FARMINGTON — Sculpture students at the University of Maine at Farmington are ready to host a showing of their work on The Prosthesis Project, a collection of wearable sculptures designed to perform a task.

The public is welcome to a reception and showing from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12, in the Flex Space Gallery of the Emery Community Arts Center on campus, assistant professor Jesse Potts said Tuesday.

The UMF Art Gallery is also having an opening of student work in conjunction with the showing, he added.

Two beginning sculpture classes, taught by Potts, created sculptures ranging from the practical to the bizarre, he said. These have been on display since this past Friday, but the Thursday showing features some artist students.

“Students will be wearing their projects inside of a giant, inflatable bubble within Emery,” Potts said. “Please come see the Sculpture 1 students in a parallel universe of their own making!”

The two art classes of about 28 students were challenged to create a very personal sculpture. After “identifying a limitation of their own body, they were asked to develop a wearable contraption to meet that need,” according to the class assignment. “It can be as silly as serious as you like,” the students were told.

“The idea was for each student to use their own body as a jumping-off point,” Potts said. The work became more personal as they considered their own limitations, some physical, some emotional, she said.

Pulling a cord on one project, metal spines of a breast plate rose to provide protection similar to a porcupine’s quills, he said. The student artist explored their own vulnerability.

In another personal sculpture, an apple dangled from headgear. Spaced within eyesight but out of reach, the student was reflecting on eating disorders as the work restrains what goes into the mouth, he said.

Another headgear has a camera that takes a photo every time the wearer opens their mouth, while a retractable beard reflects a student’s perceptions about having less hair, he said.

For beginning art students, some with no art experience and others who were taking their first and only art class, it took some weeks to conceive, visualize and implement their pieces. It was a challenge, he said.

It was also a challenge for Potts to draw the potential from each student and meet everyone at their point of interest, he said.

Working on a large, inflatable, plastic globe, using a parabolic curve to angle and cut each piece to fit together, provided an opportunity for the students to see what they could accomplish working together, he said.

The students will put the pieces together and hang it Wednesday morning, he said. The public is welcome to come watch them prepare between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m., for the one-day showing.

abryant@sunjournal.com

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