breaking in the freshmen!

 Spring semester brings the freshmen art majors to my door.  I enjoy getting to know the new crop and introducing them to the wonderful world of 3D Design.  Their cry for help from my window popped up only 2 weeks into the semester.  

And I'm not gonna lie, it's tough semester for them.  My projects are seriously challenging and for many of them, just working three dimensionally is a challenge in and of itself.  Their first project is the dreaded paper project and it's enough to make sure they are serious about their art degree.  

 While I work all my students hard, we also believe in having a really good time.  A couple of weeks ago we invited guest artist Leah Cabinum to do a cool demonstration with our students...a demonstration of fire drawing.  That's Leah in the center.  I taught her back at Winthrop years ago when she was beginning her MFA degree.

 Each student was given a spoonful of gunpowder and a small piece of drawing paper.  The gunpowder was arranged into lines of various qualities.

 Then the paper was carefully transported to the outside work space and the gunpowder was ignited.

 It was even cooler than it sounds.  Next time you see me, ask to see the videos.

 Once the gunpowder was burned, the line was left charred into the paper.  The group of papers was then arranged to complete an almost continuous line.  

Then it was back to work on the paper project!

 It took forever for critique day to arrive.  Those are students touching a project during critique.

 For their first critique, the MWF class decided to go funeral formal and dress up.  The other classes did not dress up, so they do not get their photo here.

As we finished up project 1, lives were changed forever.  At least a couple of them felt that terrible feeling of actually enjoying 3D work.  They will be mine!  

 Back to having fun.  A couple of Saturday's ago, Lander hosted the Hustle for Habitat 5K fundraiser.  I decided to run and even offered to wear a tutu if the department raised $1,000.  Lucky for me, no one wanted to endure that sight and they failed to reach their goal!  I still ran and dared my art students to try to keep up.  James is a legitimate runner and he's challenged me before and lost.  He put in some time training before this run and he kept up for over half the race.  We passed a lot of people and only got passed by one guy.  I ended up finishing in 3rd place.  James was the first student to cross the finish line and he was about 40 seconds behind me.  That's him at the finish.

Singletary, Queen Elizabeth (Mini Me) and Syd Vicious were cool enough to participate. 

  That's them racing past the speed limit sign.

 James got cold and left before they finished but there's the art group minus him at the end.

 Laura was also there but she was the professional photographer, not a runner.  She snapped this nice one of me finishing the race.

 And this nice one of James and me catching our breath.

Back to work...

 One of my favorite days of the year is Plaster Pouring Day.  This is the MWF class just before the plaster began to flow.  They're normally a good bit more stylish than this.

 Those old clothes got messed up pretty fast.  

 It's great to see the teamwork on Plaster Pouring Day.  

 It's also cool to see the lengths some will go to save their compositions.  Ricardo stretched out on the floor to save his design.

 The "after" photo.  

 This is the TR class ready to pour.  Please take a moment to notice Kenya's hazmat suit and Spencer's Goodwill seersucker pants and patterned shirt.

 Their projects were smaller which helped keep the mess down a bit.

 Just kidding.  The miracle of Plaster Pouring Day is that there's always a mess!

 And their "after" photo with a guest appearance by Oscar.

 I also have to mention the little class...Adara, Brianna and Paradise have their own tiny class.  They made up for their small size with a huge mess.

Each year I tell the students to wear clothes they don't care about to Plaster Pouring Day.  Each year some recent breakup coincides with this exciting day giving us the infamous "ex-boyfriend shirt".  We commemorated this tradition this year by putting the shirt up on the studio wall.