working with wire

Our last exploration in the first unit was to work in wire like Calder – hoping to inspire the students to loosen up and experiment. It always amazes me that college students seem to have forgotten how to play! First we developed some continuous line drawings from multiple perspectives and in a variety of mediums, and then tried to translate those images into wire with varying degrees of success. I tried to encourage the students to use a single continuous piece of wire, rather than fuss with joining separate pieces together, but it wasn’t forbidden (playing remember!). The results were quite varied in their success. I apologize for the terrible pictures, but hopefully you get the idea

 

exploring paper

For our second project we watched between the folds – (if you haven’t seen it I just want to recommend this video – it is mesmerizing!) to get some inspiration and then we embarked on some paper folding of our own. I was a little disappointed, the students didn’t take many risks or experiment with the paper, instead most opted to make a model from an existing pattern – a lesson learned for the instructor! Here’s what they came up with