Scattered around Shoreline Community College’s campus are a missile exploding with flowers, a 4-foot tall teddy bear and an archway of balloons, all thanks to the art department! This project, along with other art pieces popping up all over campus, is taking what’s being done in the art building and bringing it out.
“Students are tasked with creating a site-specific piece of art, along with a materials list and a proposal, and then execute it,” associate faculty member Matthew Allison said. “It gives students some scope of working on a larger project and it gives them an appreciation of public art.”
The project had no limits in terms of what students could make. Allison showed them examples of public art and simply put it as “a chance to create something not just for family or friends or themselves, but for anybody that walks by.”
Allison, who has a Masters in Fine Art in ceramics from Southern Illinois University, said the most difficult part for a lot of students was time. He said all students ran into difficulties building at that scale. Some with the materials not working properly and others with not realizing how long it would take to build something that large.
“If it’s too small, it looks like garbage or like someone left it on accident,” Allison said. “They also had some fabrication issues trying to make it weather proof. But at the end they were all satisfied and created something that was larger than they have ever done before.”
The projects can be seen all over campus, but most are clustered around the art building, the PUB and the library. Allison said one of the requirements was that the piece had to be in a public spot with a lot of foot traffic. The other requirement was that the piece had to be out for at least one night.
The project has permission to be kept until Dec. 6, 2013, but that doesn’t mean all of them will be taken down. Some previous projects can still be seen around campus, like the Rubik’s cube outside of the art building.
This project was started by a former faculty member Laura Ward and Allison decided to continue it because it was so popular.
“I’ve only received positive feedback from people about this project,” Allison said. “People like seeing the work come out of the classroom and it exposes the wider campus to the fact that art is being made here.”