Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Furniture
First Advisor
Lothar Windels
Second Advisor
Yuri Kobayashi
Third Advisor
Jean Blackburn
Abstract
Home is a loaded concept. For each of us it means a vast spectrum of associations, emotions and values. However, there are also a myriad of universal commonalities of what home is in our collective imaginations and experiences despite the increasingly transitory and elusive ideas about what home means for each of us. Whatever or wherever we might call home, our experiences within the walls of what we understand to be home impact and shape us. It is the physical and sociological structure that shapes our lives and the shelter from which we depart to grow into the larger world surrounding it.
This body of work is an exploration of the construct of ‘home’ as both material and immaterial structure of relationships and objects. Through various approaches to projects across mediums and forms, I have sought to align my process of making with my own developing definition of home and of the domestic through means of connection, collaboration adn community. At the heart of these is a dependence and value of relationships. In exploring relational structures and objects that mediate them through the process of making, I have deepened my belief that relationships are at the core of who we are and how we choose to design our lives. With this in mind, my aim has been to investigate our relationship to objects, our relationship to the making of objects, and our relationship to others, their narratives and histories. Of the utmost import in driving these themes has been a desire to create objects that arise from personal and meaningful places that go further to become structures of support for the life and development of new narratives.
Recommended Citation
Epler, Mark, "Re-structure : an exploration of relational engagement through objects & object making" (2017). Masters Theses. 125.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/125
Creative Commons License
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