Date of Award

5-2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Legacy Department

Art

Committee Chair/Advisor

Cross, Sydney

Committee Member

Cross, Sydney

Committee Member

McDonald, Todd

Committee Member

Wrangle, Anderson

Abstract

My work is generated from an internal struggle which arises from the transition of my youth to my adulthood. Through my experiences, I have come to believe that there is a significant deficit in what signifies the transition to adulthood in contemporary society. I view that our contemporary rites of passage differ greatly from historical cultures and wish to conjoin the two with my personal mythology and through contemporary and pop culture to possibly shed light on my seeming sense of arrested development. I am interested in depicting my own fantastical rites as if I lived in both cultures overcoming obstacles in a primitive manner with an opinion founded in technology. I am interested in objects from American culture that are relevant to my personal history. Through the use of appropriation and re-contextualization I establish my own position while creating a dialogue with culture at large. I took inspiration from historical and contemporary artists who worked in similar aesthetics. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Christian Marclay, and Richard Prince are identified for their use of appropriation. Where the printed matter of my work is original, my audio and video work is completely appropriated. I re-contextualize and disfigure particular and personal pop culture artifacts through such acts as sampling and looping to coincide with my printed work. The themes and ideas concentrated within the audio and video works derive from my curiosity and concern in my views of growing up, what that entails, and how that is accomplished.

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