Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)

"The Light That Calls Them Back" is a collection of 23 poems completed during my
three years of graduate studies. The poems in this collection are memory based and rely
on the use of metaphor to convey emotion. These writings were compiled to demonstrate
a range of poetic styles and subject matter. Most importantly, each poem in some way
deals with the poet's relationship to different places and the memories (often hazy or
inaccurate) associated with certain settings. Additional themes present throughout these
works are the loss that comes with both death and abandonment and the relationship
among visual art and images and poetry. The voice in these poems represents the poet in
different stages of life. Many of the poems appear to deal with mystical or fantastical
elements. These represent the poet's imagination and belief in the unexplained. Some are
meant to be taken literally, while others become metaphors or evidence of the poet's
desire to escape the ordinary world.

Conversations about Mortality is a series that uses installation, sculpture,
painting, and audio to explore our relationship to mortality. The premise of the work
relies on the quote, “The truth is rather than the images, though beautiful in themselves,
come to life in the act of vanishing…” The research begins with a recorded conversation
with four individuals who have all lost someone they love. The audio explores the
memories each speaker has of the deceased. A portrait of the speaker is painted on watersoluble
paper with a quote from the conversation laser etched into the back of the
painting. The painting is then placed in a water vessel made of plexiglass, and then
installed on found raw wood and steel for support. Viewers are encouraged to sit on a
provided chair to listen to each speaker.

This dissertation examines the Arthur & Mata Jaffe Center for the Book Arts
(JCBA) at Florida Atlantic University, focusing on creativity. Sixteen artists whose
artwork is collected by the center were chosen to provide an overview of the creative
process of book artists: Susan Allix, Julie Chen, Béatrice Coron, Johanna Drucker,
Timothy Ely, Karen Hanmer, Linda K. Johnson, Marie Marcano, Bea Nettles, Matthew
Reinhart, Robert Sabuda, Susan Joy Share, Keith Smith, Beth Thielen, Carol Todaro, and
Marshall Weber. The artists and the JCBA were selected for this study not only because
these artists‘ books provide a unique opportunity to explore the creative processes of their
makers, since many points of creative decision must be made, but also because artist‘s
books by definition are often conceived, written, designed, printed, and bound by an
individual artist. The list contains several artists who have been important to the historical
development of the artist‘s book or pop-up publishing fields. Their influence ranges in scope from the historical to the international, national, and local, especially in terms of
the JCBA.
This dissertation should be useful to creativity researchers and students of the
book arts because it is the first study to use qualitative research and creativity studies as a
lens to investigate the artifacts and creative processes of artists in the book arts genre, as
well as the first to use the case study approach to examine a book arts center and its
educational practices with the focus of creativity research.
With these goals in mind, concept maps were first created to document the artists‘
internal and external processes of creation, while master composite maps were compiled
to facilitate a meta-analysis of their experienced creativity. The JCBA was then profiled,
and its educational programs, practices, and policies were documented in order to
describe and demonstrate how it encourages the creativity of book artists, as well as how
its creativity-enhancing practices are established and traced into associated organizations.
A model of how the organization does this is proposed and discussed with the intention
of enhancing this effect at the JCBA and in other book arts organizations.

My thesis exhibition will manifest a visual language I developed to express things I sense
but cannot explain. I will create a sacred space, people by paper silhouettes, to
communicate what it feels like to be alive while acknowledging different realities. Each
silhouette figure I make has its own character and expresses specific things, including
care, confusion, excitement, play, and wonder. These are all facets of my own
experiences in life. The white silhouettes are anchored to a physical reality. The
chromatic silhouettes are complicated by color. They are more difficult to make out –
they are more vulnerable and ambiguous. I am peopling the installation with many
silhouettes. This expresses the range of experiences I have had with people, as well as the
many possibilities that exist for human interaction.
I will create a translucent cylindrical environment that is specifically lit, with two layers
of fabric. I will embed over two thousand hand-cut paper figures within this environment.
One plane will represent the physical world that we all access and experience via our five senses. The other plane will express another realm – one that references spiritual or
otherwise non-physical realities.
In addition, I will exhibit a series of framed collages and a compilation of video clips that
have informed the development and process of my work.

This study looks at artists’ careers as paths defined by their relative position in a
dynamic professional network where innovation and creativity are highly regarded.
Today, the theoretical and empirical study of networks has demonstrated that in some
professions the individuals’ position in the network can facilitate or constrain their
success. In studies about diffusion of information, for instance, some authors have found
that individuals connected to a greater variety of sources are more creative and perform
better. I explored this idea by looking at a network of visual artists and art institutions in
Miami, and found a positive correlation between position and success, though, not
explained by variety exclusively. In the network, artistic success is a function of
connecting both across artistic categories and a hierarchical system; therefore, in an art
world, creativity and innovation are mediated by key members, who distribute
information and resources through affiliation, prominence and brokerage.

As an undergraduate journalism student, I was taught the “little person, big picture” reportage technique – in essence, using an individual’s story to illuminate a larger issue. In this collection, in which I aim for honesty and relatability, I position myself as the “little person” in essays meant to convey one individual’s experiences and thoughts in hopes of touching another individual who’s gone through similar experiences or had similar thoughts.

The beginning of the new millennium finds documentary theatre serving as
teacher and “healer” to those suffering and in need. By providing a thought provoking
awareness of the “other,” it offers a unique lens with which to examine the socio-political
similarities and differences between various cultures and ethnicities in order to promote
intercultural understanding. Documentary is also used by teachers, therapists, and
researchers as a tool for healing. By sharing personal stories of trauma and illness with
others who are experiencing similar difficulties, emotional pains are alleviated and fears
are assuaged. Documentary theatre has expanded in definition from the “epic dramas” of
German playwrights Erwin Piscator and Bertholt Brecht during the height of the German
Weimar Republic to the recent “verbatim” scripts of playwrights such as Anna Deveare
Smith, Emily Mann, and Robin Soans. The dramaturgical duties of the playwright along with the participatory role of the audience have grown in complexity. In verbatim documentary the playwright must straddle a fine line between educating and entertaining while remaining faithful to the words of the respondents as well as to the context in which they were received. The audience, by responding to questionnaires and by engaging in talk-back sessions, plays a pivotal role in production. Documentary serves as an important vehicle for informing and inspiring audiences from all walks of life. In 2010, researchers Dr. Patricia Liehr of the Christine E. Lynn School of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University and Dr. Ryutaro Takahashi, Vice Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, approached me to create a documentary based on their combined interviews of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima survivors. The resultant script, With Their Voices Raised, is included as an appendix to this dissertation as an example of the documentary genre and its unique capacity for research dissemination. With Their Voices Raised not only conveys the memories and fears of the survivors, but in its conclusion reveals how these victims of war have elected to live their lives in a quest for peace- choosing “hope over hate” in a shared world

Inspired by the baroque prose of Melissa Pritchard, The Animalcules of Adam: &
Other Small Tales is a genre-bending short story collection that incorporates elements of
fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translation. Spanning in subject and setting, from the
primitive bear rituals of Finland to the coroner’s inquests of 19th century England, the
purpose of this thesis project is to develop a uniquely immersive voice, while ostensibly
investigating the origins of curious inventions, including the microscope, the
kaleidoscope, and the first English dictionary. This collection borrows from, and
deliberately manipulates, the texts of important historical figures, such as Walt Whitman,
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Cawdrey, in an effort to make a home in the voice
of another. It is a playful and linguistically sensitive study of the nature of invention; a
meta-fictional commentary on the anxiety (and ecstasy) of influence; and above all else, a
celebration of the written word.

Here, the natural world is consumed - a physical reality and an internal one. It is walled, but roofless - a contained space. Elements are absorbed, same energies interacting within us that work around us - the natural forces of gravitation and electromagnetism, fire and water, growth, and time. Fundamental interactions in nature, forces that hold the universe together are treated as symbolic of the human experience. The sense of rooflessness is an essential theme to my thesis. There is a constant return to the sky. The shifting clouds, the stages of the sun and the moon mimic a traveling through time, a constant change. There is a given feeling of freedom and confinement. There is a vulnerability, a destitution, and a lack of shelter. The open sky, always out of reach, is a tease to be free. Though it also hints at a feeling of oneness, a symbolic relation between the divine and the human. The open, uninterrupted path for direct prayer. Roofless indicates a continuous linkage between the ground and the sky, between rain and dirt, between nature and humankind. .

In John Fowles's last two novels, he alters his authorial project of discovering freedom for an individual from a social system to how a social system can be changed from within. Using Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection and her interpretation of the semiotic versus symbolic processes of signification, readers can determine how an imbalance in the human signifying process has become corrupted by power. Through Fowles's heroines and semiotic irruptions of the symbolic order in both Mantissa and A Maggot, Fowles reveals weaknesses in the symbolic, and consequently, moments where transformation of a patriarchal, symbolic system can be recognized. These moments of strain on the symbolic are significant because they cause a disruption of the rules and borders that define a social system like patriarchy. By calling attention to these moments, the categorical imperatives that have been imposed on women and perpetuated for the purpose of maintaining power relations can thus be subverted. In Mantissa and A Maggot, Fowles accomplishes a breaking of the boundaries, both within and of the text, by providing a literary space where readers can glimpse the power of the semiotic, the corruption of social conditioning, and gain a new perspective of their own symbolic/social system in the real world.