Mazmanian Gallery displays recent student 3-D sculptures and drawings

[Amanda Martin]

Cass Doherty

Arts & Features Editor

The Mazmanian Gallery’s October show displays 3-D sculptures and drawings created by students. The works are on display until Oct. 28.

Every year, FSU’s art department hosts a show focusing on a specific concentration within the

department. The pieces on display in the current show are from the spring and fall 2016 semesters.

Tim McDonald, associate professor of art and the gallery’s director, said he asked professors from the department to submit recent student work from their classes. Since drawing doesn’t necessarily have its own concentration, they decided to integrate 3-D sculpture and drawing together to display how the two complement one another.

Senior Sergio Lopez was part of the “Heads on a Stick” group project. His piece, one in which he intended to convey a basic facial structure, was a learning opportunity for him.

“It was a new media for me. I’ve never worked three-dimensionally,” he said.

Lopez was inspired by “the Egyptian busts, the different pharaohs and the queens.” He was taking a watercolor course at the time, and that inspired him to create the “drippy” look he gave to the head.

He used chicken wire to construct the basic features of the face, then covered it in cheese cloth dipped in plaster.

“I basically made this whole big block, and then I chiseled away and made the facial structure of it,” he said. “I like how [the pieces] convey a portrait. Because, in a way, these are three-dimensional portraits, and there’s a piece of us in all the different projects.”

Alexandria Krause, a senior, made an untitled piece for an alternative-means project. Krause created her drawing out of pastel, watercolor and graphite.

“I put glue down first, and threw pastel at the paper and then smudged it,” said Krause. She then threw watercolor at the paper and finished her piece by drawing lines with a graphite pencil.

Krause was inspired by an “unfortunate run-in with my ex.” She added, “Being able to channel the negative feelings I did have into my piece brought life to something that was really pretty.”

Krause said her goal when creating the piece was to make something attractive that would allow her to pass class. “I didn’t really have an image in mind, so it was nice to not have to think about anything, and just do something that felt right.”

Senior Maria Katinas was assigned to Ind something that looked like a drawing in nature for her Advanced Drawing class. “I was just going around taking pictures of whatever I could Ind, and I looked up and I saw the power lines,” said Katinas. “I love cool perspectives.”

Her goal was to draw attention to something in nature that people don’t normally pay attention to. “I wanted people to look and say, ‘Look how cool they are,’” she said.

Katinas used graphite for her drawing, and hung the paper up on the window in her dormroom to use the natural light. “It made it look like the sun was in the picture, but it was also so much easier to draw,” said Katinas.

Senior Trisha Danforth’s piece, called “Found Drawing” after the Advanced Drawing assignment, was inspired by lights and shadows. She said she was focused on the way lights and shadows interact with each other, the materials that cast the shadows and “light hitting objects and the way it reflects off of things, and how sometimes we overlook that.”

She added she was always inspired by nature and lighting. She seeks to capture what others don’t see in nature.

Danforth used sumi ink on paper for her piece, and said the most important part of the process was “finding inspiration”.

She added, “The biggest part of the process was Inding something I wanted to show.”

Junior Kelsey Goossens began her piece, a three-dimensional goose titled “Take-off,” with various-sized wire circles which she used to create the general silhouette of a goose. She then connected the wires together by twisting them around one another.

“I knew from the beginning I wanted it to be really large and intimidating,” said Gooss a very angular neck. She added she also wanted most of the focus to be on the neck and head, which was why she made the wire around the neck more dense than the body.

“I originally was going to have it sit on the ground, but once it was completed, I thought it would be much more impactful if it was in the air,” she said. Goossens was inspired to make a goose for her piece because of her last name, and the fact that her house is over\owing with “goose memorabilia.”

“It’s an animal very personal to me. ... It’s sort of a self portrait,” she said.