UL Sculpture Students Explore Art in the Time of Crisis

by Assistant Head of School for Academics David Long

Mary Stuart Hall’s UL Sculpture class gives students the opportunity to use art to express themselves in the context of current global events. A recent project called, “Art in the Time of Crisis” was inspired by the work done by artist Sonya Clark. Using a wide range of materials that resonate culturally and historically, Clark creates works of art that materially represent abstract measurements such as the distance of the middle passage and length of growth in a lifetime of human hair. Her work embodies visceral poetry that requires an understanding of material as metaphor and the potential for art to give form to complex concepts. 

For the project, students were asked to use political data or COVID-19 data as a jumping-off point for an artistic piece. They created a physical expression of the data they collected to share their findings, and the range of creative projects they produced is impressive!

Rohan Datta (‘22) chose to focus on the amount of lost income during the pandemic. He created a funnel using a 3D printer and a laser cutter. Into the funnel, he poured black powered charcoal that formed a pile on the floor on a white piece of paper. Each cubic inch of charcoal dust that is falling through the funnel correlates to $1M of lost income as a result of the pandemic. 

Kate Seltzer (‘22) used wood and the CNC router to create wood slats that represent one week from last March’s lockdown to the presidential election; the slats have different spacing representing how time has gone fast and slow during the pandemic. 

Alec Wasserman ‘22 chose to focus his work on the 250,000 lives that had been lost to COVID at the end of 2020. He 3D printed a small house and made a mold of it to make the candles; he then created 25 wax houses with each one representing 10,000 lives lost.

Continuous Learning student Saylor Gigniliat ‘22 focused on the political polarization in America. She created a piece that has two styrofoam heads. One head is covered with a mask looking at a mirror littered with a collage of left-leaning political messages. On the other side is the other head without a mask looking at a mirror covered with a collage of right-leaning political messages. 

The students have done a fantastic job of taking everyday data and presenting it in a creative and thought-provoking way!