Tom Morin

Abstract

The primary goal of my thesis project entitled Remnants is transcendence that can lead a viewer or an audience to a new discovery within the Self. I am aware that each individual will experience transcendence in art differently. My intent is for my photography to be the conduit of transcendence, enabling the audience to take part in a discovery of the spiritual and the extraordinary. My thesis subject is erased chalkboards of varying sizes and gestures. In this series, individuals such as teachers and students are shaping the chalkboards' appearance through erasure and are unknowingly creating information and communication for my series. Thus, I am taking the recorded world of academia - mathematics, history, science, philosophy, language and art - and presenting it as the primary source for my art. I am transforming words, numbers, and signs created by anonymous people, into pictorial objects with the possibilities of spiritual dimension. The erasure marks obscure and conceal standard fixed points of orientation traditionally seen written on a chalkboard in that we are taught to read a chalkboard - like the printed page - starting at the upper left. Therefore, it is not easy to comprehend what is seen on an erased chalkboard. In my work, the viewer has to rely on his / her visual, emotional, and spiritual intuition, as well as his intellectual interpretation to fully respond to the image pictured. Further informing my thesis project are aspects of formalism, abstraction, erasure, and beauty, which are themes that I have embraced in varying degrees in previous series of work, including Airplanes.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Photography, Artistic--Technique; Photography, Artistic--Themes, motives; Blackboards--Pictorial works; Faith in art

Publication Date

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Imaging Arts (MFA)

Department, Program, or Center

School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (CIAS)

Advisor

Theresa Mulligan

Advisor/Committee Member

Patricia Russotti

Advisor/Committee Member

Jeff Weiss

Comments

Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at TR655 .M674 2004

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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