Art Students’ Pieces Jump off the Page
Among the pieces of art displayed in the first floor atrium from the third week of school were works resembling ladders, a bouquet of flowers and spherical objects with pointed edges crafted by the sophomore fine arts class. Some objects stood tall and were a creamy shade of white, while others were longer in width and made use of a colorful palette, but each piece had a single thing in common. Ms. Spata, one of the teachers of the sophomore fine arts class, stated that these pieces, based off of tessellations were all made out of paper. When one thinks of art and paper, they’re quick to assume two-dimensional drawings, but the paper used in these pieces were utilized in a very unconventional fashion.
A tessellation, which is an image of repeating form and interlocking space, was the basis for this exhibition and what the students drew inspiration from. What made the pieces featured in this exhibit unconventional was that these tessellations weren’t drawn on paper, as one would expect, but instead the paper was used to create three-dimensional sculptures held together by tape.
“They [the students] had to pretend their sculpture was in front of them and draw almost like a visual map of what the final piece would look like, and then construct the piece,” says Ms. Spata, describing the process of making the tessellations which took about two weeks.
After first presenting the project to the students, many seemed reluctant to the idea of creating a sculpture out of paper. “They’re used to thinking of paper and artwork as only drawing. They think of it as almost like a way of creating a two-dimensional piece,” says Ms. Spata. She went on to say that by creating three-dimensional sculptures with paper, it makes the students look at the use of paper in a different way. Also included in the exhibition were tessellations by Mr. Twarog’s sophomore class that resembled buildings.
When asked about her impression of the project’s outcome, Ms. Spata replied that she didn’t expect such a tremendous level of success by the students for their first project.
William Longerbeam ’14