In this project, Heidi Overhill explores her own home as a case study of the roles played by objects in the expression of self; as a microcosm of meaning in material culture. By examining her different kinds of collections through contemporary methodologies of museum collections management, she seeks to better understand herself, the collections, and the methodology of museum collecting in general. The exhibition focuses on the accessioning of the permanent collections, and provides a gift shop where visitors may purchase postcards and other souvenirs.

Within the context of relational art, the ongoing series, Maturity Playground, incorporates pre-fabricated playground components used as sculptural material. The use of slides, swings, trampolines, and merry-go-rounds has been disrupted. These structures are manipulated through placement and colour to the point where they become socially tense or awkward situations for adults. Playground structures in the art gallery subvert conventional notions of art, the understanding of appropriate behavior in an art environment and the understanding of play as an aesthetic element. Such re-placement creates a disruption to the psychological associations attached to the activity of the object. In this new context, the works allow participation and promote the idea that play can be a model for co-operative behavior.

Uncontrollable Beauty examines the role beauty and taste play in commoditization and monetization of art within contemporary Western culture. This body of work is predicated on the notion of ‘good taste’ and explores this complex issue through the history and medium of painting and the concept of ‘decorativeness’ as they relate to modernist criticism and commercial industry.

Abstract The paintings in White Noise are a response to temporal lighting conditions that occur at night. A discussion of sensory affect demonstrates how perception is inextricably connected to the body’s sensory capabilities such as sound and touch. By examining Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology and looking at Gestalt Psychology based experiments it is made clear that seeing whole and complete forms in the world is a product of embodied perceptual experience. I recall early experiences of being affected by light describing the optical illusion of the afterimage and then move into the everyday perceptions that inform my current painting practice. The painting studio process is examined as a beacon from which to reconcile the affecting nuances of observed lighting at night. I discuss the importance of allowing trial, error and patience to take place while making paintings to in turn seek out optimal colour relationships and shape interaction. By developing a specific painting vocabulary that responds to the colour, texture and sound associated with perceptual experiences I reconcile through the abstract process of painting how affecting experiences can be re-presented and reinvented onto the canvas.

"Multiple Case Study of (Re)-Design and Restructuring of Studio Arts Schools and Departments in the Research University Environment" investigates the effect of a changing academic value system, as it is manifest through activities of studio arts program redesign and restructuring within the specific context of large, public research universities in the United States of America. A multiple case study (of three distinct American studio arts units) of the academic restructuring phenomenon within this specific locus, examining the interplay of studio arts culture with the larger institutional mandates in the restructuring process, this work approaches restructuring as a series of cultural and survivalist responses to a complex and changing environment.

Uncontrollable Beauty examines the role beauty and taste play in commoditization and monetization of art within contemporary Western culture. This body of work is predicated on the notion of ‘good taste’ and explores this complex issue through the history and medium of painting and the concept of ‘decorativeness’ as they relate to modernist criticism and commercial industry.

Abstract The paintings in White Noise are a response to temporal lighting conditions that occur at night. A discussion of sensory affect demonstrates how perception is inextricably connected to the body’s sensory capabilities such as sound and touch. By examining Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology and looking at Gestalt Psychology based experiments it is made clear that seeing whole and complete forms in the world is a product of embodied perceptual experience. I recall early experiences of being affected by light describing the optical illusion of the afterimage and then move into the everyday perceptions that inform my current painting practice. The painting studio process is examined as a beacon from which to reconcile the affecting nuances of observed lighting at night. I discuss the importance of allowing trial, error and patience to take place while making paintings to in turn seek out optimal colour relationships and shape interaction. By developing a specific painting vocabulary that responds to the colour, texture and sound associated with perceptual experiences I reconcile through the abstract process of painting how affecting experiences can be re-presented and reinvented onto the canvas.

The Gesture and the Drip investigates our increasing reliance on digital media as a means to encounter and view art works online as photographic documentation. This body of work attempts to place significance on the human gesture in relation to the loss of the human presence that often accompanies digital documentation. The gesture is a reoccurring element that can be traced throughout my thesis body of work. Occasionally, gestures are tactile marks made by my hand and in other cases they are the result of photographic reproduction, silk-screened onto the surface. A paradox is formed between the real and illusion that are interchangeable on the canvas. My paintings encompass authentic and mediated gestures to challenge the visual experience and disrupt a logical reading.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-11-06Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:49:19Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 santos_lp_me_ia.pdf: 2506316 bytes, checksum: 5f7499c655be0e21cabb083ec52115a7 (MD5) / Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) / O ateliê é conhecido como o lugar de produção do artista e onde suas indagações são materializadas, pode ser um espaço construído e pensado para isto ou ser improvisado em algum canto, mas é resumidamente um lugar onde o fazer ocorre mesmo em pensamentos que lá fluem. Este ambiente de criação está repleto de objetos escolhidos pelo artista que coexistem e o torna propício a criação, um lugar cheio de memórias e escolhas estéticas e o que talvez fique depois da obra e do artista. Esta pesquisa investiga os guardados do ateliê, como são eleitos e quais são suas influências na formação deste ambiente que se transforma com a arte, assim como tem o poder de transformação no artista e obra. O interesse é abrir estes espaços a novos olhares, investigar suas ações e buscas e como o lugar conta sobre a obra do artista e suas escolhas / The studio is known as the place of production of artist and where your key questions can be materialized. Can be a space built and thought to this, some may be improvised, but briefly corner is a place where do occurs even in thoughts that flows. This authoring environment is full of objects chosen by artist who co-exist and makes it conducive to creating a place full of memories and aesthetic choices and what might be after work and artist. This research investigates the object of the studio, as they are elected and what are your influences on training environment transforms with art, as well as it has the power of transformation in the artist. The interest is open these spaces to new sights, investigate their actions and searches and how the place on the work of artist and your choices

This thesis is about studio habits. Specifically, it considers what happens in practice in the artist's studio and ways in which creative acts have been visualised and disseminated. The chapters of this thesis are organised around views of the studios of four twentieth century painters: Francis Bacon (1908-1994), Lee Krasner (1909-1984), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and Agnes Martin (1913-2005). Each of these artists' studio habits has been fundamental to their respective mythologies and the studios they occupied in their lifetimes have inflected discussion of their work. Drawing on critical theories of sexuality, gender and space, this thesis argues that the idea of the artist as a master continues to dominate as an explanation of art-making but that this characterisation is called into question by these four artist's specific practices in the studio. Close readings of the studio habits in these case studies, considered here as a situated negotiation between artist and studio, challenges the idea of mastery that studio-view exhibits and images tend to promote. Notions of mastery are inclined to construct practice as a paradigm between an active artist and passive studio materials and these, in turn, are apt to be read in terms of masculinity and femininity, respectively. Thus, the role of studio artist has tended to privilege a male lead. Therefore, analysing particular performances of masculinity by these artists provides a means to contest reading studio-view images as statements of mastery and the damaging and inequitable connotations this designation implies. Furthermore, this thesis argues that the recent trend to preserve studio material, or to otherwise encompass traces of practice in exhibits, films and photographs, may be correlated with theoretical shifts which took place in latter half of the twentieth century as a response to philosophical losses entailed in the critique of authority and objecthood and the rise of performance and conceptual art practices.