Category: 3D
Summer 2019: In The Corner of the DMC Where Free Speech Lives… (Sculpture by Anonymous)
Lisa Lee: In Dark Skin
Writes Lisa Lee (2018):
My installation is called In Dark Skin. It addresses the complexities of raising a black male, through the eyes of a mother. It answers the mystery and highlights historical explanations as to why mothers of black boys tend to be protective of their sons. This work includes a sculpture of a mother holding up a shield in one hand and her significantly larger son in the other.
The media includes video projection, as well as sound (original song and word). Each element represents a thing that endangers the black male [Systems designed to destroy black boys, teachers lacking cultural proficiency, police brutality, etc.] This work functions as a stand-alone art piece, as well as a tool for cultural proficiency.
Wetlands Science & Policy: Professor Jennifer Cole Shares What Students Learn
Photos: Gary Parzych. Music: Ludwig van Beethoven, 6th Symphony (“The Pastoral”). Video: Gerst.
Gary Parzych (2019) writes:
I am doing an amazing stone carving internship in Vermont. And I have found an unexpected connection to wetlands….about which I learned in Wetlands Science & Policy.
The three quarries that are on our property were first excavated in the early 1800’s and are near the base of a large hill. Until 1970, quarry operators pumped the quarries to keep the marble dry and the workers safe. Pumping massive amounts of water out of the quarries and down the hill, the operators created a huge marsh in what was a valley/ dry flat land. Now the downhill site has saturated soils and marsh vegetation. It is clearly a wetland! Super interesting side effect of marble quarrying.
An Interesting And Surprising Life
A Friday Night Lights character drafts a self-evaluation for college applications:
TYRA [Voice Over] Two years ago, I was afraid of wanting anything. I figured wanting would lead to trying and trying would lead to failure. But now I find I can’t stop wanting. I want to fly somewhere in first class. I want to travel to Europe on a business trip. I want to get invited to the White House. I want to learn about the world. I want to surprise myself. I want to be important. I want to the best person I can be. I want to define myself instead of having others define me. I want to win and have people be happy for me. I want to loose and get over it. I want to not be afraid of the unknown. I want to grow up to generous and big-hearted, the way that people have been with me. I want an interesting and surprising life. It’s not that I think I’m going to get all these things. I just want the possibility of getting them. College represents possibility, the possibility that things are going to change. I can’t wait.
“Happiness is largely related to one’s sense of belonging,” Katie McColgan declares in a simulated survey of affiliative traits that she devised for a Liberal Arts 400-level “summative elective,” Friday Night Lights: An American Mirror.”
Friday Night Lights is a television series treating high school life in an imaginary Texas small city.
Says Professor Robert Gerst: “Katie evaluated characters who play leading roles in the show. Katie learned affiliative personality analysis in LASS-281 (Psychology of Flourishing). She used that lens to analyze, as if they were real people, her fictional subjects.”
The One You Feed
Ethan Hamby offers this account of his 2016 installation, The One You Feed:
In the canvas tent beyond Smuggler’s Notch I bonded with nature in a way I never have. Sometimes alone with 30 dogs: feeding, scooping poop, running tours, collecting firewood. I never felt more connected to the season, to the land, or to myself. The changing snow, the hardness of the trail, were markers of the ride to come. I observed life with intent. The dogs were the hardest working creatures I have ever seen; little husky mutts, pulling with every ounce of muscle- loving it. The joy of the run was euphoric. I could feel a shift within my spirit and my work to come.
In The One You Feed, I create an immersive experience that investigates my relationship to dog, nature, and creativity: The written word is projected as a visual art, a creative non-fiction, collecting remembered moments through language. The sound of Swedish Kulning, a piercing herding call, blends with howling huskies. Dogs projected on every wall. The smell of sweet golden straw evokes animal husbandry. The human-teeth-marked dog-dishes questions where the human/animal tale (or tail) begins or ends.
I hope this installation conveys some of the magic I felt when dogsledding. My gratitude for the dogs that were determined to drive me forward. They taught me that leading comes from the heart; that life is beautiful when you guzzle the fleeting moments: details in snowflakes, in coats of fur, in different shades of blue-ice eyes.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good – It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:
“Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
After Professor Eberhardy listened to Ethan Hamby’s final presentation in the Creative Nonfiction Writing Seminar, she asked, “What changed in your art based on our work in this class?”
Ethan responded:
“In the past, I used nonfiction writing as a response to my art. Now through this new approach to creative nonfiction writing, words inspired forms and objects. The story continues off the page and inhabits the spatial arrangement of the installation.The result is a holistic work of art that weaves all the creative disciplines into a single experience through layers of sound, symbols, and time.”
Ethan received the 2016 Liberal Arts Department Kathryn Coughlan Award for Outstanding Student in the field of Literature, Writing, or Film criticism. For his essay Protest Pots, he received the 2016 William Daley Award recognizing an excellent essay treating ceramics.