This thesis explores the relationship of the Sermo Angelicus of St. Birgitta of Sweden, written in the fourteenth century, with the Nativity/Concert of Angels panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grunewald in 1514 for a hospital and monastery run by the Antonite Order. Taking into consideration the context of the altarpiece, this thesis analyzes its iconography in relation to specific passages from the Sermo Angelicus, suggesting that the text was a possible source used by the Antonites in the Nativity/Concert of Angels panel. By doing so, parallel themes of salvation in both the text and the panel are discovered that in turn relate to the altarpiece in its entirety and present a message fashioned specifically for those patients at the hospital at Isenheim that viewed the altarpiece.

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The first chapter of this descriptive paper outlines a problem, proposes a solution and poses three questions for me to answer after completion of research. The problem was to bring an emerging ceramic style into all of my pieces rather than just the few I have mastered. The solution was to create three sets of new forms and make them repeatedly until they boasted the sought-after style. Chapter 2 chronicles the research of creating, morphing, detailing and finally mastering these new forms. Chapter 3 summarizes the experience and answers the three aforementioned questions: (1) What is my personal definition of a successful pot? (2) How does the undulating style affect the functionality of the pot? (3) How does the Campbell tartan glazing complement or detract from the pot's form?

My creative intent is to connect with viewers at an emotional level. My chosen metaphor is “Peeling the Onion.” The implication of the metaphor is that understanding is achieved after one looks below the surface and views the underlying “layers.” The challenge is to find images that are personally interesting and also connect with the viewer. At times the creative process proceeds in linear manner and at other times it seems to take on a life of its own. During my search for a balance between the literal and ambiguous, I explored the circle, the spiral and the sphere. Printmaking offers unique opportunities to produce evocative imagery. Drawing is the basic tool I employ to define form and my use of printmaking processes allows for evolving the image over time. The immediacy and spontaneity of my drawings is combined with a methodical approach to image development. Exploring the spiral, sphere, circles and the metaphor “Peeling the Onion” has provided me a means of giving a form to my concepts and hopefully a connection with the viewer.

This thesis redresses the lack of scholarly attention paid to painted circus banners produced in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century by exploring the extent to which American folk art painting scholarship, methodologies, and objects can be used to articulate the meaning and significance of banner painting. This study expands the disciplinary treatment of banner painting by introducing domesticated art as a means of representing non-academic art produced in the U.S. The thesis also presents a model for exploring banner painting after identifying traditional American folk art painting methodologies, which fail to investigate banner painting style, format, and artistic training associated with banner work.

Jewelry has been used as a gift exchange between lovers for many centuries. It has been conveyed in a variety of forms to symbolize the meaning of love. This body of work is associated with glory of love, of sexual experience between lovers representing the idea of unity when two parts become one unit, not only in the physical sense, but also in the psychical sense. The works were divided into three series including three pair of rings, two pair of lockets, and five pair of necklaces. The erotic expression has been addressed on every piece in an abstract way counting design motifs, material used, and interaction within the piece itself. Moreover, each piece has romantic meanings and essential aspects as a symbol of love.

I proposed in my paper to use juxtaposition of unexpected scale in my sculpture, with the expectation that it would create an unexpected tension that is visually stimulating to the viewer. I achieved this by creating disharmony in scale between an object that is perceived as miniature and an object that is perceived as gigantic within each sculpture. I then asked three questions of these sculptures: Was I able to alter the viewer's preconceived notions of the miniature and the gigantic through the manipulation of the size relationship between two objects within each sculpture? Which of these preconceived notions of the miniature or the gigantic became dominant as the main focal point in each sculpture? Did this intentional use of disharmony in scale stimulate enough of my interest to continue investigating this idea? I wrote about three sculptures that had been made for this project. The first was Manifest Destiny, a seven and a half foot tall bronze piece depicting an oil drill with a platform in the shape of the state of Texas. On the platform a gigantic bronze figure rides a miniature bronze donkey across the platform. The second bronze sculpture I wrote about was Gulliver in Suburbia; …

Chapter I describes the purpose of the project, which was to develop a body of work that exhibits all that I am at this point in time. The questions I presented to myself were the following: 1. A successful piece is defined by what parameters? 2. What visual qualities indicate my passion for clay and my enthusiasm for life? Chapter II lists and explains the five parameters of a successful piece, which are composition, firing, mark making, color contrast, and movement. Furthermore there is an explanation on how these parameters visually display my passion for clay and my enthusiasm for life. Chapter III is a summary concluding that by discovering my five parameters of a successful piece I now understand the elements that I am searching for in my work. My work will grow from this understanding as long as I have the same passion for clay and enthusiasm for life.

Organic forms representing nature, but not particular species, are combined with elements signifying attitudes toward the natural world with an emphasis on North American culture. The viewer is encouraged to consider human effects on the environment. Aquarium Night Light and Trophy both refer to the human tendency for commercial exploitation coupled with the creation of nature images we sometimes seem to prefer over the reality of the natural world. Reliquary metaphorically connects traditional religious connotations associated with saints' relics to both a biblical injunction to use anything we needed from the natural world and our contemporary belief that exposure to nature can have beneficial effects on human mental, spiritual, and physical health.

After generating work for many years in an intuitive, “truth to materials” mindset my intent was to explore the interior possibilities of my sculptural forms and relate these if possible, to the exterior. Alongside this exploration of the interior I introduced surface texture and color onto both interior/exterior surfaces. In some cases the work had undergone a change, which lent new meaning and provided new relationships to exist between the interior/exterior of my sculpture. Not all of the work was satisfactory to me, though I feel there were many positive results from work that may not have been successful. I found that the integration of the interior/exterior dialogue into my existing work provided new meaning allowing new relationships within the work that had not existed previously.

Through my art I seek to communicate the continuing cycle of change that unites all life forms. I had to find methods of presentation and surface that would enhance my sculptural statements that I had begun to address. Utilizing salt, wood and low temperature sagger firing, resulted in softer, more natural appearing surfaces. These surfaces complimented and completed the organic forms with which I was working. The problems encountered in presentation were rectified by alternately contrasting the surfaces of the presentation with the surfaces of the pieces, while utilizing forms that echoed the natural forms of the pieces. The opposite approach also worked well, using natural presentation materials to create a sense of unity, and geometric bases for contrast. These methods resulted in an increased sense of energy, unity and completion in the work presented.

This paper is an experiment using digital video to locate and identify the abstract in everyday life and nature. The abstract moment occurs when the image that is captured by video loses its connection with the original context, allowing the images to be viewed in an entirely new way. The abstract moment is initiated by a transformative instant, that instant in which perception is altered and the viewer sees the intended content of composition of light and sound. The project contains four digital videos that record the artist's progress and interests.

The focus of this thesis is the conveyance of moods through clothes, the communication of feelings through fashion. The thesis illustrates how clothes speak, and the tools used to communicate a visual message. Three moods are used as examples: Serenity, Valor and Love. The thesis presents the author's design ability, creative personality, cultural background and technical skills. Sources of data range from personal experience to books on Cultural Studies, armor and mask making, Indian/ Asian dance and theatre, fabric design, fabric manipulation and websites on related topics. The chapters discuss background information of the author and the topic of research, and present each ensemble created to support the thesis. Through design details and photographs of the nine ensembles, the thesis demonstrates different techniques of achieving visual communication through clothes.

Through this body of work and this paper the possibilities of using Fashion Design to express the concepts of the circle has been explored. This was done with three questions in mind: How can I use the shape of the circle as inspiration for fashion design? How can I express related words and phrases in my design? and How can I use the colors black and white to emphasize the concept of my design. To answer these questions I have created two groups of garments: one was inspired by circular objects, such as cherries and drops, and the other starting from words and phrases such as "study circle" and "circle the wagons." In the first group the emphasis was on the aesthetics of the garment while the second group was more focused on meaning. All garments are black and white.

The body of work originating from this Problem in Lieu of Thesis consists of paintings on canvas that incorporate representations of plant material. The impetus for the paintings was black and white photocopies created from mounds of plant material placed on a copy machine. The resulting copies contained forms that were organic in appearance, but unrecognizable as known objects. Parts of the most interesting and ambiguous copies were used to develop the imagery of the paintings. The new forms served the purpose of creating visual interest from unexpected images. Combined with traditional painting techniques, the selected forms produced paintings of mysterious and playful worlds similar to those parts of the environment not readily accessed, such as galactic space, microscopic organisms, and ocean depths.

This thesis will examine the iconography of late-thirteenth- through fifteenth-century images of St. Veronica's veil, also known as vernicles. In the late Middle Ages, vernicle iconography changed from iconic representations of Christ's face toward graphic imagery of Christ's suffering during his Passion. These passionate transformations, as I have called them, were affected by the Roman Sudarium relic, popular devotion to Christ's suffering and humanity during his Passion, and the Catholic ritual of Mass. This thesis will consider how the function of vernicle images during Mass was reflected in their iconography throughout Europe between 1250 and 1500.

When I was first introduced to photography, I was mainly drawn to landscape imagery. I enjoyed being a solitary spectator. Over time, inclusions of figurative elements became more and more apparent in my work. I purposefully began to incorporate a figure into my landscapes, ascribing to it a certain nostalgia and a sense of isolation I was experiencing on many levels at that time. Before long, I felt disconnected from these images because of their ambiguity and generalization. I found myself craving more content and personal commitment in my photography. At the end 2003, I started experimenting with a 4" x 5" format camera, which forced me, to some extent, to change my way of photographing and seeing. That is how the beginning of this new body of work was born. I was accustomed to shooting with a 35 mm camera, which allowed me to be spontaneous, quick and immediate. I permanently switched to a large format. I could see myself benefiting from this change. I lost some of the spontaneity that a 35 mm format offers but I gained the beauty of working with larger negatives and the endless possibilities of view camera movements. Thanks to this technical transformation, …

This thesis identifies and analyzes gendering in the art writing devoted to Lee Bontecou's metal and canvas sculptures made from the 1959 - 1964. Through a careful reading of reviews and articles written about Bontecou's constructions, this thesis reconstructs the context of the art world in the United States at mid-century and investigates how cultural expectations regarding gender directed the reception of Bontecou's art, beginning in 1959 and continuing through mid-1960s. Incorporating a description of the contemporaneous cultural context with description of the constructions and an analysis of examples of primary writing, the thesis chronologically follows the evolution of a tendency in art writing to associate gender-specific motivation and interpretation to one recurring feature of Bontecou's works.

This thesis uses the work and career of the textile designer Maria Kipp to stage a prolegomena concerning how to write about a female designer active during the middle of the twentieth century. How can design historians incorporate new methodologies in the writing of design history? This thesis explores the current literature of feminist design history for solutions to the potential problems of the traditional biography and applies these to the work and career of Kipp. It generates questions concerning the application of methodologies, specifically looking at a biographical methodology and new methodologies proposed by feminist design historians. Feminist writers encourage scholarship on unknown designers, while also they call for a different kind of writing and methodology. The goal of this thesis is to examine how these new histories are written and in what ways they might inspire the writing of Kipp into design history.

This thesis draws upon recent, art historical scholarship in iconography and semiotics to identify and analyze key images in an iconographic program associated with murals, paintings, and posters related to the Austin, Texas music venue, the Armadillo World Headquarters, 1970-1980. Resources include South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, the Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin, personal communications, and publications concerning the artists, music and history of Austin and the Armadillo World Headquarters. There are five chapters as follows: Introduction, History of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Analysis of the Armadillo Mural and Freddie King Painting, Analysis of Posters for the Grand Opening and the Michael Murphey Cosmic Cowboy Concert, and Conclusion.

Most of my childhood was spent in either the expansive suburbs of north Texas or on a farm in southern Oklahoma. The experience of growing up in these two regions has done much to shape my sense of aesthetic. From these early experiences, I have developed two completely divergent ideas of beauty which I've tried to reconcile in my artwork. The first influence is that of sparseness, simplicity and the commonplace. This influence comes from the emptiness of the suburban landscape, the sameness of its architecture and the need to find beauty in mundane things as a simple cure for boredom. The second major idea is centered around peculiarity, chaotic complexity and irrationality. This interest originally stems from early memories of my grandfather, whose experiences in Oklahoma during the Great Depression gave him the obsessive habit of never discarding anything for fear that he might need it some day. The complexity in meaning that comes from unfamiliar combinations has allowed the ideas in my work a kind of ambiguity that frees it from any singular reading. I think the content of my work could best be described as constructions of memories, experiences and influences. I never speak about any one …

Modernist painters such as Picasso, Ernst and Matisse were among others who incorporated what was then considered "primitive" art, mostly from Africa and Oceania, into their works. Prior to this, European artists had appropriated Greco-Roman themes and characters. These appropriated elements were consequently recreated without their cultural context and content, altered to reflect more current themes. In most cases, attention was directed toward the recreator, the author of the new work of art, not the creator of the artifact. In contrast, Post-Modern artists, including myself, have reproduced appropriated elements virtually unaltered as a way of denying authorship and emphasizing a more conceptual format. Appropriated imagery has been a tool for me in my work. Additionally, both figurative and abstract elements play significant roles since I consider juxtaposition of elements to be a strength. The challenge of fitting these elements together has enabled me to develop a style of painting that seems uniquely mine. The formal issues of style and content figure heavily in my endeavor to capture a moment in time; something lost forever except for its persistence in memory. These reflections are often imbued with personal icons, arcane text and symbolic drawing that weave in and out of the …

The purpose of this investigation is to explore the possibilities of manipulating clay in three distinct ways to effectively show that clay objects were at one time moist and pliable. The techniques used are faceting while wet, manipulating a variety of additions, applying different glazing techniques, and three separate firing methods. In addressing the problem, the following concerns were considered: (a) Which of the pieces made best expresses my aesthetic concerns? (b) Which firing method, oxidation, reduction or atmospheric, best illustrates these concerns? (c) Which glazing technique was most successful? In an attempt to explore and solve these problems, a series of twenty pieces were produced. A visual record of slides showing individual pieces were made to demonstrate the differences and similarities between firing methods.

During World War II, Lee Miller was an accredited war correspondent for Vogue magazine. Miller was trained as a surrealist photographer by Man Ray, and her wartime work, both photographic and written, is indicative of a combination of journalism and surrealism. This thesis examines Lee Miller's war correspondence within the context of Vogue magazine, establishing parallels between the photographs and writing to determine how surrealism informs it stylistically and ideologically. Using surrealist techniques of juxtaposition and an unmanipulated photographic style, and the surrealist concepts of the Marvelous and Convulsive Beauty, Miller presented the war as a surreality, or a surreal reality. This study concludes by using Miller's approach to suggest a new concept of journalistic practice: surrealist journalism.