College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Term of Award

Summer 2026

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Art

Committee Chair

Elsie Howington

Committee Member 1

Melissa Huang

Committee Member 2

Norton Pease

Abstract

This thesis investigates the creative and pedagogical intersections of nostalgia, play, and neurodivergent experience through a mixed-media studio practice. Grounded in Friedrich Schiller’s concept of Spieltrieb—the human drive to play as a balance between sensual and rational impulses—this work explores how childhood memory, instinct, and impulsive mark making inform both artistic production and art education.

Drawing on theoretical frameworks by Susan Sontag and John Berger, the work resists overinterpretation in favor of sensory immediacy, inviting viewers into direct, embodied encounters with material form. Sontag’s critique of mimetic representation and Berger’s analysis of reproducibility and context inform a practice that embraces mass-produced, upcycled, and craft-associated materials—glitter, wood, glass, fabric, and found objects—as vehicles for expressing neurodivergent cognition and lived experience.

Key works, including Adaptive Play (Fig. 4), The Hungry Caterpillar Series, Anatomy (Fig. 5), and Stresscence (Fig. 14), map psychological and sensory landscapes through sculptural abstraction, glitter painting, and mixed-media construction. These pieces engage with accessibility, identity, bisexuality, chronic illness, and the tension between internal belief and external expectation, while drawing formal influence from Martin Kippenberger, Yayoi Kusama,

Frank Stella, and Mark Dion. The thesis further develops a scaffolded pedagogical model—I Do, You Do, We Do—connecting studio practice to classroom teaching, positioning the canvas, classroom, and playground as unified playscapes for learning and becoming. Ultimately, this body of work argues that play is not incidental but essential: a fundamental strategy for spatial, psychological, and creative orientation within public life.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

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