Scholarship & Research
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Item Neither here nor there(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2020) Marian Albin, Cristina Simona; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Sara MastTraditional rites of passage are losing value today or are forced to take new forms, sometimes at a rapid pace. Inevitable events instantly and actively change our personal, societal and global life. Neither Here Nor There examines mental and physical liminal spaces. My aim is to define the concept, etymology and history of liminality, while exploring its relevance in our modern world. Included as part of this paper, images from my current body of work chronicle different transitional environments, both aesthetically and emotionally. The original concept of liminality, as described by earlier theorists, no longer holds the same meaning. Transitory experiences become perpetual, some occurring at the same time, some repeating. A liminal space can sometimes metamorphose into a home. In this thesis I am addressing several questions of liminality: What are the attributes of liminality and how does it reshape our identity? How do we navigate unsettling unknowns when the ground under our feet seems to constantly shift? During the writing of this paper, the novel virus COVID-19 hit the world, resulting in fear, stress, anxiety, chaos, and changes. However, the crisis also brought with it flexibility, creativity, collaboration, and resilience. New forms of ritual are being born every second.Item Contested terrain(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2016) Rodriguez, Horacio Rafael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Josh DeWeeseAs a product of multiple cultures and identities, my art is used as a vehicle to explore the creation of my personal narrative within the hybrid cultures of the borderlands. I am interested in generative questions such as: What role does spoken and visual language play in the transmission of culture? How did my loss of language at a young age disconnect me from my culture? What symbols, synonymous with my culture, could be transformed and infused with new meaning? How can I overcome and transform racist language and ideologies that I have confronted in my life? What do I have to say about my past and do I want to form those memories in my work? My thesis exhibition is about the many borders I have crossed in my life. I carry many of these borders with me in my memories, and produce work about these physical and psychological borders through a variety of media. Clay, photo, installation and sculpture come together to create a body of work that allows me to navigate the borderlands that I occupy. The use of personal and pop imagery allows me to construct my story, facilitate the creation of my identity and push my audience to explore their identity.Item Assumed identity(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2015) Donovan, Daniel Edward; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dean AdamsI use personal experience as a way of relating to others, through objects both found and made, the shared experience of being human. There is a fascinating universality in the ways so many can relate to nearly any experience despite it being general or specific. My artwork is an exploration of humanness and the ways in which we experience enculturation and assume identity of self within cultures. By assume identity, I refer to the way we adopt historical identity. The uniform and the group was a way in which I was being given the means to act a certain way through uniformity. Through my artwork I seek to examine several systems that condition action in children as well as adults.Item Never quite the same(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2015) Carleton, Christa Lynn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Gesine JanzenFemininity is a social construct that both hinders and empowers; my thesis work similarly struggles with both of these functions. Western society's view of womanhood has improved over time, but untenable expectations still weigh upon half of humanity. The title of my thesis "Never Quite the Same" describes that being molded by gendered expectations afflicts women for their lifespan, sometimes without their conscious knowledge. Because knowledge and tradition are passed on, the feminine archetype is perpetual. Men and women both continue to impose strict expectations upon females, resulting in a lack of agency for individuals and women as a whole. While I recognize that men also struggle with imposed masculine expectations, my work draws from autobiographical experiences. It cannot be denied that women have struggled with their place and their voice in the world for much longer than men. Those who say that feminism is no longer needed are complacent with the standards of inequality today. I have been scrutinizing gender roles in relation to myself and asking: Why does my gender predetermine how I perceive my private body? Why is my outward appearance praised or slandered first by the public, above my other qualities? Why does my gender identity demonize my sexual autonomy? And why does femininity mean I must be calm and subdued less I am perceived as bossy or a bitch? Questions like these propel my work.Item Untitled thesis(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1998) Leikin, Marni Sipora; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Willem VolkerszOur culture encourages the objectification of women. This objectification has a pronounced effect on human behavior. I have chosen to explore and express some of the different types of behavior that I have experienced as the result of being objectified myself. This installation is the manifestation of a range of responses to this fundamental aspect of human existence. That range includes the extremes of the Nazi commandant and the seemingly harmless comments of my great-uncle. I include stories that are not overtly erotic and which would not be automatically condemned in our culture as being abusive. Through the pieces in this show I am illuminating the pervasiveness and complexity of the abuse that is the result of the objectification of women.Item Goodbye to Bozeman(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1975) Shore, Curtis JamesMost of the time during the past seventeen years, I have labored fairly happily in the womb of academia. In the last five years, of that time, I have been able to isolate, in my works some of the inklings that were inside me and to make explicit to myself (and to others) what I was capable of. I had freed myself somewhat from external authority and was able to grapple with some of the internal absurdities that make working worthwhile. Whether the works are in fashion or not, I found is completely beside the point. I found also that the critical authority is often trapped behind the word "aesthetic" and that posterity can sometimes be a liar. I realized that what once had been in me an enormous responsibility to "BE A SCULPTOR" had changed in that five years to an inward responsibility to simply do my own work. I can look, back and see that my early work reveals an awareness of becoming, and now, it seems fair to note, my present work is an awareness of being.Item Drawings(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1989) Rausch, Selisa ClaireThe chair first appeared as subject matter in my earlier works, where it came to represent the absence of another individual. Looking back, it marked a point in my life when I needed to reevaluate my sense of self and accept being alone. My thesis works in culmination of that search for personal (as well as aesthetic) identity. The chair now serves as my partner in silent conversation. Acting as a stand-in for a human figure, it personifies the visual dialogue between artist, and subject. The chair is removed from its original environment and drawn in a studio situation. With its back to the wall and raised up on boxes, I humbly address it face to face. In the process of drawing, when I transfer all my attention to a form that seems to be looking back at me, I end up searching not for the character of the chair, but for the uniqueness of myself. This physical condition is also a kind of therapeutic situation. Having the actual chair in front of me, my hand automatically responds to what I see. My conscious mind is then free to explore the problems and questions I have in my life and my work. It offers me the chance to assess my predicament and work toward change and personal growth. Ultimately, my drawings are more a personal meditation than an outward expression of ideas. The neutrality of my subject matter enables me to concentrate more on the manipulation of pictorial elements. I initially choose a chair by how well it lends itself to drawing. Sometimes the dirty yellow color or slick pink vinyl the chair is made from, the pattern on the sofa or the compositional structure of the form itself will suggest different ways of manipulating the drawing surface. Because the chairs are more a vehicle for a creative process, I am not interested in giving them a specific environment or story line. Rather, they exist in the drawing in timeless space. The chairs are not cropped, but drawn life-size, or on a human scale, which to me gives them a sense of physicality or presence of. form. Most of the drawings are monochromatic where figure and ground are united by an overall surface pattern, color, or texture. Repetition within the form as well as the repetition of marks add to the visual harmony. Repetition is also evidence of the amount of time spent in visual dialogue with the object.Item Working progress(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1990) Karson, Terence BrooksAs the artist my intention is to immediately make the viewer aware of the space he is in by placing him in direct contact with the work. To make him watch his step. He is in darkness, he is walking on plastic, the radio is making noise, a machine is glowing, clicking, buzzing. There is activity. I want to make the viewer feel, if only for a moment, like an intruder, as if he were somewhere he shouldn't be. It is not a natural setting for the viewer. He is an intruder into the art process. This is the gallery's realm, the curator's realm, the artist's realm. The public is not invited to work in progress. After the initial uneasiness, the viewer is drawn into the space through curiosity. By using familiar things that he can identify with, the newspapers, the plastic, the desk and the things in it, the ladder, the paint, the radio and the gallery space itself, I hope to bring the viewer from a state of slight discomfort to a state of recognition of the various elements and on into a state of response to the images on the screen and on the floor. Once the recognition is established, I hope to bring the viewer into a state of familiarity and active participation, playing a guessing, game with the images he perceives and the space he finds himself in. The knowledge and information brought to the installation by the viewer is critical to the viewer's perception and interpretation of it. In this setting the viewer is brought into the process of art and becomes a part of it. The viewer is no longer an intruder but an essential participant.