Instruction and Student Work
Workshops and Demos
Open Orientations
Each semester, transfer students and new faculty/ staff go through a two-hour Central Shop Orientation. Included is a safety overview and tour of the shop’s resources, followed by introductory demos over the table saws, miter saws, bandsaws, and drill presses.
Individual classes from the Sculpture, Painting, Photo/Film, Printmaking, Ceramics and Foundation Departments get annual workshops and demo’s. Other departments have occasional demo’s based on current curriculum. Below is a strainer and panel demo for Painting Sophomores.
Strainer Overview Specifications
Foundation Orientation
Each year over 200 students in 10 to 12 Foundation classes come through Central Shop to go through a two day (eight hour) orientation project. Derstine’s current base project for the students is a mitered plywood box with a rabbeted lid. She shares the instruction with one to two other instructors each year, while the classes Foundation faculty member and the shop’s other staff assist.
Building off of the simple box each class has a different project theme based on where they are in the semester’s curriculum and what their Foundation instructor can build off of in the studio classroom. Whether it is surface designs, animated mouths, shadow boxes, formal woodworking or building two-foot legs each class explores the shop in different ways. With changing additional machine/ tool demo’s, methods of construction and installation student’s across the classes can rapidly see the possibility within the shop and what they could be interested in their own practice.
Individual Student Work
Central Shop
Elizabeth has contributed 6 years of staff instruction to the curriculum that runs through Central Shop.
In her time here she has taught more than 1,000 students how to use the table saw and alike. Running about 46 Foundation Class Orientations in the last four years. Having had more than 20 student technicians and currently manages over 3,000 visits to the shop annually.
