Sculpture and the Expanded Field

Course Description

Prerequisite:  None

Sculpture involves space, materials, techniques, and ideas. It is an art of the extraordinary as well as the everyday. No longer tied to architecture, mimesis, or commemorative representation, sculpture now appears in a variety of forms including as installations, collaborations, projections, appropriations, interventions, performances, and experimental projects that address formal concerns as well as issues of identity, historical memory, narrative, economics, the environment, popular culture, technology, globalism, politics, and time. Examples of such “expanded” sculpture include public art made to attach to buildings or to be given away, inflatable homeless shelters, and wearable art for street demonstrations. The principle area of knowledge addressed in this course involves exploratory learning about the formal, historical, and global dimensions of contemporary sculptural art. Students will work alone or in groups using a range of materials from cardboard to wood, to found objects, social affects, and conceptual ideas.

Instructor Bio

Terry Berlier is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with sculpture and expanded media. Her work is often kinetic, interactive, and/or sound based and focuses on everyday objects, the environment, ideas of nonplace/place, and queer practice.

She has exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally, including the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, Catherine Clark Gallery, Babel Gallery in Norway, Richard L. Nelson Gallery in Davis CA, Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, Kala Art Institute Gallery in Berkeley, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Natural Balance in Girona Spain, and FemArt Mostra D’Art De Dones in Barcelona Spain. Her work has been reviewed in the BBC News Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle and in the book Seeing Gertrude Stein published by University of California Press. Her work is in several collections including the Progressive Corporation in Cleveland Ohio, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley California, and Bildwechsel Archive in Berlin Germany. She has received numerous residencies and grants including the Center for Cultural Innovation, Zellerbach Foundation Berkeley, Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship, Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research Fellow at Stanford University, Recology San Francisco, Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest Hungary, Exploratorium: Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception in San Francisco, Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship, California Council for Humanities California Stories Fund, and the Millay Colony for Artists.

She received a Master's in Fine Arts in Studio Art from University of California, Davis and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.