Inflatable art canvases SMC quad

Look above the quad—it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s –– art? Many a nighttime passerby caught a glimpse of the curious art installation still in progress. For the past week, Art 13 students and their instructor have been testing inflatable art pieces before showing to the whole campus.

They have been doing this during their 3-D design class.

Emily Silver, professor of art, is orchestrating this display in her first semester at SMC.

She assigned the inflatable art to her class as a contribution to this year’s Global Citizenship theme of “Health, Wellness, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

One of her students is Randall Foster. “We were given the option to interpret the theme, what it meant to us,” Foster said of the project.

The art pieces are mostly made of plastic drop cloth and packing-tape.

“It started out as just a class assignment, but we wanted to showcase them to the community,” said Foster. “So all of SMC could be part of this project.”

Silver said in an email interview, “I think it’s a great way to create a dialogue throughout the college amongst peers.”

“Art has the power of bringing people together and forming a new way of communicating,” said Silver. “So hopefully this display will reach across boundaries and start fresh conversations between people.”

Though they only recently started staging their work in the quad, they have been working on the pieces and testing them for the last four weeks.

Assisting Foster on a piece that resembles a large wave were classmates Peter Sardo, Kathy Chin, and John Busse. Sardo said of the piece, “The main idea was shock and awe, to be ridiculously big.”

The hours were daunting for all involved, but the artists were proud of the end result. “What I liked was the frustration—to me, it was the discovery,” said Chin. Pardo said: “We learned a lot. I kind of want to do it again.”

“As for displaying the pieces, everyone has been very supportive and helpful to get this to happen,” said Silver. “I am very thankful. There were no issues at all.” The art will be on display this Thursday, Oct. 20, on the quad from 1 to 5 p.m.