Special Topics in Sculpture: Making Sculpture Through Embodiment, Ritual and Performance Art - Walking in the Redwood Forest and the French Alps

Step by step, this course will teach you the wonderous history of walking as art, and how walking is an effective artmaking practice that can produce great results. Together we will wander in the great outdoors, explore, discover, feel, express, make, and share work. Some walks will be led by visiting artists. Art 189 will be a “global classroom.” For several classes we will be interacting with a group of students at the Experimental School of Art Annecy in the French Alps. Students in both locations can share their experiences, exchange impressions of place, drink warm drinks and eat yummy foods together as we envision new worlds for the future. We will make and exchange maps, videos, photographs, read texts and write letters. Each student will have a chance to design and facilitate a walk. Requirements are curiosity, commitment to completing coursework on time, and the willingness to improvise.   We will meet with the French students at 11am for the first five Mondays throughout the quarter and then again on March 7th. Hopefully you will be able to keep these times available. The class will be an adventure in learning about environments around the UCSC campus, as well as in the French Alps. Sculptures will happen along the way!  By the end of the class, students will have acquired some new strategies for making their art projects, will sense the world in new, inspiring ways and have more understanding that the goal is the journey.  If you would like to take this class and do not meet the prerequisites then please email Beth Stephens at estephe@ucsc.edu to request a permission code.