Writing Is Kinetic Sculpture: Crafting the Essay in Liberal Arts

 

Writes Professor Carol Dine:

Studio work and expository writing in Liberal Arts classes potentiate each another. The Thinking, Making, Writing, research essay  that  Chongsheng (Howard) Zhao wrote to describe  “Labrador Dragon,” his kinetic sculpture, demonstrates the synergy.

For a metals class, Howard selected and sketched three animal figures in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. As a sculptor, he planned to devise an imaginary animal, incorporating parts of the creatures he observed at the museum. As an essayist, he planned to describe his imaginary animal in sentences recounting how he created it. In brass, he struggled while he abutted  edges; in words, he puzzled as he connected ideas. His sculpture evolved through trial and error,  as his essay did.

Through library research, a requirement for his Thinking, Making, Writing essay, Howard learned that Eastern metal artists traditionally represent animals as static. In the end, though, he riveted together the parts of his dragon, imbuing the sculpture with a capacity to move.

“Though this process was tiring,” he concluded his essay, I still enjoyed it,” Howard Zhao reports. Read his statement here .