Summer Session 2008 | enroll now

Series of six workshop days of model sculptures:

Class: Fundamentals of abstract design for sculpture

Material:

Pencil, Magic markers. 8? x10? newsprint paper for sketches, a small sketch book, Cardboard, Sharp knife, and a minimal color palette of acrylic paints.

Focus:

Doodling to-create or recreate a personal design language. A definition of doodle might be.” Preliterate, primordial, the doodle is at once the most common and the most ignored art form. And yet for all its primitivity, and despite its surely universal occurrence among the literate peoples of the world, there was no English word for the behavior we now call doodling”. Another word is scribbling.  That absent-minded activity we do while doing something else or do during particularly boring times. Another underrated word in relation to art is play. We associate play with children, but in reality this behavior is the basis of creative thinking.

While we are involved with doodling, scribbling and playing  or making drawing that are produced aimlessly or absent-mindedly we will be discussing the works of Mondrian, Klee, Calder, Stella and other artists. The key is that this activity is not so absent-minded but can lead us to new levels of finding ones unique expression.  Interesting forms evolve not because students plan them, but in spite of oneself.  Emphasis on basic design as the original layout emerges as the color defines the forms. To experience how the peripheral elements of the doodle become a means where all space is articulated and integrated as unifidied whole.

 As doodling sessions end. A more playful part begins as the work of construction starts. The “1%inspiration gives way to the 99% perspiration.” This is an exaggeration because ever step of the process students ideas change. The classes are designed around the question of scale. In the first class students work toward making something 8’’x10’, on throw away paper. The concentration being to sharpen the intensity and skills of observation. The second series of class’s students made 3D forms that could be put on a pedestal; and in the final part of the workshop the students will to be able to envision large scale works. The end purpose of the class is to get the students to continually think of the interrelationship of forms and. these scales.

The criteria of the work, therefore, was never about a student's intention or preconceived idea in relationship to a structured program or a set of design rules as it might be in sculpture, but about playfulness. The rigors of the procedural decisions that are made have wonderful results. The message in this was that despite the insistence on method, as a type of game plan, not only did "art" arrive, but also each student's individual aesthetic soon becomes apparent through the work. In fact, as the classes progressed the differences between the students became more obvious and thus more useable in creating new strategies of interaction to expand ones range of creativity.

Class: Advanced Class Clay

Focus:

The original drawing is traced onto leather hard clay slabs and cut. The slabs of clay is then shaped in different ways to create new forms.  After the firing of clay the sections can designed as individual sctions or painted, or the forms can be constructed into entirely new constructions-- experimenting with combinations to creating interesting playful abstract sculptures. The original drawing can be prepared for metal cutouts using the computer. The cutting machines, to create lines, for lasser or waterjet  machines. The results are  interesting abstract sculptures.