On the evening of Monday, Oct. 14, artists and onlookers gathered in Westby Hall’s Gallery to attend the Women of Westby Club’s show reception. From paintings to prints to even animations, the event proudly displayed works in all mediums. However, a few pieces stood out from the rest by bringing a third dimension to the gallery: spread throughout the exhibit, student-made sculptures were all made in various sculpture courses offered at Rowan.

“One of the biggest things that I took away from studying sculpture in college was realizing that I had the ability to alter the world around me,” said Assistant Professor and Area Coordinator Sam Horowitz. “I want students to feel equally activated to make a change in their own lives.”

Walking around the sculpture room, Horowitz’s words certainly ring true – throughout the workshop, students work on their projects with an amazingly broad range of tools and materials. Far beyond just clay, sculpture at Rowan presents students with a wide variety of roads to go down when designing their piece: from a fully functioning wood shop to a furnace for working in metal, the options for where to go with your project appear to only be limited by your imagination.

“Painting and drawing never held my interest,” said Horowitz. “Sculpture is a great way to explore, it’s one of the more specialized areas that we have here, and I would encourage people to give it a shot and see if they like it.”

Horowitz explained that this semester, students in advanced and intermediate sculpture classes had been presented with a theme to guide them in their projects. By challenging them to create works inspired by each of the four classical elements which are earth, wind, water, and fire. Horowitz hoped that students would share a common starting point from which they could all diverge.

As the semester began with students creating works inspired by earth, sculpture students were finishing their earth-themed projects by mid-October. Aedan Rosolia, a senior in intermediate sculpture, presented his installment in the department’s earth-themed sculptures, a metal and wood piece entitled “Give/Take.”

“I am a gardener, and this past summer I worked with Rowan’s grounds crew,” Rosolia said. “It’s about our environment and mankind’s influence on it. We do so much to the Earth, and it’s about that labor. I think machines like this are funny because they really get to that why-are-we-doing-this – so many things we do to the Earth are nonsensical.”

Finally, Rosolia detailed the lengthy process of putting the piece together: beginning with creating a mold of his hands, he would go from there to create a mold strong enough to cast an aluminum model of his hands gripping the shovel in, which, when cooled, produced his final product. 

While Rosolia’s piece stood firm as an example of one way the theme was taken, junior Morgan Van Holtz’s “Enchanted,” featured in the same gallery as Rosolia’s piece, stood in brilliant contrast to his work: her piece, a cape adorned with paint, artificial greenery, and even real topsoil and plant material brought an ethereally earthy sensibility with it.

“It’s a real costume, it’s really heavy to wear though,” Van Holtz said. 

Lily Deskis, a senior majoring in graphic design, was stunned by her own interpretation of the theme. “Mother Nature’s Baby,” composed of a wide range of materials, including fabric, clay, paint, and real plant matter, features a baby in a basket with an earthy flare.

“There’s this idea of a Mother Earth,” Deskis said. “This is like Mother Earth’s baby.”

“It’s a cute piece that was fun to do and visually interesting, and it really came to me as I went,” said Deskis.

While the four elements theme acts as a guiding light for students in higher-level sculpture classes, students in introductory courses aren’t constricted to a theme, free to express themselves creatively however they please as their first introduction to the world of sculpture. Jadah Kingston, a junior majoring in art education, took the opportunity to make an enlarged model of a logo.

“It’s for my friend’s brand, she cuts hair,” said Kingston. “My project, it’s pretty much complete, I made it all out of cardboard.” 

Going forward in the semester, whether it be proceeding to create works inspired by the other classical elements to learning more in the basics of the discipline, all sculpture students will continue to freely express themselves however they see fit in this special portion of the art department’s course offerings. From giving hands-on experience working in a wide range of mediums to offering an amazingly personalized way for students to express themselves creatively, Rowan’s sculpture program offers a wonderfully unique opportunity for students to grow as artists. 

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