ProtoStudio

ProtoStudio is an advanced after-school art program at Lane Tech school I founded and taught from the beginning of Spring 2011-Summer 2012.  The entire 2011-2012 school year is documented in the ProtoStudio blog, but here are some of my favorite moments of the year.  ProtoStudio is focused on short exercises to engage students in responding to certain contexts.  It is important to remember that these projects were created within one hour, requiring students to respond quickly and creatively to my prompts.

Wood Shop Re-Design

As part of my interview at a school in the Philadelphia area, I drafted a re-design of their wood shop.  Below are images from the shop in its current state and images from a 3-D computer model of my recommendations.  I recommended painting and focusing on cleaner organization, as well as a few re-arrangements of tools.  Hopefully I will be teaching woodworking, sculpture, and photography at the school in Fall 2012 and will be able to implement these changes.

I recommended moving the lathes against the wall.

I also recommended building an out-feed table for the table saw, slightly rotating the band saw, and replacing the radial arm saw with a miter saw.

I will be cleaning up this side of the room and possibly moving both boards to the far wall, creating a dedicated front-of-room.

I will be organizing the hand tools and clamps similar to those pictured below, from the woodshop at SAIC.

I created the model in Sketch Up, and borrowed tool designs from usernames: Chris, dirtroadkid, Zero99999, BradAskins, Daveysproket, QuickDraw, and Highland Woodworking (although Sketch Up does not require citing sources, per their license agreement).

Teaching Assistant, Furniture Design

As an MFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I was selected as a Teaching Assistant for Furniture Design in the Architecture and Design Department (AIADO).  Each student was required to make one case good piece of furniture.  The professor for the class was furniture designer Lee Weitzman.

Above: by Miran Kim.   Below: by Hwansu Cho

This piece can be used either side up, and hung on the wall. By Lindsay Le

Above: This ingenious piece uses window blinds as a door. By Ji Young Yang

Below: by Seungyeon Yoo

 

Below: Andrew Tyson

Teaching Assistant, Advanced Woodworking

As an MFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I was selected as a Teaching Assistant for Basic Woodworking and Advanced Woodworking (called Twist and Rout) with Professor Paul Martin.  The images below are student work from the Twist and Rout class.  We focused of the processes of bending wood through a variety of processes, including steam bending, vacuum bag bending, pipe bending, and lamination.  I was charged with assisting the students in making many complicated bending procedures.

Below: Lesley Jackson, who created her dowels on the lathe with a jig for a router.

This enormous chair was still in progress at critique time.

The World As Text exhibition

THE WORLD AS TEXT is a summer reading room and exhibition featuring over seventy-five contemporary artist’s books, zines, exhibition catalogs and alternative publications.  The innovative reading room is designed by artist John Preus, in collaboration with students from the Columbia College Chicago, and myself.  The exhibition was curated by Jessica Cochran at Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts.

A hybrid space crafted out of re-purposed materials to amplify connections between the action of reading and the activity of performance.  I had a substantial amount of influence over the design and construction of the reading room.

Countertransference exhibition

Countertransference was exhibited at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the summer of 2010.  The artists included were Lauren F. Adams, Dan Brawley, Anne Brennan, Mei Ling Cann, Jonathan Cobbs, Adam Jacono, Abby Spangel Perry, Dixon Stetler, Jim Tisnado, and Jan-Ru Wan.  The exhibition was curated by myself with installation assistance by Ashley Gilreath.

As participants in contemporary social debates, the artists listed above are engaged in spotlighting cultural paradoxes and critically approaching collective problems.  Through use of everyday [/alternative] materials, processes, or displays, these artists provide visual dialogue that is not possible to achieve with traditional painting, sculpture, or photography.  As a group, they demonstrate that form is necessarily tied to content.