Over the course of the last year I have spent nearly every weekend investigating this aquatic landscape by canoe, deciphering the differences between native and invasive flora and fauna. I am interested in ways that art can address the natural world. My thesis exhibition, Eight Thousand Daughters Woven into Bayou Braids, depicts and interprets the Louisiana landscape, exploring the destructive beauty and materiality of invasive aquatic plants.

My thesis embodies the uncertainties and reservations that surround ones mortality. Dealing with the loss of my father who suddenly passed away two and a half years ago has sparked an emotionally driven artistic process. The abruptness of my Dad being alive one second and with little or no warning deceased the next has impacted my work tremendously. My goal has been to evoke and share the very human emotions that occur during the erratic stages of grief. This research acknowledges the black and white absolutes of living and dying, yet those ideas are juxtaposed with the many gray areas often more difficult to comprehend. Those gray interests include: the conflicting forces of a falling body and a rising spirit, reflections of time, change, impermanence, significance, and finally questions of after-life. Although, many of the questions I have explored are esoteric in nature, there is not an enlightened inner circle, or a resource for exact answers to my interests. I am trying to link embodiment, or physical existence, with ideas that are only present in the mind; as well as searching for a visual and metaphorical bridge between here and hereafter. Representing obscurity with any kind of clarity is difficult. Is it possible to depict those places and ideas?

A child playing with matches is forgivable. Kids are curious. They want to explore adult activities through play. Does it stay innocent when that child experiments with the effects of firecrackers in frogs and gasoline on animals? What happens when they light the match? The grey area between childhood innocence and realization of wrong intrigues me and I find it fascinating how adult perspectives of such malicious deeds often vary. Up Like Weeds questions these responses using a collection of narrative prints and freestanding woodcut figures. They visually tell five tales of children in a rural environment acting out in deviant and mischievous ways not normally associated with youthful innocence. The characters developed from a particular group of children who are based on delinquents I knew, which is why I chose the rural landscape for the settings of my narratives. I speak through this landscape more naturally. The children in this exhibition should not be seen as victimized innocents for whom to place blame, but as vehicles to question this strange time and transition in everyones childhood and reflect on an adult tendency to alter their perspectives of these times later in life. They speak directly to and confront the viewers childhood memories that have since been rationalized and sugarcoated into child norms that project innocence onto play where it never really existed. The characters in Up Like Weeds should not be seen as future socio-paths or miscreants, but as exaggerated personifications of our once-selves. The confrontational images call the viewer to question an adult tendency to discard certain memories in an attempt to rationalize our actions as children into innocent play. It is virtue by omission. The stories reveal the necessary, but complicated way most of us search for adulthood. This was my experience and what my prints are based on: the messy, secretive and shameful truths that make up our childhoods.

Turn-ons and Edible Friends explores alternative sexual behavior. Societal standards have an overwhelming interest in imposing judgment upon sexual identity. The imagery is influenced by taboo and peculiar sexual fetishes. Animal personifications of the fetish are used as satire to detach the viewer from the action, and also as a metaphor for the reins with which the general public takes control over our private relationships. Thus the work becomes confrontational with the viewer and forces them to question their perceptions and comforts about sexual identity.

By examining the relationship between photography and painting at the turn of the nineteenth century, it becomes clear that the two mediums have more in common than art historians acknowledge. The two share obvious formal qualities such as form, perspective, depth, and spatial relationships. These formal qualities make it easier to see the potential overlap between the two mediums, as Picasso did during the summer of 1909. Although Picasso is not well known for his photography, the large collection of photographic imagery found in his estate now makes it possible to firmly establish the place of photography within his oeuvre. Indeed, when examining the photographs that Picasso took in the small Spanish village of Horta de Ebro, it is possible to give photography its proper due in the development of the movement now known as Cubism.

This thesis constitutes the first comprehensive analysis written in English on the life and work of German-born, post-World War II artist, Bele Bachem. By translating and critically analyzing her diverse oeuvre, which spanned both fields of "applied" and "fine" arts, this thesis examines the three stages of the artists career: Bachems "Poetic Miniatures" and theater set design under the Third Reich (1938-1945), her postwar commercial work after West Germanys Wirtschaftswunder for Rosenthal Porcelain (1949-1966), and her mature style of narrative fantasy paintings and female portraits completed in the Schwabing bohemian district of Munich (1957-1986). With this thesis, I aim to provide exposure as well as accessibility to a wider audience for this "forgotten" artist who emerged as one of the most famous women of postwar West Germany in the 1950s, but whose diverse and illustrious artistic legacy is fading with the disappearing postwar generation.

This thesis has as twofold purpose. First, it will show that Lowbrow Art fits into the framework of art history and is worthy of art historys attention. Second, it will argue for a revalidation of traditional art historical methods by proving that the methods are applicable to a marginalized contemporary art movement. Lowbrow Art is one of the most distinctive and vibrant art movements in the world, but there has yet to be a thorough examination of this style. Despite the undeniable worldwide success of the Lowbrow Art movement, it remains relatively obscure in academic discourse. Perhaps one reason why art historians have yet to investigate the Lowbrow Art style is that, for decades, the field of art history has steadily been shifting attention away from matters of style. There is a lack of discourse about Lowbrow Art and other contemporary art movements. Therefore, traditional methods of art history were considered in order to develop a formal definition of Lowbrow Art. The methods concluded that Lowbrow Art is figurative art executed in traditional media that exploits the aesthetic conventions of popular visual culture in order to engage the viewer with a narrative or implied narrative. The proper definition of Lowbrow Art formed the framework for a historical analysis of the movement.

My art work explores societal issues and the effects of accepted norms on the public and on myself. The baseline issue is security. People will go to extremes to feel secure! My goal is to create images that will start a dialog that addresses these issues and disseminates information that will cause social change. Projected Idol: a madmans obsession is a sculptural installation that examines the theme of the ideal male body image in western culture and the mixed signals that are projected through mass media. These conflicting images play a direct role in the security or insecurity of people in the name of economics. This work, begun in 2001 and completed in the spring of 2002, represents the focus of these ideas.

I have special appreciations for my education, the ability to read, comprehend, and communicate. These appreciations have led my curiosity to issues of education and how we sometimes take important necessities for granted. Advances in technologies are changing social interactions, perceptions, and the ways in which we communicate. I have become intrigued at how these changes affect the ways in which we are taught today, verses how we were taught in the past and I am especially concerned of how the future will be influenced by what we are learning. When I speak of how we are taught and what we are learning, not only am I referring to educational institutions, but also of what we absorb from daily social exchanges. As we process information, it is stored into our memories. This is how we learn and will take place regardless of the location. Remembrance is an important element in comparing the past to the present and plays an important role in this body of work.

This thesis analyzes the significance of the Paris café in Modern Art. In discussing the social and historical events of mid to late nineteenth century Paris, it establishes the atmosphere in which the first modern artists broke from the formal academy system. The primary focus is two-fold. First, how the café was established in Parisian culture as a social institution and the role this played as a replacement for the Ecole des Beaux Arts and in the formation of a new art movement. Second, how the new artists incorporated the café culture into their art as a representation of modern life. In discussing the café culture of the late-nineteenth century, it goes on to examine the role of the drink absinthe as a symbol of café life. The works of Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Jean-Francois Raffaelli and Vincent Van Gogh are analyzed and compared in order to establish the symbolism of the café. Primary and Secondary resources were used, including original illustrations and quotes by the café patrons, artists and writers, to establish physical descriptions of the café interiors. This study shows that the café culture in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century was an influential factor in the birth of modern art. For the new artists who portrayed the café in their works, it was a symbol of modern life.