Looking for Inspiration? Check out “Collage Object”

These works are by our amazing Art Foundation students from a class project titled “Collage Object,” a collaboration between the Space Research and Surface Research classes. The images are on display at our Orange Hall.

The long history of collage provides the background for “Collage Object.” The faculty invited students to apply this methodology to explore the three-dimensional formal quality of functional objects and the creation of visual relationships in a sculpture.

The students collected everyday objects, focusing on form, texture, and scale rather than function or theme. By creating an assemblage, neglecting the functional aspect of recognizable everyday objects, and exploring their compositional qualities, the students were encouraged to recognize design opportunities to develop compelling sculptures that display unity, harmony, and order. 

During the process they learned about material characteristics and processes of manipulation of materials, how to develop visual cohesiveness, about print production and photo editing, how to spray paint, construction techniques, observation and collaboration skills, documentation techniques and exhibition strategies and much more besides.

The students developed their final sculptures through prototyping, discovery, discussion, and continuous iteration. Using basic construction methods, the students cut, pasted, tied, taped, glued, strapped, and manipulated their objects to create a complete, unified composition.

To further unify the visual appearance, the final sculptures were spray painted white in our FabLab’s Spray Booth. This stage created another level of visual reduction, further unifying the separate objects into cohesive forms, textures, and visual relationships. The final iteration of the project, the photographic documentation of the sculptures, was used to explore another form of graphic manipulation through color and light. Using a black backdrop in the Gallery, the set utilized vibrant color lighting elements exploring complementary, analogous, and other distinct color relationships as an intuitive and straightforward introduction to color theory. 

The photographs of the sculptures are now on display at the Orange Hall at VCUarts Qatar and are a must-see. 

Looking for inspiration? Check out “Collage Object”. 

The project was led by Art Foundation associate professors Maysaa Almumin and Nathan Davis, with Studio Assistants and Interior Design alumni Aia Zaina and Amira Mohamed.

Art Foundation is an intensive one-year program for students who wish to pursue one of our Bachelor of Fine Art programs. The curriculum follows the philosophy of “learning by doing” and comprises four core classes that represent the basic tenets of art and design: drawing, surface, space, and time, as well as short introductory courses in interior, graphics, and painting, and printmaking.