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Judith Baca’s The Great Wall of Los Angeles is a mural decorating a drainage canal in the San Fernando Valley of California. Baca’s previous work had directly involved non-artists and members of the community that were not creators in the traditional sense, and this is no different. Telling the story of a group of people still marginalized in the twenty-first century, this mural, created from 1976 to 1983, details the distinctly Californian history of people of color. In this thesis I explore the ways in which Baca navigates the complicated waters of creating art for a public that is not often represented and uses her capabilities as an artist and educator to break down barriers and establish a community. Utilizing public art to access an understanding of the public and the larger role it plays, I determine who Baca inherently creates for.

This thesis explores the use of location-based augmented reality to transform our perception of the built environment. In the artwork, the historic Armory building in the Town of Blacksburg which serves as home to the School of Visual Arts (SOVA) at Virginia Tech is used as a locus of changing functions, social impact, and evolution. In this case, its history is used to creatively visualize the overlooked narrative in familiar spaces through augmented reality (AR) murals. AR is an artistic medium that unveils rich hidden histories, sparks conversation, and promotes deeper connection between people and places. I drew inspiration from contemporary artists such as Brian Peterson, the social narrative of the WPA mural initiative, and Kandinsky's vibrant abstract work. The project utilizes Google's ARCore framework in the Unity game engine as well as Google's Geospatial API with the aim to creatively reveal hidden narratives in places and promote positive social engagements.

Spring Break Sisters is a professional project led by Ohio University undergraduate students to provide a Spring Break Camp to Athens County girls aged 11-14. The inaugural camp ran from March 11th-15th, 2024, at ARTS/West. The camp themes were community, self-care, and empowerment. During the week, ten people participated in an educational nature walk, guest speakers, nature poetry, and the creation of 2 community-themed murals, now on display in the Athens Community Center. The camp was possible through a partnership with Athens, Arts, Parks, and Recreation and by a $5,000 experiential education award from the Center for Advising, Career, and Experiential Learning.

Throughout the late twentieth century, Northern Ireland was the epicenter of one of the most infamous guerilla-style warfare conflicts in modern history. Spanning thirty-two years from 1966 to 1998, the Troubles ravaged the communities of Northern Ireland, resulting in fifty-thousand injured and four-thousand dead. These casualties were the direct result of years of political and historical conflict that existed between Unionist/Loyalists and Nationalists/Republicans. This conflict between Unionist/Loyalists and Nationalists/Republicans initiated the creation of Peace Walls following the famous Northern Ireland Riots in 1969. These peace walls ranged in scope from a few hundred yards to many miles in length. Typically, peace walls were over twenty-five feet high and fashioned out of brick and metal. Upon these walls, “Peace Murals” were constructed as a creative outlet by those who elected to take up brush, instead of arms. These murals displayed divisive images of masked revolutionary figures, paramilitary emblems, and calls to keep out. It is my contention that peace murals created a larger divide within the communities of Northern Ireland and were overlooked as a means of division during the Northern Irish peace process. This research will analyze the effects of the peace murals every ten years as a constructed timeline, beginning in 1971 and ending in 2005 with the establishment of Re-imagining communities. This period of analysis will reveal the evolution of this iconography and imagery beginning as “tagging” or graffiti in the early 1970s to commissioned murals in the mid 2000s. I will analyze these Peace murals from a cultural or from below approach of history, through newspaper articles, and collected oral interviews by those involved in the Troubles. Historical works from Herbert Butterfield, Peter Hart, and Ronnie Munck will contextualize the Troubles while the interdisciplinary works of Bill Rolston and Richard English as well as many other political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists are required to further understand the effects of the peace mural on the individual. Hearing the voice of the individual, and how this voice is further portrayed through cultural mediums is a significant addition to the historiography of the peace mural.

James “Chip” “Jetsonorama” Thomas is an Indian Health Services physician who moved to the Navajo Nation in 1987. Although he is not culturally Native American, Thomas depicts Navajo in large-scale black and white photographic murals. His work has been discussed in online articles and books about street art in terms of their relationship to street art, specifically the art of JR, as well as their role as activist art on the Navajo Nation. There has been a lack of substantial research, though, into the way in which his photographic murals respond to or engage with nineteenth and twentieth-century photographs of Native Americans that were utilized to substantiate the erasure of Native American peoples and culture fueled by Anglo-American imperialism. In this thesis, I explore this and another important context for his murals, the work of contemporary Navajo photographers. I examine the ways in which Thomas’ murals act as an extension of his medical practice on the Navajo Nation by discussing issues such as uranium mining and its health effects and the protection of sacred sites. Unlike nineteenth and twentieth-century photographic depictions of Navajo that sought to present them as a “vanishing race,” Thomas’ murals are intended to represent the persistence of Diné. It is instead, his murals that are ephemeral and disappear over time as they alter with the surrounding landscape. His murals are predominantly placed on and around the Navajo reservation so that his images are shared with the people who originally allowed him to photograph them.

This thesis explains how three forms of contemporary Mayan art--music, weavings and murals--form part of the larger effort in Guatemala to revitalize Mayan languages and culture, known as the Mayan Movement. This movement began in the 1990's after the end of Guatemala's 36-year long genocidal and ethnocidal civil war. The research focuses on three case studies: 1) a Mayan hip hop group that retells ancient myths through Spanish and Mayan-language lyrics, 2) a Mayan weaving cooperative that has taken advantage of the often culturally damaging tourism industry to raise awareness about the lasting effects of the civil war, and 3) a mural painted by a Mayan art collective depicting the people’s history of Mayans in Guatemala from the genesis of the first human beings to present day. Each chapter analyzes the symbolism and cultural knowledge communicated by a different form of artwork, often relating them back to ancient Mayan myths, and concludes that each form of art constitutes a form of survivance, a combination of “survival” and “endurance” that refers to the active presence of indigenous peoples, worldviews, and ways of life in the world today, that inherently defies the historical and contemporary attempts to erase them.

Los Angeles has been a locus for arts activism and community-based muralism since the 1960s and 1970s when minority and immigrant communities began to engage creative methodologies to advance movements for social change. My thesis examines a contemporary history of community-based muralism in Los Angeles and considers how this provides a framework for community-based arts pedagogy, which can be integrated into K-12 public schools to empower youth in their cultures, identities, and aspirations. I explore the connection between community-based muralism and community-based arts pedagogy by looking closely at the lineage and artistic methodologies of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, CA. My thesis includes a historical analysis of community-based muralism and I discuss The Great Wall of Los Angeles mural that was conceptualized and developed by Judith Baca and SPARC in 1976. I also present a case study of The Emancipation Project, a K-12 arts education program developed by SPARC in 2013, to illustrate how SPARC engages methods and practices from community-based muralism to develop a community-based arts pedagogy that aims to empower students. My thesis positions community-based arts pedagogy as a critical approach to education that not only builds connections between classroom and community, but also supports students and families in addressing critical issues within their neighborhoods.

The Location of Lines is a nine-minute work for orchestra theoretically and structurally based the piece on the wall murals of Sol LeWitt. The piece follows the standard orchestral arrangement, with three each: flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, and trombones; four horns; one tuba; three percussion parts playing various instruments each; harp; piano; timpani; and strings in divisi throughout. Using LeWitt’s work as inspiration, The Location of Lines explores ideas of perception, structure, and texture from a sonic perspective with musical elements, such as harmony, rhythm, and melody abstractly sonifying LeWitt’s technique. Taking LeWitt’s 1995 Wall Drawing 797 as an example, The Location of Lines was written with a single initial melodic line that fluctuates across the mid-treble register on a horizontal plane (through time), yet is vertically (or harmonically) self-referencing. Background material in the piece supports the initial line by sustaining pitches for greater durations in various octaves, thereby further blurring harmonic movement of the material in the foreground, expanding the frequency content, establishing invariance relationships, and creating a rather seamless kaleidoscopic shifting of color. Further, this line, as well as the accompaniment, is exchanged and redistributed throughout theensemble.

For my thesis project I will help a local non-profit grieving center for children transform their space with murals. By researching color and imagery and how they affect children in stressful situations, informed decisions can be made on what designs would be the most beneficial in creating a safe and calm environment for children who are grieving family members. Ele’s Place, located in Burton and serving the wider Flint community, is a branch of the state-wide non-profit which offers group counseling and resources for grieving families. The Flint location opened in 2015 and is renting an old school building from a church. Because of the temporary, repurposed location there are unique challenges for this branch including investing time in art that can be moved after the lease ends, and the need to cover lockers. When working with the managing director, Amy Krug, furniture and other art that have already been donated to the organization will also influence the design choices. By working with Ele’s Place, researching an environment’s effects on children, seeking in-kind donations, and utilizing my fine-arts education, I will help Ele’s Place create a more welcoming and peaceful environment for families undergoing a stressful time of grieving and healing.

This thesis explores ways in which the mural The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City at the San Francisco Art Institute by Diego Rivera (Mexico, 1886 \u2013 1957) in 1931 potentially affects the viewer. The main question I am addressing is why did Riveras visual language not communicate clearly to his United States audience? Was it a misuse of icons, a misreading, or an intentional dismissal on the audiences' part that caused the mural that is based on a Marxist philosophy of art and labor to go completely undetected in the United States press? I conclude it was the latter, that critics and journalists did not want to reveal the progressive message of the mural and instead focused on its formal aspects. The evidence provided is original research of the newspaper coverage at the time of the unveiling of the mural as well as the scholarship done on the mural since. In addition to an examination into the formal qualities of the fresco, I also look into the history of the mural and discuss the way the San Francisco Art Institute has alternately hidden and promoted it over the eight decades of its existence.'

Cheat River is a novel about balancing family obligations against self-preservation. That is what's at stake for Allison and Andrew McKenna, a pair of siblings in rural Appalachia who must endure their father's abandonment and their pregnant mother's breakdown. At first, the two find solace from their parents' problems on the banks of the river from which the novel takes its name. But eventually, Andrew's homosexual feelings drive him to the bohemian streets of Philadelphia in the early '90s where he falls in with political activists and a household of misfits. He disappears, and Allison comes to the city to look for him. By retracing her brother's life, she realizes not only what he meant to her but what it will take to survive on her own.

In contemporary analyses of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian portrayals of the Last Judgment, one mural is usually mentioned as an anomaly: Giovanni da Modena’s fresco in the Bolognini Chapel in the basilica of San Petronio in Bologna. The mural presents the unusual combination of the subjects of the Coronation of the Virgin in Paradise and Hell. While the pairing of Paradise and Hell is thematically linked to representations of the Last Judgment, the act of Judgment is not portrayed in the chapel. The idea for the atypical subject likely derived from artworks from northern Europe, which combine the Coronation of the Virgin with the Last Judgment. The exclusive rendering of the Coronation and Hell is only found in artworks that postdate Giovanni’s mural. Finally, the iconography of the mural specifically relates to the politico-religious messages of the chapel decoration.

From 1890 until 1930, a variety of public art projects flourished throughout the United States. The public library was a particularly important and appropriate destination for many kinds of civic enhancements, inviting buildings of distinguished appearance and contributions by leading artists, designers, and craftsmen. Previously, plans for American libraries featured monumental statues and reliefs, landscaped gardens with fountains, stained glass, and decorative mosaic designs. Mural commissions came into favor around the turn of the century and deserve to be recognized as the principal form of embellishment for many of the new buildings. Library patrons appreciated these wall paintings, interpreting them as evidence of rising cultural standards in their communities. Consequently, murals were soon found in many large urban libraries, like the ones in Boston, Detroit, Denver, or Los Angeles, as well as in seemingly more remote locales, such as Winona, Minnesota, or Washington, Connecticut. This dissertation documents the circumstances in which the important library murals from the period were produced. The story of these commissions--who participated in the planning of murals?, why and when?, for how long and at what cost?--as much as the way they looked when finally unveiled, has not been told until now. The two most extensive and influential projects of this period, the Boston Public Library and the Library of Congress, are described and contrasted in this study. Subsequent library murals in this country could scarcely avoid comparison to these early models. One aim of this project has been to recover a sense of how public art comes to be understood by a community or so-called public. A truly voluminous critical discourse surrounded these works when they were first produced. Later art historians have tended to disparage such works, however. Analysis of the rhetorical assumptions of, and intended audiences for this criticism assists our appreciation of the murals themselves. Library murals were read by different communities over time, and the varying interpretations given to the works has large implications for any reckoning of public art's history in this country.

This paper is the description of the artist's process in planning, designing, and execution of a mural for the Boys' and Girls' Room in the Oberlin Public Library. The whole purpose of this paper is that of viewing the creative process as precisely as possible. However, it may be wise to make a few remarks which touch upon the more general nature of the mental and emotional process of creativity to the extent that I have been able to generalize from my experience in plastic organization.

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