Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Art in Interdisciplinary Media Studies
Department
Art
First Advisor
Peter Cotroneo
Second Advisor
Joseph A. Baumann
Third Advisor
Brandon Daniels
Abstract
This project and its accompanying short story function as visual and narrative representations of a/r/tography, demonstrating how creative practice can be used to explore and construct personal meaning through writing and art-making. The co-written story exists alongside the altered book as evidence of how the creative process not only engages the brain through neuroplasticity, but also supports meaning-making and the formation or discovery of identity. Through the integration of life writing, visual art, and reflective inquiry, this work illustrates how understanding can emerge from within the act of creation itself.
Research Highlights
The Problem: Women reevaluating long-held roles and identities within marriage and family structures face complex internal disruptions that require new frameworks for personal reconstruction.
The Method: This study utilizes a/r/tography—a framework combining life-writing, visual art-making, and reflective inquiry—to explore identity formation and neuroplasticity through the creation of a mixed-media altered book and a co-written fictional narrative.
Qualitative Finding: Creative inquiry through a/r/tography produces transformative potential by creating "in-between" spaces for meaning-making; the process can be simultaneously generative and destabilizing, leading to both deep personal insight and situational disruption when existing social or identity frameworks are challenged.
Finding: Engaging in neuroarts and creative practices like painting or writing actively reshapes the brain through neuroplasticity, providing therapeutic benefits for emotional processing and the discovery of agency regardless of an individual's prior artistic experience.
Recommended Citation
Geipel, Michelle, "I Wrote Myself Awake: A Personal Encounter with A/R/Tography" (2026). Theses. 1730.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/theses/1730
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License