Digital Collections Willamette University
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16804 research outputs found
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Moriah Gurevich 2025
No full textTransient Echoes is a 4.5-minute stop motion animated installation piece that demonstrates and dissects how monsters can be used for a better understanding of the human experience, and how monsters can be used as a vessel to represent humanistic qualities, such as hunger, growth, fear, and curiosity. It is an embodiment of my own fears and anxieties, specifically in relation to dreams, nightmares, fears of the unknown, death, and sickness. Invasiveness additionally plays a huge part of the film's narrative functions. Inspired by the natural world, it also ties into environmental harm and destruction. Additionally, although there is death represented in this project which is often viewed as a sad thing, it is represented in a way that is beautiful and peaceful through the fabrication skills and the sound design
Emma Schoeni 2025
No full textRevision is a messaging campaign designed to create a narrative of possibility and agency for women’s sports. It is designed to inspire, to actively subvert gender expectations, and to challenge social paradigms to reclaim negative narratives surrounding women’s sport with a sense of agency. It is a celebration of athletes and a celebration of creativity. It is a multimedia endeavor, blending design and illustration in different ways to emphasize its message. That message centers on creating a culture of support for women’s sports and inspiring young athletes everywhere to keep playing. It aims to balance the challenges being faced with celebrating the success, progress, and the positive impact of women’s sports. This is a project that celebrates all I have learned and continue to learn from sports and visualizes what I believe sports can become
Cynthia Souder, 2025
No full textThis thesis explores the cultural and symbolic dimensions of the "crone" through a series of five original sculptures, each embodying a distinct trope of older womanhood. Installed in the shape of a physic garden, the sculptures form a circle—an invitation for the viewer to enter, explore, and witness their differences. This immersive arrangement at Building Five creates a space not only for contemplation but also for connection and participation. I invite you to become part of the circle of crones in the garden.
My research draws on feminist theory, histories, and contemporary art discourse, challenging the ageist and misogynistic connotations historically attached to the term "crone." Instead, I reclaim the crone as an archetype of wisdom, resilience, and transformation. Historically, women labeled as crones were often persecuted not for any wrongdoing, but for stepping outside patriarchal expectations—retreating from societal norms, decentering men, and living mature, independent, and wise lives. Through this research and sculptural practice, I trace the figure of the crone across history and popular culture, examining how these representations shape and are shaped by the roles, behaviors, and perceptions of women in contemporary Western American society
Casey Ellson 2025
No full textThe content of this work looks into my past, where childhood abuse took place from around the ages of 8–15. The intent behind this work is to take the poems that I wrote during this time and poems that I have written to my younger self and bring them into physical space. In doing this, it allows me to process what I went through so I can begin to heal from my childhood trauma
Ari Albertson 2025
Full text link"synovia" is rooted in a clay practice I've been engaging in for the past year where I work with my eyes closed. Working in this way puts me into a unique and immersive flow state, and a direct tactile relationship with the material, resulting in forms that are surprising, intimate, and exciting. I consider this clay practice an extension of dance. Free expressive movement, whether at an ecstatic dance gathering or at the club, is one major access point for me to this state of embodied presence, or flow, or what I'm calling betweenity (a term I've adapted from Loren Chasse). Betweenity is characterized by a balance of embodiment, transcendence, groundedness, and interpermeability. Betweenity is interested in the ever-emergent rather than assumptions and preconceptions. I'm interested in the dancefloor as one access point to betweenity. I'm interested in the somatosensory experience of the dancefloor, of the sounds, lights, colors, feelings and motions of the dancefloor. I'm also interested in a theoretical expansion of the dancefloor as a conceptual site, a site of potentiality, a space for chance, experimentation, transformation, chimaerical and alchemical amalgamation. The furthest and most ambitious extensions of this inquiry ask what it might mean to see the dancefloor, and the betweenity it reveals, as a possible paradigm, a way of acting and interacting that might lead us into a more just, sensitive, radical and subversive sensibility.
Formally, "synovia" is a sound and sculpture installation, consisting of 18 ceramic sculptures suspended through the space, many of which contain small speakers. The sound installation consists of subtle sounds moving around the space via these tiny speakers as well as a foundation of low-frequency sound played through a subwoofer. The installation is meant to invoke betweenity and the dancefloor in a highly abstracted manner – the formal choices are intended to evoke sensations of interaction, intimacy, inhabiting your body among other bodies, and feelings of perceptual relation: distance, proximity, and the space between these relations
India Rel-McNeese 2025
No full textBaby Teeth is a Midwestern Gothic fairytale taking the form of a 64-page picture book dummy with graphic novel elements. It follows twelve-year-old Luisa, who has grown unhappy with the many changes in her life. Leaving her old home behind, Luisa and her mother start anew in an isolated rural town. Strange teeth and a mysterious creature begin to appear as she grapples with her fears of growing up.
Although Baby Teeth is not autobiographical, it is intrinsically connected to my experiences in Nebraska, my family's history, and my childhood. Like a scrapbook, all of these little pieces of myself have been taped together into a single narrative. This project has become more than just a story, but rather a therapeutic exploration of fear, grief, and the many experiences that have shaped me
Albany Case 2025
No full textThrough creating a pitch bible for an animated feature film including character designs, backgrounds, and supplemental illustrations, I used the characters of anthropomorphized racehorses to explore themes of male relationships, their nuances, the dynamic shift that defines a romantic or platonic relationship, and to make an authentic and accessible narrative of male-male love. Targeted at general audiences, Off the Bit seeks to bring queer stories to a broader demographic and to remove the stigma of queer stories being only for adults. Following the story of the characters Sterling Silver, Lord Desmond, and Little Red, this work’s focus themes are self-acceptance, finding your own peace, found family, and adjusting to major life changes and how those changes affect the relationships a person has