The following work is a creative exploration of rock formations within urban settings, illuminating the sublimity of seemingly mundane micro-environments. I argue that the historical use of the sublime in landscape painting has allowed artists to create artworks capable of evoking powerful emotion. To support this claim, I investigate the works of American Traditional Landscape painters and Abstract Expressionists, focusing on the impact of their art within the context of its creation. Moreover, I illustrate the importance of redefining the sublime to contemporary society as growing urban environments decrease accessibility to uninhabited natural settings. Through the creation of three oil paintings and two charcoal drawings, I depict seemingly unimportant rock formations in an abstracted sense to demonstrate their sublime nature. I assert that a rock’s sublimity is derived from their existence on this planet as many of these formations are billions of years old, a number unquantifiable to the human mind. Therefore, as rocks frequent urban environments, I argue that the sublime can be interpreted on a micro-scale accessible within contemporary society.

In this dissertation, I explore how LGBTQ youth negotiate understanding of their subjective positions and alliances as cultural citizens through art creation. This work addresses the manner in which LGBTQ youth express their subjective positionings within the context of an art creation forum that becomes generative of conversations and artistic creations that inform on the subject. Because it is believed that when youth engage with each other in the context of a safe social forum, they feel allowed to share openly with their peers about critical issues that impact their lives. It is through the context of sharing life experiences that reveals new understandings of the self and can become both inspirational and generative. I propose this form of engagement, when paired with art- based methods, allows LGBTQ youth to inspire narratives that are highly informative.Through application of both traditional and non-traditional research methods, data creations and data analysis the researcher and participants became entangled in a process that resulted in multi-layered understandings. This approach was generative of a variety of visual artwork, which included acrylic paintings, clothing patches, pencil drawings and digitally altered photographs. What was found was that subjectivities are fractured, but participants realized the power of their subjective positionings through identification of individual and creative potentials as the conversations and art production revealed the power of technologies of the self and care of the self. Because of this, participants were able to consider their how their individual growth could contribute to a better future for themselves and their community.

This paper is a research study of the market for fine art. The art market describes the collective ecosystem of artists, sellers and buyers creating, selling and buying art. A literature review was conducted with the purpose of understanding why art is valuable. This research states that there are three primary categories of value that apply to art: Financial, Signal and Quintessential. Financial value refers to the monetary value of art. Signal value refers to the social value of owning or creating well-known art. Quintessential value describes art's ability to elicit feelings and ideas from those who engage with the art. A hypothesized model of the art market was created that associated the three entities of the art market with the three value types. Two research studies were conducted that analyzed the ways that these three value types exist in the art market. Based on the findings of the research, it was determined that all three-value types influence each entity. However, the three value types rank in terms of overall importance and impact on the entities. This new model of a three-tiered value type model applies to consumer preferences in the market for luxury items.

To many, South Phoenix has a negative reputation of being an area full of crime, drugs and poverty. Throughout its foundation, South Phoenix has experienced many changes that have affected the quality of life of its people. The purpose of this creative project was to portray the history of South Phoenix through mural paintings. This thesis, explores a creative proposal to bring history-based murals on the streets of South Phoenix. Three large-scale paintings were created during this creative project, all corresponding with a segment of history of South Phoenix that has been forgotten by the community and the greater Phoenix area. Through this thesis, the author aims to instill a positive image of hope and determination that this community has demonstrated despite the many challenges they faced. Consequently, the author's intent is to one day carry out these projects on the streets of South Phoenix.

The thesis "How Professional Artists Can Better Promote Themselves Online" aims to create a solution to improve artists' online sales and exposure. With the Internet being such a congested platform, I began to wonder how it was possible for artists to stand out from the crowd. I conducted six in-depth interviews in order to form a better understanding of what problems and frustrations artists currently faced everyday online. The data I collected from these interviews transformed my thesis into an entrepreneurial venture, and the iPhone app Artello was born. I created an entire working prototype of my app using Keynotopia. Artello's mission is to build an interactive art community that will create and foster relationships between artists and buyers like never before. This platform illustrates to buyers an artist's personality, style, and individual story. With Artello's guidance, artists will form stronger relationships with art buyers, connect with similar artists, and create a compelling online presence.

As am artist, I am primarily interested in the representation of the human form. I am most interested in self-portraiture, which serves as a tool to better understand my perception of myself and how it fluctuates based on context. Each self-portrait is indicative of my reactions to the world around me and also to dreams, by which I mean the involuntary experiences that occur while we sleep or are unaware of the physical world around us. I tend to take a Freudian approach to understand the concepts of the subconscious mind and dreams. I also use pattern and design elements in my work to serve backgrounds for my figures. These hold symbolic significance and illustrate the idea of using dreams as a source for my imagery.