ARTS 130
Material Issues
Last Offered Spring 2019
Division I
This course is not offered in the current catalog

What kind of maker should one be, after reading the latest climate report? The tendency to build, design, love, and collect objects – in our shelves and in our museums and in our landfills – is central to the human story. We have (serious) material issues! This class looks at individuals that hold ecology and what the environment asks of us close to their heart and their making, moving beyond ‘green’ as metaphor. We will study creative practices that work in partnership with land, with forests, agriculture, radically sustainable materials, food and food cultures. Through the semester, we will alter how we consume and what we consume, we will learn to repair, learn to divest, and learn how to make our own: Food! Clothes! Quilts! Containers! Pigments! _________! Our projects will be cross cultural, interdisciplinary, slow, working at the pace of seasons, working with what is already present in our homes, in our neighbourhoods. Through guided assignments and discussions, students will draft a personal and collective manifesto detailing their relationship to material and climate change, and develop a final project, in any format, that engages with it. We will work with our hands often, and well.