Is trauma tangible? My thesis will examine my experiences with trauma and the influence it has on my practice as a visual artist. I define trauma as the reaction to physical and emotional experiences of distress, abuse, and neglect, that invaded mind and body. My traumatic memories remain subconsciously hidden, an instinctive 'survival instinct' failsafe ingrained into my psyche, that files away many unbearable experiences, only to be evoked and experienced in the present by a trigger. For me, domestic space is often that trigger. Throughout the reflective analysis of my childhood traumas, I showcase the allegorical stories, signifiers and themes of a broken home. My work brings material poetic forms to the intangible aspects of trauma, using materials and domestic references to bring a new coherence to traumatic memories. In doing so, I seek to exorcize the "negative" spaces of my past and produce a sculptural environment that evokes ideas about childhood, home, neglect and, ultimately, care. In this written thesis, I will discuss domestic and familial themes within social sciences, contemporary art and personal experiences; I will expound upon my creative process, influences and self-discoveries around trauma that inform my current practice as an artist.

This thesis explores my relationship to artmaking through the exploration of my identity. As a gay, Puerto-Rican, Argentinian, American man, my relationship to art has always been a way for me to make sense of my intersectional experiences. Chronologically recounting past and current bodies of work, I explain how my personal growth coincides with my artwork. From once shameful, hidden figures to later flamboyant, unapologetic bodies, this thesis links the sequential evolution of my figuration and ideas. I also investigate the process of reclaiming moments in art history as being inherently queer and explore the ways in which they manifest in my own work. Additionally, I expand on formal aspects like composition, color, and mode of making, and how this interacts with the content in my work. Through this recounting and analyzation of my work, I invite viewers to empathize with the universality of my queer experience.

This thesis combines photography, mixed media, and installation to explore the interrelation between art, memory, and culture; specifically, as they relate to (in)visibility and the stigma surrounding mass incarceration. Things that are compulsory are obligatory; they require that we follow a rule or law, but they also may be coercive or compelling. Compulsory, therefore, is defined alternately as something that is required and something that is irresistible. These definitions imply both desire and regulation, and these forces are often internalized and self-imposed. Following these definitions and their connotations, this thesis, titled Compulsory, combines photography and mixed media installation to explore those things that are required whether by an institution or by one's own psyche and those things that are desirable either individually or as determined by normative values. Specifically, the works collected for this exhibition examine my personal compulsions as well as the state-mandated requirements imposed upon me by the Florida Department of Corrections during my incarceration, by Child and Family Services and the court system during my ongoing custody battle, and by University of Central Florida during my studies for this and previous degrees. These compulsory circumstances have inspired me to create work that makes the neglected visible and finds beauty in pain.

Growing up in an image-based society with television, computer screens, and a massive swell of visual media leaves me overloaded with imagery and information. I seek to find beauty in the strangeness of interconnected nostalgia of family memories, loss and grief, escapism, and video games. I process and excavate my personal history by romanticizing memories, relationships, and the passage of time. I do this with constructed visual worlds created through the physical processes of drawing, bookbinding, ceramics, printmaking, and painting. I use references and influences from 20th-century artists Paul Klee, James Ensor, and Jim Nutt to connect and interweave video game graphics, archeological references, and contemporary cartooning as methods to transcend biography for an archetype of 21st-century life. I blend contemporary sources of images from media, digital research methods, and physical art making as a foundation of my studio practice and teaching philosophy.

Danielle Culibao Powell manifests the disconnectedness of a second-generation immigrants' cultural disorientation into colorful collage paintings, reconciling cultural history with contemporary identity while building a connection between herself and her parents' homeland the Philippines. The evolution of Powell's studio art practice follows entering a transcultural marriage and researching the art created by the Filipino women artists before her. This thesis documents that evolution both visually and conceptually. It elaborates the history of both the cannons of Western Art and lesser-known Filipina art and expressed in art rooted in cultural plurality.

This thesis documents my evolving understanding of my identity through an examination of my family histories, which I explored throughout my graduate studies in a series of figures in imaginary landscapes. As a Black woman scholar and a second-generation child of immigrants from Martinique and growing up in the Florida suburbs, I am constantly negotiating my space in the southern American landscape. This research addresses the autobiographical discoveries I make regarding the intersections of womanhood, sexuality, class, and how gender roles influence the spaces I inhabit. It elaborates the evolution of thought through figuration, visual symbols, and the abstraction of the landscape. These works are expressed through a variety of media including printmaking, painting, and drawing.

Electrophoretic Topography (ET) technique is developed to study the surface behaviors (single acid site, amphoteric and zwitterionic surface) and electrophoretic properties (mobility-pH profile and mobility-conductivity profile) of colloidal dispersions without the influence of specific ion adsorption and double layer compression. A graphical correlation of the electrophoretic mobility data is displayed by a three dimensional Electrophoretic Template and a two dimensional isomobility contour plot, Electrophoretic Fingerprint. A systematic analysis of the Electrophoretic Fingerprint provides information such as isoelectric line, maximum mobility, isomobility line density, mobility-pH profile and mobility-conductivity profiles. Three colloidal systems were examined in this work: (1) polystyrene latex with different surface functional groups which include amidine, carboxyl, sulfate, carboxy-sulfate mixed and carboxyl-amidine zwitterionic latexes; (2) titanium dioxide-ionic surfactant (SDS and CTAB) dispersion; and (3) Carbonaceous particulates which include GM coal powders, coal-derived liquid fines, oxidized carbon black and nonoxidized carbon black. For each colloidal system characteristic surface behaviour was shown with its characteristic Electrophoretic Template and Fingerprint. Mobility-pH profiles of the various colloidal systems were used extensively to explore the electrokinetic properties under different experimental conditions. The Electrophoretic Topography technique can be used successfully to interpret qualitatively the surface behavior of colloidal dispersions.

2018 Sweden consumed 42 kg of meat per person which is a40% increase since 1990. The worlds total meat consumptionis responsible for 15 % of the total greenhouse emissions eachyear. Cultured meat is synthetically produced meat which candecrease the amount of emission that is released. My study explored the acceptance of cultured meat among chefs to portraysolutions and contribute with information about the role ofproduct design, in order to affect and raise the acceptance ofcultured meat. Chefs were chosen as a target group becausethey were considered the ones to introduce cultured meat tothe rest of society. My study was carried out with a conceptualfuture based user centered design approach in combinationwith emotional design. A workshop with chefs was held tocontribute to my understanding of the problem. The results ofthe workshop were made into a function analysis which laterwas used to generate ideas. The study resulted in a productwhich shows the guests at a restaurant how much they havehelped the environment by ordering cultured meat instead ofconventional meat. By the use of product design the incentivefor chefs to make a change into cultured meat be raised.

My artwork aims to create an ephemeral world filled with metaphorical materials. I examine and use my own experiences and perspectives, presenting fluctuations between childhood and adulthood. The personal objects that represent these times frame an implied sentience. The objects, gathered and installed in specific groupings, connote familial relationships.

The world around us is in a continual state of change; we, as humans, are agents of change simply through our existence. Moreover, our choices become catalysts of change and have profound effects on our environments. This paper will use the chemical formula of glycolysis as an extended metaphor to expound the notion of the human existence in a continual state of change. C6H12O6 + 6(O2) -- > 6(CO2) + 6(H2O) + ATP The above chemical formula represents glycolysis, a chemical reaction during which glucose (C6H12O6) and oxygen (6O2) combine to produce carbon dioxide (6CO2), water (6H2O), and energy (ATP). This is the first step in aerobic cellular respiration, a process that all complex organisms use to convert nutrients into usable energy. This formula metaphorically illustrates my creative process. Glucose represents the fabrication process through the combination of concepts (C6), materials (H12), and interactions (O6), with the addition of my own interactions with my environment (6O2) to produce a conceptual experience (6CO2) with a physically interactive component (6H2O) to elicit change (ATP). However, as in aerobic respiration, glycolysis is simply the first step; my finished work is only a beginning.