Date of Award
2-27-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
First Advisor
Ruth Burke
Second Advisor
Brian Franklin
Abstract
My practice utilizes an intermedia and anti-disciplinary approach to conjure a reflexive vision of my experience as a gay and gender non-conforming person in rural Kentucky. Concepts that are important to my practice are storytelling, embodiment, and assemblage. Coming up gay in rural Kentucky I often felt like an assemblage. Not quite one thing entirely, but many parts swirling together in a fluidity that isn’t easily categorizable. Part farm boy, part faggot, part miss piggy. I am also interested in assemblage as a way of making. Found objects and images are tools I employ as a way of inviting the viewer into the work. Through their familiarity with an object, image, or subject, they can begin to contextualize the more personal or abstract components of the work. As a queer Kentuckian I am connected to a lineage of queerness that I wasn’t privy to until my adult life, however, could feel in my embodiment. This paper outlines how my experiences, and deep connection to queer Kentucky, inform my studio practice and research.
Recommended Citation
Gibson, Cooper Lane, "Back Country: Queer Rural Temporalities, Pansies in the Bluegrass" (2023). Theses and Dissertations. 1669.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/1669
DOI
https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2023.20230711063201260682.999982
Page Count
50
Comments
Imported from Gibson_ilstu_0092N_12324.pdf