The bodies of work that I have created during graduate school stem from my interest in mass media, culture studies and spectatorship in the digital era. My research engages digital technology and media studies to consider the ethics and ambivalence associated with spectatorship. Using traditional art mediums, I explore social and digital media, revealing tensions through representation and materiality. This translation from digital to analogue media is pivotal in all my work. Handmade objects introduce slippage and meaning as they break from the limiting format of the screen. This thesis will explore the research and content that inspired the creation of my work over the past three years and demonstrate how the resulting artworks create content and meaning.

This written thesis unpacks the thoughts and motivations behind the decisions I have made in my artistic practice that have ultimately culminated in my M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition: Sub for More. By merging images of my own work as well as internet sourced images of the culture that drives my work, I have created a platform to begin to understand my experience during graduate school. This text examines and explores my belief in the inherent power in pop culture, my obsession with fame, celebrity, and my self-identity as a participant in current pop-culture.

In 2011, following several years of in-country research, I published a book on Lithuanian folk pottery. I enrolled in the Folk Studies master’s program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in 2014, well after my research and book had been completed. In the present study, I use my newly acquired knowledge of folklore In my previous work to revisit Lithuanian folk pottery. In my previous work, I had sought to create a picture of “authentic” Lithuanian folk pottery that was confined to the narrow temporal borders of 1861-1918. Here I deconstruct conventional ideas about authenticity, as well as culture and heritage, in order to expand my study to three additional periods: the interwar period of independence (1918-1940), the Soviet period (1940-1990), and the post-Soviet period (1990-present). Examining additional epochs of folk pottery production, I search for the commonalities and continuities binding together both objects and makers through seemingly disparate eras marked by dramatic political, social, and economic ruptures. To do this I examine the interconnected roles of political ideology, revised historical narratives, cultural policy, socio-economics, and concepts of cultural identity. Sifting through these various facets of national identity, I ultimately find that it is in the consistent nature of the adaptations that folk potters and artists make to the dramatically changing circumstances where consistent patterns are found. It is in these circumstances that people must survive, as individuals, a culture, and a nation. This study relies upon three central components: My previous research, texts related to folklore and cultural theory, and a wealth of new interviews conducted in Lithuania between September and November of 2015. Utilizing these tools, I move beyond my previous aim of reconstructing a period of history to engaging with art and culture as living, dynamic phenomena that are ever-changing and present but which possess roots in history and tradition.

Ten painted Cajamarca-style ceramic spoons form the foundation for an investigation of the way that these seemingly utilitarian objects were bestowed with economic and symbolic value both within and outside of the borders of the Cajamarca region, located in the north highlands of present-day Peru. Since the ceramic spoons have been recovered from sites associated with large and powerful societies and states, such as the Moche of the north coast and the Wari of the central highlands, an analysis of the form, style and imagery present on these spoons reveals how these objects transcended cultural boundaries. To assess and evaluate the cultural traits shared by the Cajamarca and neighboring polities, George Kubler’s concept of form-classes, which groups together objects with similar primary traits regardless of chronology, is utilized. The application of the concept of form-classes is significant because of the lack of written language in the region and the dearth of archaeological investigations in the Cajamarca area. Consequently, the form and style of the object is considered as the primary point of analysis and can be compared and contrasted with the form and style of spoons from other pre-Hispanic cultures, including the Wari, Huarpa and Chimu. Perceived as small, utilitarian items, ceramic spoons were actually elite goods traded or carried across thousands of miles for the purpose of establishing new, and reaffirming existing, ideological connections in a period of intense exchange and economic growth.

The artist discusses the background, ideas, and work entitled Archetypes in Clay, for the completion of her Bachelor of Arts Degree and undergraduate research for the Fine and Performing Arts Scholar program at East Tennessee State University. The artist used this development of work to explore personality types, and how they can be portrayed through clay vessels. In particular, the artist shows her work, how she created the vessels, the testing involved, and the struggles she faced. Archetypes is the focus behind the concept of this project. Her work includes four ceramic vessels, created with clay and finished with glaze. The artist cites Carl Jung, Isabel Briggs-Myers, and NERIS Analytics Limited as important research in this project.

The use and firing of clay to make art instead of vessels was a revolutionary concept in Japan when it first was introduced by Hayashi Yasuo in 1948 with Cloud, and expanded upon by Yagi Kazuo in 1954 with Mr. Samsa’s Walk. Although both avant-garde artists were major forces in the advancement of abstract, nonfunctional ceramics, Yagi is usually given sole credit and occupies a prominent place in the literature, while Hayashi’s name can scarcely be found, despite his numerous international awards, large body of work and career spanning seven decades. This thesis seeks to identify the factors that influenced the direction of their careers and the unbalanced reception of their work. It compares their backgrounds, personality traits, avant-garde affiliations, and positions on art and ceramics, in relation to the norms and prerequisites for success in Kyoto’s deeply stratified, convention-bound ceramic community. The pervasive practice of rating and society’s emphasis on affiliation and rank were significant forces in this situation, as were issues that divided Japan’s art world -- the separation and unequal ranking of fine art and traditional craft, or the value of individual expression versus technique and tradition. Ultimately, this study reveals an insular world during a decade (1946–56) of crisis and transition that is rarely studied in the West from the perspective of ceramic art.

I take a critical view of sociopolitical and cultural issues dealing with homoeroticism andgay politics. I explore gender theories in order to further understand what it means to bemasculine or feminine and how it affects my placement in society. I use art as a tool forexpressing sexual freedom while questioning traditional sexual identity. I'm interested in exploring ideas of the oppressor and the oppressed, and how power becomes an inevitable force (in every society) that creates a hierarchy, consequently establishing control. But what is power? According to various definitions, power is an entity that possesses and or exercises authority or influence. I want to focus on this idea of exercising authority, which one can argue we need, but why? To prevent chaos or is it to control a society? What about exercising influence? Do we need an influence exercised upon us? Or does that make us subjected to another person's subjective point of views? These are questions that I directly or indirectly ask with my work in relationship to gender, gender roles, and sexual orientation. I am interested in Judith Butler's theory in performing gender, and how in performing gender, one assumes social hierarchy of power depending on what gender we are performing. If I am a man performing as a man then I am treated differently by society than if I am a woman performing as a woman. But what happens if I am a man performing as a man who prefers men as lovers, or a woman who prefers other woman as lovers? In what context is this situation accepted by our society? And is it different for men and women? And why? What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman, within the context of performance? Then taking it a step further and argue that we are all performing subjective ideas constructed by social norms.

This thesis is an historical archaeological project involving the classification and analysis of the ceramics found at Camp Floyd, a 19th century military site 40 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. United States military troops were dispatched to the Utah Territory to establish a Pony Express Station and an Overland Stage Trail, to assert federal authority in the Territories, and to end the ongoing conflict between the federal government and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The primary research question concerned the ceramic usage patterns at Camp Floyd as compared to other military sites and non-residential sites of the 19th century. The ceramic assemblage recovered from Camp Floyd was classified using Berge's classification system of historical ceramics. A sample from this collection was analyzed in order to assess social and economic differences between officers' and enlisted men.

About eleven thousand years ago the earliest known human inhabitants of the Central Andean area began a lifestyle which developed into some of the richest cultures of the ancient American civilizations. The people living in this thirteen-hundred-mile arid mountain zone, which is now the nation of Peru, produced some of the most outstanding examples of ceramics in the world before the birth of Christ. The purpose of this study was to examine representative examples from various early Peruvian cultures in an attempt to identify their characteristics and to determine the extent to which the pottery forms of certain early cultures influenced the ceramics of other cultures. The investigation examined and compared the figurative motifs, surface designs and contour spout shapes of early Peruvian ceramics. It was hypothesized that some or all of the above characteristics evolved from one early Peruvian culture to another.

In 2010, Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds made its debut in Tate Modern, which promoted Ai to be one of the most famous and respected contemporary Chinese artists. This Conceptual art work has multiple layers of meanings, which all corresponds to the Western expectations for a successful contemporary Chinese artist. In fact, the Western art world has long held bias and stereotypes towards international artists. Ai chose to perform his personality to conform to the expectations and Western ideologies, which brought him international fame. On the other hand, other Chinese artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhou Chunya, don't totally agree with these Western ideologies, and therefore their fame in the society are less distinguished than Ai.