Date of Award
5-10-2026
Date Published
June 2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Studio Arts
Advisor(s)
Whitney Hubbs
Second Advisor
Dusty Herbig
Keywords
Americana;Hauntology;Painting;Photography;Psychogeography;Public Memory
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts
Abstract
This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and image-making through a multidisciplinary practice spanning photography, painting, and collage. Rooted in early experiences with skateboarding as a framework, the work adopts a subcultural way of seeing that reinterprets urban space as fluid, contingent, and open to reconfiguration. This perspective informs an ongoing investigation of post-industrial and altered environments as sites marked by both physical and historical violence. The project frames these landscapes as “spectral,” holding traces of human activity, memory, and absence. Alongside this external mapping, it examines an internal landscape shaped by visual memory, personal experience, and mediated imagery, where photographs function as unstable records that blur fact and fiction. Studio works incorporate archival materials and found images to construct layered, nonlinear compositions that collapse time and resist fixed interpretation. Ultimately, the thesis positions image-making as a form of cartography and ritual—one that navigates between presence and absence, experience and speculation. By embracing ambiguity and coincidence, the work foregrounds the unresolved and the unknowable as central to both artistic practice and the understanding of place.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Dominique, Jared A., "BRIEF CANDLES: MEMORY, DEGRADATION OF TIME, INDICES AND ACTIVATION" (2026). Theses - ALL. 1009.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/1009
