Date of Award

Spring 5-30-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Graphic Design

First Advisor

Clement Valla

Second Advisor

James Goggin

Third Advisor

Andrew Sloat

Abstract

Edge is a deceptive word. It suggests lines, borders, designations—a kind of certainty. I see edge instead as a porous adjacency—the noise at the intersection of planes that adds meaning, rather than separation. Live Edges is a design research practice that is hyperobservational and multi-planar. Equal parts training ground and methodology, what began as an effort to derive graphic form from the intangible qualities of place developed into an approach to parsing complexity.

Setting locality as my origin point, signifiers of place—materiality, behavior, orientation, architectural form—serve as catalysts for graphic response. I interpret landscape in order to construct my own, testing methods for framing that employ rhythm and topography across multiple surfaces (physical or virtual), to construct immersive experiences.

My methodology is structured around a set of relationships and across a spectrum, from place toward process—from specific to abstract, structural to sensorial, interior to exterior, contained to fluid. The work modulates along these variants, simultaneously addressing dimension, clarity, and poetics, and bringing structure to the amorphous.

I build up from and into surfaces, blurring the flat and spatial as a tool for tension, interest, and layered meaning. Informed by architectural practice and theory, Live Edges considers context and scale, and observantly prods the edges, addresses the gaps, and uncovers every facet of terrain in research and form. The act of mining for nuance, combined with an agile approach to framing, constructs a process that is broadly translatable.

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