▼ This thesis explores my clay sculptures that celebrate the diversity of life that is revealed in natural objects and living organisms in and along the ocean and its shores. Each individual piece is inspired by the multitude of intricate details of sea-plants, coral, driftwood and ocean sea creatures that I have encountered throughout my life. The ocean is a place to explore, contemplate and relax, enjoying the variety nature has to offer. Through the process of creating, my work is at once familiar and strange, projecting a level of wonder and mystery. The pieces are static in the nature of sculpture, yet appear to possess a life of their own cultivating a unique, animated and sensuous presence. These sculptures suggest individuality, a fantasy creature that is inviting in form, texture and color. I chose ceramics as a medium to convey my ideas because of its organic composition and its ties to the environment. The pliable, plastic nature of clay allows me to be playful and spontaneous in my decision making. They are decisions that have been made to draw attention to the mysteries of the ocean and how it provides an endless source of inspiration. These sculptures are to be acknowledged as individual pieces representing a view into my nature, a nature that can be shared and enjoyed by those who are fascinated by the natural world of the ocean and the fantasy of the created object. Advisors/Committee Members: Mangus, Kirk.

▼ Objects that survive the ravages of time provide valuable insight into the past and help us better understand a world and culture long since changed. Two works by the Venetian artist, Vittore Carpaccio, provide especially enlightening examples of this. They are Hunting on the Lagoon, c. 1495 from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and Two Venetian Ladies, c. 1495 from the Correr Museum in Venice [Figure 1 and Figure 2]. Like pieces of a puzzle, these paintings join to form a compelling look at fifteenth-century Venetian life. When pieced together, these remnants allow us to rediscover aspects of a bygone culture. They convey information specific to a time and place. As representatives of Renaissance Venetian material culture, they reflect aspects of social, cultural, and economic relevance. Advisors/Committee Members: Medicus, Gustav.

▼ The Borderland American-Hungarian Video Installation developed from my interaction with the American and Hungarian cultures. I grew up listening to my grandmother’s story of escaping from the 1956 Hungarian Revolution with her family. Due to these experiences, I became interested in talking to the community of Hungarian immigrants in the Northeast Ohio region about their experiences with the Hungarian and American culture. I invited individuals into my home for a Hungarian dinner and to talk about their experiences and traditions. Borderland embodies the results of each subject’s storytelling alongside the projected images of my 2005 journey to Hungary. In my work I hope to create meaning through a discourse about multiculturalism using a documentary-style production process. While Borderland Video Installation questions documentary myths of objective reality, it encourages the audience to experience the videotaped storytelling of American - Hungarian subjects and the projected imagery of my 2005 journey to Eastern Europe. Placed in the space of the viewers, the television monitors hold the verbal stories of the subjects. The verbal accounts of my subjects represent fragmented memories of time and place as they describe their struggles with personal and cultural identities. Based on the complex stories of the subjects, the two video projections on the opposite gallery walls play continuous cycles of recreated landscapes of Budapest, Hungary. The signs used in the video projections consist of reflections, landscapes videotaped from moving vehicles, advertisement, American - Hungarian names and franchises, dress codes, architecture, bridges and lighting. In order to listen to the words of the American - Hungarian subjects and sounds from the video projections, viewers have to pick up the headphone placed beside each television monitor and projector. As the viewers move about the Borderland’s space, they are creating their own unique experiences. The television monitors and video projectors are on pedestals that equal human proportions, and act as parts of a jigsaw puzzle that invite each viewer to knit together the different fragments and emotions into a coherent narrative story, or experience the space as an abstract event. Advisors/Committee Members: Ball, Martin.

▼ The student teaching practicum is an important phase of a teacher education program. During the practicum, a dynamic relationship develops between the university, the cooperating teacher and the student teacher. After a review of literature a need was seen for examining this relationship from the cooperating teacher’s perspective. In this study, the researcher sought to reveal what professional teachers saw as benefits to them for their participation in the role of cooperating teacher for students in art education student teaching programs. To gain an understanding of what the perceived benefits were for art cooperating teachers, the researcher conducted a qualitative case study through interviewing three participants who had all served as art cooperating teachers for a large northeast Ohio university’s art education department. Responses to the open-ended questions conducted at the semi-structured interviews were coded for content analysis. Findings from the study reveal benefits, drawbacks and suggestions drawn from the data collected. It was concluded at the end of the study that art education cooperating teachers who serve this large northeast Ohio university gain societal, personal and concrete benefits, learn from their student teachers and achieve professional development through participation in the program. Suggestions for improvements in the student teaching practicum are given as well as implications for future research. Advisors/Committee Members: Hoeptner-Poling, Linda.