Teacher: Sarah

                   In June 2011, my university gave me an opportunity to take a sculpture class for the first time in my life. I was very excited to explore a new side of art. There were three projects that were supposed to be completed during this summer course. One was working with clay and plaster, the second was woodcutting, and the third was steel welding.

                  At the end of the summer, I completed these three projects.  For my clay project, I imprinted a waffle-shape into the clay, and used many kitchen appliances to create different designs. For the woodworking project, I made something similar to a satellite dish that you would see outside peoples’ houses or apartments for television. I was given many fragments of wood to make a design. I started out with making the letter “X”, and I put the circle wood fragment on top of the “X” hoping to balance out the design. I originally wanted to paint the bottom wood black, and have the circle painted white. I did not have time to paint the bottom black, and so this was the final design. The steel welding project was very difficult. I had many ideas, but I wanted my project to look like a music note at the end. However, my professor says it looks like a flower wilting. I decided to try to make it look more like an octopus, by stretching the legs out further, but I did not have enough material to make eight legs. My teacher suggested I work with chain at the top, but the heaviness of the chain makes the bottom not able to support it. That’s why the ball droops. I wanted to use colors from a piano, such as gold, black and white. The Home Depot did not have all the colors I needed for my design; therefore, as you will see, I have bright yellow, white, black and green chains supporting the structure.

                  Of all three projects, my favorite is the woodcutting satellite dish.  Although, I did not intend for it to look like a satellite dish, the project looks balanced and came together well. This project was also the one I got the highest grade for because of its complexity and stability. I hope to take another sculpture class again to practice my skills with woodworking and steel welding. In the future, I will draw my design and have it approved by my professor before I start creating the project by hand. I hope that I will learn from my past mistakes and will be able to further my creativity.

Clay

Wood-Cutting 

Steel-Welding