Caroline Ma - Alumni Artist Extrodinaire

Teachers have and play favorites even though they might say they don't. For me, one of my all time favorites has been Caroline Ma who graduated from here 2 years ago, so Class of 2009. I had the pleasure of working with her in her junior and senior year. I believe she took 5 of my classes, Beginning and Intermediate 2-d and 3-d art, and Ceramics. She will be beginning her sophomore year at Parsons in New York City. What is so nice is that she has kept in touch and when she flew home for the summer, she dropped by with a few of her recent assignments. I invited her to work along with my 2nd year 3-d students in our Metals Unit. So here she is above annealing a piece of copper in the butane torch, getting ready to turn it into a piece of jewelry.

These are the pieces she brought to show me from a 3-d Design class she took at Parsons. Above the wire sculpture of her hand, and below a light fixture.

The light above was so unique, I've never seen anything like it. She built it from many geometric pieces of plastic that she secured together with pierced earring studs. I believe the instructor told them they couldn't use glue so this was her creative solution. Inside surrounding the bulb was more plastic, this time in a shade of pink so that when the light is lit it gives off a soft pink glow.

This next sculpture was just as fabulous as the last. This time the instructor had them start with styrofoam and carve an interesting form, then cover it up in a collage technique. Caroline used pink embossed paper that looked like leather as well as newspaper. She used tiny pins to nail the paper in place, again very clever! And then to add the steel nails, it really adds movement and variety to the piece. For EXTRA CREDIT list for me on a pink piece of paper the 7 Elements of Art and the 7 Principles of Art. I've already listed 2 of them for you above (make sure you list those 2 in the correct column). Put your name and period on the paper and give it to me no later than Friday Sept. 10 when you walk in my door before you take your seat.