Student Projects

Drawing 210

Meme Drawing

The meme drawing visually communicates a critique of contemporary life in the format of
expectations vs. reality. The concept will exist between the sharp contrast of the two
images to form a concise and fully articulated critique of life through the narrow focus the
student selected. The critique should be both poignant, relatable, and easily understood.

The composition is chalk pastels on drawing paper (18” x 24").

Drawing 210

Contemporary

Still Life

Students choose one of the three traditional forms of still lives, (Bodegone, Momento Mori, or Vanitas) to illustrate the contemporary relationship to death. Students selected their own objects and authored their own still life compositional arrangement to communicate their contemporary critique on the socio-political or cultural relationships towards the subjects of death in society in the twenty-first century. The compilation of objects address the intentional compositional meaning and concept the artist intended to share critiquing the present.

Drawing 210

Verb Drawing

with AI

Students designed a composition creatively around employing the gestures of their selected verb. The verb is effectively communicated in the absence of the written word
itself. The overall composition is co-authored between the AI randomized drawing and the responsive drawing authored by the student. The only color in the composition will be the line(s) of the AI mark-making to differentiate the marks made by the machine from the student. Students effectively responded to the randomized AI drawings to integrate the lines into the overall composition using any 2D drawing materials of their choice in black and white or grayscale. Drawings were each made on drawing paper 11” x 17”.

2D Design & Color

Justice Design Poster

This project is responsive to the GMU Visual Voices Lecture Series talk discussing design justice. Students were tasked with locating at least one ableist/discriminatory/hostile design on campus and complete the engineering design process. Students then created a poster to call out the design and make the harm no longer subliminal to those not implicated. Students photographed the poster installed in space and wrote a love letter to those implicated by the design.

2D Design & Color

Literary Mixed

Media Project

This project is responsive to the GMU Visual Voices Lecture Series talk discussing photographic mixed media art practices with a strong affiliation to literary sources. This project was more formalist in nature having students engage in multiple material studies that supported the material connections to the literary source material each student selected. Students made a mixed media composition that had to include (1) at least one picture, (2) the literary quote of their choice, (3) the student perspective in response to the selected quote, and (4) mark making.

2D Design & Color

Nature and

The Anthropocene

This project is responsive to the GMU Visual Voices Lecture Series talk discussing the ethics of materiality and specifically that of taxidermy to ideologically look at the relationships between nature and the Anthropocene. The project included students making their own paper sustainably in the printmaking studio as their 2D material substrate and creating a diptych composition that illustrates a symbiotic relationship between nature and the humans. Students choose the relationship they wish to illustrate and visually communicate the relationship through the use of contrast by cutting the paper to make an image out of the use of negative and positive space. The final project is assessed only by the quality of the cut paper’s cast shadow using an overhead projector to illuminate the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Sculptural

Investigations

Inside the Box

Students created a box sculpture with a distinct interior world within the context of the curiosity cabinet conceptual and formal lineage. Students considered how the collection of objects characterizes the collector, the relationship of collections to the inception of museums and the relationship of organization and display in connectivity to taxonomy. The composition included (1) a well-built, fully finished plywood box with (2) a minimum of 2 dividers inside the box, considered, (3) appropriate hanging hardware, (4) found element(s) and (5) handmade elements.

Sculptural

Investigations

It’s Bigger Than You

Students created a sculpture, installation, or environment out of cardboard that is larger than the human body, but that had to be broken down into portable, collapsible, parts. Students were asked to consider the physical relationship the object should pose bodily on the viewer in the conception and ideation of the final project. Each composition incorporated: (1) corrugated cardboard construction, (2) a curving form, (3) planar form, (4) considered negative space, and (5) physical/spatial effect on the viewer.

Sculptural

Investigations

Gestures and The

Space In Between

Students created a multi-part plaster sculpture whose parts were in conversation with each other and through the use of figure casting elicited a gesture. No single part is a complete work on its own—only when the parts are combined in a specific spatial formation is the work complete.  All projects had to include:  (1) plaster life-cast made from an alginate mold, (2) at least one subtractive plaster carving , and (3) other built or found objects .