Sensing Synesthesia is an exhibition of experiments, carried out through the medium of graphic design as an attempt to generate a synesthesiac experience by visualizing sound. Since many elements within the realms of sound and sight are relative, creating a genuine synesthesiac experience for a viewing audience proved challenging. To address this problem, I created visual elements that corresponded with personal convictions, emotions and proclamations and presented them in a way congruent to the sounds being heard. Through these experiments, I discovered the personal growth of myself: the sharpened skills as a graphic designer, initiated interest in hand-rendered type as well as graffiti art as a style. Furthermore, I aimed that the interrelated, impactful relationship between sight and sound we all encounter on a daily basis generates a deeper experience despite our level of awareness.

CommuniPLAYtion: getting our hands dirty together is a weeklong installation of a collective ceramics studio implanted in Foster Gallery. It is a participatory and interactive exhibition that demonstrates how material play creates moments for personal reflection and contemplation, while also facilitating communication and social relations within a specific place. CommuniPLAYtion is an opportunity for an altruistic exchange among individuals in contrast to the monetary transactions that momentarily connect strangers. These engagements, similar to the Do-It-Yourself Geopolitics of other contemporary artists, empower individuals to develop modes of interaction that suit their interpersonal needs. The exhibition, communiPLAYtion enables the basic precursors that Maslows Hierarchy of Needs suggests are necessary in order to achieve self-actualization. I orchestrate events to make participants feel safe and respected, in order to encourage a sense of connectedness or belonging. I utilize the research of psychologists and art therapists, especially Carl Rogers nondirective approach to therapy, to create an inviting and comfortable environment where I can be myself and feel willing to open up to others. The gallery contains one ton of packaged, wet clay, which enables visitors to make any kind or size of sculpture they choose. Together, participants and I incorporate our work into a central part of the room where a temporary landscape of combined, unfired clay objects emerges. Over the course of the week a larger, collaborative sculpture emergesa tangible record of the creative efforts of a shared group of participants. The sculpture records the marks of each person, alluding to the value of intangible emotions shared during conversation. Collaborators engage in the phenomenological experience of manipulating wet clay in a collective space with shared tools. As they work alongside one another an intimate dialogue unfolds naturally. The sensuous and malleable material enables and physically validates the emotional connectivity that happens on-site. The haptic experience of revealing vulnerability in public spaces and feeling the positive effects of collaboration engenders felt knowledge or self-trust. At the end of the week, the raw clay sculpture is broken down into chunks in order to be used for endless reiterations in other locations. Leaving the clay unfired draws attention to the value of the ephemeral, interpersonal exchange rather and imbues the clay with the agency of the collective experiences that continues to build with each event.

I am fascinated how we define and personalize ourselves through the objects we own and accumulate. It is my goal to make a collection of utilitarian pottery forms that through the use of color, form, and pattern, are cohesive in their variety, and are accessible as objects for daily use.

This exhibition, Course Over Ground, cohesively combines a metaphorical reference to maritime navigation with sculptural forms that convey balance, tension, and control. My mixed media sculptures are conceived with an adherence to the formalist perspective of objects. Each sculpture exists as an honest form. The work, and my intention in making it, is evidence of the process of breaking down selective images or objects into what I understand to be their purest representational forms, such as a squares, cylinders, pyramids, and rectangles. I allude to themes and the metaphor of a journey, which coupled alongside my continual quest for self-discovery, has been manifested into sculptures that aid the viewer as they navigate the gallery space.

Unveiled Pandemonium is a body of work that acknowledges my struggles, as a woman, with skewed self-perception and how frayed, decayed bits of self-love affect interaction with daily life: the public sphere versus the private. Using both large-scale graphite drawings and intimately sized, full-color digital narrative sequences, I portray movement, as a state of freedom, while capturing each character in a position of physical or emotional constraint. To increase the tension each figure interacts with another visually and in narrative; a war with the self begins. Within the engagement of internal and external tensions, each characters body becomes a battlefield as she strives to find self-fulfillment through uninhibited freedom from constraint. This thesis briefly examines the perceived ancient ideal of womanhood and explores how capitalism has had a hand in the construction of the modern ideal of womanhood based upon the writings of John Berger, Carolyn Knapp and Jena Pincott. Lastly, this paper contextualizes Unveiled Pandemonium within the current art and ideas of Jenny Saville, Lisa Yuskavage, Katerina Jebb and Nan Goldin among others.

Agnolo Gaddis Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle in the sanctuary of Santa Croce, Florence, represents an unusual artistic program. Initiated by the Franciscans around 1388, Gaddis is the earliest monumental True Cross program; it set the standard for similar works into the sixteenth century. The objective of this thesis is to shed light on this unusual narrative sequence and the reasons for the selection of the True Cross legend as its subject matter. The unique choice for the narrative program provokes several questions: Why was it chosen? What purpose did it serve? What truths did it attempt to convey? What stories did it imitate? This thesis attempts to answer these questions by tracing the motives of the Alberti family of patrons who commissioned the cycle and of the Franciscan monks who lived adjacent to and worshipped in the church. Attention is paid to which version of the True Cross story is used, which scenes are depicted, and which scenes are left out and why. This thesis investigates the influences of contemporary Florentine politics, the alliances between the Alberti and the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce, and the symbiotic relationship that existed between the church and state. Topics addressed include the Franciscan agenda, with its mimetic desire to imitate Christs crucifixion, and emphasis on the mendicant lifestyle. The Franciscans and their possession of a relic of the True Cross as a motive for the selection of the artistic program and its narrative contents receive attention. Finally, comparisons are drawn between Gaddis True Cross frescoes and other works containing similar narratives, such as the Stavelot Triptych and Piero della Francescos mural cycle of the True Cross in San Francesco in Arezzo. An analysis of these works serves as the basis for a discussion of the choices that were made in the Santa Croce cycle.

Sculpted corbels of the Romanesque period are often categorized as obscene or grotesque, and frequently dismissed as medieval humor or an individual artists imagination. Common themes on corbels include images of debauchery and obscenity, as well as depictions of the effects of sin. These themes are usually communicated through the image of entertainers (acrobats, musicians, and dancers), acts of excess such as overindulgence in alcohol or sexual vice, threatening gestures, monstrous animals, or the human visage transformed by idiocy. As titillating and lowbrow as the images on corbels may seem, they should not be relegated to categories of absurdity or pure entertainment. Sculpted Romanesque corbels reveal a specific medieval visual concept of physical and spiritual degradation resulting from mortal sin. Furthermore, depictions of people and activities on sculpted corbels created between the eleventh and twelfth century in France and Northern Spain provide insight into medieval society. In analyzing the evidence, an interdisciplinary approach is essential to provide insight into the visual and social functions of sculpted corbels. An evaluation of shifts in power and economics during the eleventh and twelfth centuries establishes historical contexts, while a review of medieval written sources provides insights into medieval philosophies and perceptions. When such source materials are reviewed in conjunction with visual images, many aspects of medieval societal concerns that are embedded within Romanesque corbels become identifiable. Finally, when corbels are considered contextually with other images in their immediate vicinity on building facades, themes and even narratives are revealed.

This thesis focuses on the three churches designed by the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio in Venice: San Francesco della Vigna, San Giorgio Maggiore, and Il Redentore. Separate chapters devoted to each of these buildings explore multiple issues, among them Palladios awareness of the city, its civic rituals, and architectural traditions; his sources of inspiration in the buildings of classical antiquity, especially ancient Roman baths and temple façades; his relationship to the architecture of the recent past, especially in Venice but also on the terraferma; and his ability to adapt his style to suit the requirements of private, public, and monastic patrons. The thesis also examines Palladios innovative approaches to some of the most pressing issues of Renaissance church design, most notably the question of centralized vs. longitudinal planning, and the problem of what sort of façade should be placed before a typical church, with its high central nave flanked by lower aisles or chapel.

Vol. 1, Der Verschollene Diskurs. / Notes bibliogr.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--München, 1994. / Bibliogr. p. 325-357.