Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/733

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Paintings
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1995) Wiesenfeld, Alexandra Ingrid
My paintings are inspired by the interiors of abandoned houses I discovered in remote areas of Montana. In these spaces I find a strange combination of intimacy and history. Personal items, like a coffee cup with hearts or a red high heeled shoe, are left behind. Nature slowly reclaims territory: the wind rips at the wall paper, revealing layers of color and time; the light pours in, singling out details and creating a satisfying order within the apparent chaos. I see the objects around me, whether familiar or decayed beyond recognition, as if for the first time. Each seems imbued with a hidden symbolism and a mysterious meaning. Rummaging through the traces of the people living there before, I feel like a voyeur intruding upon a space secret and ominous. Simultaneously there is the surreal sensation of my being on a stage, observed in the same secretive way. My intent is not to imitate in paint an actual likeness of the buildings but rather to express the emotion they evoke in me. This emotional impact prompts my choice of imagery as well as the formal elements of my paintings. It is the mood of these abandoned spaces that stirs me to set up juxtapositions, which create psychological and emotional content. In my compositions I contrast various objects, both found and imagined, which creates a dialogue between them. I look for formal and psychological contrasts, in shape, texture, color and connotation: the closed versus the. open, the soft versus the hard, the light versus the dark, the safe versus the dangerous... The figure personifies my own feelings of displacement. When the naked woman is part of the composition, the objects become her props and the space her stage. I omit her features, as I am not interested in her as a specific person. Rather she serves as a tool, an "object", to set up a potent pairing with the space and the other objects. I want her to be young, sexy.. transitory. She is what she is, unself-conscious and without shame. Her pin-up-girl quality and her sexually evocative outfits are in contrast to her gestures, which are introspective and private. Even though the viewer might construe her open sensuality as an invitation to be violated, it is important to me that she does not appear as a victim. She is full of contradictions: she is paradoxical to her surroundings and therefore absurd. The naked woman and the objects around her create another, inner dialogue, one of which she is fully aware and which ultimately mocks her with her own existence. The imagery provides me with a basic structure, a vantage point. I am not interested, however, in mere illustration. I aim to re-construct the object with paint, to build it physically by surrounding it and penetrating it with brush strokes. The canvas becomes like a puzzle in which all elements are connected and interdependent. I play these elements against each other, contrasting flatness of surface and depth of space, line and color, representation and abstraction. In this process I am searching for ways to break through boundaries, which are often present when painting a representational image.
Re-institute : realization of unrealized resources
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2009) Nesset, Troy Lawren; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Christopher Livingston; Bill Rea (co-chair)
There are preconceived notions that human beings and built environments have a defined life-span. Both the homeless population and the abandoned infrastructure of cities are seen as existent until their place in society has been tapered, suspended or given up on completely. Once the individual or building reaches a point of societal condemnation it is neglected and eventually forgotten, slipped into the archives of non-existence. What once was an element of a functioning whole becomes a void that is commonly overlooked. Many forgotten people within the homeless population and buildings within abandoned infrastructure have an immense amount of potential energy that may be utilized to further their existence as a function of society. At a human level the homeless person flows through the social construct with little more acknowledgement than a shrug of the shoulder and a minor donation. In the built environment resources sit stagnant amongst constantly advancing infrastructure. In both circumstances the subject is left to exist as a non-participating part of a society that does not acknowledge their presence and lacks the mutual interaction that makes the vagrant or abandoned infrastructure an integral part of the social system. The Re-Institute program identifies contributing factors of social exclusion at both human and infrastructural levels. These factors will be counteracted by reversing the primary concepts of social exclusion into a catalyst to solve the issue. The mechanisms used to combat the problems of social exclusion will exist in a sociological, environmental and programmatic realm within the Re-Institute project. Through the architectural and programmatic development of the program, these mechanisms will re-institute neglected resources back into a constructive part of society.