Monday, December 1, 2014

great moments in sculpture #4622, #4623 & #4624

So while all that other stuff has been going on, some academic work has been going on in the sculpture studio at Lander.  We hit the ground running this fall with lots of Sculpture I students, a good public sculpture project for the Advanced class and a very sculptural group of MAT grad students.


It looks like some of these got a little out of order.  It's much easier for me to explain them than to try to rearrange them.  Try to keep up.


 The Sculpture I students learned about proper clamping skills on their wood project.  There's nothing like a good demonstration to teach new skills.


 Danielle has sworn off sculpture, welding and having me as a teacher about 40 times in the last 3 years.  Still she keeps coming back.  This time she's a grad student and she just couldn't wait to get her hands on some steel again.


 The MAT students worked on a psychological self portrait for their first project.  This is a detail of Mean Megan's that should be closer to the photo of the whole sculpture.  


 As an added obstacle this semester, construction began on the new entrance to the university.  This is great except the project literally runs right up to the walls of the outdoor sculpture studio workspace.  We quickly lost access to our loading dock making pretty much everything we do more difficult but we did get some free entertainment right outside our windows.  This photo was from several weeks ago when the first trees started coming down.




 Later more trees were down.



 The wood projects finished up in good time and turned out well.  There's Hunter's selective hearing device.


 And a really bad photo of Emily's all natural wearable drawing easel.


 And an equally bad photo of Megan's golf swing helper.  Nice Megan, not Mean Megan.


 There's Braden's red solo cup holder.


 There were some that didn't fit.  That's Rashaad trying to get encased inside his protective vest.


 Back to Mean Megan's self portrait.  It's a six foot tall stack of ceramic plates.  She drilled holed in each plate and stacked them all on a steel rod.  They're stacked on a black tablecloth with a black doily.  Very nice



 Olivia's laminated wood lava lamp cover.


 And then there was the class when the giant backhoe broke through the construction barriers and stole two trees outside our window.


 I'm not sure how I can be expected to focus when this sort of thing is happening right outside.  


 When the bulldozer started digging up the road I stopped pretending to pay attention and just stood in front of the window.


 Danielle's self portrait.


 And then again with hair and a body.


 And then I got distracted again  This guy is like a surgeon with that bucket.


 Soon the asphalt and trees were completely gone.


 Meanwhile the students were working and trying to finish their steel projects.


Calliham's turned out well.



 This was supposed to be a photo of Mean Megan's sound suit project.  I made some videos of them too and apparently that got selected instead.  Not sure if it will post or if it will play but if she says something mean, well, it's Mean Megan and we were provoking her a little.  But the suit is great.  She wanted a suit that made the sounds of a country porch in summer.  She made the porch and the swing and attached the overalls to the swing.  When she stands up, the swing comes with her.  Very clever.


 That's Olivia's steel project.


 Paige is making a cool public art project but just look at that weld.  It's beautiful.


 Another accidental video.  This is Danielle's party dress made out of glass bottles.  She says she didn't drink all of them.


 Whitney's sound suit is a pair of wearable wings made out of freshly fallen leaves.


 Erin's take on the sound suit was to create native American leggings that made a drumming sound when she moved.


 And Daniel sped through his weiner dog bench and jumped right on his next project that seemed to be a big bird.


And that's what it turned out to be.  A heron I think.  With a big sharp beak that promptly poked Daniel right in the middle of the forehead.

We have one more week of classes and lots of deadlines coming up this week.  I'll share the photos of the public sculptures as soon as I can.

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