A collection of poems by Gale Marie Thompson.

In this thesis, I explore the June 1946 issue of Dance Index: Joseph Cornell’s “Clowns, Elephants and Ballerinas.” Through the archive of materials collected and presented by Cornell, I attempt to understand the histories of performance offered to the magazine’s readers. Despite the rich field of scholarship dedicated to Cornell and his art, very little work has been dedicated to his contributions to Dance Index. I interpret “Clowns, Elephants and Ballerinas” as both a collage and a series of histories, and I present the magazine as a serious work in Cornell’s oeuvre. I also endeavor to provide an understanding of Cornell’s working method, his sense of history, and the ways his juxtapositions of word and image provide meaning to readers. Weaving together the visual and textual, contemporary and historical, Cornell explores performance legacies, American and European exchange, and pantomime, dance, and circus performance tradition through this magazine issue. Cornell uses each of his diverse materials to explore larger social and political issues as well as artistic traditions. “Clowns, Elephants and Ballerinas” represents a crystallization of a moment in one of his many “explorations.” / text

My doctoral thesis is comprised of two bodies of research: two artworks taking the form of installations (videos, audio recordings, textiles, texts), which will be exhibited for viva. Femme Fabrications, 2016, is made from research into the American artist Joseph Cornell's (1903-1972) source materials held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum alongside research on Jean Wilkinson's 1977 book Flower Fabrications. A series of textile works encased in silk lined boxes trace my step-by-step construction of a rose from organdie. The floral emblem of the white rose (dried), 'death is preferable to a loss of innocence' , becomes an editing device, which I use to consider a number of possible recipients for the rose, such as Cornell himself. Spoken word audio recordings, which ruminate on how his sexuality pertain to the criteria of the rose are edited together with home-camcorder video footage of the house that Cornell lived in for most of his life - the house he made the entirety of his artworks within. Central to The Cesspool of Rapture, 2017, are moving-image studies of zippers, stains, rips, abrasions, openings, and closings in a series of dresses made by the American couturier Charles James (1906-1978). These videos register and move through the material research, the garments, at alternating speeds. The changing speed is registered in sound by clicks synced to each individual frame. It is at times violent and at other times tentative and gentle as the uncovering of the damage to the dresses unfolds. Audio recordings of James explicating his interests in eroticism and sexuality persistently interject the footage. This work includes the installation of a series of reconstructions of James's 1932 Taxi dress. Its black linen body is reconfigured and abstracted as the splayed design makes unfinished seams and unzipped zippers visible. In each artwork I configure viewing and consuming as a mode of authorship. I show how these diverse processes of identification become authored acts. When drawn into intimate relation with the leftover material of these historical authors, my contamination proves deviant: I gain possession of the capacity to speak for them, to expose, idolise, misrepresent, and fictionalise them. My thesis is composed of this group of methodologies, which were found and developed within the production of the artworks.

In the essay A Rhetorical Guide to Ebb I explore the diverse array of influences in art, and music that guided the creation of the composition Ebb, for 13 musicians and electronics. Of those influences, the boxes of the American artist Joseph Cornell played a particularly important role. Having based the conceptual framework for Ebb on ideas taken from Cornell, the essay, instead of being driven by a single thesis, involves the creation of conceptual boxes. These conceptual boxes emphasize the influence of the artist Joseph Cornell, along with the composers Iannis Xenakis and Gérard Grisey. In addition, a time line documenting the stages in Ebb's creation is included.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Theatre, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-61).

No description available.