Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/100332

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Open Access
Drawing on identity
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Rockett, Sarah, author; Kokoska, Mary-Ann, advisor; Coronel, Patricia D., committee member; Hempel, Lynn Marie, 1965-, committee member; Lundberg, Thomas R., committee member; Ryan, Ajean Lee, committee member
The focus of my work is to express aspects and constructs of identity through employing a physical drawing line. I view identity as a fragmented conglomerate influenced by one's personal experiences and interactions with social expectations. Through an analytical process of observation, I investigate my own identity by compulsively examining myself from the perspective of others and simultaneously considering my inner self. As the individual cannot be understood without her relationship to the many, my process highlights the roles that I play in relation to the collective of society. I take into account the many variations of social constructs, gender roles, and stereotypes that are imposed upon my identity, and question their impact upon my inner self. The result of this practice manifests itself in the form of art works made of many parts. Each work displays an accumulation of physical pieces that unite to emphasize the architecture of my identity. My art works tend to have an open-ended question or statement that propels their initial formation. They continuously grow, multiply, and accumulate to become drawings in space. By removing the traditional tools of drawing, the immediacy of the process commonly associated with drawing is increased with materials such as wire and thread. Through this method, there is a greater degree of tangible interaction by the artist with the work. I am no longer separated from the line by the tip of a pencil, but physically manipulating the movement of the line by hand. My anxious nature of looking inwards and outwards is recorded in each bend of wire and every stitch of thread. While these materials work harmoniously with my process, they also lend themselves in support of the conceptual aspect of the work. As I cannot escape the social construct of my gender, it must be noted that my work derives from an innately female perspective. Many of the questions that I pose towards social constructs revolve around the expectations of women's roles. With the use of wire and fibers, I am able to portray the complexity of contradictions that exists within my gender and myself. Wire functions as a strong building material, but is also durable, fragile, and may be manipulated to fit a specific mold. In this manner, the wire relates to current expectations of women both in the home and in the social sphere. Often viewed as having a delicate sensibility, embroidery echoes a long standing tradition of women's work and craft. However, the complexity of this technique can be emphasized and amplified when united with the physical drawing line. While I do not intentionally endeavor to compose a feminist statement in my work, an aspect of feminism remains in the process of self-discovery.
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 member
I 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.
Open Access
Excess flesh: a study on the universal commodification and consumption of the colored body
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Holmes, Jasmine Nicole, author; Lehene, Marius, advisor; Souza, Caridad, committee member; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Plastini, Johnny, committee member
First, the breakdown of hegemony and the creation of "race" must be explored before moving onto the branching facets of commodified colored figures: Entertainment, Labor, Sexuality. Western societies' basic understanding of race is laced with phenotypical notions. The term itself is entwined within every societal construct that exists within the contemporary world. In order to completely discuss my artistic practice and the pieces that have developed throughout my time within this program, we must study these compartments of racial discrimation and overall consumption of the Black form.
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 member
One 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.
Open Access
Psychological exchange
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Byrd, Adriane, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Huibregtse, Gary, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Conner, Bradley, committee member
My artwork functions as a way to explore and define the personality traits that I developed as a consequence of early life experiences. My paintings are highly introspective and depend on themes of repetition, time, aspects of the gaze and a relationship with the viewer to understand their true meaning. I use my own personality dispositions toward subtle emotion and properties of observation to create a psychologically active dialogue between the viewer and the content of my work. I also employ the use of time and the compulsive need for order and repetition to reveal the desire to define and understand my own psychology.
Open Access
Subliminal recognition
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) McGee, Mike, author; Bates, Haley, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Kneller, Jane, committee member; Tornatzky, Cyane, committee member
In the making of Subliminal Recognition I strove to create a work of art that will engage an attentive viewer and facilitate a contemplative experience. The writing in the following pages provides background information regarding the path of exploration that led me to the ideas and processes of its creation. It is designed as a resource to facilitate both an appreciation of this work and an understanding of my intentions as an artist.
Open Access
That which sees me: painting's unique capacity in an ambivalent age
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Price, Justin, author; Lajarin-Encina, Aitor, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Kissell, Kevin, committee member; Emami, Sanam, committee member
I use the medium of paint to express my interest in problems for which I do not have the language to express. Born from my obsessive and indecisive tendencies, these preoccupations must be attended to at a distance from myself, a skill paint is specific to accommodate. Paint functions as a corporeal engine of thought, a notion expressed by French phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, showing no distinction between the mind as non-extended or the mind as body/matter. Using paint to address my own disposition of ambivalence, its own ambivalent qualities provide a nuanced context for these interrogations. Paint exists both as itself, color made tactile and concrete, and decidedly descriptive with its illusionistic capabilities. These oppositions also provide a unique perspective to the fluid nature of our modern world burdened by the violence of its systematic naming and control as theorized by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Paint is agile to speak of the implications to these ambivalent systems created in ordering our world. Secundino Hernández, Tomory Dodge, and Joshua Hagler are three artist who also deal with the medium of paint as a logic unto-itself. Like them, I explore the subtlety of ambivalence in search of a new constancy.
Open Access
The boundaries of experience
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Price, Patrick, author; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Dineen, Mark, committee member; Soler Gallego, Silvia, committee member
As I make my way through the world, I rely on my senses to inform me of the things and events around me that allow me to continue living and growing as a human being. I am keenly aware of myself as a living human consciousness that appears to inhabit a body. My mind is the center of this being, and my body and the senses it employs are the interface between this being within, and the reality without. My artwork explores the boundary between these worlds and how it gives shape to reality. With a focus on history, culture, and science, and how they affect identity, my research investigates the way these factors inform the creative act of being in the world. The sculptural objects and images I create attempt to reveal answers to the questions my artistic practice revolves around. My work casting and fabricating objects and then placing them in specific contexts challenges the frameworks of collective and individual world-view constructs by revealing them for what they are. Material and landscape, objects and space, create harmonious or discordant relationships that aim to question what a culture can take as certainty. The trajectory of this body of work has led to my thesis The Veil of Isis, which through metaphor and allusion, points to the limits of what our senses can tell us about reality.
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 member
In 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.
Open Access
The space between: cognition, constructs, and contemplation
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Guntren, Anthony, author; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Kneller, Jane, committee member; Lundberg, Thomas, committee member
I frequently ponder the buzz that surrounds a person at any given moment in a day. Stopped at a traffic light, I gaze around at other people in their cars and think of all of the experiences that have brought this group of humans to the same point, waiting for the light to turn. These brief moments of simultaneity--these intersections of individual experiences, environments, and objects--are wonderful features of being alive; the ability to contemplate these brief moments is uniquely human. As well as offering critical analysis of five separate sculptures, this paper delineates the conceptual framework, artistic influences, material considerations, and compositional choices as it relates to the creation of sculptural body of work titled Cognition, Constructs, and Contemplation. The forms presented in this body of work attempt to reconcile ideas of "cognition" in visual form by abstracting isolated units of complex neurological systems that govern the transmission of thoughts, memories, and emotions. These sculptures are composed into naturalistic constructs that draw inspiration from cyclical systems found in both the natural world as well as the manmade. My intention is to evoke contemplation on the unseen forces found in the space inside and between living entities, and in the objects and landscapes that surround them. The space between bodies contains an unknown energy that pulses with the cognitive output of all living creatures.

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