Course Description
Summary
The word ‘sculpture’ contains the word ‘culture’ reminding us that in making objects, we not only make our world, but we also encode it with our own personal values and ways of seeing. Our choices in material, process, and idea are linked to personal sensibilities or affinities, aptitudes, tendencies of thinking and making. These choices encode the work being made. As we engage in ‘sculptural thinking’, we develop our abilities to shift our perspective to embrace different points of view, different ways of seeing and valuing, to move beyond what is familiar and to see the world in new ways.
This course invites students to investigate sculpture as language and as activated object. Can sculpture exist as an instruction, an action, or as evidence of that action? Can sculpture act as an intervention? Or perform and respond to interaction? Can sculpture be impermanent, change, or even disappear? Our focus will be on alternative contemporary approaches in sculpture. Use this class to experiment in sculpture, and to explore new ideas and modes of making. The explorations in this class should be constructed to expand your voice. Through making and experimentation and embracing the studio as a site for physical thinking, this course asks students to explore artistic methodologies for making and disseminating new work, questioning their role as artists in a radically changing cultural landscape. Small is ok, experimentation is encouraged, test-drive your ideas, go out on a limb.
