ART 111 – Studio Practice

Taken during my Fall 2022 semester, Studio Practice was the first studio class I had ever taken at Murray State (along with ART 101) and one of the first opportunities I was given to create 3D art. Needless to say I took full advantage of that and really tried to hone my skills as an artist outside of digital design.

The first project was a wearable sculpture and two spheres based on the concepts of skin and structure, created only with cardboard and hot glue. The wearable is a pair of shoes, based on a symbiotic relationship between the shoes (which need form to be considered a shoe), and feet (which provides form and is given protection in return). The spheres are based on the idea of structure, in this case an organic structure, and skin, which is modeled after a metropolitan landscape.

The next project was composition and color, in which we selected a cropped and collaged image of our previous project and created a painting combining the two. We also selected a color palette and tried to match our paint to it as closely as possible.

My third project was to create an animal out of found objects. I decided to make a hedgehog because one, I adore hedgehogs and two, the spikes presented a unique challenge and room for creative solutions. The final product is made out of a cake mold, spoons, aluminum nails, a couple screws, a funnel, and loads of epoxy. This project presented a lot of new challenges for me and someone who has never worked with metal before, but I am super proud of the results.

The final project was a collaborative paper installation based on some themes provided to us from a short story. My group decided on the idea of isolation and were inspired by the way the story was presented as fairy tale and created a children’s play/puppet theater inspired art piece. We also individually played with paper cutting techniques to get us familiar with the material.