The assignment- Much 3D art of the cave dwelling period was created by altering found materials in nature, such as rocks, wood, bones, etc, through carving, incising, or adding items. I showed some slides of such artworks, and I brought some stuff from home, to which we added stuff from the classroom and campus.
How to make this up- I had brought in an assortment of shells collected from the beach (mostly broken clam shells) and some dried out bamboo shafts from a small grove near my home. I allowed students to take small pieces of wood from the scrap boxes there in the classroom, and some foraged outside for such things as small stones, leaves, acorns. (in a nod to the 21st century I am allowing the use of hot glue to attach these items to each other)
The assignment is to create a free standing sculpture, looking to see what the pieces bring to mind, then building something that would be seen as that thing. For our purposes the subjects will be those things that cave artists regularly depicted- people and animals, as well as specific parts of those things (for example, a human hand, an animal's head, etc.) Mythological creatures are also allowed.
Above is a representation of a bull made from wood scraps from the bins in the classroom, pieces of bamboo, and broken shells, while below is a perching bird, with a supporting skeleton built from small pieces of wood and whole and broken shells used to make the feathers and body.
