For this spring semester two of my students worked on building a RepRap 3D printer as research.  The printer had been started from prior semester, but that was limited to only the construction of the frame; which still had to be taken apart and rebuilt.  The concept of the RepRap is that it is built from open-source community, software and designs.  The RepRap started the whole entry level printer movement available for the educator, artist to the everyday person.

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A Printrbot printer was used to make some of the parts that had broken from assembly or to update a part from the wiki environment.  Members share new designs, so as a community the printer is updated as users address issues they encounter.

Sculpture received a donation from a women that could no longer carve and wanted her un-carved stone to go to a good home.  So, spring semester brought on bigger possibilities and with that came greater challenges.

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Notice the Maquette in the far left image, this helps a great deal for reductive sculpting from six sides.  After the design has been mapped out on the stone, start carving; or for this example cut down to size first.  The last image is a finished result (later in the spring 2016 student show).  It was cut into numerous pieces and then adhered together with an industrial epoxy.

During winter break I was doing some running around with my mother back in Ohio and one of the places we stopped at was her bank.  As I was waiting I saw a very familiar designed sculpture.  The cast aluminum panels for the bank were designed, cast and installed by Akron, Ohio sculptor Don Drumm.  I would say he is the reason I got into sculpture in the first place.  Designing such large sculptures that were cast and welded aluminum in the early sixties was very progressive as the ability to weld aluminum and have your own foundry was a feat within itself.

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These relief sculptures are at a local bank in downtown Canton and were commissioned for the original bank for its grand opening in the sixties, I can’t remember that name of the original bank; sorry.

 

Three examples from the fall Iron Pour.  In the preparation post (before the pour) you can see a couple of the students making the molds for their  castings.  The one gallon oil jug that was cast solid, very heavy and all the detail from the side measurements came out in the casting.  Student then painted imagery on both sides of the casting and clear coated the entire work.

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This casting is a perfect example of early production metal casting in a two-part sand mold.  Meaning, the top knife is made out of wood, in metal casting terms is called a “pattern.”  The bottom is the finished result in iron, but is visibly smaller that the original.  This is because iron has .5 to 2% shrink rate from molten to solidified state aside from the finish work the removed a certain portion of the casting.

As upper level students in Sculpture finished up the semester with their video projection project, this one was very strong in its presentation and use of materials.  The use of sound had to be incorporated into the project.  So this student used a basin of water (mounted above, out of view) with pieces of cord running from it down to the floor.  The cord had a knot right over a pan to stop the water from continuing and drop into a pan.  I felt this was a great way of dealing with sound as this student stated during critique that the pre-recorded version did not have the same impact as real water dripping in the space; I agree.

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As I have taught this project for a while now, I had always run it as a group project.  For the most part students dug in and turned out some great results.  This semester we as a class had some healthy debate over making it an independent project.  I heard the arguments and stated that it this was fine, but as a group, greater things could be accomplished.
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These two works are good examples using the time frame normally meant for a class to be divided into half or fourths.  So I commend these two student as this is all made out of marsh grass from the ocean that would wash up on the shore.  Both had to go collect the reeds (grass), dry it out and then install it over a four class period.

Finished off the South Carolina Art Education Association (SCAEA) conference with an Iron Pour.  Sculpture students had two part molds and ran the pour as a morning workshop for SCAEA  members assisting them with making scratch mold molds.

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As the pour was a couple of days away, molds had to be prepped removing patterns (object to cast), channels needed to be cut into the mold and a graphite coating was applied with a spray gun.  Day of the pour, molds were placed and leveled in front of the furnace.

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Packed semester with November having an event every week!  Faculty exhibition kicked it off even though it was on Oct 30th.  The clothing iron relates to the community that was built by industry and slowly dismantled by overseas outsourcing.  The stone was carved out of green alabaster and was pleasing to polish as the color and character of the stone really came out.

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Installation is first introduced without technology, then video and audio, and later video mapping, interactive and integration of objects.  This student chose to document the work through time-lapse and still imagery in the video.  The work had a more feminine quality about it and I think the white on white is key to that.