Students experiment with new materials in ART210 Process

In Art210, Process: Art + Design Exploration, students began the semester with an assignment to use a material they’ve never used before–traditional, non-traditional or digital. The purpose of the assignment is to push students’ creativity beyond their comfort zone. Artists work in two primary ways, either starting with and idea and then finding materials to help articulate it, or beginning with materials and working organically to discover a concept. For this “material to concept” assignment students chose a wide variety of materials, including drawings made with string dipped in ink (Jordan Lightner, ’17), candy wrappers  (Kimberly Bradford, ’14), carved cardboard (Danny Pobereyko, ’14), watercolors on fabric (Kaylin Greer, ’17), plastic bags (Esther Flaharty, ’14), shredded paper (Emily Hayden, ’14) and even loose leaf tea (Kelsey Nylin, ’14).

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Anne Gouty decided to use pieces of stainless steel that her father had saved. The material had belonged to her grandfather originally and had sat unused for seventy years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Anne translated designs, a type of personal signature she’s used in other media, into the metal.

 

 

 

 

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…and enhanced a stain on one of the pieces of steel (an anomaly since this material is rust resistant) to reveal the shape of a bow-legged old man with a pot belly.

 

The assignment required students to conduct research on their chosen material to fully understand its inherent properties and then conduct a series of ten experiments. The three works that represented the best results were brought to critique, where classmates provided feedback: sharing ideas for improving the work, deepening the concept revealed by the materials, or taking the work further in the future.

Students completed a writing assignment to support and contextualize the work which detailed the research and experimentation process, and explained the concept that was discovered in the material–this writing assignment marks the beginning of an artist’s statement, one of many professional elements covered in the course.

This assignment will be followed with a second that works from “concept to materials” and a third that explores the boundaries between design and fine art. By the end of the semester students in the course will have also written an artist’s bio and resume, curated an exhibition of their work and created a digital portfolio that documents their work over the semester. Below are some links to the digital portfolio’s created in last year’s Process class!

Reid Bruner (’15) http://rmbruner.wix.com/atlas

Brooke Dominguez (’16) http://bdomingu.wix.com/website-portfolio

Jasmine Gonsalves (’15) http://jasminelizg.wix.com/jasmine-gonsalves

Abbi Miles (’16) http://abbiga15.wix.com/abbigailmiles

Olivia Toriumi (’14) http://oliviatoriumi.wix.com/oliviatoriumi