physical body. Using colored glass as a marker of emotion and silver as a marker of time, I depict an abstract record of my relationship with my physical appearance on a daily, or even hourly basis. I do this as a means to be honest about my experience as a woman who wants to love the body she’s in. Cognizant of societal pressures to exert women to hate how they look, I strive to love my body and my appearance.
Open Access
Cut with your eyes, glue with 'em too
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Ruff, Colin, author; Lehene, Marius, advisor; Kokoska, Mary-Ann, advisor; Osborne, Erika, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Steensen, Sasha, committee member
In the mode of postmodernism, my work attempts to create a meta-narrative by using elements of the larger, grander, and delusional narrative of our American experience. I am interested in exploring the effects of experience (things that happen to us and to objects) on our perception and creation of reality through my artwork. Experiences in general are communicated through signs, symbols, and configurations. These configurations, especially through media, can become a screen preventing direct access to experience. They also can act as a block supplanting real experience with a form of mitigated experience. By deconstructing and reconfiguring symbols and iconography of American mass media from the 1940’s - 1970’s my collages become a vehicle of communication that seek to destabilize the original intent and message behind many of these source images. Through this process, I hope to create a dialogue of the collective experience. I do this through the physical aspects of the work, through the social implications brought in by the fragments, as well as through personally relevant meanings and associations that I deploy in a satirical way.
Open Access
Formal complications
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Schweiger, Alec, author; Bates, Haley, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Malinin, Laura, committee member
This thesis is concerned with the experiential understanding of the everyday-tactile environment. From public to private, infrastructure to daily-use objects, the things that exist in the constructed environment around me compel my investigations of material, form, and function. Specifically, how these qualities work in concert to inspire associations of purpose and value. Inhabiting a variety of formats from jewelry to sculpture to installation, the work allows me the space to pose questions about what makes an object important, and how that may be determined. The responsive decisions I make are informed by my experience with, and a sensitivity towards, materials and objects associated with packaging, adornment, domesticity, and industry.
Open Access
From Sacrificial Lands to reciprocity: art and social engagement
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Thornton, Janine, author; Lundberg, Thomas, advisor; Kissell, Kevin, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Plastini, Johnny, committee member
Oh I would touch with this love each wounded place - Anita Barrows, "Psalm" My thesis artworks focus on interconnection and on the Western cultural perception of a separation between humans and nature. This perception developed during the nineteenth-century Westward Expansion, which viewed nature as a source of resources to be utilized and tamed. Within this separation is an assumed hierarchy in which nature is viewed as lesser or expendable when compared to humans. Land continues to be sacrificed for human wants with no regard for the impacts that this land use has on nature and humans, or on our delicate ties of interconnection. The word interconnection is very broad with many meanings and interpretations. In this work, interconnection refers to relationships, especially from an environmental perspective, in which individual behaviors affect other life forms and natural systems. This interconnection is a web of cause and effect, in which actions of individuals have impacts that ripple out into the world. It is often difficult to understand the effects that individual actions have on others, as it requires a heightened awareness of our world and its issues – awareness that can be challenging to achieve. I believe more discussion and action are needed to help expand awareness and sensitivity towards environmental threats. The questions guiding my research ask, a) how I visually represent the concept of human/nature interconnection, b) how I express the environmental necessity of relationship and reciprocity in our actions, and c) how social engagement can help to expand awareness and discussion. I included social engagement in my thesis because I believe a greater depth of understanding can be encouraged through collaborative works with artists and other disciplines. I explored ideas of human/nature interconnection and relationship through studies of materials, place and the environment. Materials such as fibers, cement and plastic connote relationship, culture, consumption and waste. Fibers are reminders of everyday consumer items such as clothing and housewares, which also can provide a sense of status through the brands selected. Plastics link to consumer product consumption, and to trends, which lead to waste when the item is no longer of value. Plastic is another manufactured material used for packaging and consumer product integrity. My use of plastic ties back to product consumption and waste, as most plastics become landfill. Cement is a manufactured material most frequently seen in construction projects, which aligns with urban development and shifting relationships with nature. Following my work with materials, I looked to my relationship with place, focusing on where I live. This included developing a better understanding of how I relate to the land and wildlife around me, and impacts I make by living there. By making the subject matter of my work more personal, I am better able to see my particular relationship with nature and the impacts of decisions I make. Next, I expanded my personal perspective from my locale to a larger view of the rural environment through the collaborative development of the Sacrificial Lands exhibit, which includes my artwork along with work of other artists, poets, and scientists. The Sacrificial Lands project showcases individual perspectives, creativity, and research from a variety of fields. The objectives are to encourage expanded discussion of environmental topics and to promote collaborative endeavors that seek greater environmental awareness and restoration.
Open Access
Intrinsic motions
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Trujillo, Isaac, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Wohl, Ellen, committee member
This graduate thesis describes in-depth research and artworks produced by Isaac Trujillo from 2018-2020. His MFA works created at Colorado State University expresses and captures the importance of traditional printmaking, digital photography and twenty-first-century interpretations of the land art movement. His work contends that the sport of rock climbing, printmaking, and interdisciplinary art practice are all in collaboration with the phenomena of nature. This expands our ideas of a static material world and expresses the constant flux of space through juxtaposition and metaphorical references to geologic time. The primary argument for contemplation is that material things and objects are inevitably in a constant state of change and renewal.
Open Access
Lake Street weavings
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Bukowski, Kristen, author; Lundberg, Thomas, advisor; Kissell, Kevin, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Osborne, Erika, committee member
Lake Street Weavings is a series of five small woven textiles. Their colorful compositions are inspired by my surroundings and reflect the gridded American landscape. I am enamored by the relationship of these grids to woven structure. In this series, I transform colossal grids from our landscape into small woven textiles. I attempt to capture the character of my environment and translate these qualities into weavings. Through Lake Street Weavings, I hope to express my movement through the world as a complex matrix of place and time. The series is also exhibited with a large scale wall hanging, Suspended Function, and a woven accordion book, Night and Day. These additional works explore the same themes as Lake Street Weavings, while emphasizing scale in different ways.
Open Access
Malicious innocence
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Swihart, Sam, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
My work represents an exploration of warfare through the lens of children both in and out of the combat zone. Because warfare is such a multifaceted enigma, many of its aspects become overlooked in favor of grandiose narratives that speak towards its glorification or abhorrence. In the past, art was used to ennoble warfare as a kind of sport for the aristocracy, while legitimizing conflict through the actions of the ruler and state. However, beginning in the nineteenth century, there was a shift in propaganda that focused more intensely on the role of the individual soldier. By the twentieth century the focus had shifted largely away from the valor of individuals, instead focusing ever more on the abject qualities of modern warfare. These narratives all share a common theme that is primarily focused on the actions of individual soldiers or units, their heroism, and the horrors they endured. Yet children often play an ancillary role in many of these narratives, either providing a source for pity, or showing desperation while emphasizing the loathsomeness of an enemy. For this reason, I have chose to tackle the subject from a different angle – that of the child’s involvement both in play as well as combat. By exploring the often overlooked role of children both in actual conflict as well as the social roles of children on the home front in times of war I hope to examine not only the effects of battle on the child, but also the cultural conditioning of children to further perpetuate the cycle of violence through the reinforcement of societal norms. To achieve this I have been playing off the duality of chaos by juxtaposing imagery of children at play with imagery of war and its consequences. Throughout this exploration my work has made several dramatic aesthetic shifts in an effort to communicate this sense of chaos – psychologically as well as physically. By combining traditional, indirect painting methods with contemporary photorealism, I hope to create visual tension between areas that are fully rendered as well as areas that are under developed and deliberately obscured. I have also begun the use of photo collage in the creation of my paintings in an effort to further destabilize the visual field and to bring an additional air of uncertainty to the narrative. Furthermore my palette has shifted away from a traditional, limited palette to incorporate a variety of colors. These help to emphasize the more unsettling aspects of the subject. By incorporating these elements of painting into the work I hope to represent a sense of disorientation that echoes the abstruseness of war itself.
Open Access
Places as sites of experience
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Allen, Sonja, author; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Osborne, Erika, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
I am sensitive to my environment, and to how perceptions of an experience within a particular geographic location are effected through the relationship of body, object, and place. My work oscillates between human induced and natural systems, and continues to reveal questions regarding the complex relationship between Americans' and the land in the 21st century. Through the process of mining and manipulating large quantities of earth I reference the land as a resource, while acquainting myself to the specific features that set this landscape apart from the rest of North America. The focus on the landscape translates into my art practice, where I explore how a person's sense of self-identity might become altered through experiences within different places and in light of changing landscapes.
Open Access
Systems of uncertainty: acting and undergoing
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Faherty, Lauren, author; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Kissell, Kevin, committee member
For most of my life, I have sought to understand how systems within the body function and engage with one another — how a healthy and organized structure can undergo rapid deterioration stemming from networks failing to communicate properly. The body is supported by an abundance of systems that are introduced to aging, disease and other biological effects throughout our lifespan. The transformation that takes place in the physical self when introduced to a biological disruption is the basis of my body of work Acting and Undergoing. The confrontation of my body's mortality was spurred by my family's genetic predisposition to autoimmune diseases. The organized structure of systems in our bodies lacks the security or stability many people enjoy. In my sculpture, Acting/Undergoing, thin, precarious wood structures work to support plush fabric pieces that are actively overtaken by black forms. Viewers looking at my unpredictable structures are confronted with their own bodily relationships — as one that is intimately familiar yet shrouded by the unknown.
Open Access
The edge of place
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Sullivan, Emily, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Badia, Lynn, committee member; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member
My thesis work uses clouds as a metaphor to explore transition, change, and shifts. I track the origins of my interest in landscape painting by discussing nineteenth century Hudson River School painters — the first to celebrate the American landscape in a traditional oil painting method. Their practice of painting en plein air, in addition to their mobile studio practices as artist-adventurers, influences my paint language and approach. Frederic Church's painted cloud sketches are highlighted for his process, materials, and relationship to place. I argue that these paintings, both finished and unfinished, exist in a state of liminality. Next, I detail a search for the "local" in the presence of multicenteredness and movement, as outlined in Lucy Lippard's text, The Lure of the Local. In my series Holding Patterns, and my thesis work The Edge of Place, I question what it means to find a sense of place within shifting localities. I reference contemporary approaches to landscape and skyscape painting within the context of Lippard's discussion. The history of liminality is followed, using anthropologist Victor Turner's work as a launching point to discuss how liminal spaces are illustrated in my paintings. My work is also supported by Rebecca Solnit's text A Field Guide to Getting Lost to show how relationships in flux can be mirrored in the landscape. Finally, time as a marker of liminality is discussed within the context of my paintings.
Open Access
The process of proliferating change
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Bisbee, Taylor Lee, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Dormer, James, advisor; Dungy, Camille, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member
My research focuses on the relationship between self, community, and the environment. How through direct experience with the processes of nature and printmaking, a better understanding of existing harmoniously with the world can be accomplished. A phenomenological experience can be transmitted through this direct contact with process, in which the viewer might reflect on their being in the world. The process that is best suited for the work of art is used to have the least impact on the environment. This action creates prints that keep the community and environment in mind and perpetuates a harmonious existence that informs the content. Humans can create a harmonious trend of existence by living and creating consciously.