Sarah Peters

This class explores sculpture through sequential movements—growing an artwork through considered shifts in form. Beginning with the foundational materials of plaster and clay, students will create an original form and then alter that sculpture, step-by-step, with additional materials, including (but not exclusively) found objects, paper mache, cardboard, and textiles. These additions will explore and expand on the original form and can be a catalyst for a series of new objects. The objective is to join intuition and imagination to the properties of sculpture—volume, negative and positive space, shape, line, color, closed and open surface form, balance, proportion, scale, and construction—and develop the skill of generating new ideas from existing work. There will be frequent individual and class critiques, and all work will be open to the student’s individual interests, concerns, and interpretation.

The history of sculpture is partly a story of functional objects: ceremonial vessels, masks, armor, fertility figurines, religious altars, and ritualistic death objects. Using these objects of utility as inspiration, students will create new objects both in response to and reflecting their own contemporary concerns. In this way, we will hold hands with the makers of these objects from the past, examine our kinship as well as our differences, and find meaning through form. The class will focus on the properties of sculpture: volume, negative and positive space, shape, line, color, closed and open surface form, balance, proportion, scale, and construction. We will work with many different materials, including found objects, clay, plaster, papier maché, cardboard, and textiles. There will be frequent individual and class critiques and research trips to New York City museums. Each class assignment—as well as the conference project—will be open to the student’s individual interests, concerns, and interpretation.

This class will examine the human head, both as a naturalistic form and as a container for emotion, experience, and thought. In this hands-on sculpture class, you will first learn to sculpt a representational head: eyes, lips, nose, hair, forehead, and skull. This foundation will become the departure point for imaginative exploration. The class will focus on the properties of sculpture: volume, negative and positive space, shape, line, color, closed and open surface form, balance, proportion, scale, and construction. We will work with many different materials, including clay, found objects, plaster, paper mache, cardboard, and textiles. There will be frequent individual and class critiques and a research trip to a New York City museum. Each class assignment, as well as the conference project, will be open to the student’s individual interests, concerns, and interpretation.

This course explores drawing as a tool for self-expression, imagination, and storytelling and as a language for exploring and communicating ideas. The first half of the class will concentrate on developing the skill sets of observational drawing: linear drawing, tonal drawing, mass and volume, negative space, contour, proportion/sighting, planar construction, and composition. The human form will be the focus of the second half of the class. Students will draw from the model and make artworks using the human form as the basis of and/or point of departure for using traditional and experimental materials and processes. Throughout the semester, there will be keynote presentations on contemporary and historical drawing, a study trip to a New York City museums/galleries, and group and individual critique.