PNCA Theses
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/10177/40121
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Item Aaron Smith BFA General Fine Arts Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Aaron SmithCollaborations is a joint effort between Aaron Smith and Colin Cathey who are organizers of participatory events. The panels and drawings that you see in front of you are artifacts from these events; we’ve been applying the term Happening to these because it helps describe the participatory, performative, and impromptu qualities of these collective actions. The work ultimately is about setting up a collaborative experience where participants can engage in a very automated state of creative energy exploring the physicality of mark making, sound and movement.
The inquiry is about exploring the language of mark making and how it correlates into understanding the dynamic of the Happenings themselves with a focus on how participants styles push and pull and influence one another. It has gradually become a process of engaging in this communal energy with friends and allowing it to teach us about the visual language of painting. Chance is a central influence and is the main guiding principle. The work operates very much on its own with us and the other participants functioning as vessels under the collective influence of the work.
Conceptually this work is trying to live outside the realms of the consumer marketplace
from a cultural and socio political perspective while also sharing a strong resemblance to the philosophy of the Fluxus and Gutai. The work is meant to be in opposition to professionalism and the pretentious, serious and inaccessible aspects of the traditional art scene while also focusing to explore the pure vitality of these mediums. The materials are just the materials and speak for themselves. The work utilizes the vocabulary of play, automatism, and action painting within the context of community involvement.Item Abigail St. John Illustration Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Abigail St. JohnThings Will Get Better: An Alphabet Journey is an illustrated poetry book that focuses on key moments in childhood, both the light and the dark. It is a journey through the growing pains of adolescence and the realization that we’ve made it out the other side okay. Though it is hidden within the imagery, this book is heavily inspired by the traditional alphabet book. The poem flows through the alphabet, touching on each letter as a memory, moment in time, or feeling. These moments are often activated through visual metaphor, characters and/or symbols. Each letter has a story, a history in which there are countless moments of significance. The repetitive mantra, “things will get better” is at the center of the book’s rhythm, while the alphabet pushes the loose narrative forward. The overall goal of this publication is to promote opening up, relying on a the network of supportive people you have in your life, and hopefully coming to the realization that we aren’t defined be the difficult moments in our lives, rather it is how we move forward and learn to trust again.
Item Alishba Rahim, 2024(2024-11-25) Rahim, AlishbaDigital Girl World is a teaser and trial episode showcasing the viewer’s attempt at survival after being transported into a horrific version of PNCA. Your only ally, a young, hyperfeminine girl named Nami helping you find a way out of this liminal space PNCA. Can you trust this girl? She looks sweet, but something about her feels…off. Through a merging and contrast of hyperfeminine and retro horror game aesthetics, internet-core and analog elements. I will create a narrative that reclaims hyperfeminine women’s sense of autonomy in the horror genre. The genre is a psychological horror, animated as a visual novel. In the plot of the teaser, after the viewer is transported into the liminal space PNCA, they are immediately chased by shadow people. There the viewer meets Naami, who helps you out by solving a puzzle, which unlocks the elevator, allowing both Naami and the viewer to the next floor. Naami then introduces herself and informs you that the school creates puzzles depending on what the shadow people and the environment want. The two process to explore the floor, and stumble upon a Monster door that wants something to eat. Naami guides you along with a puzzle, unlocking a locker that reveals a still-beating heart. Naami fills the heart with blood and feeds it to the Monster Door. After the door is satisfied, the elevator door opens, indicating the puzzle is solved and the two are free to go. The viewer feels relieved that someone as reliable and totally not suspicious as Naami is there by your side. The core of my thesis is merging a retro horror-game aesthetic with hyper-femininity to reclaim women's sense of autonomy in animation by recontextualizing traditional feminine traits. Most media depict the 'girly girl' as vain, unintelligent, and basic. Someone who has not earned their agency. This correlates with how the interests of young girls are seen through similar lenses of lesser value. Instead, misogyny encourages both men and women to invest their me with traditional masculine, interests/fields/appearance, which are more respected and important in society. This is especially relevant in horror movies, where the hyper-femme girl who is neither the ‘succubus’, ‘femme fatale’, or ‘final girl’ is treated to be insignificant and weak—the victim. This is all exemplified through Digital Girl World’s main character Naami. A smiley and sweet feminine girl, with an ‘off-side’. The goal for the future is to create more episodes where Naami’s true nature gets revealed before it is too late for the viewer to do anything about it. Therefore, crowning the girly Naami as undefeated, forever more. In the plot of the teaser, after the viewer. Link to Digital Girl World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnUi2lI2H44Item Amelia Husbands 2024(2024) Husbands, AmeliaAddison is a young professional navigating the fast-paced life of Chicago. She’s balancing the demands of a corporate career and a self-absorbed boyfriend. Just as an attractive new client enters her world—captivating her in ways she never expected—Addison begins to question her relationship. But before she can make sense of these feelings, her life is upended by devastating news: her beloved grandmother, Marie, has passed away. Having shared a unique and special bond with her grandmother, who raised her during her formative years, Addison returns to her hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, to attend the funeral and sift through Marie’s cherished belongings. While doing so, she and her mother stumble upon a hidden treasure trove—a collection of old photographs of Marie with a mysterious man from Savannah, Georgia, dating back to 1955. Feeling unfulfilled and intrigued by a mysterious revelation, Addison embarks on a journey to Savannah to uncover the truth about a man connected to her grandmother's hidden past. Guided by her supernatural gifts, she delves into her grandmother’s life while struggling to reconcile her own unraveling relationships. Thesis contains the first half of the novel.Item Andrew Newell BFA Sculpture Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Andrew NewellThis work has been driven by the idea of the technological Singularity. Like science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s famous adage says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Once humans build a self-improving intelligence we will have effectively created a machine god. This machine will be infinitely more intelligent and capable than humans. I believe this could result in the complete loss of human autonomy. This work uses religion to talk about the development of intelligences greater than our own and what effects they may have on humanity. It draws parallels between religion and humanity’s dependence on technology and points to both as means of social and moral control.
These sculptures are a cautionary tale, meant to make the viewer ask themselves about the future of humanity and its development of technology. These pieces are constructed primarily from discarded objects sourced from the refuse of everyday life and cheap or secondhand materials. By viewing these sculptures the audience is asked to look at the technological methods of control that have subtly affected their lives and to imagine futures where those methods are taken to an extreme. These works demonstrate that the road to Singularity will be a rocky one that poses risks to humanity’s future.
Item Angelica Trimble-Yanu General Fine Arts Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Angelica Trimble-YanuIyeska is a multimedia installation combining the processes of photography, printmaking and sculpture. Iyeska encapsulates sacred space as a continuous presence of indigenous narrative through ancestral landscape, movement, color and light. This work evokes remembrance through the ceremonial interaction with my sacred homelands in the Makȟóšiča, South Dakota. Iyeska explores the concepts of Indigenous survivance and traditional Lakota knowledge through the combined language of ancestral memory and sacred space.
Item Ann-Marie Engelberth Illustration Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Ann-Marie EngelberthHaven is a post-apocalyptic children’s book that tackles living in a world devoid of plant life. After finding an curious pouch while exploring the wasteland, Tala and her friends are guided by three spirits on a journey to bring flora back to their desert town, Haven. Each spirit is representative of different positive influences of nature on the environment including food, clean drinking water, and beauty. Throughout the book runs a parallel narrative of the giant androids that rule Haven with an iron fist and their gradual decline in affluence during the course of the story. The androids are representative of the dangers of conformity, utilitarianism, and unhindered negative influences of technology. Haven is an 8” x 8” book that runs for eighty-four pages and is divided into a prologue and three chapters. It is aimed at children between six to nine years old. For my thesis project, I took the entire book will be taken up to the final line-art tonal stage, with two interior full-color spreads and an illustrated cover in order to appeal to publishers at the concept stage.
Item Audrey Meschter BFA Illustration Thesis Spring 2023Audrey MeschterWith three collections based in different geographical regions of the state, Rowena is a graphic apparel and accessories brand designed in Oregon, for Oregon. Each collection is inspired by the visual qualities and color palettes of the landscape they are designed for, presented as a prototype shop in a professional website setting. The collections — Forest, Coastal and Desert — present in a unified, cohesive manner but are also curated to reflect their chosen region individually, too. Designed for lovers of the outdoors and design, Rowena seeks to bring these two worlds together for both the enthusiasts and the quiet participants. Named after the Rowena Crest viewpoint, Rowena is inspired by Oregon and seeks to share its beauty through collections of thoughtfully designed products.Item Ben Glas BFA Video & Sound Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Benjamin Glas-HochstettlerItem Beth Starkey 2024(2024-11-19) Starkey, BethMonsters of Aslamere is a 36-page concept art book, detailing an early civilization fantasy world, with the intention of using it to pitch a video game. The first part of the book details the cast of characters. Part two shows several of the original monster designs created to fill Aslamere’s world. Part three is several finished illustrations used as key art for the feeling of the game. Aslamere is filled with fantastical monsters that still control most of its territories. The people struggle to survive each day, hunting monsters that are just as likely to turn around and return the favor by hunting them. All of this starts to change when a young hunter and aspiring researcher named Kai sets out from their village, along with their small winged familiar, Vanati, determined to create this world’s first monster book. Kai grew up fascinated by monsters rather than fearing them, and so explores every corner of Aslamere to hunt down every monster, gathering information about each of them in different ways. With some luck, food, and a gentle hand, Kai is even able to tame some monsters to bring back to their village. Doing so helps their people expand and open up greater possibilities for farming, crafting, hunting, and traveling for Aslamere, setting the trail for animal domestication in this world.Item Brady Wolchansky 2024(2024-06-24) Wolchansky, BradyMANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL SYNDROME, A Micro-Cinematic Experience features the premier of an experimental short film I wrote, co-directed, and starred in called, Manic Pixie Dream Girl Syndrome, an adaptation from a comedic monologue of the same name I performed at an all-female group art show in 2023. This tangential monologue begins with, “you guys ever hear of the expression ‘all beautiful women are crazy’?” The 5-minute short screens at looped intervals in a makeshift microcinema constructed alongside a pop-up museum of “artifacts”; a behind-the-scenes look of the filmmaking process, including but not limited to props, costumes and images from the film’s set. The complete installation revolves around my investigations of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” (MPDG) character archetype, as seen in popular romantic films such as, Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and 500 Days of Summer with Zooey Deschanel. In cinema, the MPDG is portrayed as an artsy independent woman who often rejects societal expectations of classic womanhood and domesticity. While the MPDG is presumed to be free-spirited and independent, she is still defined by the expectations of a predominantly male protagonist and is mostly restricted within the confines of said male protagonist’s own personal goals and growth, and rarely displays any self-actualization or true personhood. This exhibition aims to recreate my own version of the MPDG, examined from a modern, feminist lens. Through the aesthetics of filmmaking, stand-up comedy and intermedia installation my hope is to show empathy with those who can relate and rouse awareness of the MPDG trope’s negative effects in others.Item Briar Parks Animated Arts Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Briar ParksThe Hyperflat artist aggregate is a collective art practice that doesn’t distinguish between art and the everyday performance. In my thesis project I have created a system / stomach designed to digest hierarchies, and make feedback loops out of the leftover fragments. it is a system of humans and puppets working to shatter dichotomies in identity, building connections and harnessing the paradoxes between contrasting perspectives. A person’s position in the Hyperflat artists aggregate is determined by their costume, know as a Scarab. A Scarab is a mask / hat / puppet hybrid that connects its wearer to the artists aggregate and to a language of icons. all Scarabs have an elemental and a psychic signifier built into their design / structure that is directly connected to the Hyperflat language. Scarabs are intended to shift between individual and collective identity by being worn as hats and masks. This range of functions is designed to provide the wearer with a palette of identities, a kind of toolbox for making performance art including Animation, everyday Fashion and sensory deprivation.
Item Casey Finn BFA Intermedia Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Casey FinnAnalog Oceans and Nuclear Fusion is a triple channel panoramic projection in the shape of a broken circle. You can’t go outside of the circle, you can only go inside of it; into total immersion. Surrounding you, a fabric constantly activated by found footage. The fabric’s smooth surface allows the screen’s form and visual content to be emphasized. The silence accentuates the visual immersion and screen shape. The footage is from my own personal 16mm collection and online archives. I have minimized temporal signifiers with the exception of the frailty of analog film: the scratches, color transformations, and glitches. This indicates a sense of time and history. The past is collected and crystallized into the present viewing experience.
Watch the film of the installation here: https://vimeo.com/246697884
Item Emily Cress Illustration Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Emily CressEach illustration features a different phobia, 5 natural and 5 societal fears. While there are hundreds of phobias, I’ve picked out the ones that I had familiarity with the most in my life. Whether it be me having the phobia, or the people that I associate with. In addition to also picking the ones that inspired me the most. Due to the lengthy creation process and other obligations, I have since reduced the series to 6 but topically split in the same way. The three natural ones are: Melissophobia the fear of bees, Herpetophobia, the fear of reptiles, and Trypophobia the fear of holes. The three societal ones are as follows: Aichmophobia, the fear of sharp things, Automatonophobia, the fear of false human representation, and Sciophobia, the fear of shadows. Once I chose the phobia I sought out medical information and then first hand perspectives on each one. What inspired me the most were online posts that were places for people to vent their frustrations; especially in poem form.
Item Emily Lint Photography Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Emily LintAllusion/Illusion is a room installation consisting of a multitude of mirrors and two projectors. From each projector, a five-minute progressive video loop of black and white photographs I created in the studio of mirror sculptures, are projected onto the walls. When these images are projected onto the mirror compositions placed throughout the room, they add an additional layer of fragmentation, aiding in the creation of a more dynamic and confusing optical illusion. These materials work together to disorient the viewers’ perception of self, space, time and reality by fragmenting themselves and the room surrounding them. Although the medium of photography is continuously evolving with new technologies, techniques and practices, one thing that has stayed consistent throughout its short 200 year history, is the underlying expectations for it to depict truth and reality. Due to the mechanical and scientific nature of the medium, artists have been continuously working in ways to either embrace or disrupt this promise of a ‘window onto the world’. Exploring the topics of truth, reality and photography’s ability to produce magic and illusion within an installation rather than the conventional two-dimensional print, allows for the experiential exploration of the essence of photography and the activation of the spectator’s presence within the space. Alongside the exploration of analog and digital technologies, I am experimenting with deconstructing the presumption that the camera is a faithful ‘mechanical eye.’
Item Emily Schwartz BFA Illustration Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Emily SchwartzThe second idea of importance is duality. The duality of exterior beauty and inner turmoil. The duality of cool, humid climates and dry, hot climates. The duality of precise, colorful, painted imagery and jittery, dark, animated graphics. The duality of being killed by the environment, and being an accessory in killing the environment. The duality of the beauty of landscape and the grotesque nature of life.
The paintings versus the animations represent the ideal versus the reality. Stillness versus movement. What I saw versus what I thought and felt. The animations distract from the paintings just as my uncomfortable feelings distracted me from being able to completely lose myself in the beauty of my surroundings.
The animations are representative of the raw, honest emotions I experienced as reactions to these environments. These animations are the inner turmoil to the paintings’ exterior beauty. They serve the purpose of being an unappealing, ugly distraction to disrupt the neatness of these paintings. They are manifestations of the ugly feelings I experienced while in these settings. The paintings are the seemingly-staged photos you bring home. The animations are the feelings you probably don’t want to talk about. The paintings are the ideal, the escape. The animations express the inescapable, imperfect reality that is often difficult to bear,
Item Emma Parry BFA Painting Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Emma ParryMy practice is heavily process oriented. I find myself asking a lot of questions, and through the process of drawing and painting, I am able to find answers, and most of all more questions. The process of painting and drawing allows me to investigate the ways that I interact with the world, by slowing down and reflecting on what is really there and what has been missed. My work focuses on the limitations that my own perception has while questioning my habits of seeing. Through different methodologies of meaning making, I reflect on my perception as well as myself. This work is a series of observational drawings which have come from photographs that I have taken and posted onto instagram. Each sheet of paper depicts a corner of a photograph in chronological order that the photographs were posted in. The drawings are made starting at the top left hand corner, moving to the right, until the row is complete, then I move onto the next row. When I am drawing the information which is presented within the photograph I am able to see what is missed through my own lense. I am able to notice what was once the background. The background, corner, is now at the foreground. I find an infinite unknowing as well as an infinite opportunity of growth through my own lens with these drawings.
Item Erin Boberg Doughton, 2024(2024-07-25) Doughton, Erin BobergThe written thesis Now it’s a Party explores the tensions and possibilities of performance in visual art spaces, with a focus on why and how artists create ephemeral, embodied work in spaces designed for the care and display of objects. The title is taken from a common phrase exclaimed after a glass is broken at a house party. Like a good party, a performance often involves breaking something - a glass, a rule, a social code. Performance relies on a shared (if temporary) belief in the value of process over product, people over objects and the collective over the individual. The exhibition Now it’s a Party extends the thesis to the gallery as an open studio where visitors are invited to share meals, practice simple magic tricks and experiment with creating and recreating documents of performance. Unlike traditional magic - where the magician does not reveal their tricks, everything in the gallery is real and revealed. Visitors are offered a menu of solo and collaborative scores to be performed with domestic objects including tables, chairs, tablecloths, dishes and brooms, revealing the often invisible labor of art-making and caretaking. The objects and actions vary from day to day, documented in an accumulative archive of photographs and ephemera. The documentation includes two primary scores - Do Over (tablecloth trick) and Ghost Broom. The performers in the photographs are Erin Boberg Doughton, PNCA Alum Crimson Ravarra and PNCA student Malique Pye. All photos by Mario Gallucci.Item Grayson Bear Intermedia Thesis Fall 2018(2018-11-01) Grayson Bear“Superfun: A silly willy place that gets more bigger and more funner every day!!”
Superfun is a science fiction comic book that utilizes the accessibility of cartoon storytelling to critique and analyze complicated content such as corrupt systems of power and the loss of innocence. It is the tension between the cute and creepy, the cuddly and claustrophobic, that Superfun visually and conceptually relies on. Capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy and other hateful systems that plague our world manifest as a colossal wacky metropolis.
Lullaby of Frogland is the first of nine issues which will complete this story. In the first issue, the primary characters and themes of the larger narrative are introduced, opening up the world for future installments. Superfun is meant to push and pull between immersive fiction and sobering allusion to real situations. Our world is so fucked up to begin with, that the cartoon veil of Superfun is often thin.
In addition to telling a fun and engaging story, it is my goal with Superfun to question my role within the chaos of an unstable and unjust society, as well as encourage readers to do the same.
Item Hannah Schill BFA Animated Arts Thesis Fall 2017(2017-11-01) Hannah SchillFishkill is a concept for an animated horror-drama television series about the inhabitants of a small Colorado town, who in the aftermath of a massive local earthquake must contend with the sudden appearance of monsters in their community. The series uses the tradition of monster-as-metaphor storytelling to explore themes of mob mentality, “othering” as a form of violence, physical manifestations of a collective unconscious, and the dark underbelly of small towns in the American west. The two main characters, Frankie and Wesson, must contend with the roles they’re forced into by the rest of the town, and struggle with placing morality above compliance with tradition, all while trying to survive the monsters closing in around their town. Fishkill is a concept for an animated horror-drama television series about the inhabitants of a small Colorado town, who in the aftermath of a massive local earthquake must contend with the sudden appearance of monsters in their community. The series uses the tradition of monster-as-metaphor storytelling to explore themes of mob mentality, “othering” as a form of violence, physical manifestations of a collective unconscious, and the dark underbelly of small towns in the American west. The two main characters, Frankie and Wesson, must contend with the roles they’re forced into by the rest of the town, and struggle with placing morality above compliance with tradition, all while trying to survive the monsters closing in around their town.