Art electronic theses and dissertations (MU)
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The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of Art. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Columbia. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Item Examining the histories of Bisa Butler's quilted portrait I know why the caged bird sings(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2024) Karcher, Mary Michael; Schwain, KristinBisa Butler, a contemporary fiber artist, roots her practice in the processes of craft and the histories of Black women. By creating large-scale quilted portraits that express the layered histories of Black Americans, she investigates stories that are often buried under false accounts that perpetuate a Euro-centric interpretation of history. In this thesis, I explore three histories represented in Butler's 2019 quilted portrait, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, through the research methods of biography and intersectional feminism. First, I underscore the ways that Butler's fine art contributes to the inclusion of fiber art in the high art space. Second, using the subjects of her quilt as a guide, I examine the histories of middle class, educated Black women in the early 20th century, which offers insight into the intersections of race, gender, and class embedded in this work. Finally, I investigate the work and identities of Black artists (not Black art history) by placing Butler and her quilted portraits in conversation with artists like Faith Ringgold and the artists of the AfriCOBRA movement. I use my exploration into these three to offer a thorough reading of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, identifying how the histories intersect and overlap to inform the narrative of quilt scholarship. The layered histories in Butler's work demonstrate the need to integrate fiber art, specifically quilts, into the mainstream of art history.Item Held in place(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2024) Saburi, Farena; Wehrwein, AnnaThis body of work examines socio-political confinement and immobility through visual and material experimentation in painting. These concerns are influenced by my ongoing experience of immigration and the social constructs of gender that control and limit my social and physical mobility. In my work, I take on the task of understanding space by painting and stitching inside and outside the picture plane. I reference physical and social barriers in architecture that simultaneously serve as entrances and escapes. Cut-outs, tears, frays, and threads of canvas unravel and spill outward from the fixed and bounded picture plane. There is a constant fight for motion in the stasis, impermanence in the permanence, and release from the containment. This thesis does not discuss the issues within gender and migration separately, but instead fuses them into one conversation about spatial difference to show the ways they encourage, enforce, maintain, and/or reject one another. Looking at the relationship between place, space, gender and feminism through the lens of Feminist Geography provides a framework for understanding how social systems, place, space and mobility intersect. Contexts of race and gender are discussed through the histories and processes of (Tajik) Textiles, Immigration, and the art historical contexts of the mediums of painting and fibers. These contexts are considered in the discussion of works from my MFA exhibition, "held in place". Several works are analyzed through the repeated motifs of Doors and Dresses, the looooong black braid, Transparent Curtains and Veils, and the Victorian Walls of (Tajik) Homes. The analysis of works is then expanded upon though the discussion of installation and the ways hanging speaks to the placement and mobility of works and their representations of issues of gendered mobility. It should be specified, this thesis does not offer solutions in equalizing the access of place or its experience, but rather holds space where the discussion of its inequality and the complicated experience of social movements is of the utmost importance.Item A cold fireplace(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2024) Pickering, Sophia; Mannella, C. PaziaMany notable photographs of my father and I were taken in our family home in Philadelphia, the one where my Grandma lives and everyone gathers. This house represents a stable continuity and inspires a feeling of timelessness in my family, as the years become uniform in a concrete setting. After my grandfather's and later my father's death, our family group became smaller, and yet the house remained exactly the same. Because of these changes and consistencies, my Grandma's house has become a place where I deeply feel both the living and absent presence of my Dad. In A Cold Fireplace, I dream of a version of this house, one of broken chronology, where it is impossible to distinguish one year from another and time no longer separates the living from the dead. The show and writing titled A Cold Fireplace is centered around the home's ability to exist outside of a linear timeline by holding disjointed emotions and memories in compressed space. Through pulp painted fragments of personal family photos taken within the rooms of my family home, I call attention to the ways in which these interiors both absorb and diminish tragedy. I identify the home as a setting in which chronological time is both broken and looped. I utilize handmade paper, wooden miniature furniture, and ceramic frames to create a materially-potent memory space of the home, one that is both swirling and unchanging.Item Hydra-machine(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2024) Frew, Connor; Shaffer, Travishydra-machine is an installation and expanded artist's book which employs print, poetry, light and sculpture to triangulate queer and trans subjectivities within provisional structures of digestion, multiplication and refraction. hydra-machine is concerned with histories of experimental and interdisciplinary artist's book practices, and asserts that the book's structural flexibility and capacity as a technology of collation provides substantial grounds for investigating its queer possibilities. In hydra-machine, commercial and institutional technologies of sight and print under hierarchical value systems (historically allegiant to capitalism) are made abject in their misuse and appropriation, softened into poetic instruments of contact. The scanner and overhead projector mediate encounters between dissonant forms and establish fields of contingence, fields framed as "queer wilderness"--unstable networks of relation that frame and challenge structures of ordered language and meaning as extensions of heteropatriarchal violence and control. This primary strategy of refraction becomes a metaphor for irrepressible trans and queer desire, and the gallery becomes a site for embodying new organizations of love, body, perception, language and touch. The wild subject is finally able to trace the silhouette of desires which have always been present. In this, my thesis is a machine for myself, located within an uncomfortable, buried and obstinate trans desire. hydra-machine is a book built from a cracked-egg daydream; a book and poem and body which might become refractory and vast and unmappable.Item Botanical imaginaries(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2024) Drake, Erin McKenna; Pintz, JosephThis thesis focuses on the potential of otherworldly objects, as well as the literature, photographs and objects that assist in the speculative nature of observing. To understand a specimen and its function within an ecosystem, it needs to be studied in a deep, concentrated manner. Through referencing collecting and natural history, I construct another world with seeds and fruit similar to our world yet completely foreign to us. I use readily identifiable textures and forms (e.g. coral, fruit and seeds) to influence my ceramic specimens. Some seeds are closely related and identifiable while others are more alien. Moments of recognizable natural elements connect the viewer to the objects and encourage further study. My speculative species allow me to create an alternate without the constraints of this world. My ceramic seed pods and fruit of the invented world function as artifacts. I construct otherworldly specimens in hopes of forming a deeper understanding of their purpose and function in their ecosystem. My seeds and fruit are displayed as a three-dimensional field journal. I expand upon these ideas of collection through the field journal and consider the possibilities of the natural world beyond our own.