Students, teachers, family and friends gathered in the Sculpture Park Sunday to officially kick off the new exhibit.
This year’s exhibit includes six sculptures designed and made through a collaborative effort of professional artists and students.
Danny Belanger, College of Art and Design director of external relations, said this is the first year professional artists have worked with students on their sculptures.
Grace Knowlton, a professional artist from New York, holds the College of Art and Design Nadine Carter Russell chair. She was responsible for working with art and design students to create and make sculptures based on her use of spheres. As an artist, Knowlton has worked with the concept of spheres for more than 40 years.
“The original thought was to have the students build my work for me,” Knowlton said.
Belanger said the goal was to have the students re-create Knowlton’s work, but the students took her ideas and built upon them.
Rick Ortner, College of Art and Design dean, said this is not only a project of sculpture but also a project of landscape design, interior design, architecture and art.
Three groups of seven students from architecture, interior design, art and landscape architecture collaborated on the six sculptures.
Cynthia Handle, an assistant art professor, said the biggest struggle was getting the students to learn how to use all the tools.
“The work was overwhelming until they understood what was needed,” Handle said.
The students had to learn how to work with steel and metal in addition to using the tools to create their sculptures.
Brian Falcon, a fifth-year architecture student, said working on the sculptures was one of the most educational parts of being in architecture.
“I’ve been waiting to get my hands on some stuff,” Falcon said. “It was more real to do this project.”
Falcon was part of the team that created a sphere that after collecting rain water in four buckets, four flaps rise.
The students started their projects Jan. 23.
Handle said the studio was “humming” from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.
“Night and day there were three to four different meetings for the students,” Handle said.
Falcon said his group got together about three days a week for four hours a day in the beginning, but toward the end they worked whenever they could, sometimes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The students also designed where the sculptures would be placed in the park and the landscape.
The landscape is a spiral of red and brown mulch and white gravel.
Handle said the spiral fits in with the theme of spheres.
Kelli Scott Kelley, a painting professor, said it is important for the students and artists to learn installation and how to have the sculptures interact with nature.
Ortner said the students put a lot of work into the sculptures and were able to showcase art’s ability–to slow people down from the rush of day to day life.