Course Description

The life-size figure is a touchstone of sculpture. Making something our own size, standing like oneself, with every surface, each feature– a head, a face, a gaze like our own– that’s a very peculiar proposition, unlike anything else mankind makes for itself. It must have been strange, startling, and intimidating the first time, in prehistory. Done right, it still is.

After Rodin, the life size figure walked away from rhetorical demonstration, toward daily life. Recently, that has been perhaps best exemplified in photography– the Beach Portraits of Rineke Dijkstra and the Museumgoers of Thomas Struth, for example. Likewise, the figure of this course is the body we live in, today.

In the interest of speed, the armatures will be ready for work on the first morning. The pose is quotidian: very little implied motion, very little signing “gesture.” Better to let the body speak for itself.

This class is not an anatomy lesson, although anatomy is employed. We think through what tells and what suggests–what makes “message” of a body?

Basic modeling skills are on the table but you need not have done this before to try it in June. Bring readiness to try for trying’s sake. On offer is pure experience—the 10 days do not include preservation of the work in clay (that may be pursued separately on an individual basis). Our ten days are a creative confrontation with life, and everything it takes to make life hold still for a moment, and take Form.

Through the week, we take occasional breaks for brief slide talks and conversation. After lunch on the last Friday afternoon we clean up and review all our work with invited critics from outside the room: Choghakate Kazarian, Garth Evans and Bruce Gagnier. Reception afterward, for all concerned.

Course Syllabus