Browsing by Author "Simons, Stephen R., advisor"

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Open Access
Figuration and the human condition
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1999) Kleinschuster, Stephan J., author; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Orman, Jack L., advisor; Dormer, James T., advisor; Kneller, Jane, 1954-, committee member; Twarogowski, Leroy A., committee member
The figure has always been what has interested me most. The desired to reach competence in its rendering was a prime concern for me before I realized the process by which this goal is sought. The everlasting struggle for this skill began to take precedence over my desire for the skill itself. I began to seek the struggle; to push the struggle into the content where before the figure was only the desired end. As the action of the figures themselves began to emulate the struggle that I went through in trying to reach them, I became aware that the content of this struggle needed to take a more coherent form. I found that the quintessential nouns and verb of my struggle were the horizontal, the vertical and the diagonal. Further exploration revealed that the manner in which I combined these elements qualified the type of struggle that I unknowingly sought, the struggle of rising and falling. My passion became, as Rudolf Arnheim states, the acknowledgement of our relationship to...the eccentric power of gravity that pulls us down. In response, we struggle to liberate ourselves from the coercion of our earthbound condition and to rise-with height (verticality) as an eccentric objective, the explicit target of our striving. As we shall see, this tension-laden struggle is a vital component of artistic expression because it dramatizes the pervasive human conflict between powers of trying to pull us down (diagonal) and our own striving to overcome them. In seeking to liberate my personal interpretation of this kinesthetic action the shapes began to secede from the figures they represented. This perhaps came about via the mediums I chose to utilize. The methods of making stems directly from working in the intaglio print medium. This is a sculptural medium that allows one to access the sense of finality in velvet blacks, the richness of tonal gradation, and the potential to illuminate volume. These characteristics began to inform even the drawings that were to become prints. I drew looking for this content with a contemplative discretion, using drawing techniques I knew to be translatable into intaglio. The violent shapes of the first soft ground impressions in zinc re-informed the drawings that were to become prints. As a result all that I paint, draw, or sculpt has the residual sensibility of problem solving in intaglio printmaking. The abstraction that came to fight the figure also joined the content in it's struggle. The figure was not only an exciting visual referent it came to be the control. Its presence and identification act as a standpoint from which to judge the level of abstraction that is necessary to reaffirm the expression apart from the subject matter. Since the desired content was no longer a mere rendering of the figure, I realized that in the transformation of the figure there also resides the struggle of collapse and support. This collapse and support is not confined to physical dimensions, rather it now includes the contrast between intellectual recognition of the figure and the confusion arising from abstraction.
Open Access
Humanity unmasked
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Scott, Stanley James, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Beachy-Quick, Dan, 1973-, committee member; Flippen, Paul, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member
The darker facets of human nature drive my work. The figures you see in these prints and drawings are very real depictions of, and responses to, internal conflict. These figures offer the viewer a deeper level of understanding of the human condition as present both within the artist and society as a whole. I am particularly interested in the elements that make us uncomfortable and the aspects of ourselves we deny. These unexpressed emotions are the source of the tension in the images. The tension that binds each of these figures is inside us, driving our own actions and choices. I feel we need to accept and acknowledge our inner demons, both at an individual and a societal level. My work accepts this internal conflict as a normal part of the human condition that we all feel when we struggle. By speaking honestly through the works, the viewer is challenged to redefine their relationship to the internal struggle invoking a raw response.
Open Access
Making my image
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Tompkins, Farrell Elisabeth, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Ryan, Ajean Lee, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Snodgrass, Jeffrey G., committee member
The impulse to craft my own likeness is an intuitive choice driven by questions about my identity as a woman and an artist. I define these themes as passive and active, and explore them visually through the medium of reductive woodcut printmaking. Using the genre of self-portraiture, I force the viewer into the same space I occupied as I observed myself in the mirror. Original drawings are analyzed as a series of shapes and broken down into layers of value. The resulting prints express my suspicion that the viewer can never fully understand my point of view.
Open Access
Origin and expansion
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Vaeth, Sarah R. J., author; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Dormer, James T., advisor; Pressel, Esther J., committee member; Ellerby, David A., committee member
This work has its source in the internal landscape, constructed out of memory, dream, psychological propulsion and inhibition. It is fundamentally my autobiography, in which I use the language of pictorial space to create a text of the mind. The work encompasses two series, called Wing and Stone and Water. These are differentiated by physical processes and by formal qualities. Both are conceptualized as an elucidation of my own psychological terrain. Throughout the work runs this vein of thought: that I am pushing forward from a ground prepared in childhood. My work is an examination of this liminal confrontation.
Open Access
Resonance of awe
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Keith, Julie Anne, author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Ellerby, David A., committee member; Harding, Blane, committee member
My art is a visual expression of my intimate relationships to family and my surroundings. It is a search to unite the dichotomy of self and other, and a seeking out of the divine. Using landscape as subject matter I strive to create a visual vocabulary with line, shape, color, and movement to express a universal and spiritual way of seeing.
Open Access
Reticulation: earth and aesthetics
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Anderson, Kimberly, author; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Dormer, James T., advisor; Kokoska, Mary-Ann, committee member; Twarogowski, Leroy A., committee member; Cafaro, Philip, 1962-, committee member
My love and respect for the natural environment has deeply directed my artwork. This series of work evolves around an in-depth study of environmental issues. My artwork is a response to the research; some works simply use the issue as a starting point while other work clearly displays the concern. The printmaking lithographic process has also guided the development of this work, both conceptually and aesthetically. Within this series, I am trying to bring beauty, mystery, curiosity, and conservation of the land back into our daily focus through the image-making process. The work is my way of internalizing the natural world and expressing my concern for it.
Open Access
Toward the fecundity of being
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2002) Butler, Joshua E., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Ellerby, David A., committee member; Boyd, James W., committee member
The images represented here, both abstract and representational, deal with the question of how the concept of "self" relates to "Being" (as with Heidegger) through the study of the interrelation between the artist, materials and the subject matter. The premise for the early nonobjective and surreal experiments was the assertion that the state or qualities of being that an artist brings directly and uninhibitedly to the artists materials would be found as content in the image that resulted from this relationship. With these images I was interested in invoking a heightened, rich visual presence that reflects a sense of being on the edge of life and death. It seemed that this would be the place of being where "self" would most readily be revealed. While nothing "substantial" was found, it began to occur to me that what was most interesting about the process was that moment or series of moments where "I" was sublimated into the creative process within the materials and subject matter. During this time a transition began to occur with my image making. I began to understand "self" as a function of relationships in general. The peculiar aspect of the relationship between artist, materials and the subject matter is that it is a relationship within which all involved are transformed. The artist grows and changes through the process, the materials are transformed from raw materials into living visual language, and the subject matter ceases to function as a consumable object "it" (the land for example) and instead becomes, in Martin Buber's words, "thou" that now functions as the beloved. (It seems ironic thate one answer to counter-consumerism is not necessarily overt activism, but rather, educating people to be studio artists.) While I was in the process of understanding all of this I began to work more and more from everyday life. Our human experience of Being is by its nature relational in that we are what (and how) we are engaged in at any moment. The nonobjective work was becoming like a song stuck in my head. I was finding in the World, as it offers itself for investigation, a bottomless well of spectacular visual information. In contrast, the investigations into my internal environment were exciting at first, but the process and imagery was fast becoming repetitive and boring. The still ongoing series of plant and garden images are a result. My new thesis is that if my being-in-the- world as an artist is relational and I know that the quality of being that I bring is reflected as content, then as an artist, I can choose what type of relationship to participate in. In doing so I take responsibility for both the contents of my life and of the images because they reflect and inform each other. The land, and gardens in particular, gives me an opportunity to reconnect with my original Nature. Gardens are especially interesting because they are the work of directly participating in Nature by bringing the experience into our urban environment. This series of images involves bringing the materials to the gardens and making marks that are a direct response to the interrelationship of my being and the being of the environment as a whole. As such, I choose to participate in the fecundity of Being.
Open Access
Voyages of memory
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Kottal, Douglas V., author; Dormer, James T., advisor; Simons, Stephen R., advisor; Jennings, Calvin H., committee member
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