GALLERY: Urban’s Stone Carving class creates elegant sculptures out of an unforgiving medium
Stone Carving has traditionally been an 11-week, Urban Advanced Studies (UAS) course taught by art teacher Kate Randall every spring. Next year, it will be taught during both the fall and winter terms as well as in the spring term. In addition, it will not be a UAS class. Students in Stone Carving choose a rock during the first week of class and continue to work with that rock throughout the entire trimester. This gallery highlights the work of some of the students currently in Stone Carving, alongside their thoughts about the process of creating a stone sculpture.
Karan Desai (’15) used his previous experience with sculpture to influence his Stone Carving piece. He had done “animal themed” sculptures in the past, so when he went to choose his rock, he picked it based off of what the colors reminded him of. “When you wash it… it’s a marble-ish kind of color… light beige with red cracks everywhere,” said Desai. Desai said his project shifted over the course of the term. He wanted his final project to be a sculpture of a turtle. He said that, at first, “it kind of screamed ‘turtle,’ but then it screamed ‘tooth.’” He said he chose to take Stone Carving because “it’s a lot harder than sculpture, because sculpture is clay and you can kind of remold stuff into what you want, you basically have many opportunities to start over. But with Stone Carving, it’s a lot more rigid, so when you take something off, it’s gone forever.” Desai likes this idea, explaining that it “says that you have to make mistakes, but you gotta make mistakes once … and learn from it”.