Lan Tuazon

Materials Lab: Raw & Cooked Materials will explore five techniques of material reuse and invention: densify, reconfigure, transform, design and cultivate. Dispensing with the notion of nature as raw material, standing supply, this course begins with surplus, waste and by-products as an earlier beginning point of meaning and making. This class will look at vernacular architecture, secondary use design and current industrial models of material manufacture to understand both the physical properties of materials and their interconnected social, political and ethical meaning.

This course provides students with a semester-long concentration on a sculptural project of their own choosing. Students are encouraged to focus on a cohesive body of work that shares a material or conceptual framework. Multiple individual critiques will enhance their ability to identify, develop and clearly express their artistic intentions. Image and video presentations will expand students' familiarity with a range of sculpture practices. Individual research methodologies are emphasized and structured to take advantage of the institution's resources. Class discussion of contemporary sculpture and theory will underscore students? understanding of the social production of meaning and help them to contextualize their work.

This advanced, interdisciplinary course provides a generative space for developing and understanding creative projects through the discourse of the field of Sculpture. Students in this course come together from various departments to enrich the content of their work through critique and conversation with Sculpture faculty and other advanced level students from across the school. Weekly readings inform the development of self-directed creative projects which form the basis for discussion and may form the basis for a thesis body of work.

This interdisciplinary studio seminar provides a grounding in concepts, histories, practices, and potentialities of the field as reflected in the department's four curricular themes: Permanence and Ephemerality, Public Practice, Space and Place, and Systems. It is designed to help students develop, document and position a body of focused, self-initiated work that demonstrates conceptual understanding and technical ability in relation to the evolving field of contemporary sculpture. In-depth faculty mentoring and peer discussion supports students as they prepare a public presentation or exhibition of their work. In addition to addressing specific themes identified by individual faculty, the class examines tensions and connections between sculpture, architecture, designed objects and new media as they extend and complicate our notions of an expanded sculptural field.