Exploring Social Issues in Sculpture; Students Deconstruct and Reconstruct Wooden Chairs While Commenting on Social Issues

The Art Department, as a whole has been working throughout the year to implement a visual arts curriculum focused on developing student's abilities to critically think about art making and the importance of meaning and concept behind creating work. Students have spent time exploring artists who used their work as a platform for commenting on social issues throughout the world.  This particular project was this class's first introduction to this practice.  Students learned about artists such as Carrie Mae Weems,  Doris Salcedo and William Kentridge, whose work is as much appealing and successful for its' visual qualities as it is for it's conceptual qualities.  The students had a great time working with this medium.  More importantly, students were forced to critically think about their particular social issue and reflect on what particular aspect of this issue they were drawn to and then solve the problem of how to communicate these thoughts visually with their structures.  Here are some of the results.

The following summaries were based off of the students artist statements that were submitted with their final sculpture
Upper Left - Zach Burlingame (12th grade) focused on Energy Consumption with the spindles of the chairs representing power lines and the wire representing the electricity moving throughout the earth, which is represented by the chair itself.  The chair is really battered to illustrate the negative effect that our current sources of energy are having on our planet.  There are also batteries drilled into the surfaces to comment on the often negligent approach to refusal of wastes from energy sources that damage the planet.
Upper Middle - Paige Mason (11th Grade)  focused on the how distorted perspectives of others and oneself can be.  She experimented a lot with broken glass to comment on how humans often identify themselves as broken and not worthy enough.  The colors shining through all the broken pieces suggest the real person trying to shine through the often distorted perspectives.  Structurally, Paige wanted to create an imperfect somewhat unbalanced composition that represented the innate uniqueness of every individual, and that we should not look or be like anyone else. 
Upper Right- Liz Pierce (11th Grade) focused on the stress and pressure placed on students to be extremely successful both academically and socially in high school.  Her chair remained somewhat perfect and intact as a whole to represent the structure and perfect expectations that are pressed on many teenagers.  She covered her chair with old torn out pages from a book to illustrate the both the numerous thoughts and amount overwhelming image of homework and studying that stresses students out.  Liz had fun with the actual seat, ripping it open to suggestion the student exploding inside.  There are also little spiral wires protruding from the seat to further illustrate this pressure bursting out from them. 
Bottom Left- Jazz Borst (12th Grade) and Brooke Koelndorfer (12th Grade)  worked together to create a sculpture about gender roles and the stereotypes women often face from the American Society.  The front black shape is the desire of a woman to be bold, powerful, strong and unique while the Pink Form with the bright red lipstick is hovering and engulfing her pressuring her to maintain the feminine "girly" appearance and attitude. 
Bottom Second from Left-  Evan Wright (11th Grade) This sculpture was constructed to represent an African Warrior fighting against the AIDS Epidemic in Africa. 
Bottom Third from Left-   Rosie Rosales (11th Grade) focused in on the idea of being shunned by others and society after making a mistake and dealing with the consequences.  This piece was inspired by a friend of hers that she saw go through this.  The final sculpture is composed on a strong tilt to represent a person's support structure crumbling or being chopped off.  She used color at the base to represent the darkness that one goes through when feeling abandoned and as you move upward from the legs of the chair the colors grow more vibrant with life representing the desire to come out of the darkness.  The seat also has a literal illustration of someone curled up on the seat of the chair which really drives home the connection between the structure and the abandoned human. 
Bottom Far Right- Alex Angerer (10th Grade) worked with exploring the true meaning and reality of experiencing life.  He used the literal form of a ladder to represent going through life and working towards the top or happiness.  Each stage or step has a lot of wear and tear which he used to illustrate the experiences and hardships many face. Gold was used to emphasize the hardships and experiences as being more valuable than the end result.