Browsing by Author "Ryan, Ajean, committee member"
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Item Open Access A disobedient mediation(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Bagdon, Andrea, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Bernagozzi, Jason, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Little, Ann, committee memberHistorically within the canon of art, specifically painting, the female form and ultimately female identity was understood in binary terms as being an opposite of the heroic male, conveyed as a commoditized trope of the feminine. There was a disruption to the canon of art in 1968 with the invention of the handheld Sony Portapak camcorder. Many female artists adapted video into their artmaking practice for its ability to become an effective communication medium. In its infancy, the medium of video was not yet dominated by male artists and was not taught in most art institutions. Thus, it represented a medium untainted by the baggage of art history. As a result, experimental video became a feminist medium which offered an alternative form of mediation to subvert the patriarchal artistic canon. Artists have the potential to be researchers of perception and Art can become an agent of mediation to breakdown subjective social orders that cloud our consciousness. My work aims to decode and expose the abstracted systems of femininity and the domestic by using the image processing mediums of video and paint. My paintings and videos unveil multiple emotional states from the same female-identifying psyche in order to examine intimate scenes of self-conflict which have been brought on by obsessive cultural programming. By using uncomfortable representations of the domestic and the figure I also intend to highlight the psychological trauma and disrupt the patriarchal lens that is inherent within the canon of art.Item Open Access Abstraction, ideology and identity(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Hettinga, Maria, author; Simons, Stephen, advisor; Dormer, James, advisor; Beachy-Quick, Dan, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Tornatzky, Cyane, committee memberMy graduate work has been in printmaking, specifically monoprints. I print a variety of materials which reference landscape as well as domestic life, including common household materials such as wax paper, plastic wrap, sewing machine-stitched swatches of textiles and paper, tulle and lingerie. My personal biography is instrumental in my work; my cultural identity has played a major role in shaping my personal identity. I was raised in a Dutch immigrant farming community on the rural perimeter of Los Angeles. Domesticity, decorative arts, fashion and femininity were intertwined to create a fixed notion of beauty and to enforce a strict definition of gender roles. My insular, conservative community contrasted with the ever-changing natural environment of Southern California in the 1970s--1990s; the landscape was altered by urban expansion as well as pollution. I make abstract visual references to fashion, femininity and landscape in effort to create imagery which evades easy definition. I employ abstraction to destabilize traditional, taken-for-granted ideological narratives. While challenging authority, I promote a mindful approach to social and environmental progress which acknowledges the complexities of the twenty-first century.Item Open Access Acts of emergence(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) LaBarre, Sarah E., author; Lundberg, Thomas, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Kneller, Jane, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee memberIn my thesis installation Acts of Emergence, impressions of memory and past experiences emerge from canvas through layers of stain and stitch. Each piece suggests a fragment of memory--real and imagined. Several dozen fragmented units represent a mapping of memory through space, as if each component manifests pieces of a moment in time, flowing across the wall. The format of this piece presents a kind of disjointed timeline that contains partial records of an experience. The work as a whole is scattered across and floating away from the wall, creating a fragmented composition made up of bits of densely stitched canvas. Viewed more closely, each fragment itself becomes a composition. Stains suggest the presence of memories left behind. Each piece in this panorama holds a moment; together the units present a kind of suspended place or moment in time. These fragments appear to travel across the wall, emerging from my memory and stained with references to a history, not unlike paintings made by the Mexica people of Pre-Hispanic Mexico, who conceived time and space as intrinsically linked. I draw much inspiration from the human body's capacity to convey many emotions. The dancing figures in my work are anonymous: each with their own identity, yet not seen as anyone in particular. They are frozen in specific moments, offering a view of that moment as well. Together, suspended figures plot multiple moments within this spreading map of memory.Item 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 memberThese 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.Item Open Access Drifting, mending(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Leonard, Zach, author; Lehene, Marius, advisor; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Tornatzky, Cyane, committee member; Cohen, Adrienne, committee memberI see my everyday life and my art practice as connected by the activity of walking. My art practice attempts to express poetic qualities of discarded (broken) objects found in my everyday life and in my walking (drifting). Overall, this practice is guided by a sharpened sensibility towards everything that is broken or bereft, including bereft-of-a-world. I gained this shift in sensibility after a car accident, in my teens. My propensity for walking made it a preferred means to act on my sensibility for everything that is broken or bereft (from simple actions, ideas, and objects), enabling me to engage with concepts of space and place. The combination of Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre's ontology and epistemology of space and place influenced my creative process. In addition, the Situationist practice of detournement – a method of appropriating and altering something (an event, or – as often in my case – objects) to create new meaning – is possibly as important as walking in my art practice. Walking is a method of research and detournement is an expressive action of that method. In the studio I, in a sense, began mending, bringing them back into a world. With the small artistic gestures or simply articulating them into a space (on a wall, a floor) or into a combination with another. I strive for a sense of poetry in humble materials, creating works that exist in the present moment, reflecting the fragility of the world, and allowing for individual moments of viewer creativity, experiences, and perceptions.Item Open Access Habitation: anthropocentric notions of home(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Laugen, Melissa, author; Bates, Haley, advisor; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Kissell, Kevin, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee memberOne of the most essential human conditions is to seek and establish a home. Conceptualization of home is generated by the material and psychological structures impacted by our shared cultural ideals. The vernacular of the home extends beyond mere shelter and creates context for the discourse of identity. Our external selves are socially constructed and identified by our connection to an abode, a region, or an even larger territory….home. Concurrently, we have a need for a private realm, a space to conceal the personal and vulnerable parts of our existence. In the bodies of work, I reside, Armament, and Comforter, I have produced a system of structures that imply the fragility and strength of the fabric of the domicile. These objects exemplify an innate desire for the sanctuary, protection and comfort of the intimate interior and simultaneously reveal that there is imperfection and impermanence in the concept of the domestic.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 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 memberThis 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.Item Open Access Managing and manifesting memory(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Jaso, Jacob Stuart, author; Lundberg, Thomas, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Kissell, Kevin, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee memberTo understand my relationship with my past, I make objects with a sense of urgency to harvest sensations and reveal truths hidden in memory. When I left New Brunswick to emigrate back to the United States, I began to feel a longing to return to Canada. I had found a real sense of home, with deeply personal and profound connections to people and places. I would not truly understand the depth of those connections until I left. As I work to gain perspective on my longing to return to the past, I draw upon Suprematist concepts of creating irrational spaces and giving primacy to feelings over objective visual representation. Both concepts use color and shape to create these irrational spaces and to capture raw emotion. Far from New Brunswick and the people that made me feel welcome, everything I began to make echoed their faces and the landmarks that ground my remembered experiences. To understand the extent and power of memories in my creative process, I considered how to diminish their ability to influence my practice, since everything I made was centered on the past. Could Suprematist strategies offer real ways to distill a memory without diluting the remembered experience, breaking down memory, and discovering truth within the process of longing? If I could not return to living in a comforting past, I would create a window, a portal, a way to dwell in the contentment of that chapter of my life.Item Open Access Mental planes(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Titone, Jennifer, author; Sullivan, Patrice, advisor; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Bohn, Andrea, committee memberMy works are mental planes in which I chart the accounts and associations I have with textiles and patterned objects. Each piece is a direct consequence of being raised within a family of industrial textile manufactures that produced fabrics for fashion, food, and bio-medical science industries. While I do not know the technicalities that exist within the process of designing and creating fabric-based materials and ornamentations, my daily exposure to the industrial craft has instilled an inherent sensibility for textiles and related objects of pattern that I come in contact within my daily encounters. Painting in an abstract manner that mimics collage, I incorporate the synthetic, the flat, and the vagaries within representational forms. This encourages intentional ambiguity within synthesized spaces, causing the viewer to struggle and grasp to make a connection. The viewers are invited into the puzzle to create their own narratives of place and time.Item Open Access One man's trash, is another woman's treasure(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Hamilton, Samantha, author; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, advisor; Osborne, Erika, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; DeMirjyn, Maricela, committee memberKitsch and related aesthetic sensibilities have a history of being undervalued and deemed flashy, sentimental, and "low-class." Kitsch aesthetics inspire "cheap" emotions contrary to the sophistication and control associated with an educated audience. Rasquachismo supposes a working-class sensibility, highlighting the hierarchy of materials and that these materials exist within systems of power and value. My work explores these aesthetic sensibilities by acquiring imagery from inherited or low-value sources such as thrift shops and transforming the second-hand or discarded objects I find into new artistic objects that conceptually reflect the materials used. References to gender, labor, utility, and mass production are evoked in my work through the use of found objects as the ground for the painting of second-hand floral patterns.Item Open Access Revival of Hejaz tribal embroidery using digital design technology: a collaborative design process engaging Saudi female academics(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Ejeimi, Sahar H., author; Sparks, Diane, advisor; Yan, Ruoh-Nan, advisor; Ryan, Ajean, committee memberThe purpose of the study was to create a collection of professional dress ensembles for Saudi female academics based on their preferences. Two models underpinned this research study: the FEA consumers’ needs model combined with the collaborative design model in order to engage study participants into the design process. A mixed methods approach was implemented in this study in terms of data collection process to examine participants’ FEA preferences within two phases of the design process. First data were collected via online survey from eight participants to evaluate and give suggestions for the eight preliminary sketches. The data were used as feedback to refine the designs in the second phase. The final phase of the project included data collection onsite in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, using questionnaires and focus group discussion with 12 participants. This data helped assess whether the final garment collection met participants’ professional needs, and if participants would be willing to wear them. Results from this study showed that the ratings for the final garments were generally higher than the first sketches in the first phase. Results revealed that the aesthetic aspect was rated the most preferred by the participants among the FEA aspects. Results also indicated that Silver Waves design received the highest rating among the designs in terms of FEA aspects. Qualitative results showed that participants were willing to wear the garments in this study as the garments represented heritage, looked contemporary, and had versatile uses. Participants were also willing to pay more for culturally inspired work attire. Discussion and conclusions are presented.Item Open Access Surfaces of growth and decay, beauty and repulsion: addressing the abject and the sublime through drawings of the natural world(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Scheck, Naomi, author; Kokoska, Mary-Ann, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member; Harrow, Del, committee member; Rickard, Kathryn, committee memberMy artwork has largely been influenced by my understanding of the natural world as being in constant flux. Through my drawings I explore natural life processes that are both beautiful and destructive, addressing growth and decay. I seek to present a visual and sensory experience that generates emotions of awe and imagination, but also challenges and confronts idealized views about life and natural processes. My intentions are similar with those of abjection, which occurs when that which is normally ignored, unacknowledged, or uncomfortable is exposed. I work with tensions between beauty and ugliness in my artworks in order to address these ideas. My drawings work on a microscopic and macroscopic scale, which addresses relationships between intimacy and distance. I work with fine detail on large pieces of paper, so the drawings are viewed both from up close and from afar. At a distance the drawings look like organic formations or topographies, but up close, the detail and volume of marks become prominent. Obsessive accumulation is also important; the multitude of various marks cannot be counted or comprehended, which references the notion of the sublime. The various elements of the drawings work together to create the feeling of an amorphous entity in the midst of uncertainty and change.Item Open Access The ontology of the ineffable(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Miller, Zachary, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Dormer, James, advisor; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Didier, John, committee memberIn this essay, Taoism and other philosophical references are juxtaposed with contemporary art historical figures to supplement Zach Miller's explanation of his own artwork. Themes explored include the relationships between language, creation, destruction, positivity, idealism, negativity, sense and manifestation. Miller argues that sense transcends the functionality of the linguistic notions of signification, especially in relation to translating ineffable qualities of experience. Conceptual influences are balanced by explanations of aesthetic processes involved in the creation of Miller's work to show similarities between ideas and artistic behaviors. Miller reveals the potential liberating experiences of creating artwork in the face of the meaninglessness and impossibility of the objective knowledge of reality.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 Open Access To the light(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) French, Matthew, author; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Voss, Gary, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Kneller, Jane, committee member; Lundberg, Thomas, committee memberWood is a warm, natural material that has a long history as a structural support in the construction of buildings and this role is deeply embedded in our minds. Left bare with minimal sealants, its grains reveal the course of the growth it took while still in an organic state. These qualities remind us of the living presence contained within certain inanimate objects. The scale of construction is miniature, revealing the numerous conscious decisions that went into building the passageways, levels, and thresholds that respond to each other as they define the spaces of the sculpture. The sculpture is intentionally taller than the human body so that we are physically overwhelmed and humbled by it. The constructed form also expresses the humbling qualities of gravity and time. The sculpture's appearance, as tenuous and struggling for uprightness, expresses the vulnerability all forms experience under the pressures of gravity and time. We relate to how our bodies feel physical vulnerability to these and other forces at work in the material world.Item Open Access Transfigurement; Animophilia(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Lambert, Cei A., author; Lundberg, Thomas, advisor; DiCesare, Catherine, committee member; Ryan, Ajean, committee member; Sparks, Diane, committee memberThe illustration-based installation Transfigurement; Animophilia contends with the integration of my subconscious and conscious mind by suspending disintegrated parts that describe a process of transformation. The work is not intended to portray an integrated, resolved person. Using transparent materials that include viewers as they explore illustrations of my body in metamorphosis, I expose the membrane of my subconscious to scrutiny. The metamorphosing chimeras present in this work are distortions of the form I inhabit, yet detailed illustrations coax viewers to suspend their disbelief in these neo-beings. The moments when these creatures merge reflect my drive for individuation and the investigation of my personal metamorphosis. To shift back and forth between visible illustrations and the translucent spaces between images is to invite viewers into my chaotic inner dialogue, where reason argues against feeling, integration alternates with disintegration, and the real parallels the fantastic.