Master of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, EECS - Computer and Information Sciences

The process of handcrafting robotic spray-painting instructions is arduous, time-consuming, and inefficient. Nonetheless, these painting instructions are required to paint non-uniform vector graphics as road markings on the roadway. Therefore, an automated path planning process is desirable and necessary to translate arbitrary vector graphics into executable spray-painting instructions which meet the specific requirements of road painting robotic systems. Unfortunately, robotic spray-painting and associated path planning processes are not trivial; having many complexities and constraints. This paper presents an introduction to the problem, related research, an automated path planning technique, and an associated web application for visualizing, editing, post-processing, and exporting the automatically generated painting instructions.

Committee: Wyatt Newman (Advisor); Soumya Ray (Committee Member); Michael Lewicki (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Robotics

BA, Kent State University, 2011, College of the Arts / School of Art

I am fascinated by simple, remarkable, natural processes, like a puddle that has gathered in the sidewalk, colorful fungi that grow and multiply, and tide pools that flourish with life at low tide. I focus on these often-overlooked occurrences to create a language of colors, shapes, forms, and processes in order to construct abstract works of art that resemble organic, natural spaces. Each painting shrinks, magnifies, or modifies natural places in our world. This thesis is my investigation of the natural environment with which we coexist, but frequently neglect. It is my wish that viewers experience these paintings as momentary escapes or pauses away from the busy chaos of everyday life. This body of work includes a variety of different processes and materials to create a sense of wonder and beauty in order to achieve a similar quietness and stillness that nature has to offer us. My honors thesis is done in conjunction with my senior project, Innate Materiality, which consists of eleven works, and a body of writing that categorizes the work to expand upon and further explain the paintings.

Committee: Gianna Commito (Advisor); Gustave Medicus (Committee Member); Isabel Farnsworth (Committee Member); Juliann Dorff (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Art/Art History

This thesis investigates the intersectionality of ink painting and revolutionary politics in modern China with the work of Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) as an analytical lens. Through a critical sociopolitical contextualization of Fu's paintings at crucial junctures in his career, I will analyze the ways in which his paintings have changed to reflect their respective eras. Along with negotiating his artistic identity and practice, these same junctures have provided a means by which I will critically examine Fu's negotiations of national identity. Born in 1904 when China's final imperial dynasty—Qing (1636-1912)—was in a terminal decline, he grew up during the tumultuous era of warlordism and the shaky beginnings of the Republican Era (1912-1949). Fu was an artist and political activist during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). He was an artist in service of the entire Chinese state as a propagandist (1926-27, 1929-30 for the Kuomintang, and 1950-66 for the People's Republic of China). Though he died one year before the Maoist-led Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Fu's work was posthumously affected. In addition to the abovementioned events, I examine Fu's negotiations of national identity evident in his art historical writing, his time as a propagandist, as well as his formative studies in Japan from 1932 to 1935. His studies proved fruitful as he developed a novel trajectory of modern “guohua” (Chinese national painting) and his signature style that elevated his work to a position of paramount importance. The goal of my project is to provide, a succinct yet satisfactory historiography of modern China while interrogating the ways in which Fu Baoshi not only captured the essence of his natural subjects through novel landscape painting, but the ways in which his career embodies the search for a quintessential “Chinese-ness” within the fine arts and in the realm of national character.

Committee: Andrew Hershberger Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Michael Brooks Ph.D. (Committee Member); Rebecca Skinner Green Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Asian Studies; Biographies; Fine Arts; History; Political Science

MFA, Kent State University, 2023, College of the Arts / School of Art

This thesis research seeks to investigate the emotional and philosophical relationship between recorded history and lived experience. The paintings use self-portraiture to expand my personal narrative, situating myself in an ongoing, collective history of struggle that reflects the human condition. How the self fits into a larger whole is continuously investigated by inserting myself as the figures populating these historical settings. The paintings explore how violence is consumed in the stories we share and how it reflects the political and economic history we experience.

Committee: Joseph Underwood (Committee Member); Eli Kessler (Committee Member); Shawn Powell (Advisor) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art History; Fine Arts; Hispanic Americans; Latin American History; Middle Ages; Religious History

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2021, Studio Art

There is an anxiety which accompanies the experience of navigating a society which is failing its people. This angst manifests in many ways: irrational compulsions, sensations of abject disembodiment, the illusion of powerlessness, etc. I speak to these disorienting experiences through the creation of a surrealistic dream space in the form of large-scale oil paintings. By placing contorted, discorporate figures in ambiguous, amorphic environments, I aim to portray the liminal space occupied by myself and other members of my generation. This paper serves as an exploration of this liminal realm, as well as an investigation into the significance of painting as a catalyst for conversation and social change.

Committee: John Sabraw (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

MFA, Kent State University, 2019, College of the Arts / School of Art

An examination on the conventions of antique portraiture and how they are translated into a contemporary painting context. Through the use of a limited color palette and a restrained focus on the subject matter, (only hands, faces, and singular objects), the portrait becomes a concise, streamlined conception.

Committee: Gianna Commito (Committee Member); Darice Polo (Committee Member); Shawn Powell (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, History of Art

As the Chinese Communist Party sought to redefine socialism in the Chinese context and position itself in shifting international currents during the first decade of the newly founded People's Republic of China (1949–1959), the country's art establishment rejected Western modernism in favor of academic styles and selective forms of traditional Chinese practices. State-employed artists, tasked with visualizing party policies, placed themselves at the juncture of historical narratives and social discourses that defined the first decade and a half of the PRC. This dissertation examines a particular group of artists, based in the northwestern provincial capital of Xi'an, who reformulated the traditional practice of ink and color painting (guohua) as a modern artistic medium through their unorthodox brushwork and subject matter. Led by the Yan'an printmaker-turned-painter Shi Lu (1919–1982) and the former Dagongbao sketch journalist Zhao Wangyun (1906–1977), the six ink painters the Chinese Artists Association-Xi'an Branch employed garnered national acclaim for exhibiting their xizuo (“studies”) in a series of well-publicized exhibitions that began in October 1961 in Beijing. Praised for their integration of artistic style with the “character” of the northwestern region based on their firsthand observations, Shi, Zhao and their colleagues — He Haixia (1908–1998), Fang Jizhong (1923–1987), Kang Shiyao (1921–1985) and Li Zisheng (1919–1987) earned a collective name: the Chang'an School (Chang'an huapai). The “success” of the Xi'an ink painters as a modern, regional ink painting “school” was considered not merely a local or personal achievement but a national one. Through five thematic chapters that focus on the school's structural and theoretical foundations, this study suggests the Xi'an artists gained momentum through their ability to function effectively as a work unit (danwei), as content providers for the mass media and as interpreters of the broad concepts o (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Julia Andrews (Advisor); Myroslava Mudrak (Committee Member); Kris Paulsen (Committee Member); Christopher Reed (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2014, Studio Art

"The Memory Yields: B.F.A. Thesis Exhibition" is a collection of miniature oil paintings that aims to create an intimate and personal viewing experience. This is felt as the viewer approaches the piece, each step forward rewarding the viewer with more information. Still, there is a distance created by the miniature scale itself that cannot be avoided. The Memory Yields was exhibited at Trisolini Gallery in Athens, Ohio in December 2013. Accompanying the body of work is a written investigation into the theory and methods of production, informed by the study of family photography and how it functions within personal narrative. This thesis is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a Painting concentration.

Committee: Julie Dummermuth (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

MFA, Kent State University, 2013, College of the Arts / School of Art

As an artist, I am interested in how to inject the personal and intuitive into the regularity of systems, and with this body of work, I do this primarily by introducing disruptions. Responding to the flat, loom-controlled patterning that is used to structure a field of yarns, I introduce irregularity and disruption through painting the yarns with organic shapes prior to weaving. The result is a body of work that balances steady patterning of weaving with painted images in transitional movement.

Committee: Janice Lessman-Moss M.F.A (Advisor); Kathleen Browne M.F.A (Committee Member); Michael Loderstedt M.F.A (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1950, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

MFA, Kent State University, 2024, College of the Arts / School of Art

“Soft Machines: Abject Bodies, Queer Sexual Expression, and the Deterritorialized Transfeminine Figure” explores the relationship between the abjection associated with the feminine figure and queer discourses surrounding sexual expression and gender dynamics. Julia Kristeva, in her 1980 work “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection”, examines the social and cultural disruptions caused by objects/subjects on the boundaries of “The Symbolic Order”. Kristeva's work, along with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, lend themselves to the development of a perspective on queer bodies that allow them to revel in the abjection imposed on them. The transfeminine figure is regarded as a taboo, an infringement on the boundaries of both social order and biological determinism. It is in this that “Soft Machines” weaponizes abjection to illustrate expressions of queer love and desire that align themselves with femme perspectives, an act of resistance against the centering of masculine accounts of queer sexual expression. “Soft Machines” situates itself as a feminist body of work exploring the boundaries of printmaking, painting, and sculpture using watercolor silkscreen monotype on canvas and installation. “Soft Machines” explores a corporeal color palette reminiscent of skin and the bodily interior. The “figures” printed on the canvas works are ambiguously internal and external, twisting and folding over each other across the print/paintings. My research into the relationship between painting and printmaking inform these aesthetic and formal decisions, “queering” the traditional formats of both by producing works that could be read by viewers in either context. The main painting device throughout this work is specifically watercolor, chosen for its historical relationship to women in the arts as well as its ability to stain textiles with minimal material disruption. The balancing of softness and the visceral is central to this work and is reflective of my research inte (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Taryn McMahon (Advisor); Shawn Powell (Committee Chair); John Paul Morabito (Committee Chair); Eli Kessler (Committee Chair) Subjects: Fine Arts

MFA, Kent State University, 2024, College of the Arts / School of Art

As an artist and writer, I create work to explore my own complicated identification and disidentification with queer aesthetics, experiences, and environments through conceptual and physical processes. My thesis, entitled Someone's Sun, is a meditation on gay loneliness in the current age of gay-male sociality made material in a series of handwoven tapestries. I aim to embody a sense of self-inflicted ennui, a self-defeating act of seeking for connection while simultaneously hiding oneself behind banal / insipid landscapes. Through the remediation of photographs of sunrises and sunsets posted by gay men as placeholders for their own portraits on social media apps, I abstract and amplify saturation and composition in photoshop to create a digital painting of an otherworldly environment akin to those of Science Fiction films and television. I use my digital paintings as references, glancing up at them as I dye-paint warps with a variety of color using painterly brushstrokes, once again filtering each image through a further filter of abstraction. Through these digital and analog painting processes I explore color and scale, culminating in a final remediation by weaving with single toning color of wool and a metallic lurex weft yarn on traditional floor looms to create shimmering watercolor tapestries. I weave queer tapestries, that whisper seductively hushed desires while screaming “look at how I shine.”

Committee: Gianna Commito (Committee Member); Gianna Commito (Committee Member); Eli Kessler (Committee Member); John Paul Morabito (Advisor) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art History; Behavioral Psychology; Communication; Developmental Psychology; Fine Arts; Gender; Gender Studies; Personal Relationships; Psychology

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Art History

Luchita Hurtado is a Venezuelan painter who spent much of her life working between Central America and the United States. Though Hurtado developed an extensive portfolio over 80 years, her work was not widely recognized or exhibited until the late 2010s. Her work explores themes of the body's connections to nature, spirituality, identity, and motherhood through the lens of the female gaze. Her series titled I am, created in the 1970s, is unique because she paints a self-portrait by looking down at her body, forcing the viewer to take on her gaze, within a variety of natural and domestic spaces. This thesis project will be an analysis of what it means to thwart the male gaze in painting, with the example of Hurtado's series I am. This thesis engages with alternative practices of looking, the meaning of the gaze, the impacts of ecofeminist interpretations of the work, and the emphasis on the omniscience of the gaze in Western painting.

Committee: Jeannette Klein (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2024, Studio Art

The field of figurative painting is a longstanding mode by which the human body can be imagined, remembered, and chronicled through color and form. Art made about the body is a visceral way for artists to explore the problems, and joys, that unites us, as humans, regardless of time period, language, or place of origin. I seek to understand why humans connect and communicate expressively, and how this manifests in interdisciplinary art forms, by researching and creating artwork surrounding the conceptual dialogue of how memory and sense of place work to form one's identity. I use arbitrary color in the form of the color blue in order to communicate messages of emotion and reverence towards my subjects, as well as a plethora of found materials applied to my paintings which ground my figures in imbued meaning. As a painter and art historian, I am interested in how this conceptual framework is reckoned with in the context of gender by women artists. I am principally guided by the work of Luchita Hurtado, a Venezuelan painter who only received recognition for her extensive portfolio of self-portraits in domestic and natural spaces as a nonagenarian. Other artists explored include Judy Chicago, Tiffany Alfonseca, Clemencia Lucena. The development of this thesis project will be twofold. The project will develop as both a critical analysis through academic writing on the subject as well as demonstrations of creative research with the development of a painting portfolio. I will exhibit this portfolio at the Ohio University BFA Thesis Exhibition in April 2024.

Committee: David LaPalombara (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, History of Art

My dissertation, Communities of Color: The Life and Painting of Alma W. Thomas (1891-1978), examines the work of Thomas, particularly the abstract compositions she produced between 1960 and 1978, against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement and the contentious debates within the art world itself around different forms of representation. I am particularly interested in both the demands made during that period for greater representation of women and non-White artists in public museums and the widespread belief that arose more or less simultaneously that only representational or figurative art could adequately address feminist or anti-racist concerns. My dissertation aims to show that Thomas's paintings, although non-figurative, were intended to contribute to the goal of a more diverse and integrated society, principally by changing perception itself. Despite what initially appears to be their cheerful simplicity, Thomas's compositions are in fact subtly complex, inviting viewers' attentiveness to small differences in the elements' shape and color. In this way, they solicit a positive form of “discrimination,” one that discourages generalization and attunes us instead to individuality. Her paintings, comprised as they are of separate daubs of paint, stand as analogues, then, for other, even more complex communities of color.  Thomas's own life story is an interesting one: she spent most of her adult life teaching art within the Washington, DC public school system, turning to painting full-time only after her retirement at the age of sixty-nine. In addition to analyzing individual paintings by Thomas, I also investigate the artist's artistic biography, including her commitment to the tradition of European modernism, her affinities with the Washington Color School (particularly the artists Kenneth Noland and Sam Gilliam), and her fascination late in life with the Apollo space program, which I discuss as an early form of Afrofuturism. My ambition is to reveal the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lisa Florman (Advisor); Sam Aranke (Committee Member); Jody Patterson (Advisor) Subjects: African Americans; American History; Art History; Fine Arts

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2023, Studio Art

This essay describes my thesis for my BFA degree in Studio Art. This paper serves as a memoir of my journey as a painter to flow state. In this essay I outline how social media addiction causes anxiety and how I overcame that anxiety through being in the present through flow state and finding the sublime in my work.

Committee: John Sabraw (Advisor) Subjects: Aesthetics; Fine Arts; Mental Health; Philosophy

MFA, Kent State University, 2021, College of the Arts / School of Art

These large-scale oil paintings on panel pair down simple, anthropomorphized shapes in an effort to explore the formal elements of painting and color theory while simultaneously creating tension and humor through color, edges, and texture. In utilizing color theory to create color relationships that result in sensory optical experiences upon viewing, I can trick my viewer into seeing colors as other than themselves, adding a layer of humor to the production of the works. This tool is also used to create depth, creating space within the paintings more easily translatable to the viewer as a livable space, reinforcing the idea that the shapes they are seeing could be human ones. Adding another layer of humor is the rounded shapes utilized in the work, often hard to describe as anything other than a tangible common object such as a balloon, lozenge, or worm. The shapes morph between purely formal explorations and anatomical depictions, adding a sense of playfulness to the compositions. The introduction of curved shapes allows for a push back against the bravado of minimalism and geometric abstraction I have experienced as a female artist in those fields, adding feelings of awkwardness and tension that mimic my own in relationship to those ideas.

Committee: Gianna Commito (Advisor); Shawn Powell (Committee Member); Peter Johnson (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, History of Art

This dissertation outlines the history of the symbiosis between painting and Du Fu's poetry from the poet's time to the twentieth century. Examining the combination of the two arts between 1912 and 1966 will show artists' various ways of incorporating Du Fu's poems in their paintings. It suggests that a shift of spectatorship from private circles of the educated elite to the common people and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took place around 1949, which fundamentally changed the functions of traditionalist art from private communication to service to the masses and the country. In the People's Republic of China (PRC, 1949 onwards) the establishment of the Du Fu Memorial Museum in 1955 marked an important moment in the processes of politicizing and institutionalizing the symbiosis of painting and Du Fu's poetry. The museum has directed and controlled the production, exhibition, and circulation of paintings after Du Fu's poems based on constantly changing political realities. In this context, I argue in this dissertation that artists used their agency and incorporated Du Fu's poetry in their paintings in ingenious ways. They transformed their paintings, with Du Fu's texts, into versatile spaces, where on the surface they might appear satisfactory to the censors, but at other levels suggested alternative meanings available to elite viewers.

Committee: Julia F. Andrews (Advisor); Kirk A. Denton (Committee Member); Namiko Kunimoto (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History