Fine arts

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/4920

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I Want to Believe: Fragmentation, Instability, and Uncertainty
(2025-08-01) Horton, Jordan; Gale, Ann
This thesis traces the changes in my approach to image-making and speaks to the role of painting as a medium for inquiry rather than resolution. Through multiple bodies of work made over the past two years, I have asked questions about belief within the contemporary moment through perception, materiality, and the legibility of imagery.The paintings explore themes of the ineffable, locating the self, and the edges between states of being. The final works in this thesis raise ideas surrounding authenticity, digital mediation, and trust, asking the viewer to confront their own perceptual assumptions and the unstable boundaries of image, screen, and representation. Through painting, drawing, text, and collage, this current body of work opens a conversation around the shifting ground of belief. The paintings I have arrived at operate as moments in flux that mirror the fragmented, mediated, and unstable experience of the present moment and living life through the screen.
Touching “Is-ness”: Countering Alienation Through Perception and Emotional Awareness
(2025-08-01) Shi, Yihan; Jamison, Flint
Every experience and emotion I’ve experienced is like data inscribed into a vast personal database, influencing my every action and decision. In moments of stillness, I find myself revisiting and dissecting these memories, questioning what has shaped my choices and has me to become who I am today. I choose not to analyze memory from existing scientific research and social structures, but rather to explore memory from personal perception and feeling. I believe to fully experiencing memory is a way to bring emotional awareness to reality. Through collage and reconstruction, I strive to create the possibility of existence for those unrecorded spaces and memories, seeking a space to express feelings denied. This allows moments that may have been forgotten to re-enter the field of vision, granting the right to express hidden personal stories. These works are not a retelling of the past, but a reconstruction of past perceptions. They respond to my confusion about “love” and “identity”, and also challenge the discipline of emotions under capitalist logic.
INFRUCTESCENCE
(2025-08-01) Knox, Jade; Arbelaez, Natalia
INFRUCTESCENCE is a multimedia sculptural thesis that weaves personal memory, mythic narrative, and material poetics into an exploration of hunger—bodily, emotional, ancestral, and cosmic. Rooted in Knox’s rural Tennessee upbringing, the work spirals outward from the intimate image of a slug inside a green bell pepper into a larger meditation on containment, desire, and transformation. Slugs and shadows recur as symbolic agents of vulnerability and boundary, echoing themes of metamorphosis and mythic punishment. Sculptural forms become vessels of narrative, protected and imprisoned by salt, a material both preservative and destructive.Blending ceramic sculpture, text, and performance, INFRUCTESCENCE imagines a descent into an otherworldly realm where characters like Hades, Eve, and a many-eyed slug navigate a maze of hunger, memory, and myth. Through these figures and their encounters—comical, tragic, surreal—the installation investigates the limits of the body and the self, and the moments in which transformation becomes inevitable. Salt maps the psychic terrain between protection and isolation. Ceramic forms stand as guardians, remnants, and containers for unseen forces. Drawing from the botanical term infructescence—a cluster of fruits where once flowers bloomed—the work proposes that what remains after longing, trauma, or desire is not absence, but residue: thick with memory, ripe with story. At its core, INFRUCTSECENCE is a sculptural poem about the hunger that shapes us, the boundaries that break around us, and the mythic echoes that carry us home.
In Search of Home
(2025-08-01) Dehbozorgi, Maryam Sharareh; Cummins, Rebecca; Jamison, Flint
This study begins with the question, "Where is my home?" and explores the impact of migration on fragmented identities and the ambiguity of belonging to a place. This research originates from the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the idea of "home" in the context of migration, a confusion that arises from the contrast between the place where a person currently resides and the place they desire to consider as their "home." Three central questions guide the research: How can a sense of belonging to a new place be formed? What role does cultural memory play in the reconstruction of identity? And can technology play a role in reconstructing the identities of migrants? These questions form the main framework for understanding the cultural and identity shifts caused by migration, and the role of cultural memory and digital technology in this process. This study employs a qualitative methodology, including the analysis of personal narratives, theoretical exploration, and the production of art as primary data collection tools. The research demonstrates that redefining the meaning of home and engaging with cultural objects can help migrants reconstruct their lost identities in the contemporary world shaped by technology.
Nesting Ground
(2025-08-01) Barker, Bonny; Arbelaez, Natalia
Nesting Ground reflects on the hostile patterns and structures established through interpersonal connections. Formal investigations are efforts to understand the environment and systems the body finds itself in, and to relinquish a need for the sense of control. Included works navigate the body’s response to toxic relations, and how defensive reactions may prove detrimental to individual and community wellness. The structures of entwined bodies made from clay reference the dance of emotional entanglements and their static detriment. Built coil by coil, these forms parallel the relations and patterns I have traversed, materializing the outcome for recognition by the viewer of a shared experience.
Magical Realism
(2025-08-01) Brownlee, Christopher Ian; Gale, Ann; Lin, Zhi
My recent paintings explore the potential of magical and nonsensical imagery to evoke states of mind. I have studied mythology from many cultures, seeking to understand their non-rational logic. I apply that method of storytelling to narrative paintings, in the hope of capturing complex emotional states. My background is in realistic painting, but that no longer suits the work I’m doing. I seek an expressive mode of mark-making that better complements my non-linear approach to storytelling. I have applied this same myth-based method of organizing and presenting information to the writing of this thesis.
Close Shaves: Vulnerability and Hypermasculinity in the Barbershop
(2025-08-01) Pahang, Kyler; Gale, Ann
This thesis is a written accompaniment to a series of 36 paintings that were created in partialfulfillment of my Master's of Fine Arts degree. This thesis explores the barbershop as a complex site of identity formation, negotiation, and contradiction, particularly for queer Filipino men navigating hypermasculine spaces. What began as a personal exploration rooted in my experience of getting my long hair cut and stepping into a traditionally masculine domain evolved into a broader investigation of how intimacy, vulnerability, and identity are expressed and repressed within barbershop culture. Drawing from interviews and direct engagement with Filipino barbers, my work examines the lives, spaces, and gestures that define these environments, each shaped by layers of postcolonial history and personal aspiration. Through representational painting informed by ethnographic practices, I document the tensions between care and performance, visibility and concealment. I use vibrant, synthetic palettes inspired by Filipino "banig" weaving, and apply paint in ways that capture both presence and ephemerality, echoing the duality of tenderness and hypermasculinity found in these spaces. The barbershop becomes a site of double consciousness, where the comfort of touch and transformation coexist with the anxiety of surveillance and conformity to hegemonic norms. My work reflects on grooming not simply as an aesthetic act but as a practice loaded with colonial legacy, racial identity, and gender politics. Ultimately, this body of work seeks to queer the barbershop by revealing its contradictions and possibilities as a space of mentorship, community care, and subtle defiance against the rigid boundaries of masculinity.
Continuous Home Repair
(2025-08-01) salazar, ralph; Swaine, Michael
In my practice, I explore the interconnection between the body, the home, and nature, treating them as interchangeable, symbolic stand-ins for one another. This throughline allows me to reflect on the continuous hostility impressed upon all three elements. As Western power clings to dominance over the Global South, as marginalized communities are stripped of autonomy, and as the climate crisis rages on, my work persists as a poetic, emotional, and bodily response.I create assemblage sculptures and kinetic installations that incorporate video, sound, performance, and found materials. Much of the material I use comes from construction sites, emergency contexts, or are remnants of various exploitative industries. I assemble and orchestrate these materials by playing with their intended function and focus on their relationship to labor: pallets don't carry a heavy load, windows are removed from walls, and Styrofoam breathes on in perpetuity. My work often includes video projections of performance documentation, portraying Sisyphean scenes of futile, repetitive acts. These performances are staged with care, using deliberately chosen materials and locations, but the actions themselves are discovered through experimentation and multiple takes. By allowing space for spontaneity in both my assemblages and performances, I invite viewers into an immersive encounter that stirs curiosity, evokes surprise, and leads to meaningful discovery. Working across the interconnected layers of our existence, the body, the home, and earth, I aim to provoke reflection on the state of our collective well-being and the colonial and industrial systems that have led us into crisis and collapse. The format of this thesis weaves through literal explanation and poetic fragments of personal narrative related to origins of aspects of my practice. Starting with the various steps of my creative process to listing off impactful influences and lastly to numbered sections of significant themes or approaches implemented in my work.
WE ARE ALL EGGS
(2025-05-12) Eke, Amarachi Christine; Lin, Zhi; Gale, Ann
As my time at the University of Washington is winding down to a bittersweet end, my practice in my second year has led me to intensify an already bright color palette and intentionally artificial materiality to capture and consume viewers' attention. With striking aesthetics, I strive to maintain the sacred goal of compelling an audience to linger and explore, giving my paintings more than a passing glance.I draw inspiration from late Byzantine mosaics, allegorical paintings from the Renaissance, and visionary artwork by Hilma af Klint. I aspire to create similar impacts of awe, rumination, and awakening through my colorful, playful, cartoon-like stylization. My current body of work seeks to connect humanity to creating a prophecy by boiling down complex ideas, forms, and concepts to their most basic unit, which is the symbol of the egg. I use artificial, plastic-looking colors to contrast the divine, paying homage to the new gods that have emerged under the vindictive and compelling theocracy of capitalism and other systemic structures within modern society. The delicious artificiality of acrylic paint, paired with my internal desire to create an all-inclusive, self-contained world where everyone can joyfully coexist, manifests itself into something that has the opportunity to become real and, therefore, is more than a dream. Amidst real-world chaos, madness, and confusion, my ambition is to create beams of joy through my art to offset the mundane and operate as a catalyst to envision a brighter, kinder, loving, and, most of all, delightful future. Since the beginning of my studio practice, specifically in Seattle for my MFA degree, my transition from small, intimate works on sketchbooks (due to no studio access over the pandemic) has boomed into complete wall-sized paintings. However, on every scale, I strive to create a visual language in addition to a maker's mark or style with repeating motifs, patterns, color palettes, and subjects. Creating a unique stylization has been one of the most important goals I have focused on as an artist. I believe it is the purest testament and the truest dedication to the contribution to the canon of art and art history to individualize yourself among the millions of artworks existing as we know it and be identified by your unique visual cadence. As I additionally have an academic background in Art History, specifically 15-16th century Italian Renaissance and late Byzantine periods, I have familiarized myself with the importance of composition, visual rhythm, iconography, staple, motif, and characterization in a way that propels viewers beyond the work and into imaginative realms. Adding a grander space to create has heavily influenced my work after my first quarter in Fall 2022. As I was trying to illustrate vast spacescapes within the confines of an 11x14(+)" sketch pad, working exponentially larger allowed my style to evolve and become an exploration of world-building, character design, and creating my visual cosmology. The critiques I have received thus far have made me consider new ways to handle paint, especially in color and material. Though I love a rainbow palette, my rainbow has become more intentional through conversations with faculty about how to shift the mood I am trying to convey through more color specificity.
When the Prison Doors Are Opened, the Real Dragon Will Fly Out: Seeking Alternative Asian / American Futurities
(2024-09-09) Phan, Kevin Quang; Jamison, Flint
Glitch as error; the erroneous element, the perversity to the desirable. The current hegemonic structure disseminates varying images of the Asian as the “other” and imposes expectations of labor and assimilation onto Asians in the United States. Drawing on Vivian Huang’s conception of the Asian/American as “inscrutable” and Rosa Menkman’s framework regarding the glitch, I aim to link the idea of glitch as another means of potential for Asian American futurity to reject assimilationist tactics and Orientalist perceptions of Asian individuals as a whole. How can we refuse the American Dream and reclaim images of the Asian individual? Similarly, what rituals have Vietnamese diasporic communities maintained from the homeland to cultivate havens separate from the powers of America? The existence of Asian Americans and the continuance of their cultural spaces and practices present themselves as ‘errors’ within the white supremacist state. Both the glitch and the Asian American contradict hegemonic political and aesthetic conventions. How can glitches and Asian Americans reject homogeneity and racialization, and move toward a future of agency and autonomy for the Asian American individual?
Oi-ee Moochim
(2024-09-09) Hong, Min Seok; Lynn, Whitney
손 맛 (son-maat), directly translating to hand-flavor is a Korean phrase that expresses the intimate connection between an individual's tactile sensibilities and the food they prepare. Within the domestic space, this hand-flavor symbolizes the unique taste imparted by love and care, creating flavors that cannot be easily replicated. This essence is often passed down through generations, becoming a cherished cultural inheritance that evolves over time. Hand flavor is a defining aspect of one’s identity and personalized essence. I use the notion of hand-flavor as framework to provide context for my research and studio practice. In doing so, I unfold the complexities of labor that are often associated with the expression of one’s hand-flavor. I interweave materials emblematic of a South Korean immigrant household, through which I am able to investigate the intricacies of my relationship from everything between the familiar and my sphere of life in Koreatown, Los Angeles to contextualize my methodologies.
SUBJECTIVITY/ LIGHT/ CELLULOID/ AFFINITY
(2024-09-09) Meyer, Ali; Jamison, Flint
This thesis is written concurrently to an ongoing studio-art practice that aims to understand the relationships between technology, digital space, and subjective identity by examining notions of body, individualism, and change through an auto-biographical lens. While the evolution of digital space within the last few decades has been essential to creation of community, it has also functioned as a key element of colonialism, capitalism, and overall systemic oppression. This paper seeks to explore the nuances of this type of space and the possibilities of functioning outside of the system that seeks to individualize and oppress in an inevitable digital future. These ideas of “identity” that concern how this space functions are abstract and widespread: to continue this conversation this paper aims to delve into concepts of subjective identity and ultimately, ideas of affinity between individuals.
Voids, Blobs, and Bodies: Representing Care and Chronic Illness in the Gallery
(2024-09-09) Dorsey, Rachel Elizabeth; Lin, Zhi
The body of work explored in this paper depicts care routines connected to lessons from chronic illness: care for ourselves (skincare, massage) and care for each other (gathering, community, touch). I represent these care routines in large, gestural drawings, paintings, interactive sculptures, and delicate monotypes. Broadly, the work looks at chronic illness, showing the daily gamut of rest, (inter-)dependence, melodrama, varied physical sensations, vulnerabilities, and connections formed alongside my lived experience of autoimmunity. Through material exploration with loose weave canvas, bedsheets, table linens, furniture, rounded substrates, cotton gauze, and molding paste, I consider the painting as an object with intimate knowledge of the human body.
The Currents Bank: A Next-Generation Distributed Economy Banking System
(2024-09-09) El Shabazz-Thompson, Freesoul Kofi; Swaine, Michael
I create research provocations with the intention of generating communion and public ritual by gatheringaround the materiality of our social systems and institutions. A large portion of my practice is spent unpacking present societal structures by investigating artifacts of the status quo. I'm interested in artifacts that embody power, such as money and other forms of currency, credit cards, or IDs. I augment these power-objects to the extent that they elicit the viewer to question object-embodied power. I want us to focus on our present ways of knowing; How do these power-objects construct our ways of knowing? How is it that we can sense their power? What is their relationship to our ways of being because they are powerful? How might close examination of these objects hold the keys to changing our experiences? Investigating these questions is disorienting, and in reorienting, perhaps we'll share greater faith in whatever we know to be possible.
Bittersweetness and Burning Wood
(2024-09-09) Han, Ren; Gale, Ann
My work has always been rooted in an obsession with process. I searched for something intangible while the material slipped through my fingertips for hours and hours, the final image being born of adaptive movements. In those repetitions, I began to find linkages to memories, writing, tension, and an affinity for nature that now contentedly perches on my shoulder and informs the work. I draw from imagery of unfurling moth/butterfly wings as well as undulations of jelly-like sea creatures and swiftly hunting birds. I am drawn to cyclical, repetitive motions in weaving and in color. I started to explore physical tension within fibers, drawing-like gestures, and the spinning, weaving, mending that I incorporate into the work which translates into cloaking, embodied woven paintings. The metaphorical tension appears in the concepts I think and write about such as memory, trauma, and the relationship of the body to its space and others. In this way, I develop a macrocosm and specific color world from interdisciplinary techniques of fiber arts, painting, and drawing that invites the viewer to ponder conceptual bittersweetness, a feeling of cloaking, and suspension. This thesis aims to clarify and provide a deeper explanation for the body of work.
Post Tomboy
(2023-08-14) Sallay-Carrington, Jai; McNeel, Amie
This thesis paper gives context to the ceramic sculptures which make up the exhibition Post Tomboy. Communicated through clay, a material which expresses the malleability of the body and of the self, these sculptures showcase the complicated journey of understanding a gender and sexuality which exists outside of the cultural norms. Using personal narrative, examples from other artists, as well as brief histories and definitions of gender diverse and LGBTQ+ identities, this paper goes into depth about each sculpture within the exhibition and how they relate to me as a queer and gender non-binary individual. Portrayed as animal-human hybrids and shapeshifters, these figures speak about queer experiences and deconstruct the notions of gender to find a place where non-binary identities exist. As each animal comes with their own physical qualities and mythological associations, therefore the therianthropic qualities of these figures shed light on a humanistic characteristic or feeling which is invisible to the naked eye. Queerness and gender identities outside of the binary can be isolating when existing in a heteronormative society. By sharing my personal journey, my work normalizes and celebrate these forms of identities.
The Closet Room
(2023-08-14) COCHRAN, KAYLA; O'Toole, Helen
This project is an extension of my longstanding interest in visual storytelling through domestic still life. In an attempt to discover these stories, I rely heavily on the practice of collecting and investigating evidence of existence. In search of human paraphernalia that hold some anonymous history, I find artifacts that, together, evoke new narratives and place value in moments and items that were once discarded. This project has developed into a series of interdisciplinary set-ups that collapse expectations of reality and dimensionality. It disorients through uncanny familiarity and illusion, communicating a sense of both nostalgia and anxiety. The work weaves together personal stories of growing up in Massachusetts with those of anonymous figures and fictional characters. There is a human presence that transcends the body and grants subjectivity to inanimate objects. I encourage viewers to step into this mirror world, reminiscent of a dream, in search of a feeling, an answer, or a memory. This statement seeks to clarify the concepts and decisions set forth in the body of work.
Exploring the Intersection of Race, Adoption, and Evangelical Culture Through a Studio Practice
(2023-08-14) Quickbear-Stalder, Ryland Cameran; Jamison, Flint
Media and media consumption is based on perception. Perception comes with biases that exist from upbringing, personal belief systems, and many other things. Exploring the intersections of those ideas is even more exciting. This document serves as an examination of religious upbringing, racial identity, and perceptions of the art world. Those topics create the work within my studio. My interest and my work exist within those intersections. This document will also be entered into the archive of an institution, J. Jack Halberstam dedicated their book Queer History, “To All of History’s Losers.” Archives do not record stories like mine, but this time it will.
The Right Creature
(2023-08-14) Blume, Dana Eriksen; O'toole, Helen; Lin, Zhi
This thesis is a written accompaniment to a series of 5 paintings that were created in partial fulfillment for my degree of Master of Fine Arts. The paintings depict a fictional creature in the midst of an episode of self-defeat. This writing serves as a historical record of the formal steps taken in drawing that lead to the creation of this creature, who serves as a stand in for myself in his world. I discuss the cultural use of the monster as a receptacle for the unknown, cartoon as a filter for the unsettling and image as a container that gives materiality to the intangible. I review criticism around the aesthetic category of “cute” and analyze the function of the archetypical “cute monster”. The writing ends with a personal anecdote about the role drawing has played in my life in keeping idle hands at bay and compulsion as an over-arching theme of the work.
How To Make Art
(2023-08-14) Blake, James William; McNeel, Amie
This work describes a way of making more work. By following theloose process below, the reader is offered a guiding set of principles in order to make Art. This is a desirable outcome given the proliferation of instruction and theory which makes no effort to guide the recombinant artistic process. A tool box without an idea does not make an automobile, nor does a vision without a process. Given the abstract nature of creating meaning from nothing this work is far from exhaustive. Fortunately, counterarguments are particularly generative for the author, and he hopes they are for you too. Please enjoy this insight into:

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