Thematically, this course departs from mundane objects of the material, industrial, contemporary world. Much has happened technologically and culturally in the course of the late 20th and early 21st centuries to alter the traditional parameters of art making. Together we will examine crucial pivots and revisions, endeavoring to understand “extra-artistic” and internal forces that shape the landscape in which contemporary sculptural gestures are made.

Artists are engaged in some of the most exciting research around--research into what it means to be alive and human right here and right now.  Art, if you let it, will blow your hair back, get your heart revving, and even make your skin tingle. My teaching celebrates this through experimentation and exploration; it’s not art if there isn’t risk-taking, trial, error, revision, frustration, failure and epiphany. Art is messy. Art is hard. I think of the classroom as a dynamic space, virtual or otherwise. That said, it is always a collective space, where we all benefit, support, encourage and challenge each others’ endeavors. A spirit of cooperation befits this and I exhort you to contribute to it.  The quality of your presence and attention to course content is indispensable.

I have conceived an overall architecture for the course, but I am also excited to tailor our investigations to our interests and needs as they evolve and present themselves. I expect you to make a serious and sustained effort to wrestle with the ideas proffered, to take notes during lectures, to come prepared to actively discuss readings or assigned videos, and to spend time at least twice during the week to further your projects between classes. It will be important to develop habits of mind that keeps you moving forward and connected to the course goals at regular intervals, rather than making binge-y, spastic, all-or-nothing gestures constrained heavily by time, i.e. “cramming” an art work into being.

Please feel free to be in contact with me as much as you need: in class, during office hours, via email. Like most folks, I can get overwhelmed by email/incessant digital demands of contemporary life and therefore need to practice good boundaries with it, so please give me 24 hours to respond in that way. Also, I’ll expect you to check your email once every 24 hours or so, because I’ll occasionally want to communicate via this medium (about assignments, materials, etc.) and need to rely upon the certainty of your being on the other end of these electronic missives. Thank you, in advance!

Last but not least, this syllabus functions contractually, and as such delineates course objectives, expectations and obligations. You are responsible for the information herein, so please take time to read through this document carefully.

This course is driven by relationship-centered pedagogy. That means we will privilege the relationships we have with each other, strive to make connections between course content, materials and larger intellectual themes. Because we are continuing to operate within the context of a local and global health emergency there may be occasions when we recur to electronic or virtual spaces. I have come to consider these digital spaces as just one of many materials we can intentionally sculpt during our time together. I would be remiss to pretend that we aren’t gathering this semester under very unusual and often stressful circumstances. I sincerely commit to honoring the strangeness of this time with all of its possibilities, limitations and unknowns.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

- Develop 3-D visual thinking and making skills. The hand knows things that the mind does not!

- Understand the techniques and processes related to individual media. Get into a complicated relationship with matter!

- Hone your ability to assess and interpret 3-D forms, conceptually and formally. Cultivate intuitive, irrational, emotional, embodied intelligence!

- Develop an aesthetic vocabulary informed by the Visual Elements and Principles of Design. Duh.

- Become acquainted with the critical discourses that articulate the historical and contemporary concerns of sculpture. Whut.

- Take creative risks, experiment, fail, succeed, and repeat. Yes, THIS!

- Think divergently. Make radically!!!

ACTIVITIES:

Project #1 Object Translations and Detours - You will have the opportunity to work in 3 different materials, realizing/pushing/stretching each to its metaphorical, symbolic and plastic potential. Using an object from the real world as source material you will re-imagine it in carved wood, paper machè, and welded steel. The lateral movement from original object to the final work involves significant shifts in scale, texture, shape, and material - these alterations live at the heart of sculptural thinking and are fulcrums for meaning-making, experimentation and process-based research. Artists: Liz Magor, Cara Levine, This is Not a Gun, Pierre Huyghe, Do Ho Suh, Doris Salcedo, Theaster Gates

Project #2 Reproduction - Moldmaking is one of the original ways of reproducing forms in the world; it is an ancient and contemporary technique with significance far beyond the technical. Copies are not the same as originals; mass production shapes our realities in ways that are wondrous and more than a little bit freakish. Together we will explore what happens when objects repeat and proliferate in extreme numbers, imitate and/or stand in for other objects, and/or crowd out other kinds of matter. Artists: Minerva Cuevas, Allan McCollum, Jeff Koons

https://hyperallergic.com/670572/step-into-a-pantry-of-ceramic-groceries-stephanie-h-shih/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=D082621&utm_content=D082621+CID_f90d1a62326e7c73f3a5489f0efcb679&utm_source=hn&utm_term=Step%20Into%20a%20Pantry%20of%20Ceramic%20Groceries

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Course Policies:

EVALUATION: In this course I value process equal to product. All assigned activities must be completed in order to pass this course. Activities completed on time, with a high degree of attention, persistence, passion, and creativity will receive all of the possible points associated with each project.

CITIZENSHIP - I use the term Citizenship to indicate your performance in the studios with regard to participation, work ethic, cleanup, organization, and safety, in addition to a measure of the quality of your engagement with the meat and bones of this course’s intellectual content. This later entity shows up in partner work, class discussion, attendance, the quality of your labor, the persistence of your process, and in oral and written critique. In the context of a lingering pandemic, our attentiveness to the larger learning environment/culture and collective intelligence that we generate (or thwart) together takes on a totally new dimension, so we will tend to this throughout the semester (20 pts.)

Project #1 Object Translations - carved wood (5pts.), welded steel (5pts.), paper machè (5pts.)

Project #2 Reproduction - banana (5pts.), site-specific on campus (5pts.), site-specific @ Safeway (5pts.)

Process (everything that leads up to a work) + Product  (design, craft, imagination manifest in the final piece)

Process is paramount in artmaking. Dedicated development of your ideas, exploration of a variety of options, and patient consideration will yield the most extraordinary results. By “process,” I mean the development of your ideas in sketches, maquettes and in concept. As a general rule, persistence and deep attention offer ample pay-off; at other times you will need to submit to the irrational forces of intuition and madness, heeding the unique screech of sirens and muses.

The formal choices that you make about size, scale, shape, color, material, etc. ARE the content of your work. Close attention to the Visual Elements and Principles of Design will yield the greatest synthesis between FORM and CONTENT. By “product” I mean the final work, its formal success and achieved meanings as delineated by the assignments, and in conversation with the fundamental concerns of sculpture, historical and contemporary. 

The relationship you build with sculptural materials generates the knowledge and skill that allow you to transform raw matter into sculpture. Craft is both the physical and intellectual skill you bring to the work.

Many aspects of art cannot be taught. That said, we will work to tap into places of intuition, creativity and mystery that fuel great human achievements, which sometimes take the form of art. Mostly, making art is simply a way of thinking—a way to construct knowledge from experience.

I’m as interested in thinking as I am in making and particularly in the intersections between the two. (One never happens without the other and in sculpture they are nearly indistinguishable.) In light of this, I will help you to develop your ability to articulate ideas in both materials and words.  In addition to presenting a variety of physical/creative problems to solve, course content will include discussion of influential technological, social and cultural forces that have impacted artists and art making over the last 100 years. Your work and the discussion of said work should evidence engagement with these ideas.

OFFICE HOURS: I’m available to you during our class time and at other times through the week when you may need assistance with course content/assignments; please email me if you need to meet outside of our regular time slot; or come to my office hours on Fridays from 1-4pm, when I am typically helping students in the Sculpture area. We can chat about the course, college more generally, careers, current events or whatever. Do not feel like you need a so-called “good” question – please come by the studio to see what we are up to or even just to say “hello”!

THOUGHTS ON POWER, REPRESENTATION AND HISTORY: I believe art and artists are indispensable to a well-functioning democracy. Democracy requires imagination and flourishes when the imaginative life of a society is cultivated and nurtured. We can only create that which we can imagine, whether our creations are works of art, engineering, public policy, etc. I therefore strive to maintain a classroom that is deeply respectful of differences in ideas, opinions, strategies, and experience. Yet the history of art is affected by the same historical operations of power that play out in the world at large. Cognizance of the ways race, class, gender, sex, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, national origin, and sexual orientation inform our making and interpreting is crucial to our intellectual inquiry. I seek to know and carefully navigate the ways artistic representation makes power and privilege visible. This can be tricky, but again, I endeavor to build a community in which we ask hard questions about how the history of images and objects shapes our experiences, desires and sense of the possible. Building this awareness will assist the effort to decolonize the curriculum.

I would be remiss to fail to acknowledge that the forces of empire in their different guises (genocide, slavery, white supremacy and misogyny) have conspired to allow us to inhabit this room on this campus on this land, even virtually. I do so with the hope that consciousness of these agents can lead us away from their perpetuation.

CRITIQUES: Critique is a format for discussing work in a more or less public way. Critiques can take many forms, including group-wide scenarios, peer/partner critiques and written reviews. Often they utilize free-association, but they function best when the criteria for analyses are clear. You will be on both ends of the critique, giving and receiving feedback. At the most basic level our interest will be in learning how visual language functions, and how to wield it for certain effect. All artworks make arguments and utilize visual rhetoric to do so. But art also traffics in language that is spacious, historically situated and slippery, permitting meanings to function in ways that are not rational or literal but instead oblique, associative and evocative. Interpretation happens best at the deep end of the pool and we will spend a good amount of time there.

LATE WORK: Projects unfinished by the designated time are extremely discouraged and will--excepting rare cases of serious personal crisis, famine, war, acts of God and/or economic collapse--effect your Citizenship grade. Please communicate with me well in advance if you anticipate not being able to complete an assignment on time.

STUDIO ACCESS AND USE: The main classroom of the Sculpture area is available for your use from 8am to midnight, except when another class is in session (M, W 8am-10am and 2-4pm). Access to the Wood and Metal Shops will be restricted to times when a trained Monitor can be present, or I or Safety Tech Andrew Somoskey can accompany and/or oversee safe use of materials and machines. Your Whitman ID will have card swipe access during the semester; please let me know if your card swipe fails to work. Please wear a mask at all times while inside the art building.

The Sculpture Studios will be monitored on certain weeknights and weekends by Sculpture Studio Monitors. Please take advantage of these students and avail yourself of their knowledge. Please always respect a Studio Monitor’s judgment around safety in the shops and yield to their experience. They have your safety in mind above all else.

You may email me or Andrew Somosky to arrange a time outside of monitored hours to come in and use the facilities. Because our schedules are often quite full I encourage you to arrange these sorts of meetings with at least 48 hours of anticipation.

DAMAGES: Any damages to the art building, the tools and or machines herein, may result in charges beyond the course fee, to your student account.

ATTENDANCE/TARDINESS: Prompt and consistent attendance is crucial and your success in this class will depend largely upon it. I take attendance daily and the quality and quantity of your attendance will be reflected in your Citizenship grade. I always require an email from the Dean of Students in order for an absence to be considered Excused.  Often, at the beginning of class I make important announcements and set up the schedule of activities, answer questions, or reflect on our direction and progress.  Routinely missing the first 5-10 minutes is unacceptable and will severely impact your Citizenship grade.

WORKLOAD: A modicum of success in this class will typically require 5-6 hours of work outside of class time per week; this includes working on class projects, readings/videos, attending exhibitions and lectures, etc.

Art making is not a linear process, and artworks cannot be crammed overnight; this dictum applies especially to material based works, which are supremely subject to laws of physics, skill and investment of time.

CLASS STRUCTURE: Our time together will be structured by short videos, lectures, group and individual interactions, critiques, and thinking through/together: making, writing and discussing art, artists and ideas.

COURSE FEE: $150

SAFETY: Works involving bio-hazardous materials, body fluids, egregious physical or emotional pain, or weapons will NOT be permitted in class. If you have ANY concerns regarding the safety of a material or process or project, you are required to consult beforehand with me. Let your guiding principle be “do no harm,” physically to the building, yourself, grounds, facilities, etc. or emotionally to yourself/others. While some actions may be intellectually defensible within the history of art, there are limits to what I will allow to happen in my classroom, virtual or otherwise, for both your and my emotional safety.

CHANGE: I reserve the right to alter or modify this syllabus as we proceed through the weeks of the semester.

ACCOMMODATIONS:  If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with Julia Dunn, Associate Dean of Students (Mem. 205, X5213, dunnjl@whitman.edu) for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. All information about disabilities is considered private; if I receive notification from Ms. Dunn that you are eligible to receive an accommodation, I will provide it in as discrete a manner as possible.

Calendar:

Week 1

Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021

Welcome!

Syllabus!

Intros + Object Stories!

Jane McGonigal on The Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Z20RVq5dA

Object Translations:

1. Find a place to sit with your partner. Have one of the bags there, along with one chunk of the plastic clay. 

2. One person (A) puts their hands in the bag and feels for the object therein. The other will sit with the clay (B).

3. A’s job is to give a verbal description of the object, WITHOUT revealing its identity. B’s job is to sculpt a likeness of the object, based on the verbal cues. 

4. You should spend about 10 minutes doing this activity. Try to be as accurate as possible!!! Reflect on what strategies you use to communicate with your partner about your object. After 10 minutes have elapsed, you may reveal the object inside the bag and place the objects side by side. 

Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021

HW: Bring three objects!

Jim Dine discussion + Curation + Interpretation

HW: make a paper and tape replica of one of your objects. Think about the decisions you are making relative to scale, emphasis, material, visual character, etc. Use Leonard Drew’s body of paper objects as inspiration:

Week 2

Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021

Look at and discuss paper objects that you have made.

In-person, demos and instruction: paper maché, wire, wood.

HW: look at website for This is Not a Gun

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021

Discuss: This is Not a Gun

In-person, demos and instruction: paper maché, wire, wood.

HW: Spend time getting your first Object Translation going. WATCH: Pierre Huyghe Art 21

Week 3

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021

DISCUSS: Pierre Huyghe work

WORK DAY

Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021

WORK DAY

HW: finish up first Object Translations, present to class on Tuesday

Week 4

Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021

WORK DAY

HW:

WATCH: Doris Salcedo Art 21

Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021

DISCUSS: Doris Salcedo

WORK DAY

Week 5

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021

WORK DAY

HW:

WATCH: Adam Milner Art 21

Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021

DISCUSS: Adam Milner: Adam Milner has a theory about what he calls Vibrant Matter—”that everything is active” and his artworks exist in temporary contexts that allow them to generate new meanings (a bodega, a thriftstore, etc.) Do you believe in this “theory”??? How might it be useful to us in our thinking and making?

WORK DAY

Week 6

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021

Second Object Translations due! - Critiques

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021

NO CLASS- Fall Break!!!!!

Week 7

Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021

WORK DAY

Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021

WORK DAY

Week 8

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021

WORK DAY

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021

FIRST PROJECTS DUE - all three objects must be complete - Critiques

Week 9

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021

Critiques, con’t.

Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021

WATCH: Theaster Gates Art 21

READ: Jeanette Winterson’s ART OBJECTS

Week 10

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021

Begin Reproduction Projects!

DISCUSS: Art Objects

WATCH: Liz Magor ART 21

Demo - Mold Theory

Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021

WORK DAY, demos and instruction, plaster, banana molds

Week 11

Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021

WORK DAY, demos and instruction, intro to silicone molds

Thursday, Nov. 11, 2021

WORK DAY, silicone molds continued

***You must bring an object to make your first mold***

Week 12

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021

WORK DAY

Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021

WORK DAY

****THANKSGIVING BREAK****

Nov. 22-26

Week 13

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021

WORK DAY

Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021

First Object due - Critique

Week 14

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021

Second Object due - Critique

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021

LAST DAY OF CLASS - Critique and course wrap up

Week 15

Final Exam Week - our final will be written

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