Digital Collections Willamette University
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Keanu Narciso 2025
Full text linkLOOK! is a conceptual art and design project rooted in the simple, radical act of paying attention. It explores how overlooked fragment s of everyday life such as urban debris, textures worn by time, or incidental compositions can reveal symbolic meaning when approached through slow observation and intuitive response. Guided by the practice of the dérive and the philosophy of presence, I gathered over 500 abstract occurrences from my daily environment, allowing them to lead my creative process. Through archival curation, material exploration, and layered collage, these fragments evolved into a personal visual language—one that speaks to both internal states and external landscapes. The work blurs the boundaries between photography, design, and conceptual art. It embraces both precision and spontaneity, structure and disruption, reflection and reinterpretation. Each piece challenges habitual ways of seeing, inviting the viewer to slow down, to shift perspective, and to find resonance in what is usually overlooked. Ultimately, LOOK! is a meditation on perception, transformation, and creative authorship. It reflects my own journey of breaking routine, rediscovering intuition, and discovering meaning through an abstract lens. The project asks both artist and audience to move beyond surface layer of things, and to recognize the extraordinary potential hidden within the ordinary
Laura Livingston 2025
Full text linkPicture a world beyond our own, where the differences between us is what makes us strong- Welcome to the Galaxii! This line of unique and vibrant dolls are ready to accompany children across the farthest reaches their minds can imagine, teaching them that we don’t have to look, sound, or even think alike to form lifelong connections. Each Galaxii member has their own unique build and special characteristics that help them to conquer the unique challenges of their environment and make them special in their own way, and every child can learn to embrace what makes them special alongside their new intergalactic friends in this new journey of friendship! This presentation will explore the creation and ethos behind six unique characters , and how they’ve each been modeled into compelling and interesting doll designs
golden lionheart collier 2025
No full textWhat can be known and how? What is the nature of existence, and how is that nature reflected in the expression of culture? What exactly counts as data, and how is it encoded, decoded, exchanged, and circulated? To better explore the mysteries of how cultural information and data migrate through time, space, and complex systems, I’ve adapted a variety of unconventional conceptual and methodological tools to examine the phenomenon of strong emergence in diasporic cultural transmission
Morgan Swartz 2025
No full textStories form the backbone of human understanding, spirituality, and cultural evolution. They can expand our conceptual frameworks and excite a desire for deeper knowledge as they push beyond the boundaries of the known into the realm of "what if." In Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters, he suggests that "it is possible that scientists, poets, painters and writers are all members of the same family of people whose gift it is by nature to take those things which we call commonplace and to re-present them to us in such ways that our self-imposed limitations are expanded."
To See: The Mystery of the Binding Threads is a project dedicated to the re-presentation of ideas discovered within quantum physics. It draws inspiration from stories I have both read and written over recent years—narratives centered on characters who discover realms where all things emerge from the Weave, a woven network in constant flux, shaped by human choice. Through written and painted works, I crafted a personal cosmology with the Weave at its center. It highlights the ways in which our sensory experience is limited and speculates on ways in which we can see more. Through the act of creation, we have the ability to reveal these mysterious threads of life and potentially manipulate their pattern. Though other mediums provide entry points for understanding the Weave, this series utilizes my primary medium of painting. The works either visualize elements from the accompanying story or interpret the Weave's impact on real-world experience through symbolism
Penelope Misceo 2025
Full text linkMy thesis project is titled The Hollywood Cowgirl, and comes in the form of a feature-length screenplay and accompanying teaser/music video.
Los Angeles is at the heart of almost everything I write. This thesis project is a love letter to the city that raised me and the writing form that has always seemed to click for me.
This story is something of a feminist farce about celebrity culture, Hollywood, and the internet. Alana Adams is a tenacious B-List actress who just wrapped a western revival film. She is first dragged into the press over false nepotism allegations, and then again after punching a slimy pedestrian on Sunset Boulevard. As Alana method acts around town and is thrust even further into the public eye, she must navigate hedonistic parties, cutthroat PR agents, and the realization that her celebrity may not be all it seems. I like to think of it as Barbie meets Babylon meets Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
The video teaser for The Hollywood Cowgirl is a little romp set to music, introducing some of Alana’s adventurous life, the story’s mood, and how I might imagine an adaptation of the script to look. I make use of poppy, saturated visuals and a punchy punk song: all characteristics I would love the full feature film to have
Melissa Jones 2025
No full textGrowth Spurt is a sculptural installation that examines the parallels between human life cycles and the growth cycle of plants. Just as plants require all four elements to survive and undergo constant change, each part of the exhibition represents a stage in the process of human transformation and evolution. We all experience change in our lives, but in different ways and at different times. This work is interwoven and connected in a nonlinear timeline, reflecting the intertwining of my artwork and personal journey of growth
Shaun Crabb, 2025
Full text linkThis project, Genderfluid, is a call for liberation and rebellion against our current administration and the legislation that seeks to erase the trans identity from existence. My mural takes the approach of resistance through a self referential figure, who perches in the volatile waves of a stormy sea. They are braced against the pounding walls of water, their position taking a stance of power, and to the top left of this piece, we can see a glow of a sun setting, cascading light onto the ocean as well as the figure This piece was created with interior house paint on concrete and brick, and stands approximately 17’x13’ feet tall. This mural seeks to discuss several themes, tackling them all individually, with its main talking points being about the relationship between our bodies and bodies of water. Water is a vital source for us, it keeps our bodies functioning, but also can be a representation of gender identity and transition. As water cycles through our body, it inherently becomes intertwined with our gender and sexuality, which is constantly changing and fluid.
Other themes are discussed in this mural, like the lesbian identity and its place historically, and how this influences the fight for liberation from oppressive forces. Typically, lesbian identities get striked as being a “lesser-sin”, something that isn't taken as seriously as its male counterparts, and often is seen as a “phase”. Through centuries, lesbians have fought in different ways for visibility through art and literature, and oftentimes hid sapphic themes in stories and visuals, even in pious pieces depicting Christ and nuns. I also discuss themes of fatness and fat identity in my work, as fat people have exclusively experienced oppression and erasure. I intersect these two discussions by highlighting the fat female experience, which for decades has grown into a tumultuous relationship between fat female bodies and society's pressures and expectations. I then go on to discuss how the fat female body is a threat to the patriarchy, because it shows living authentically despite what is put in place around you that says otherwise.
Overall, my mural intersects the relationships and experiences of fatness, lesbianism, and transgenderism, as while they are all facets of my identity, they are all currently at threat of erasure from our current administration. By using water as not just a representation for transition and gender identity, but also for hate and bigotry and the relationship between it and our society, I bridge the gap between these two and highlight rebellion, resistance, and liberation. It’s important to remain unified and together as a community as the erasure of trans identities becomes more rampant, and through organized rebellion, an oppressive regime can be defeated