Multiples Assignment
Introductory-level students are introduced to fundamental materials and construction techniques. This assignment prompts students to use found multiples to create a structural repetition that gives a sense of visual movement. The resulting works serve as a foundation for discussing compositional elements and construction strategies during critique.
Flat Planes Assignment
This assignment challenges students to transform flat materials into dimensional forms through cutting, bending, and folding. By constructing volume from planar surfaces, students develop an understanding of structural integrity, joinery, abstraction, and the use of positive and negative space within sculptural composition.
Soft Sculpture Assignment
For this assignment, students explored how meaning is created by transforming familiar mechanical or commercial objects into soft, bodily forms. By working with materials such as fabric, foam, felt, batting, or rubber, students investigated how natural forces such as gravity, pressure, and weight, shape form and create expressive sagging, folding, or slumping structures reminiscent of the human body.
Chair Assignment
Chairs occupy a distinctive position within art and design. They are simultaneously functional and aesthetic objects—icons of design history, proxies for the human body, and symbols of presence. A chair may be conceived as a universal form intended for broad use or as a highly customized, individualized object. Its methods of fabrication and material composition fundamentally shape not only its utility but also its conceptual and cultural meaning.
Civic Engagement Projects
The following three projects integrated civic engagement with studio work and professional practices for emerging artists. These collaborations include a mural for the Hamilton Madison House, an established settlement house serving the Chinatown/Two Bridges neighborhood near campus. The organization’s mission is to support vulnerable community members including children, the elderly, new immigrants, refugees, and the unemployed.
The second project involved a collaboration between my students and my brother, Dr. Alex Becket, DVM, at the Stone Zoo in Boston. Students designed and 3D-printed prosthetic support-brace prototypes for an endangered crane with a leg injury, working from a plaster footprint impression and detailed anatomical measurements. Using a design-thinking approach, they researched the needs of a non-human client, developed multiple structural solutions, and iterated based on direct professional feedback. The project strengthened skills in 3D modeling, prototyping, and digital fabrication while providing a unique applied learning experience.
Following collaborations beyond campus, the Fall 2020 semester shifted toward supporting our own community during a challenging phase of the pandemic. First-year art students, returning to in-person learning after extended isolation, created a large-scale collaborative mural for the lobby of One Pace Plaza. Inspired by Black Lives Matter street murals, the students designed a “welcome back” message celebrating New York City and its diverse communities. The completed Unity mural is now permanently installed on the ground level of One Pace Plaza, marking a significant creative and communal milestone for the students involved.
