Master of Fine Arts Thesis

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https://hdl.handle.net/10829/24421

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3C [Combinatorics, Cybernetics, Crystallography]
(2017-05) Haleta, Michael; Lattanzi, Barbara; Scheer, Joseph; McCarthy, Lydia
In 1953 the term “3C” which stood for “Compulsory”, “Capacity”, and “Conflict” was given to one of the original minicomputer companies by the name of Computer Control Company, Inc. I have switched the 3 “C’s” to represent “cybernetics”, “combinatorics” and “crystallography” to link my current work to the processing and control systems found in early computers. Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics that deals with observing combinations of set elements and the mathematical relationships which characterize their properties. Crystallography is the study of the arrangements of repeating patterns of ions, molecules, matter and atoms within crystals. Cybernetics is the scientific study of any system which deals with but not limited to parameters of control, communication and the examination of all possibilities of connectivity. The purpose of this thesis research is to demonstrate and model how the analyzation of combinatorics, cybernetics and crystallography can lead to the generation of new emergent forms and growth processes in patterning systems, color organization and group performance. All three “C’s” have emphasized a shift in my artwork through the examination and documentation of growth, interaction, connectivity, flow, mutation and sequencing within both human (social) and digital structures. The results of these experiments will be revealed, and the conclusion will return to the idea that improvisation within structural sets generates new emergent behaviours. This idea will provide solid ground for a speculative conception of improvisation and its significance beyond the discourses of either art or science.
Abject Architect Landscape Survey 1
(2017-05) Griggs, Lea; Kelleher, Matt; Gill, John; Gill, Andrea; McConnel, Walter; Sikora, Linda; Sormin, Linda
This exhibition, Landscape Survey 1, provides various types of creative techniques to investigate, identify, analyze, record and interpret the aesthetic landscape. Interpretation is essential in providing the knowledge and understanding required for making effective decisions.
Addressing you & I Addressing we
(2018-05) Gause, Sydni; Cox, Diane; Powers, Angus
My work acts like the proud quilted banners pinned to the walls of a Southern Baptist church that read "King of Kings" and "Lord of Lords." I begin by investigating the role of material and the psychological undertones that follow, as objects like these are situated in specific sociopolitical contexts. Similar to the iconic chrome decal of a sexualized woman that has been stuck to the back of a pick-up truck, I find these religious textual devices to allude to a particular type of identity, one that is commonly seen in the South where sexist oppression of women is an active reality. My sculptural work manifests similar physical properties to the items above, yet negates the original intention, often times speaking directly to the viewer and their conditioned gender constructs. My aim here is to challenge this form of conditioning, especially between text and iconography. It is within this critical way of manipulating recognizable objects that I ask my work to be active and vocal while reaching an empathetic conclusion.
The Aesthetics of Forgetting
(2016) Torrence, Virginia Rose
There are certain symbols, types of touch, and a personal aesthetic that emerge from this process of searching. Some reoccurring symbols within my work are hair, fabric, holes, eyes, impressions, fruit, jewelry, and flesh. All of these objects reference the body, but they are devoid of the presence which once employed them, so now point to an absence. I portray the presence of absence. The objects I use act as a metaphor for an intense desire for something lost. The way in which the imagery is rendered, from intangible abstraction, to carefully sculpted elements, to a piece that is a cast of an object itself, mirrors the way in which a memory recedes into darkness and ambiguity or how it may come into a tight and stunning focus. The process of remembering and forgetting is always in flux. Even when a presence does come close, it will skirt around the perimeter of clarity within the mind’s eye. I objectify the obscurity of fleeting memory images, creating a monument to unattainable desire for the past.
Alchemy Juice
(2017-05) Zablocki, Alex M.; McConnel, Walter; Kelleher, Matt; Sikora, Linda; Sormin, Linda; Gill, Andrea; Gill, John
My work is a marathon exercise in the deconstruction and adaptation of vessel aesthetics, form, function, conventions and histories. I remain alchemically adventurous by employing a wide range of materials, processes, chance and humor. Through risk, exploration, and random experimental compositions, I push against categories. Vessels are no longer made to use and sculptures operate within a size similar to pottery. In my work, the intimacy of scale alongside carefully considered surfaces and structures invites the viewer in on a visceral and optical adventure in which I provoke the senses by incorporating a cornucopia of rich and exotic theatrics.
Alt Language perception, language, gestures in our interactions
(2020-05) Hoffman, Erin; Hunter, Brett; Horochowski, Alexandra
This paper communicates the entanglement between ourselves and our words through the lens of glass and process. Beginning with our ego-centric ways of thinking, I analyze how this type of perception is so heavily rooted in our language. Methods of communicating with one another, including spoken words, gestures, chats, and computer systems make up this gray area between what we are attempting to communicate and what is heard. My work demonstrates how, oftentimes, the pauses in our interactions can be more impactful. I question the effects of overlaps and interruptions in conversations: are they more than just another tap on the shoulder? Our necessity to communicate is constant, however, our ways of communicating and our interpretations are constantly changing. Under the current climate, how do we continue to reach out to one another, and what does our social distancing look like today?
Approaching Bodies: Mutual Emissions and the Insistence of Reflex
(2021) Uliasz, Isabella; Souther, Eric; Deutsch, Andrew; Contino, William
First, I have to explain what I mean by bodies. My understanding and usage of this term spans almost all things. According to existing definitions of the word, it can refer to the physical structure of a living organism, a central aspect of something, a collection, and a distinct material. Bodies are ideas, relationships, objects, words, spaces, and systems. Anything can be bodied. Body is a verb. It does. Bodies operate, connect, create, interact, and transform. Bodies are context, forming the structures of attachment that allow us to understand and make associations. Bodies appear many times in the coming pages. I would like you, my reader, to understand that I purposefully do not distinguish between intended meanings of the word body in many cases because to do so would reduce the body’s multiplicity. Know that the shifting meaning of this word is a deliberate and critical refusal of the reification of bodies. In this text, I will navigate my way toward the body in all its diversity of meaning, and in turn, provide space to observe how bodies approach their own interpretations.
Arrested Decay
(2018-05) Mahoney, Cory; Gill, John; Green, Jason; Kelleher, Matt; McConnel, Walter; Sikora, Linda; Sormin, Linda
My work seldom begins with a clear idea in mind. To know too much about what I am going to do is to lose all purpose in doing it. The need to induce surprising results is crucial. Permutations of construction, glaze application and firing are all essential aspects of my processes. Trust in the uncertainty of outcomes generates the most honest acts of creative expression I possess: the way in which I respond to panic, frustration and disappointment. Expectations are hedged and I submit to the inevitability of chance. These experiences are compiled into an empirical catalogue and utilized for future opportunities.
Artif(fice)fact
(2017-05) Rennie, Ryan; Kelleher, Matt; Gill, John; Gill, Andrea; McConnel, Walter; Sikora, Linda; Sormin, Linda
Much of my practice functions as a means to reflect selectively on my surroundings. This usually begins in the form of collecting, often in relationship to being an active practitioner of consumerism. I am undeniably attracted to kitsch relating to a fake rusticity or ancient motif that surfaces in the form of low brow imagery in pop culture, consumer market, or regional style. I aim to appropriate the appropriated as a means of reflecting on the first removal and any absurdity that may arise in its initial theft. My goal is to use the same tools of absurdity twice over, or to re-layer and configure the same cultural paradoxes in a manner that may point to this absurdity in all its problems and poetics. This often happens in relationship to a sign, motif, or practice that is not intrinsic to a specific area or time period but does become a type of vernacular. This balance between the extrinsic and the everyday is where my interest lies. Due to the complexity of globalization and the movements of practices and motifs cross-culturally, I choose to pull from how these issues may surface directly around me.
Atemporal Miscellany
(Alfred University, 2023) Kripper, Kevin
I was introduced to personal computers, game consoles, and the Internet at a very early age. I belong to one of the first generations in Argentina with such technology available in those first years of life. By the age of eight, there was already a desktop computer, a Sega Genesis, and a dial-up connection at home. Even younger, my parents enrolled me in Futurekids, an after school computer camp to learn about, and produce with, emerging new technologies. Back then, computer courses were not offered at school, so it was there, where I first experimented with creating digital drawings, animations, recording, editing digital audio and video, and more. This probably sparked my interest in all processes involving different technologies, and sent me into an eclectic journey that eventually led me into computer-assisted art and craftsmanship, and creative software development. In other words, for the past ten years, I have been going back and forth (and trying to merge all together) fine arts, creative programming, product design, advertising and education. That is why I ended up calling myself a “media researcher” rather than an artist, as I approach the different mediums I work with from a broad perspective that not only includes the arts, but also toolmaking and teaching. Part of my work emerges from my interest in media itself. Using self developed tools, found material from art and technology history, and speculative futures/pasts, I engage with topics that explore notions of appropriation, authorship, techno-phobias, glitch (in it’s pure form), new media art conservation, and media archeology. These pieces are generally presented as interactive installations, sculptures and mixed reality experiences. This path I took made me explore a wide range of technologies from the present and the past, and experiment combining them into hybrid systems as a way to change the future. Sometimes, these explorations take the shape of a conceptual art piece, and other times, as tools to assist myself (and others) in the creative process and art practice. The mutual symbiotic relationship I established with technology to create art, while departing from it to comment on, challenge and develop technology, albeit beautiful, made my body of work very complex since it explore a wide variety of topics and aesthetics, even making it seems to be done by different artists. So, for clarity, I tend to split my artistic practice in two: My other body of work relates to Vsynth, a self developed digital lab of modular video synthesis, image processing and video-tool design inspired by the video culture of the late 60’s and 70’s where artists, engineers and programmers worked together co-creating new technologies for the art but also for liberating the spirit and expand consciousness. I was deeply inspired by the visual fantasies Eric Siegel had in mind when he wondered...
Attritional Yeast
(2022-05) McLearn, Brady; Hopp, Johnathan; Kelleher, Matt; McConnell, Walter; Sikora, Linda; Willard, Adero
The following is a supporting document for my ceramic art MFA thesis exhibition in the Turner Gallery at Alfred University in April of 2022. The purpose of this document is to articulate the language that my work uses to communicate my ideas, interests, and experiences. I will describe the actions that are necessary to my process and how the challenges that I have when working with materials offer new insight to what the work will become. I touch on how the work is received and explain ideas embedded in the finished work. I then move into a stream of consciousness and a poem, a list of books and artists that have influenced me in the last two years, as well as a technical section entailing details important to my process. I would like to thank the Alfred University School of Art and Design graduating classes of 2021, 2022 and 2023, the entire ceramic art faculty: Jonathan Hopp, Matt Kelleher, Walter McConnell, Linda Sikora, and Adero Willard; and big thanks to Jenni Sorkin, Meghan Smythe, Wayne Higby, John Gill, Keith Simpson, Shawn Murrey and Hannah Thompsett who all helped me with sound advice and generous support along the way.
Beneath The White Sands
(2018-05) Heckard, Hillary; Lambert, Coral
I construct sculptural installations that illustrate change through the idea of impermanence by combining technology, video projection, sound, performance and light with other mediums ranging from glass, wood and metal. I utilize light and colors to create sculptural objects that transform people through physical engagement. I view glass as a state of matter that can be altered at any time. Through its prismatic, refractive qualities, and color spectrum, I incorporate light in conjunction with glass to transform space and our perspective of it. In building a foundation of collective engagement, the viewer becomes aware of the complexity of the current human condition.
Beyond Perception
(2022-05) Zhu, Crane; Scheer, Joseph; Souther, Eric; Chen, Xiaowen
My thesis consists of several major pieces about a profound experience of encountering an ash tree. The tree is in the Kanakadea Park, in front of Almond Lake, in Hornell. These visiting experiences bring me strength, thinking about life, and these also inspire my creation. I cannot remember the view of the first time I stood beside this tree and looked at the broken sunlight in front of the lake. However, I remember how my stressful heart felt a burst of relief. The relief becomes the beginning of this whole story. It was a moment of peace that brought me back there to be in a daze. After going there several times, I noticed this tree stood alone, just like me. There are no trees around it. Could it be lonely too? It seems well grown. How did it face the flow of time to grow into such a big tree? As if I heard the tree whisper, “Since your life is messed up, and you don’t know how to fix it. why don’t you seek help?”
Beyond the Boundary
(2019-05) Wang, Lan; Chen, Xiaowen; Deutsch, Andrew; Contino, William; Bode, Peer; Scheer, Joseph
Since the 1960s, the Internet has reached the whole world. The idea of cyberspace has evolved to became a significant term that describes people’s many different experiences of the Internet. Cyberspaces continue to incorporate many complexities of our daily life as we interact with the technologies. At first, people could still tell there is a line between the real world and cyberspace, but the field of cyberspace suddenly expanded and even merged with our daily life. So many people pour emotions and energy into their virtual identities in cyberspace, an invisible new world emerges. That’s how we create a world--a virtual world that consists of cyberspace and human cognition. With that idea in mind, a few questions are generated in my head--Is there still a clear boundary between the virtual world and the real world that we can see? Can our real world be virtualized? Can the virtual world get materialized?
Blue Milk and Other Short Stories
(Alfred University, 2023-05) Egnator, Gabrielle; Lambert, Coral; Wheeler, William; Quiñones, Joey
Blue Milk and Other Short Stories is an exhibition and written thesis that engages in a type of world building or judeo-futurism. Blue Milk is an invented product in an invented world; influenced by the mythology of Techelet or “biblical blue”, the moral fable of the golden calf, the 1971 adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, and the artist's own fraught relationship with healthcare. These influences and moments of fantasy help develop and question what is considered to be sinful, holy, hurting, and healing.
Body Like a Thorn
(Alfred University, 2023-05) Walton, Victoria; Hanes, Stephanie; Hopp, Johnathan; McConnell, Walter; Montgomery, Lindsay; Sikora, Linda; Willard, Adero
Body Like A Thorn encompasses how it feels to be actively in resistance. Through prioritizing narratives of Black queer|trans and disabled persons, I illustrate a push and pull between the constrictive systems from dominant expectations of being to the organic, where there is room and belonging for nonconformity and variety. This tension is felt in the various installations, wall-hanging textile collages, the nets pulling coiled ceramic vessels, and life-size figurative works. I meld my disability activism and theory into tangible forms. What is natural cannot be contained and cannot be held back. Through the work, I am able to assert that the Black nonconforming person is seen as a thorn to conventional society. Through the subversion of norms, the thorn is activated in a new way, to re-establish agency against normative assimilation, and to accept the beauty of their differences as part of the natural world.
Buried/Encased/Embedded
(2021-05) Wilcox, Kimberly; Hunter, Brett; Donnellan, Karen
Traumatic events and hereditary elements play a role in how our identity and body take shape but, are these factors also inescapable: is our parents' history a prophecy of what will also limit us? I am interested in how the economic and societal conditions of previous generations impact both the living and those yet to be born. Through my artistic practice, I confront the difficulties within my own experience in an attempt to find softness and empathy in a family that copes with mental illness. My work brings attention to damaging cycles that come from attempting to ignore or bury trauma. Domestic space and the unseen body allow me to address our most difficult interpersonal relationships. Through my performance work, the body becomes a vessel that endures the traumas, both experienced and inherited, through labor. In other cases, the body is absent from a domestic setting, but the trace implies that we hold space for those who have passed in our lives, for better or worse. My artistic practice is focused around creating experiences that evoke this type of emotional complexity that I have experienced, allowing space and time for the viewer to critically consider their own relationships. Through the use of space, materiality, and body, I transform these habitual ways of dealing with trauma into moments of reflection that can lead to empathy, inherently beginning a new cycle of healing.
Catching Our Breathe in the Eternal Dust
(2018-05) Dawson, Schuyler; Hunter, Brett
Who do we feel we are supposed to be? How do we see ourselves as we relate to the world? How do we find a reprieve from our daily anxieties? I explore these questions in my work using text and poetry situated amidst sculpture and installation. The text offers the voice of an author, a conscience, and the externalization of someone’s internal struggles as an invitation to embrace not knowing and vulnerability. The sculptures offer points of metaphor for our struggles to find meaning and understanding through the anthropomorphization of weathered and broken objects placed in moments of tension. The text and the sculptures together highlight mystery, wonder, and acceptance of the moment as a respite and an antidote for our existential longings.
Ceramics in a Liberal Arts Curriculum
(Alfred University, 1960-12) Leach, Richard, B.
The philosophy of education has under gone little change since the founding of the college at Harvard in 1636. The aims of the educators have shifted from the general ends proposed, to "…advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity…”, to educate youth in good manners and to emphasize instruction in the arts and sciences so that the student may “…be fitted for publick employment both in Church and in Civil state."* to a more elaborate means to the same end. The persuit of the Liberal Arts has been an attempt by men to discover by free use of intellectual faculties something of the nature and meaning of the universe and man' s place in it as well as the highest values to which human life can aspire. These eternal truths were to be revealed by the study of Rhetoric, which included Latin and Greek grammar and syntax, Logic; and Philosophy or Metaphysics which was, in effect, a course in psychology, sociology, history as well as philosophy. Entrance to college was based on the ability to read Latin verse and prose, and to decline perfectly nouns and verbs in Greek. The chief emphasis of the education was the acquisition of the tools and discipline of logic to the sages past. The two languages were the media for transmitting of the inherited cultural tradition to posterity. Knowledge of Latin and Greek was the key to the understanding and appreciation of a body of History, Science and Philosophy as well as of literary forms which made up the substance of Western Civilization. This Renaissance ideal, coupled with the concepts of duty and discipline of Puritanism, was the ideal of the leaders of American higher education in the seventeenth century.
A Chair That...: Philosophical riddles masquerading as furniture
(2017-05) Bai, Mimi Biyao; Donnellan, Karen
Intersectionality is the overarching framework for my worldview. This term refers to the numerous, intersecting vertices of race, class, gender, etc., that affect an individual’s experience in society. Through this lens, I seek to triangulate my position within my social, cultural, political, and economic context. In my work, I endeavor to highlight the complex, shifting nature of identity as well as the nuances and contradictions found within interpersonal relationships.

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