Master of Fine Arts Terminal Project Reports

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/13161

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 68

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$500 OBO
(2017) Joe, Moore
Open Access
Acts of Location: Rot or Renewal
(2019) Vaughn, Jen
Open Access
BEING MADE AND MAKING IN THE RUACH OF GOD
(University of Oregon, 2005-06-11) Roemen, Marshall
Open Access
The Center for Investigation of Land Mass Agency (CILMA):ON CARE + ENTANGLEMENT: BECOMING THE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATION OF LAND MASS AGENCY
(University of Oregon, 2021) EVANS, EDEN VITA
The Center for Investigation of Land Mass Agency (CILMA), is a field study project that activates the natural landscape to investigate care, thing-power and land use. Through site-specific experimentation and ritual action, CILMA acts as a catalyst for engaging grief, healing, interconnection and object agency to deepen our environmental awareness. CILMA employs a variety of disciplines including sculpture, installation, performance, video and fiber practices in conjunction with interdisciplinary research to explore care and ritual as methodologies for the construction of speculative futures within the context of a global climate crisis.
Open Access
CHAFF
(University of Oregon, 2015) Oslovar, Andrew
This document is the continuation of a process of making. It is not a description of that process, but exists actively within it. My current and continuing practice involves an investigation and exploration of multiplicity and iterations of thingamabobs1. This process involves at its core, the intuitive and athletic construction of things from plastic material. Plastic operates both as a material as well as a method in which I make. It is a material whose life span matches its infinite mobility as a raw material. From found plastics, these things are created through a rapid unedited process forming a massive accumulation of colorful wall mounted trophies. Creating humorous idioms and contradictions between materials with varying degrees of cultural context; raw colored plastic is combined with manufactured toys, food storage containers, office supplies and sports memorabilia. Through this collaging of both constructed and found objects, I am able to create a language of visual puns, idioms that do not translate to any language. These things then proceed through a process of continued exaltation and normalization by the creation of multiple iterations of the same things. The things themselves, images, image-objects, catalogues, signed purchase agreements, written documents, and three dimensional scanning become evidence of process.
Open Access
Charistmatic Things
(University of Oregon, 2022) Langley, Erin
n his 1984 essay collection The Responsibility of Forms Roland Barthes refutes the notion of a blank surface writing “No surface, wherever we consider it, is a virgin surface: everything is always, already, rough, discontinuous, unequal, set in motion by some accident: there is the texture of the paper, then the stains, the hatchings, the tracery of strokes” (162). Here Barthes considers the nascent material (the substrate) of a work of art not as a neutral surface, but as a presence that is already lively and activated. The idiosyncratic precondition of material that Barthes describes is where much of my work begins: from a cast-off or remnant, severed from its value system, which forms the logic for a response. In my practice these leftover materials—removed from their original context, and laden with evidence of their past— are imbued with “thing-ness”. These residual surfaces, enlivened by their status of post-use, are re-metabolized in the studio in order to navigate within frameworks of natural and synthetic, consumption and waste, subject and object.
Open Access
Constructure: Greenhouse, green screen, house, shelter, projection screen, wall-screen, home, stage, movie set, health spa…
(University of Oregon, 2017) Weng, Esther Y.
Open Access
Daughters of the Western Trace
(University of Oregon, 2015) Vala, Jessie Rose
My work involves ongoing research into historical and mythological narratives and ecological events that shape and change the world in unforeseeable ways. This unfolding exploration bleeds into my making, often in irrational ways. Through the use of a multitude of symbols and abstract narratives I investigate the possibility of a continuous shifting relationship to ourselves and our surroundings. I consider this perspective through the exploration of such tropes as technological devices, ritual, trance music, enigmatic sculptures, costumes, and metamorphic landscapes. These elements are seen in my multi-channel video's, soundscapes, and sculptural components of my ongoing installation work.
Open Access
Default Blue and Cleansing Light
(University of Oregon, 2018) Wood, Natalie
While employed as a custodian, I developed a detailed knowledge of the building I cleaned – where to find hidden outlets, dusty crevices, and secret doors to air duct chambers. As an artist who works site-specifically, I gain an understanding of a space in a similar manner as a custodian by projection-mapping and arranging objects in accordance with the edges and cracks of the space. Through this process, I am looking for and caring about the overlooked bits and unnoticed features. I cherish the banal and seek to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. In this thesis paper, I explore the relationship between my roles as a custodian and artist, examine my process of producing work, and discuss my treatment of materials. I am building on a history of color theory, site-specific installation, and the use of found objects and video.
Open Access
Edge Condition
(2017-02-08) Nachtigall, Stephen
Lush green vegetation, cascading waterfalls and waving golden wheat 5ields; UV printed on vinyl adhesive, stuck to an electrical utility box, vending machine or underground subway advertisement. These cultural moments of decoration and distraction through images of plants and nature mimic a place you feel you might have seen or been to before, but they also advocate a removed conception of nature and our place within it. The context of my work 5inds root in the potential of such images to frame a condition of experience that can address how we approach ecological predicaments in the present and future. My terminal project, Edge Condition, utilizes mesh textile screens woven with strands of grass, 5lat-screens displaying 3D generated plant forms that seem to sway and move of their own accord, and a structure of steel framing studs that composes all of these elements into a physically immersive installation. Edge Condition manifests a physical space which presents the possibility to re5lect on how we think about "nature” and technology together, and perhaps how a future horizon might envision such a convergence.
Open Access
The Embodied Confluence
(University of Oregon, 2015) Magratten, Anne
The following report maps my work in relationship to the subject and experience of landscape and its connection to painting. It begins with my ruminations on landscape historically and the undiscussed yet problematic elements of its uses. Next I address landscape as a continuous physical and perceptual experience and alternative ways this can relate to painting. Finally, I address my own studio practice and painting process. I ask the readers' patience with regard to the difficultly of correlating inspirational/formative experiences with artistic outcomes as they are often indirect and slippery.
Open Access
end of magnolia season
(2022) Petkau, Hannah
Drawing is a balancing act of reality and fiction. Line and form are markers, representative of space and experience, a record of things tangible and ephemeral. There is the capacity for a linear trajectory but it can be elusive: coalescing and cycling through states at once concrete but also synthetic. Shifts in actuality or factuality occur from the inevitable slips and lapses of translation as a line and form is drawn and repeatedly redrawn, altered a little bit in each iteration. An indeterminate looping of degradative and generative processes, a never ending cycle.
Open Access
Esoteric Concussions
(2016) Widomski, Rachel
Observation into daily life is foremost in Rachel Widomski’s practice. She seeks out and embraces the interruptions of time, by capturing and exhibiting often overlooked moments. Her work provides a suspension of experience, shared when a viewers perspective meets her own. Working fluidly through various mediums as way to rupture the spatial and temporal conventions of daily life, she utilizes material from the quotidian as an act of resistance––fracturing its intended purpose, and re-presenting it in an abstracted state. The allure of the image is important to her work, and is backed by a poetic framework with potential for various interpretations.
Open Access
ETERNAL FLUX
(2022) Buzzee, Dana
Towards offering narrative and details on the research and thought which has evolved into my terminal creative project, Eternal Flux, this report takes the form of a collection of smaller verses through the methodology of gathering: A grimoire for after the end of the world.
Open Access
Everything's Trash. Everything's Treasure.
(University of Oregon, 2024) Campbell, Ashley
My artistic practice is rooted in process-based research, manifesting as a type of pastiche—an interdisciplinary collage of video, sculpture, and sound performance. I'm interested in how seemingly disparate things come together and form meaning. There are overarching themes, but I am not attempting to provide a straightforward answer within the work. Instead, I strive for it to be skewed, off, strange, otherworldly. I rely on spontaneity and experimentation, beginning my work in a predominantly formal manner—responding and reacting rather than planning and organizing. By remaining open to circumstance, instinct, and impulse, I find that ideas coalesce and form around objects and materials. I’m always observing. I look for my own “glove, pollen, rat, cap, stick” moments out in the world and in the studio. I collect these things through photographing, 3-D scanning, recording video, etc. Gathering and arranging becomes an almost streamof- consciousness-like endeavor, bringing a piece into being. This approach allows me to engage critically and conceptually along the way. Processes and ideas form an interwoven structure, each relying on the other to expand the possibilities and potential meaning of the work. Everything is trash, and everything is treasure. There are no horizon lines, and hierarchies disappear, oozing, bleeding, blending, shimmering, sparkling. This is the ethos of my terminal creative project and encompasses my work as a whole. The forms in this project take shape via video and sculpture. My work is an ever-evolving continuum. Each piece opens the door for the next, and they are an interconnected train of thought.
Open Access
Excitations
(University of Oregon, 2018) Milner, Stephen
My thesis work revolves around the tension between frustration and desire, through trying to connect the seemingly disparate activities of surfing and gay men cruising for sex. I am interested in the latent eroticism of the hyper-masculine surf culture. One of the most compelling aspects of surfing is the formation of inclusive, spiritually-aware, temporary communities. Surfing and anonymous gay sex are similar in that they are performed in the conditions of the pursuit of chance and vertigo with psychological undertones of fear, desire and bodily thrills. This space of confusion is where I like to place my art practice. Sculpture, video, installation and photography are the vehicles I use to merge subjective speculation with my investigations into the history of gay identity and to force a dialogue between surfing communities and gay culture.
Open Access
Exuberance to Disturbance: Stories
(2019) Khan, Sumer
Exuberance to Disturbance is a selection of personal anecdotes, lists, and short stories, a verbal articulation to one way of working visually. The purpose of this research is to establish different ways of generating ideas around and for making. The writing is an exploration in combating the notion of running everything in life down narrow channels of attention, depicting loosely guided pulses of emotions and reactions. Research draws upon personal experience and inner monologue, essentially laying the foundation for any form of eager making and focuses on different levels of reality and internal insecurities.
Open Access
flesh pixels, post perfect
(University of Oregon, 2021) Anderson, Claire
Open Access
Functionally Fine
(2019) Thompson, Kayla
Open Access
the future is flaccid
(2022-06) Stoll, Tyler
This text focuses on the relationship between my thesis exhibition and a manifesto I have written, both of which are titled "the future is flaccid." The manifesto proposes “flaccidity” as a radical embodiment and tool to queer and undermine what I call “phallic masculinity,” an ideology and identity that mandates the pursuit of being continually erect, potent, and strong. I employ flaccidity as a critical and political tactic through an exploration of embodiment and gesture. I am interested in gestures as carriers of queer ephemera and as performative expressions that can perpetuate or undermine gender normativity. By analyzing the film Grease, I make evident how hyperbolic gender performances contain the material for their own undoing. Lastly, I explore the political nature of my work and its relation to other artists’ practices, protest media, feminist manifestos, and queer theoretical texts.