The Instruments installation represents the superimposition of two systems. The marketed elements that comprise the hegemony exerted by commodity culture are placed on top of the occult qabalistic Tree of Life. This overlaying makes the commentary that the pursuit of identity through commodified objects usurps and drowns out the natural fundamental components of the human psyche. The artist accomplishes this by creating various expressive multimedia sculptures out of actual objects. Each one is given a title that references a particular sphere on the Tree of Life glyph, for each piece is meant to represent that sphere’s aspect of the human entity as it is expressed in the commodity realm. The artist begins by introducing the reader to the artistic contexts and the various conceptual structures that serve to inform and describe his mode of working and its results. Subsequently, a detailed description of each work is given, simultaneously functioning as a necessarily brief survey of the spheres on the qabalistic glyph.

A narrative qualitative research approach was used to understand the role that spiritual journeys had on the lives of emerging adults. Participants were four emerging adults (2 female, 2 male) ranging in age from 20 to 29 years. All participants were of middle class social economic status and lived in a mid-size Canadian prairie city. Three of the participants were Caucasian and the fourth was of Spanish-Caucasian ancestry. Semi-structured interviews provided the opportunity for the participants to share their stories regarding the role that their spiritual journey played in their life. Data were analyzed for themes within and across the participants stories. A visual representation of their collective journeys was created along with four-part poetic representations of each participants individual story. The stories that the participants shared revealed that emerging adults spiritual journeys were cyclical in that the journeys began with feelings of discontent, which led them to seek spiritual resources and experiences to address the unhappiness in their lives. In acquiring new knowledge, the participants were faced with different theories, ideas and experiences that brought forth additional questions. These new areas of thought led these individuals to search for further answers and meaning, bring forth new questions, new meaning, and in turn, the process became a cycle. The cycle that began with their initial discontent continued because of a desire for further knowledge.<p> Findings are discussed in terms of the current literature on spirituality in emerging adulthood and spirituality in relation to meaning making; implications are discussed for counselors, educators, and researchers and recommendations are made for future research.

Residents of the region just north of the U.S.-Mexico border experience migration and smuggling activities through constantly changing found objects on the desert landscape--a pair of shoes neatly arranged on a trail; a cross hung in a tree; a can of food balanced on a rock. Consideration of some found objects as placed objects, set down with apparent care by travelers unseen and unmet, demonstrates how the objects uniquely inform the perceptions and practices of residents who find them. Such finders speculate about the lives and movements of others by utilizing the objects as metaphoric figures of practice, tools that uniquely but only partially help them bridge knowledge gaps among multiple constantly changing variables in their everyday lives. The finding-speculating dynamic confounds a direct and easy association of found items with trash, of migrants with threat, and of a border wall with hopelessness. Residents instead craft a sophisticated and practical cultural memory of place in a region that is inhabited differently by day than by night, where tragedy, grace, danger, and hope fuse in unexpected ways. The objects and events that erupt into rural border life inspire a poetics that matches the territory. In a landscape of uncertainty, placed objects secure and extend situational understandings beyond common conceptual frames of epidemic, normalized patterns of violence and collateral damage that are often considered necessary conditions of life in the region.

The Instruments installation represents the superimposition of two systems. The marketed elements that comprise the hegemony exerted by commodity culture are placed on top of the occult qabalistic Tree of Life. This overlaying makes the commentary that the pursuit of identity through commodified objects usurps and drowns out the natural fundamental components of the human psyche. The artist accomplishes this by creating various expressive multimedia sculptures out of actual objects. Each one is given a title that references a particular sphere on the Tree of Life glyph, for each piece is meant to represent that sphere’s aspect of the human entity as it is expressed in the commodity realm. The artist begins by introducing the reader to the artistic contexts and the various conceptual structures that serve to inform and describe his mode of working and its results. Subsequently, a detailed description of each work is given, simultaneously functioning as a necessarily brief survey of the spheres on the qabalistic glyph.

should one react against the laziness of railway tracks between the passage of two trains investigates the everyday as experienced in the post-industrial landscape. Through the activities of walking and mapping, fieldwork is conducted during treks that follow the route of the railroad in the Kitchener-Waterloo region. I examine detritus as post-readymade artifacts of the industrial economy that has abandoned the area. Interventions of minimal gestures engage the inherent narratives of these discarded materials. Improvised assembled sculptures mark my route as a form of wayfinding that re-appropriates the neglected urban space of the railroad right of way. Online maps document these treks as open works of art to be completed by participants as self-guided walks. The activity of walking and assembling sculptures in these marginal landscapes is a playful strategy that resists the alienation of immaterial labour in our contemporary economic context.

Found and collected natural (organic) and industrial materials are conducive to Vicky Shukuroglou's making of artefacts. They have particular properties of materiality and origin for engagement, interpretation and intervention. Materials are sourced, selected and collected from such diverse environments as urban industries and remote coastal environs. They are chosen for their working properties, personal associations, and qualities such as colour, form, texture, weight, structure and material composition. Her observations of and responses to these diverse environments and their local materials become the influence in the process of making. Objects - such as hair and bone - are investigated and reflected upon as they hold certain qualities that appeal and intrigue, and inspire creative responses. Materials are significantly altered from their original form and utilised for the construction of works, or engaged with as 'objects' for inclusion that remain largely as they were found. They are built onto, extended, reconstructed, enclosed or joined with the constructed elements. Visual energy and ambiguity created from common and opposing qualities is considered and utilised in the interpretation of found forms. In the building of these objects or assemblages, they take on a detailed and intimate identity, whose scale expands beyond the hand held object. The process and activity of making is a vehicle for further observation and learning, generating an understanding and insight into the relationships of place, structure, form, movement, space, and personal methodologies.

This research project investigates factors contributing to what I consider to be an erosion within the contemporary culture of the imagination- crucial to the very concept of what it is to be human. It has been said that the 'civilising' of art within contemporary culture may have flogged the human imagination into retreat. If so what might be the best way for art to help us visualise more creative ways of living and being? This is the key question I have pursued in this research project, the main outcomes of which are a body of creative art works (presented for examination in the form of a site-specific installation, together with documentary archive of photographs and other interventions) and an exegesis which explores the critical context for these. In proposing site-specific installation art as a vital alternative to the over-commodification evident within much contemporary art, I also see repetition and play as being strategies with particular potential for encouraging active artist-participant dialogue on the subject of the poetico-ethical imagination- along lines suggested by thinkers such as Robert Kearney and Ken Wilbur. The artefacts and installations presented for examination are mostly devoid of textual explanation and commentary, with the aim of emphasising direct sensory experience. However, throughout the written component (exegesis) I have taken the creative liberty of including textual fragments and other visual elements as a means of suggesting that a form of disassociation, meandering or breakdown has occurred. The reader will also notice an absence of capitalisation in the titles of chapters (and certain works). In this I have sought to explore possibilities for undermining academic form through imaginative play.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 28).

Digital technology has expanded the designer’s creative reach, but cannot duplicate the complexity of the imperfect and unexpected results of handmade processes. By executing a series of hand-built collage and assemblage pieces, I hope to not only rediscover the pleasure of working with my hands but also to develop creative methods to incorporate into future design projects. In this body of work, I have manually executed tasks that designers perform with software — cutting, pasting, layering, aligning, and creating transparency and drop shadows. The pieces are built from new and found materials, using text and images from old family letters and photos — physical evidence of relationships from my childhood and those of my parents and grandparents. These pieces express fragments of memories and family history.

This thesis explored the phenomenon of Modernism in Twentieth Century Nigerian art and the cultural ramifications of the Found Object in European and African art. Adopting the analytical tools of postcolonial theory and Modernism, modern Nigerian art was subjected to stylistic, conceptual and contextual analysis. The avant-gardist context of the form was explored for two reasons; first in an attempt to distinguish the approaches of named artists and secondly, to address the Eurocentric exclusion of the ‘Other’ in Modernist discourse. The works of Nigerian modernists - Aina Onabolu, Ben Enwonwu and Uche Okeke whose practices flourished from 1900 - 1960, were interrogated and findings from detailed artists case studies proved that during the period of European Modernism, a parallel bifurcated Modernism (1900-1930 / 1930 -1960) occurred in Nigeria characterised by the interlacing of modern art with nationalist political advocacies to subvert colonialism, imperialism and European cultural imposition. This radical formulation of modern Nigerian art, constituted a unique parallel but distinct avant-gardism to Euro-American Modernism, thus proving that Modernism is a pluralistic phenomenon. To valorise the argument that Modernism had multiple avant-garde centres, this thesis analysed the variations in philosophies, ideologies and formalism of the works of Nigerian Modernists and contrasted them from Euro-American avant-gardes. The resultant cultural and contextual differences proved the plurality of Modernism not accounted for in Western art history. Furthermore, by adopting comparative analysis of the Found Object in European and African art, this thesis proved that, the appropriation of mundane objects in art differ from culture to culture, in context, philosophies and ramifications. This finding contributes to knowledge by addressing the ambiguity in Found Object art discourse and problematic attempts to subsume this genre into a mainstream framework. The uncovering/theorisation of this parallel bifurcated Nigerian Modernism, contributes to expanding understanding of Modernism as a pluralistic phenomenon thus, contributing to debates for the recognition of the different Modernisms which cultures outside Europe gave rise to. The recognition and situation of Nigerian avant-gardism and modernism and interpretation of the Found Object as being culturally specific will subsequently contribute to the reconstruction of modernist discourse and Nigerian/African art histories.