SCULP 624 001
Old School Woodworking: New School Work
June 8-June 21, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructor: Rod Northcutt
$100 Lab Fee
This class will focus on traditional woodworking techniques for progressive sculpture, craft, environmental/site-specific work, and furniture design with an emphasis on non-electric tooling. The class is designed to provide students with a working understanding of wood material science and direct wood techniques for cutting, joining, and shaping. Work will be made using old-school technology; employing shaving horses, spring-pole turning, joinery, riving, carving, and scaled-down timber-framing. The class will cover some basic woodworking skills by stepping back to pre-industrial processes, making it an ideal introduction to woodworking. Because the methods are founded on the natural characteristics of the material, advanced students will benefit as well.
SCULP 625 001
Turning Nature Inside Out: Research and Urgency in the Beautiful World
June 22-July 5, 2008
Instructors: Claire Pentecost and Laurie Palmer
In how many ways can we describe and understand our relationships to nature? Empathy, ownership, identification, resentment, disappointment, preservation, exploitation...these are only beginnings. Like the relations we enact with the humans closest to us, our relationship to nature is all too scripted by old habits and limiting patterns. Do we need to invent a special relationship therapy? These questions are urgent and demand the engagement of all of our faculties, not least of which is imagination. This two-week workshop provides an opportunity to work outside in the landscape of Ox-Bow while exploring and trying on alternate modes of relating to the natural world. We will borrow methodologies and material practices from other disciplines to create new forms of research and open our concepts of the possible. Taking examples from art, science, literature, economics, and natural history, instructors will provide problems and models to structure explorations toward material, formalized outcomes. Students will engage in a series of short projects oriented around experiential research and experimental results. Materials and processes will depend on each student's ideas and interests, but we will engage collectively in practices such as walking, collecting, documenting, writing, sampling, and modelling. Daily discussions and visual presentations on contemporary approaches to nature in art, as well as some reading, will complement doing and making.
SCULP 622 001
Ecosystems of Adornment: Investigations in Sustainable Jewelry
June 22-July 5, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructor: Christina Miller
$200 Lab Fee
This course is designed to make a conscientious effort to collaboratively develop responsible methods of production in the context of a traditional jewelry and metalsmithing studio. During the two-week session we will cover the reuse of old jewelry and metal recycling sourced from our community “mine”, cradle to cradle design concepts, site specific sourcing as a “green” design strategy, the use of waste products from other studios as a test of sustainability, as well as continuous assembly and disassembly of our own objects. In addition to an in- depth exploration of ecosystems of adornment a variety of techniques that are conducive to working with alternative materials will be covered as well as basic metalsmithing processes such as sawing, forming, soldering, and finishing. This class is open to all levels. Willingness to be part of a creative think tank and design group is the only required prerequisite for this course. Some reading materials will be sent prior to the start of the course.
SCULP 614 001
Metal Casting for Sculpture
July 6-July 19, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructors: Norwood Viviano and Dan Matheson
$200 Lab Fee
In this intensive class, students will learn to create patterns and molds, the process of melting and pouring, and finishing and patination techniques for metal. Emphasis will be placed on working in response to the natural environment. While developing a technical vocabulary, students will work on a series of studies that investigate aspects of the landscape that will culminate in a final project. Sodium Silicate bonded sand molds will be the main mold making technology. Bronze and iron melting will be explored.
SCULP 623 001
Blacksmithing: Forging the Form
July 27-August 2, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructor: Michael Rossi
$150 Lab Fee
This intensive will start with the fundamental techniques of forging, and move quickly into more advanced projects. We will focus on the processes of moving material while hot, and the forge and anvil will be the primary tools of achieving form. As a corollary, the history of forged ironwork (architectural, tools, and sculpture) will serve as a source of inspiration. Each student will also be encouraged to make an inflated sheet metal sculpture.
SCULP 620 001
Red Hot Basics
August 19-August 25, 2007
non-credit only
Instructor: Scott Lankton
$100 Lab Fee
Learn the basics of blacksmithing in a fun, creative, and spontaneous way! You will learn all the basic techniques of forging or hammering hot steel to make your own functional or purely sculptural pieces to take home with you! Tapering, upsetting, piercing, making holes, scrolls, forge-welding, etc. will all be taught and used to make items such as (but not limited to) kitchen utensils, small sculptures, fireplace tools, candleholders or something else that you have in mind! No experience necessary, just a good attitude and desire to learn this ancient art of shaping metal!