The act of applying makeup is a ritual shared by many, often beginning at an early age. Though makeup is presented as a final product in the public sphere, the process of applying makeup can be just as, if not more important. This thesis acts as the theoretical basis for my digital art project, Facing the World. My work gives insight into the lesser understood motivations behind wearing makeup while shedding the stigma that wearing it is merely a superficial act or sign of vanity. The project Facing the World presents the makeup routines and personal narratives of seven women to uncover the merits of cosmetics as a means of identity creation, self-care, and mindful reflection. The work is exhibited as a single channel looped video of approximately twenty minutes with the corresponding subject’s audio portion played over headphones.

The project takes marketing strategies learned in business and applies them to the work of visual artists. The project consists of two parts. The first part includes marketing materials and brand identity for a marketing/career counseling business (coach4artists). Materials for the counseling business consist of a corporate identity package, a brochure, a website, a business plan, and a marketing plan for the company. The second part includes marketing materials for a student artist (the "client") from California State University, San Bernardino. Materials for the client consist of a corporate identity package, a brochure, a postcard, a website, a business plan and a marketing plan.

The second part of a two-part MFA Thesis presentation, this paper distills the content from the preceding exhibition A Step of Two or The Pas de Deux: an installation of paintings, drawings and projected video. It touches on various themes that surround [well researched] ideas about perception, dissociation, the gaze, and relationships. Most of all, this paper and the body of work it describes is about the visual representation of a sensual understanding of the world.

Your New Best Friends: An Exploration of Furby, Siri and Other Sociable Electronics is focused around interactive electronic systems and the effect these systems can have on our human psyches. My work focuses on two particular periods of development: the late 80’s to early 90’s, and the 2010’s to present. One period represents my childhood and the other my early adulthood. By comparing the two I can examine trends in the ways we engage with robotics and can better understand the ubiquity of electronically mediated interactions today. I utilize these new understandings to manipulate the capabilities of devices from both periods to create pieces that communicate care in a new way, sparking a moment of joy for the viewer while also increasing the awareness of the failings of devices when compared with true human interaction.

Existence Stories is an interactive activist art project that gathers personal narratives from people about the ways in which their lives have been impacted by the current political climate in the United States, particularly surrounding the 2016 Presidential election and its aftermath. The project harnesses first-person narrative and audience participation as tools for humanizing the “Other” and building connections between people through the act of sharing stories. As the project has progressed over time, it has evolved in multiple directions and come to incorporate a variety of media, primarily comics, animation, printmaking, and zines. The roles that reproduction, distribution, and communication play in all of these media are also explored within this body of work.

Half in Dream: The Tangle in the Grid discusses the form and content of a physical art installation by the same name. The site-specific installation is a large three-dimensional collage of natural ephemera collected from the area around Amherst, Massachusetts, which interacts with natural lighting conditions to illuminate a gallery-facing image of ever-moving light and shadow. The written work elaborates some of the many details within the structure of the artwork, and reveals the philosophies, embodied practices, and methodologies that informed the visual work's creation. Woven throughout are reflections on phenomenology, walking practice, General Systems Theory, collective making, narrative arts, Zen Buddhist practice, indigenous perspectives, and ecological theory.

This paper examines the work of German artist Horst Hoheisel in Latin-America. I open the conversation by including Hoheisel’s provocative participation in the 2005 memory debates in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here, I introduce the nature of Hoheisel’s reasoning and the dialectical self-reflectiveness that is at work in his artifacts. In each project, I look for the way in which Hoheisel lays down the “memorialistic substance” of a specific site together with the self-critical rationality that characterizes his creation. The second part of this essay attempts to construct the theoretical parameters for the expansion of the definition of the countermonument. This expanded definition attempts to unlock the countermonument and the memorial from the therapeutic mechanics of repetition -at the level of the subject- and release its possibilities vis-à-vis the potentiality of the event of language. Using the insights of Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, I discuss the work of two contemporary artists (Jochen Gerz and Krzysztof Wodiczko) who experiment with the use of space and language as a way to invent a new type of countermonument, one that is based on the notion of an active memory rather than a cathartic one.

My work is a continuously evolving self portrait formulated by a combination of past experiences and influences. The Immaculate Condemnation body of work is a cathartic reaction that confronts Catholic Sin and rebels against gender conformity. As both a confirmed Catholic and transgender woman, I speak from an authentic voice that seeks open conversation regarding these topics. I also hope to demystify the transsexual body for the non-transgendered viewer. Additionally, I use allegoric imagery to communicate my interpretation of beauty, power, horror, and sex. I combine performance, photography, sculpture, video, audio, and graphic design to execute my installations. I intentionally develop environments that both attract and repulse the viewer in order to mimic the relationship I have with Catholicism and Gender Issues.

We often think of architecture as distinct buildings, yet as we move through the city we continuously pass through a built environment that is a collage of buildings. These spaces between buildings are underestimated as influences on our experience of everyday life in the city. Considering architecture as linked existential experiences through spaces rather than confined to individual buildings is more in line with our experience of the city as a series of interconnected spaces and places. Rather than describing a single, static architecture through words, how can we express this linked experience of spaces dynamically through narratives? Can writing reveal subtle experiences of interconnected atmospheres within the city? If so, how could this understanding inform the way architects consider the relationship between built-forms and the greater urban context? This thesis investigates and interprets the atmospheres of pathways and in-between spaces to understand their influence on the experience of moving through the city. Although in-between spaces are where much of the human experience of the city occurs, they are rarely discussed and, in many ways, this keeps them out of the realm of design consideration. Atmospheres (discussed by Peter Zumthor, Juhani Pallasmaa and Alberto Pérez-Gómez) arise from our multi-sensory perception of space. The thesis investigates the literature surrounding the phenomenological study and design of atmospheres as well as the connection between atmospheres and narratives—how they develop and are essential in creating meaningful spaces for embodied-experience. Assuming the identity of the flâneur—city-wanderer, documentarian, and observer—as an entry point into investigating the city through movement, the project aims at documenting and rendering atmospheres in the city through photography and writing. Through the intersection of architecture, atmosphere and narrative, the thesis presents a multi-media study of atmospheres of in-between spaces in Montreal focusing on writing as a tool for generating new narratives that inform design. This research project develops a new methodology that reorients design-thinking towards a sequence of experiences through atmospheres in the city. Ultimately, this research sets the conditions, methodology and context for the architectural intervention of attuned public spaces for events along an extension of Parc linéaire du Réseau-Vert (the Greenline).

The artist, Delaney Shae Rogers, discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Endo / Exo, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN. The exhibition dates are from March 25th through April 5th, 2024, with a public reception held April 5th, 2024. The author provides insight into the concept behind the work in the exhibition and shares how the making process and specific materials impact the work. This body of work explores coping with grief, anxiety, and the state of the world through the process of making and communicating otherwise difficult topics through visually digestible symbolic language.