Mary Kate's Work Showcase
Art History Projects
Survey: Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo Art
This comparison essay from Art History 2820 highlights two of my favorite artworks. Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, ca. 1484-1486.Tempera on canvas, 5’ 9” x 9’ 2”. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence and Peter Paul Rubens, Consequences of War, 1638-1639. Oil on canvas, 6’ 9”x 11’ 3 7/8”. Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. These works have always fascinated me because they depict mythology subjects during a time when the art world was dominated by religious themes. This paper touches on the art periods they belong to, the expression of allegories, and the variation from classical mythological stories.
Contemporary Art
In this Contemporary Art final paper, I illustrate the need for additional methodology of diasporic study, the intersection of art produced by diasporic individuals. Though my examples, Dominique Fung's Exhibition, It’s Not Polite to Stare, Jeffrey Deitch, New York, 2021 and Chen, Susan, Chinatown Block Watch, Oil on canvas, 74” x 84”, 2022 are Asian in origin, I believe this additional methodology could be adapted to any people experiencing diaspora.
Romanesque and Gothic Art
The final project in this class was to deep dive into any topic we found interesting enough to learn more about from the Medieval times. Everything about this class was so interesting, I had a hard time picking just one thing to research. Ultimately, I went with the Allegoriacal Theology of Medieval Bestiaries. A seemingly endless topic of surprising research. The rich religious meaning of bestiaries of the time may seem random and fantastical, but to the medieval mind, the animal kingdom provides an understanding of God, and through comprehension of his divine work, one could better understand the human condition.
Japanese Art
This is my final narrated presentation on Chiharu Shiota. In it, I cover some of her string installations including gallery work and labyrinthine-like theater installations. I cover her explanations of the internal vs external theory behind her color choices and share my own version of her work for interpretation.
Art and Protest
The final for Art and Protest challenged us to use various protest methods covered in class to create a protest of our choosing. My protest addresses the lack of gun laws in relation to gun violence against children and raises a call to action aimed at the US government.
Feminist Ecocinema
As notions and practices of cinema evolve into post-cinema, contemporary screen theorists are considering how certain media works affect perceptions: of ourselves, others, our environments, and the planet itself. In this time of ‘post-truth,’ in politics and beyond, alongside the cinema’s transitions within the 21st century across diverse global screens, this course interrogates depictions of ongoing power imbalances. To examine intersectional impacts of neoliberalism on
humanity and the planet, we will adopt the interdisciplinary cultural movement of ecofeminism as a theoretical and methodological lens through which we can closely assess how moving image works advance environmental justices and feminist resistances. Below is a classroom presentation I gave on a french movie called Faces and Places and a midterm paper exploring the Intersectional Ecofeminism Framework: Uniting Reproductive Rights, Capitalism and Ecology