Tee Time on the Terrace
05/21/2017
Last week first-year students in a Spatial Dynamics class taught by Associate Professor Asli Serbest invited the RISD community to a round of miniature golf outside of the RISD Museum.
Using classic paintings and objects from the museum’s collection as a starting point—by artists like Jackson Pollock and Fernand Leger—The Himalayas Mini Golf Project celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first miniature golf course and encouraged students to experiment with structure, material surface and spatial composition in order to translate historic art and design motifs into a contemporary (and fun!) mixed-media installation.
More than 100 players tried their hands on the 10-hole course, and Experimental and Foundation Studies faculty member Kai Franz won the tournament.
“Students were encouraged to quote and question, appropriate and contradict, and reflect on the parallels between art and golf to better understand the structure and cultural significance of both.”Associate professor asli serbest
The Providence Journal reported on the artsy antics last Tuesday, noting that the assignment “asked each of the 10 teams … to create a three-dimensional golf challenge” and pointing out that some of the expectation-defying holes were not even round.
One hole (see top photo) reacted to Leger’s Flowers, another to Christopher Willmarth’s Beginning and a third (see below)—in which players mixed colorful paints together while putting—to the process-based work of Pollock.
“Process was important throughout the semester,” Serbest notes. “Students were encouraged to quote and question, appropriate and contradict, and reflect on the parallels between art and golf to better understand the structure and cultural significance of both.”
—Simone Solondz
top image by Kris Craig/The Providence Journal
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