Art and engineering students collaborate on Museum project

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/summa08.jpg” caption=”Fourth-year studio art students Allison Garrett and Benedict Lopes and fourth-year engineering students James Prine and Geoff Rivers. Photo by Jennifer Petteplace.”]Art and engineering may seem like an unlikely combination, but when students from both disciplines joined forces, the artwork they created took on a life of its own. An innovative pilot project was launched last fall, partnering mechanical engineering students with students from the Studio Art Program in the School of the Arts.

Fourth-year engineering students James Prine and Geoff Rivers and fourth-year studio art students Allison Garrett and Benedict Lopes leapt at the opportunity and, over the past few months, have collaborated on two interactive sculptural works.

These works will be unveiled at the Museum's annual Graduating Studio Art Student Exhibition, Are You With Me?, which runs April 10 to 26.

“Over the past 20 years or so, theory and practice in all areas of society have sought out inter-disciplinarity as a goal that offers the potential for innovation and imagination as thinkers from varied areas contribute their discipline's uniqueness to a broader project. This is true not only in the halls of academia but also in the museum world,” says museum director and curator Carol Podedworny.

“The McMaster Museum of Art is very pleased to be able to offer the engineering and studio students of McMaster University a forum in which to express an innovative collaboration. Congratulations to the students and to the departments whose initation of this project accentuates the innovative thinking characteristic of the McMaster community.”

This initiative, named Art in Engineering/Engineering in Art, serves as a final-year project for engineering students and a thesis project for the studio art students. All participants are enthusiastic about the experience.

“This project is a breakaway from industry-related mechanical engineering projects,” said Rivers. “This is a really applicable project that is going to be different every single year, where we'll be working with people, and we get a handle on what it's like to be an engineering consultant.”

“It has been an incredible experience,” said Lopes, “one that I feel like I've been building towards for the last four years. This project shattered our limitations — whatever we wanted we could execute.”

The untraditional pairing fulfilled course requirements in an innovative way.

“Many final-year projects focus on using hard technical skills to create possibilities, artistic skills to select choices and a fusion of both to actually realize the solution,” said Prine.

Garrett works with steel, focusing on kinematics (a branch of mechanics that deals with motion). Her final work is a large metal tree sculpture. A bicycle mechanism is incorporated into the piece and when it is pedaled, a series of chains and magnets carry carbon steel ball bearings to the top of the branches. When the bearings reach the top, they funnel down so that the tree appears to be raining.

Lopes's sculptural installation is a conceptual piece. Hidden from the main gallery space by a series of modular facade units, the installation invites the viewer into a private, experientially-focused space.

Rising to a height of eight feet and running the length of the gallery wall, structural integrity is paramount. The work is intended to enclose the viewer, limiting the scope of their senses while at the same time requiring the viewer to interact.