Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2005
Capstone Advisor
Tom Sherman
Honors Reader
Joanna Spitzner
Capstone Major
Art
Capstone College
Visual and Performing Arts
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Creative
Subject Categories
Art and Design | Art Practice
Abstract
When Junior year arrived, along with the opportunity to start a thesis project, Kristina Foley and I agreed that this was right opportunity for us to create a body of collaborative art works. From there we decided to present our final works at Spark Gallery. Our show, On Earth, is a collection of works in varying media. Overall, we have three videos, two narrative, photographic series, two mural photographs, a driftwood sculpture, felted pelts and photographic frames, a book of poetry and drawings held in knitted pouches, and a shadow cloth mural.
What does it mean to be working in such media as video, fiber, and photography? Basically, video and photography are visual media that require technological processes, which result in visual objects exploring time and narrative. Fiber art is more of a hands-on, physical process that employs the sense of touch. Throughout our work, we found it important to combine our media as a way of inviting the audience to participate in a complete experience of the senses. Also, video and fiber have similarities in historical development.
Concerning the issue of collaborative process, we worked together while conceptually developing, problem solving, and editing every project, but we usually split up the work when executing the actual pieces. Working collaboratively has allowed us to undertake larger endeavors as well as more complicated ones. Since we entered into drastically different majors, our collaboration allowed us to engage in the qualities of each other’s medium. Kristina comes to the visual arts with a sculptural, tactile approach and I come to fibers with a visual, analytical approach.
We have very similar conceptual aims in our work, yet because of our vast experience in certain, specialized areas, we have very different methods of problem solving. Combining both of our sensibilities into singular works resulted with innovative solutions and a higher, creative consciousness that we could not have arrived upon by ourselves. It is for this experience that we entered into our collaboration.
Every work tells a story, and every story builds upon the ones around it. Our works embody many themes and most of them overlap. Some themes that we recognize in our work are magical realism, feminism, exploration of social roles, body memory, human relations to the environment, and life as a continuous cycle from an ecofeminist perspective.
Recommended Citation
Williams, Laura Mariposa, "On Earth" (2005). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 701.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/701
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
