Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Art
Committee Chair/Advisor
Todd McDonald
Committee Member
Alex Schechter
Committee Member
Dr. Andrea Feeser
Abstract
This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and the body through handmade paper installations inspired by the deserts of southwestern Utah. Drawing from personal experience of place and the loss of a childhood home, the work considers how environments are internalized and persist as shifting, sensory impressions rather than fixed geographies. The desert becomes a generative site for examining presence, transformation, and the passage of time, both geologic and personal.
I use handmade paper and installation to translate my experience of place into physical form. Paper serves as both material and metaphor; its fibers, textures, and muted tones emulate the desert landscape. Through processes that parallel sedimentation and compression, each sheet accumulates time and change. Suspended at a large scale and responsive to light and movement, the paper forms environments that engage the body. These installations invite slow looking and navigation, where texture, opacity, and spatial relationships allude to an internal landscape shaped by memory, absence, and lived experience. Through these installations, place is not only preserved but reconstituted, suggesting that what is lost geographically may continue to exist as an evolving, interior terrain.
Recommended Citation
Downs, Jessica, "Desert Ghost" (2026). All Theses. 4755.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4755
Included in
Book and Paper Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Painting Commons, Sculpture Commons