Touch Is a Point of Contact

Catalog description

Touch is a point of contact where distinct beings - human, object, or idea - meet, creating an exchange that can be both physical and transformative. Using contact as the main frame for thinking, this class will explore casting, molding, and related practices as both technical processes and conceptual frameworks for making art. Beginning with simple acts of rubbing, tracing, and walking as ways of recording and translating experience, students will explore how shapes, forms, and textures can be transferred across materials and contexts. Through a series of hands-on workshops, the class will move from mark-making practices toward more advanced methods of moldmaking and casting, such as working with negative space, making body casts, and positive object casting. Working with materials ranging from plaster, concrete, and resin to more experimental materials like wax, candy, or lard, students will develop technical fluency while also considering the poetic, sensory, and social dimensions of "contact." The semester culminates in a final performance that synthesizes learned techniques with individual artistic inquiry. This final project emphasizes the reciprocal influence of contact - how objects can shape the body's movement, and how the body alters the object's meaning and function.