th<\/sup> century, interest expanded from artists to include collectors. The series began to include title pages that made claims that the prints and designs were useful for a variety of artists, and specifically named them, like architects, embroiderers, and goldsmiths, Uchacz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cHow could one series of designs be useful to all of them?\u201d Uchacz said. \u201cI mean \u2018how\u2019 in a very practical way. What would you have to do to take this 2D design for ornament and translate it into an architectural frieze? Or into the filigree embellishment of a gold chalice? Or into an embroidered scene?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uchacz\u2019s research tackles assembling the corpus of these title pages, and examining the languages, locations, range of artists and rhetorical flourishes of the claims. She and her team of student workers are creating a digital repository, so they can filter the title pages by artist category or claims of utility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second part of the project is collaborating with artists familiar with historical tools and techniques to translate the ornament from a 2D design into actual form, like jewelry, hammered silver, carved wood or a painting. Uchacz will note how the artists make decisions and fill in intermediary steps that the print doesn\u2019t explicitly define.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen these title pages claim utility, what does it mean for them to be useful?\u201d she said. \u201cAre these supposed to be pattern books or jumping off points for more imaginative designs? If you\u2019re a wood sculptor and you\u2019ve got to translate this pattern into oak, how do you translate the dimensionality of the design? What\u2019s the horizon of possibility in terms of translating the 2D into 3D?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThose are the kinds of questions I am not now equipped to work on myself because I don\u2019t have the hand skills to be able to answer them through art making myself. That\u2019s why partnering with artists is so important. They stand in as a proxy for the Renaissance artist to help me get a better sense of what was possible with these prints.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to creating works based on the print template, the artists will make a second version based on their own interpretation, using the prints as \u201ca springboard for their imagination,\u201d with Uchacz again probing the decision-making process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The grant allows commissioning the artists and purchasing materials, and the team is in the closing stages of the print database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uchacz said it\u2019s useful to make historical arguments about prints and title page claims, noting that ornament prints rose in popularity after the 16th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI want to take these claims seriously,\u201d she said. \u201cI think if we look at how and in what ways they could be useful, we are going to find some scholarly insights that we just didn\u2019t have access to before, because we never thought to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A moment of discovery for Dr. Tianna Uchacz in her graduate student days led to a longtime interest and research focus. Uchacz, assistant professor of art history and craft technology in the Visualization program, was researching Netherlandish artists …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"featured_media":20134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[250,58,63,90],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Research Spotlight: Dr. Tianna Uchacz Studying Ornament Print Title Pages Through Arts And Humanities Fellowship - Texas A&M University College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n