To visually represent the multifaceted hybrid identity; a multidimensional artistic approach was necessary. I considered all the physical, psychological and cultural truths of my family. I explored our relationships, our behaviors and our responses as we simultaneously identify with the Latino and Anglo North American cultures and exist within its ever-changing parameters. Two streams of thought emerged in my artwork. One explores the characteristics and bi-cultural composition of my immediate family. The other looks at recalling past and distant members of my extended family as our points of origin while identifying the visible and invisible forces that shape our characters. Our natural response to mix the Anglo and Latino is reflected in my artistic process by developing a visual image through various mediums.

Reservation for Two is an investigation of the ceramic dinner set and search to unlock its simplistic mystery. Most dinnerware settings available on the market satisfy and facilitate the action of eating, but they do not provide an experience to remember or a chance to fully taste the meal in all of its complexity. To challenge the participant and to produce a memorable experience, I have begun altering specific fundamental decisions within the traditional place setting attempting to create stimulation beyond physical gratification. Each of my experiments question specific design criteria that format the majority of dinner sets on the market. My goal is to take the experience of eating to a higher level so that this and other moments of our lives have substance.

Drift is a movement by, or as if by, a current of air or water . It can mean the depositing of debris by such a current. It can also connote a veering off from a projected path. What interests me about the word is that it suggests a slight loss of control, but not a devastating one. Most importantly, for this body of work, it implies a passive movement, a transition in which one is not able to control every part. We can perhaps choose the river we get into but not the direction of its flow. Using properties of handmade paper as an intrinsic part of the work, I have explored ideas of transition in a number of ways. First, materialothe process of changing things from solid to liquid to solid again in papermaking by combining and removing water; second, by suggesting the blurred shift from land to water in swamplands; third, through the idea of journey, which is suggested by the imagery of the boats; and, finally, through use of imagery that lies between abstraction and representation. By walking that particular visual line the work creates poetic imagery, a visual reverie or daydream. It seeks to walk a line between conscious and unconscious thought allowing for the work to be open-ended and suggestive.

Iraqi art is a field of study that has been marginalized and misrepresented by scholars and western art institutions. Since the American-led occupation of Iraq in 2003, however, scholars and curators have shown an increased amount of interest in exhibiting the works of artists from Iraq. Resulting from both the limited amount of scholarly research on their art and from a western tendency to categorize a people in terms of nationality, Iraqi artists are now being carelessly grouped into easy and inaccurate classifications. To illustrate the fallacies of this new categorical trend, this paper analyzes the art and lives of three Iraqi artists, Hana Mal Allah, Adel Abidin and Wafaa Bilal.

Noble, Elizabeth Lorena, B.A., University of Central Arkansas, 2005 Master of Fine Arts, Fall Commencement, 2008 Major: Studio Art Add, Subtract, and Multiply: Paintings Thesis directed by Professor Edward Smith Pages in thesis, 44. Words in abstract, 209. ABSTRACT This thesis chronicles the daily rituals involved in personal grooming, adornment, and cosmetic use. As a woman and a painter, I appropriate the female figure in my work and use the body to provoke thought and conversation about the concept of the body as a workable surface. I see the body surface similarly to how I see the painting surface. In my work, the figure becomes her own artist, owning her own body, and manipulating it however she pleases in a series of up-close, private moments within intimate spaces. The body, it seems, has always been viewed as a surface. There is a wealth of history surrounding the plastic manipulation of the physical body which informs my work as I trace grooming, adornment, and cosmetic usage across time and various Western cultures in this thesis. The image that contemporary mass media projects of the ideal female body and appearance sparks my interest to seek historical information that can explain the evolution of cultural aesthetics and ideologies that aids in understanding why we do what we do to our bodies. I then appropriate the pressures felt by women to alter their appearances by owning the idea of the body as a surface onto which one may add, subtract, or multiply.

The Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans: Vestiges of a Neighborhood is a photo-documentary of the remnants of one of Americas most unique and culturally distinct neighborhoods. Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated this neighborhood, it lies in ruin, slowly returning to nature. All that remains of the community that once occupied the Lower Ninth are the dilapidated buildings, the crumbling homes, and the small possessions left behind. For the past three years I have explored the Lower Ninth Ward, discovering the remains of a community rich in tradition, family, and religion. Through the use of black and white photographs and the panoramic format, the tragic landscape and the broken architecture come together to give a greater perspective of the fragile state of the neighborhood. In this past year I have created a portrait of this neighborhood, to serve as a memorial to the loss of the Lower Ninth Ward community and as a means of preserving what is left.

The facade of Wells Cathedral belongs among the most extraordinary church facades in all of England. An expanse of architectural and figural sculpture, the facade is one hundred fifty feet wide and originally included one hundred seventy-seven niches with full-length statues and ninety quatrefoils framing either a bust of an angel or a scene from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Above a height of seventy-five feet, a gable with figural sculpture and two towers top the façade. Such an elaborate facade is unique and begs the questions: by what means did Wells come to look as it did? A key fact to understanding the facade is the notion that during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries Wells was competing with Bath and Glastonbury for the bishopric of Somerset county, which it had formerly possessed. While the facade was an integral part of that campaign, it also provided other functions. It offered a setting for funeral processions and for the important liturgical pageantry that took place on Palm Sunday. Ultimately, these processions facilitated interaction between worshipers and the facade thereby enhancing the spiritual experience of the sacred place. Last, but not least, the plethora of sculpted figures transform the facade into a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem foretold in the Apocalypse. In this thesis, I will describe, analyze, and interpret the sculptural program of the unique facade of Wells Cathedral in terms of its three functionselevating local church history to help regain the bishopric, providing a backdrop for liturgical processions, and representing the Heavenly Jerusalem. Such an interpretation will demonstrate the importance of the Wells facade not only to the church community and to England but also to the history of medieval art and architecture.

All women are the children of Eve and the children of the earth. With the work of Eves Prisoners, my aim was to create imagery about the transient stages of womankind and the timeless relationship the feminine ideal has with nature. We are born innocent and able to see the truth of things, but eventually we all imprison ourselves in our bodies, in language, and in our own nature. My pictures want to reconcile the innocence and the pain and to say that by accepting aging and death as part of life, we free ourselves from our own prisons.

The Nasrids were the last Islamic power on the Iberian Peninsula. They created a place of luxury and wealth in their hilltop fortress, the Alhambra, which is one of the best-preserved examples of medieval Islamic palace architecture. It was transformed in the thirteenth century into a palace-city and during most of its early history housed the most important figure in an Islamic society, the sultan. The Alhambra displays bare, natural elements on the exterior, while the interior mimics and references these natural elements in a grander fashion with gardens, fountains, beautiful vistas, sculpted porticos and lavish rooms. These interior spaces were settings for the sultan to display his wealth and power. In this thesis, I explore a selection of sites in the Alhambra by examining how decoration, courtyard gardens, water, and patronage reflect medieval Islamic notions of pleasure. Following the introduction, each chapter is focused on a specific place within the Alhambra: the Palace of the Lions, the Comares Palace, and the Royal Bath. All have survived relatively intact and date primarily to the fourteenth century. In order to best discuss pleasure, each chapter includes a discussion of building layout, decoration, gardens and the role of water, and patronage. Each section is discussed in relation to pleasure and will investigate the means by which the spaces provide pleasure.

The Louisiana State University Museum of Art owns a collection of British paintings that highlight the popular styles of portrait painting from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. This British collection includes examples of Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and neoclassical portraiture along with typical British Romantic landscape paintings, a tradition following earlier Dutch landscape examples. The collection includes works by such internationally known artists as William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Michael Wright, John Hoppner, Sir William Beechey, Patrick Nasmyth, Sir Nathaniel Dance, Sir Henry Raeburn, William Westall, and Peter Monamy. Many of these artists are represented in such famous art collections as the Royal Collection in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The collection at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art also concentrates on a nautical, or marine, subgenre. This type of art is exemplified by paintings of sailing vessels on the sea, as well as several portraits of famous naval figures, such as Horatio Nelson. The chairman of the Louisiana State University Art Department felt that the collecting of portraits of marine subjects was appropriate due to the seafaring traditions of both Louisiana and Britain. When the Louisiana State University Museum of Art first opened its doors, under the name Anglo-American Museum, its mission was to collect those works of art which would reflect the cultural ties between Britain and the United States. This political agenda was thought to be best illustrated by the works of John Smibert and Benjamin West, and in part by Trevor Fowler. Also included in this thesis are works in the collection by John Partridge, Frederick Marryat, and attributed to Thomas Hudson, as well as several portraits by unidentified artists.